Five things you get wrong about being trans in the workplace

As a trans professional, I've had my fair share of strange interactions with people who weren't transphobic and were generally well-meaning, but who were fundamentally confused about what being trans is actually like and thus did some very strange things. To give just one example, an investor who shall remain nameless once introduced me, in the interests of mentoring, to another trans woman who'd reached quite a high position in a company they worked with. Unfortunately, the culture clash was massive: I am, after all, a data and infra engineer and occasional statistician, and the person whom I was talking to was very much an HR professional. While we were both trans, literally nothing else about our experience had much overlap to it and the whole experience was simply excruciatingly awkward.

A lot of these situations seem to come, in general, from a set of fairly common misconceptions that people hold. One might then hope that correcting these misconceptions might have some positive effect on the inclusion and experience of trans people in the workplace.

In this article, then, I'll discuss five misconceptions that people commonly hold about trans people, with a tilt towards workforce interactions. In each section, I give a brief explainer of the misconception and why it's wrong, and then give some points for what you, as a well-meaning cis person (or a trans person privileged enough to have dodged most of this shit: they're few and far between, but I've met one or two of them) can do to help mitigate or undo the damage that the misconception causes.

Most people have a completely wrong mental model of transphobia

In general, when us New Zealanders think of bigotry, our models are racism and misogyny. These model forms of bigotry are pretty effective for modelling a lot of different kinds of bigoted behaviour, so it's perhaps unsurprising that we tend to run that way. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work for transphobia: when handling transphobia, rather, you need to think in terms of antisemitism.

In cases of racism and misogyny the principle by which people are excluded from the workplace or held to be inferior is incapacity: people of colour or women are held to be not as good at whatever they're doing as white people or men. In transphobia and antisemitism, however, trans people or Jews can easily be thought of as being very smart, cunning and excellent planners. The axis by which these bigotries work is conspiracism, infiltration and corruption. The Jews or the trans people are deviants who are corrupting your youth, controlling what you can say or think, secretly pulling strings behind the scenes.

This means that well-meaning people who are using racism or misogyny as a filter simply don't catch a lot of transphobic attitudes. From the regular perspective, questions about things such as whether trans people belong in sports or whether trans youth should have access to puberty blockers might well seem like a fair debate. Well-meaning people might thus simply not catch the fact that this is largely Julius Streicher level gutter propaganda. Using the conspiracist lens, you can clearly see what's being smuggled into the discourse in these debates: trans people are imposters, fake members of a group they claim to be a member of that they're aiming to destroy from within. And of course, as always, they're trying to corrupt your children and turn them into versions of themselves.

Without awareness of this lens, it's been remarkably easy for a lot of bad actors to thoroughly, comprehensively and persistently lie to people via media reports that don't even quite register as propaganda to the average person. Hilary Cass's shit-stained rag of a report, used to deny vital healthcare to trans teenagers, is an excellent example of this: it's badly constructed, full of lies from cover to cover and deliberately excluded pro-trans studies on grounds that they are "biased". This is a common theme in propaganda: because trans people are inherently deceptive, anything that we or the people who work with us say about us is inherently biased, and the only way to say something unbiased is to only listen to the people who think we're deviants that should be eliminated. Because the correct lens isn't being used, however, it's quite easy for a well-meaning but ignorant person to completely miss this. If you want to avoid doing damage, you have to be aware of this.

What you can do

Remember that you need to use a model for bigotry that's quite different to what you might otherwise rely on. This isn't a fault on your part, it's simply that things operate in a different framework.

If a trans person points out that something's transphobic but you think they're overreacting, check that it isn't a framework issue. We do sometimes overreact, of course, but as often as not, the issue is that people aren't using the correct framework and simply don't see the damage being done.

Keep in mind the fact that you are being extensively lied to by some pretty horrible people. If something that's being said about trans people sounds weirdly conspiracist or as though we're a shadowy evil-doing cabal (or, for that matter, being deceived), check whether it's actually true or not. Nobody, for example, is actually performing surgical interventions on trans children, and the fact that this lie keeps coming up in the public discourse despite having approximately zero basis in fact should give you some idea of just how bad this shit gets.

Much of the damage transphobia does is reflexive

As much as our current media environment and our elites and pundit class have had their brains cooked by rank transphobia, most people still aren't actually gutter transphobes. For the most part, people don't want to deliberately hurt us or screw us over: they just don't much care about us. This means that a lot of the transphobia we face in practice is mediated by people who either don't care much about us or who are outwardly supportive.

One channel by which this happens is conflict aversion. The gutter transphobes are, unfortunately, very loud about their transphobia and like as not, if they have to interact with a trans person or see them at all, they'll quite quickly make it everyone else's problem. For a person who doesn't care much about trans people and is even a little conflict-averse, this poses a problem: sure, the trans person might be the most qualified candidate, but they've seen what happens in the media when trans people show their faces anywhere, and they know that anyone in their company might be a transphobe and start making a massive fuss the moment a trans person gets hired. In that situation, it might start looking more and more like you should hire someone else.

