Yeah, I'm acutely aware that everyone's expectations are rooted in habit. It's hard not to see/feel that the burden of difference is always expected to fall on the different ones, as if sympathy and/or empathy have become mythological beasts that never existed. Everyone else's assumptions always take precedence over other possibilities, and in my own specific case, of aspects of my life. I have to always be prepared to accommodate the lazy privilege of ignorance and unchallenged cisgenderism. If the comfortable are to be afflicted, it is my job to do so, but I have to be nice about it, because how can it be their fault if no one teaches them?*

And sadly, no, I don't think I can talk to my manager about being trans. Our department has already shed jobs, and they're always looking to shed more. I like my manager and my supervisor, but I doubt that any conception of them liking me is large enough to contain challenges that not even a pop understanding of transsexualism can contain; Oprah has yet to do a show on non-binary gender identity.

This isn't all aimed at you, but it's the tip of something large just below the surface you've tripped over. Me, I'm almost always there.


*as if Google only works for angry minorities