Thursday, May 31, 2018

All Too Often…

This is a common tale, work is great, promotions, raises and then it all dries up after we come up.
She Says Top TV Job Offers Slowed When She Came Out As Transgender
Scottie Madden hit a career milestone as a showrunner. But she says the opportunities dried up after she came out as transgender.
BuzzFeed
By Susan Cheng
May 31, 2018

When showrunner Scottie Madden first came out as a trans woman to an executive at Discovery Inc.’s Animal Planet in January 2015, she felt relieved. “If my top-level client is OK with this, then I'm going to be OK,” she’d told herself. Before transitioning, she had worked with the network to develop Dude, You’re Screwed, an adventure reality series that ended up airing on the company’s flagship network, Discovery Channel. As Madden recalls it, the executive had been “so blown away and happy and accepting.” From there, the showrunner proceeded to come out to all her colleagues in reality television. Their acceptance, Madden said, bordered “on the verge of surreal.”

But Madden’s optimism was misplaced. Now, more than three years after coming out, Madden says that neither Discovery, nor any other network or production company, has hired her to run another show.

“I never know if [an executive’s] not calling me back because I’m transgender, because she doesn’t have anything for me, or because she no longer works there — you never know,” Madden told BuzzFeed News, describing the often ambiguous nature of show business. “When you work for hire, you serve at the mercy of somebody's whim. The phrase you always hear is, ‘It just didn’t work out.’ And that covers all manners of things.” As showrunners, Madden explained, “Our clients are both the network and the production company.” As the linchpin between the two, they pitch ideas, help TV executives develop shows, and officially get the job when and if the show gets bought.
Oh this is so very common… We support you 100 percent! Then nothing.

And it is almost impossible to prove discrimination; they have a thousand excuses and none of them are discriminatory. Unless they are stupid they will never say that you weren’t hired because you’re trans, so proving discrimination is all but impossible.

That is why I say if you have a job wait until you have a couple of performance reviews under your belt before transitioning.

For me I lived as Diana except for work, so for 40 hours a week I was in male mode and the rest of the time I was Diana. It was hard living a dual life but I had only a couple of years before I was eligible for retirement and I didn’t want to lose my pension, so I bit the bullet for 4 years and the day that I retired I transitioned.

It is not just us, but all protected classes.

  • We didn’t hire you because you are old, we didn’t hire you because your skills are out dated.
  • You didn’t get your promotion because you’re a woman; you are just not qualified for the new job.
  • You were laid off not because you’re black but because your position is not needed anymore.

Oh they can come up many reasons that are non-discriminatory and trying to prove otherwise is all but impossible.

So why have anti-discrimination laws?

As I like to say it keeps the honest companies honest, it make many companies to think twice before discriminating  and they sleazy companies, well nothing would stop them.

As an example take Trump’s son-in-law…
Kushner Cos. is facing investigation for filing false building permits
Market Watch
Published: Mar 21, 2018

A New York City Council member and a tenant's rights group are launching an investigation into the real-estate firm controlled by the family of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, over a report that it regularly falsified building permits.
Let’s face it there are companies out there that wouldn’t blink twice about discrimination or breaking the law, while others go out of their way to hire protected classes. I was at a Target store the other day and checkout clerk was trans. At my local Stop & Shop they had a trans woman working for them, my guess she was a high school student and then a college student working the summers for them.

No comments:

Post a Comment