In such circumstances, transphobes are effectively executing a heckler's veto over the employment and retention of trans people in the workforce, which is pretty fucked up. This is only exacerbated by the fact that a lot of well-meaning people don't quite get why we're so uncompromising about a lot of trans issues: they see it more as an affectation or something we choose to do than the truth that this is a fact about us, this is the gender we are and that respecting this is actively a matter of life or death. Our gutter transphobes play into this, making it out that we're being dramatic and making a fuss over nothing, and while getting people to become actively hostile to trans people is difficult, that kind of idea is one that propaganda can easily make stick in a person's mind. People who generally mean well, then, can develop a perception of trans people as a bit fussy, a bit whingy and kinda problematic: not the kind of people whom you'd want to work with, in short.

This has serious impacts on us because, out of an unwillingness to engage in conflict or through picking up false ideas about us (which is made easier by the fact that the mental model is wrong), much of the real transphobia against us is motivated by fear of the behaviour of some of the worst people in the world. Unless addressed directly, there's not really any way that trans-positive messaging or education is going to have much of an effect. To genuinely improve outcomes for trans people, you're going to have to be willing to get into some fights.

What you can do

Check your initial reactions when it comes to trans people. If you're worried that the trans person is in some way going to cause a conflict or otherwise be trouble, make sure that you aren't pre-emptively expecting someone else to react badly. Make sure that you aren't repeating a media script but are actually taking the situation seriously.

Be ready to get into some fights on behalf of trans people. If someone starts being bigoted, it's incumbent on you to shut that crap down as soon as possible. Conflict isn't always bad, and sometimes it's unavoidable.

Don't necessarily exclude trans people from consideration because you're worried that they'll catch flak. We're pretty resilient people and can deal with problems: just make sure that you have our backs if need be.

When we say something about the importance of something to us, believe us. Pronouns and names are not optional, and acting as though our identities are an affectation to be humoured but not really taken seriously is a great way to upset us and make the environment hostile.

We have more resting on our jobs than you do

It's fair to say that New Zealand's job market has been... less than good for the last few years. Recovery from the last few years of economic shocks has been muted, the current government's response has been ineffective and now we're facing down another major crisis in the form of the current oil shock. At the moment, every job is being snowed under with hundreds of applications (the prevalence of LLM tooling for all of this is certainly not helping), getting an interview is almost impossible and the social safety net that we rely on to survive unemployment is becoming increasingly worn. Consequently, everyone in the world is currently really fucking anxious about jobs. If we have one, we really want to keep it even if it's bad. If we don't, we're pretty desperate to get one and the lack of one is probably fucking us up mentally quite badly.

For trans people, this current state is roughly akin to how we might have felt about our jobs ten years ago. High rates of unemployment among trans people mean that a lot of us have very little money and thus, those of us who have work are terrified of losing it. High rates of gutter transphobia and the second-order reflexive bigotry that I described above means that we, on average, have to interview for a lot more jobs than we would if we were cis. Given how transphobia works, the competence markers that other marginalised groups might rely on to cut through an application process where they might not otherwise be noticed don't quite work. When we have jobs, we're consistently (thanks, once more, to the transphobia reflex) way less secure in them: the first to lose our jobs and the last to get promoted. And lack of social support, given that we're often estranged from family and have fewer friends than other people, means that we have significantly less in the way of places to fall back on than an average cis person does. In 2026, all of these things have been dialled up massively by the wave of elite hatred of trans people that the likes of JK Rowling and the New York Times (to name just two of the biggest culprits) have been pushing.

This means that basically everything to do with our jobs is quite emotionally fraught. Applying for jobs is that much more exhausting and draining for us than it is for cis people. Interviews, when we get them, are utterly nervewracking, as not only is the cost of rejection that much higher for us than for others, we basically always have to face the prospect of overt or covert bigotry. We're often terrified of losing our jobs, and any kind of rejection or negative feedback hits a lot harder than it does for cis people in the same situation. Work, in short, is a consistent process of being put through an emotional wringer for a lot of us.

What you can do

Even in the best situations, we are subject to a lot more emotional stress than cis people simply by virtue of being in the workplace. At the policy level, making free mental health care available to trans people, or if you already have an EAP program, making it available to trans people quite a lot more often, would do a lot of good.

Rejection has much more of an impact on us than it does on others. Consider doing what you can to soften that. If you've rejected a trans candidate who is nonetheless a strong candidate, consider advocating for them in your professional networks. If you can compensate trans people financially for time spent in the recruitment process, consider doing that as well.

A lot of trans people look to find work and support themselves through nontraditional methods (this very article is one of them, in fact). If you're capable of it, support that work and make use of any platforms you might have to share it. Help trans people who are doing this gain the kind of visibility that they need to make these projects work.

The bad news hits all of us

You might have noticed that trans people have, over the last few years, been subjected to wave after wave of people doing terrible things to us. The Olympics, after decades of trans people being allowed to compete with no problems, have recently implemented deeply intrusive DNA testing to make sure that trans people aren't allowed to compete. The UK has issued a blanket ban on young trans people being prescribed puberty blockers, forcing them to go through the wrong puberty in a deeply cruel policy that is going to lead to young people dying from suicide. They're also attempting to force trans people out of public life wherever they can. And as for the USA... well, several states appear to be compiling lists of known trans people for use by law enforcement, which is a few small steps away from actively genocidal policy. Even here in New Zealand, our health minister attempted to push through a puberty blocker ban, which is being fought in the courts.

It's easy enough to think that this doesn't affect trans people that much in certain circumstances: after all, I'm not a young person any more, I can get HRT and I'm not living in one of the more hostile countries to trans rights at the moment. I'm also not a sportsperson and I'm highly unlikely to qualify for any competitive sporting event. One might conclude, then, that I'm not much affected by any of this.

This would be very much an incorrect conclusion. While I'm careful about my news consumption, it's impossible to block all of the news out, and besides, I'm a writer: I have to pay attention to the world around me to do what I do. I also have friends in a lot of places that are directly affected: one consequence of the internet is that trans people often have a lot of international friends, so this isn't something distant that happens across the sea from us: we see this happening quite directly to people we care about, and of course, having limited resources, there's not much we can do to help. This isn't great for our mental health.

What you can do

Be aware that we are affected by these things: don't assume that geographical distance means that we aren't affected by things happening overseas.

Push back when people try and bring overseas talking points to our shores: the fact that the UK is deeply cruel to trans people in no way obliges New Zealand to be.

Make sure, once more, that we have access to mental health support if we need it. Don't expect us to be functioning at full capacity the day after an overseas atrocity.

We're less different from you than you think we are are

Finally, people often assume that trans identity is much like a cultural identity: an identity with a thick layer of community ties by blood, language and culture. The assumption is often also that our trans identity is our primary identity, overriding anything else we might have, and that we'll tend to affiliate more with trans people than with anyone else.

None of this is really true: a trans identity is a pretty thin identity layer. We are, after all, born into communities, and for all that we are trans and often not accepted by said communities, we still, for the most part, have more in common with the communities we come from than with other trans people as a whole. A trans person from Louisiana is going to have more in common with other Louisianans than with a trans person from New York. The difference between Aucklanders and Wellingtonians is, on the whole, going to be bigger than between a cis and trans person from the same city. The food we eat, the places we frequent, the hobbies we partake in and our cultural assumptions are not, in general, things we get from our trans identity, but from the places we live, the communities we were born into and the communities that we make our homes in now. Yes, there is such as thing as LGBT and trans culture, but this is in the manner of being a subculture: these are important parts of who we are, but they're far from everything.

This even extends to questions of gender and sexuality: trans people have more in common with other people of their expressed gender than they do with other trans people. A trans woman is going to have more shared experiences with cis women than they do with trans men (with the caveat that the shared trans experiences can hold disproportionate weight). A trans lesbian may well have more in common with cis lesbians than they do with straight trans women. And professionally, a trans software engineer is going to have more in common with a cis software engineer than they would with a trans HR professional.

What this comes down to is the fact that we aren't some other group that you can help or harm in the abstract: we are fully-fledged, good faith members of your communities. Sure, we might look a bit different and have some unusual medical needs, but in the end, much as you might try to escape it, we are you. A trans woman is a woman. A trans airsoft player is an airsoft player. A trans engineer is an engineer, and a trans immigrant is most certainly an immigrant (I can attest to this one personally). If you elect to other us and do us harm, then, you are directly damaging your own communities, often ones that are quite dear to you. If you help and support us as part of your communities, however, you benefit not just us but also the very communities that are dear to you.

What you can do

Include us in gendered or cultural groups when you organise along those lines. For the most part, trans women have a lot of interests in common with cis women in the workplace: we get hit by pay equity issues, promotions and all of the flavours of sexism in much the same way that cis women do.

Don't assume that we must have different preferences, likes and dislikes to you. We come from the same communities as you, and a lot of us are going to like the same shit. If you're organising a fun activity or something, don't assume that we'll not be interested and invite us (I might still not come, but that's because I'm Polish, not because I'm trans).

Don't worry too much about offending us if you accidentally misgender us or something: just correct yourself and move on. Unless it's made to be a big thing, you're unlikely to have caused serious cultural offence or committed a faux pas of that kind: it's just an interpersonal slip-up and is easily dealt with (provided, of course, that you're acting in good faith).

Don't assume that trans people necessarily have anything in common with each other besides transness: we're a very diverse group and often have very little in common. In fact, a lot of us can't stand each other, and the more well-adjusted trans people that I know tend to have social and professional circles that, while they have a lot of trans people in them, certainly aren't trans spaces in any gestalt sense.

Summary

All of these are common mistakes or gaps in knowledge that well-meaning people have about trans people in the workforce. While it'd be very strange if you were to know much of this unless you were already personally close to other trans people, knowing these things can help you make life quite a lot better for any trans people you might work with.

Learn them, then, and do your best to apply them. And as I stated in the last point, remember that we are members of your communities just as much as we are our own, if not more so. If you make our lives better, then, you also make your own life better.