After Action Report: Meeting in re: Transgender Rights

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Pdxfashionpioneer
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After Action Report: Meeting in re: Transgender Rights

Post by Pdxfashionpioneer »

This afternoon when I entered the building -- ironically named Fox Tower -- that houses the local offices of Price, Waterhouse, Cooper in my black Liz Claiborne suit separates, pencil skirt and one-button jacket, and black Naturalsole booties with 2-1/2" heels, I realized a banker friend of mine works in the same building and tried to calculate the odds of a chanced encounter in the elevator.

I was warmly created at PWC's reception desk and ushered into the meeting room where the presentation was going to be made. Representatives from the Human Rights Campaign, Basic Rights Oregon, Trans-Activity (an advocacy and support group for kids from 3-18 and their parents) and a few other such groups manned tables with their materials and brochures.

The presentation consisted of a panel of transsexuals who had transitioned and a healthcare social worker who specializes in serving transsexuals, telling their stories of self-discovery and passage. Lots of pain. Because this session implicitly conflated "transgendered" and "transsexual," I felt the presentation negated one of the main points of the first workshop, that "transgender" covers a wide enough range of behaviors that if you think about it too long you come to the same conclusion that Moonshadow did, 'nearly everyone's transgendered!'

Be that as it may, at the Happy Hour, I learned that Oregon and 18 other states have laws protecting the civil and workplace rights of LGBT folks. Oregon's law, which was passed in 2008, is probably one of the broadest in that it prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression or the appearance thereof. If you think of it as providing LGBT rights then clearly we fall under the T.

If you take the act at its words, then we are engaging in "gender expression." One could probably make a case that you're expressing your masculinity in your fashion forwardness of wearing a skirt to work, but I expect you'd get to the judgement you wanted more quickly and easily by arguing you are expressing the feminine side of your personality. Then again, I'm an accountant, not an attorney.

Clearly, in Oregon we have benefited by the success of the LGBT rights campaign. I couldn't be disciplined or discriminated against for showing up at work the way I was dressed for that meeting. Unfortunately, few businesses and employees are aware of those facts and fewer yet live in them.

As I see it, our next challenge here, and in how many other states as have such laws, is to get the word out to employers and employees alike.
David, the PDX Fashion Pioneer

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oldsalt1
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Re: After Action Report: Meeting in re: Transgender Rights

Post by oldsalt1 »

If PWC has or is creating a policy for LGBT, things have come a long way. Going back to 74 a fellow I was working with got a job at what was then just PW .
He was driving a bright yellow Chevy Monza coupe that he had just bought. I met him for lunch about a 2 months later he was driving a dark 4 door.
I asked him what happened to the Chevy. He said that they (PW Management) told him the car was unacceptable to go to clients. I could just imagine what would have happened if he tried to wear a skirt to work
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Re: After Action Report: Meeting in re: Transgender Rights

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Over here all the employers I have been with have very rarely, an emergency maybe, asked me to use my personal car for work purposes. If I needed to then the company hired one or provided one if it was an essential day to day requirement for the role. Then it doesn't matter what car I drive and, yes, I have had two yellow cars, one a golden yellow and the other a pale yellow. I have even been known to wear yellow occasionally.

As for whether freedom of gender expression has reached the majority of the business sector, I just don't know. My employer does allow skirt wearing by males but for practical reasons I decline to do so even though everyone at work knows that I wear a skirt. When I worked for a subsidiary of HSBC about 15 years ago if I was attending a meeting with HSBC personnel I was told in no uncertain terms that the dress code for such meetings was shirt and tie. I turned up once in a T-shirt and jumper and was given black looks and "educated" later.
I believe in offering every assistance short of actual help but then mainly just want to be left to be myself in all my difference and uniqueness.
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Re: After Action Report: Meeting in re: Transgender Rights

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It was a unique situation going to work for what was then one of the "Big Eight" public accounting firms. Image was the entire thing. Being properly dressed for work was a major issue. If there was such a thing as a dress down day it meant you could possibly wear a sport coat without a tie.
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Re: After Action Report: Meeting in re: Transgender Rights

Post by skirted_in_SF »

oldsalt1 wrote:It was a unique situation going to work for what was then one of the "Big Eight" public accounting firms. Image was the entire thing. Being properly dressed for work was a major issue. If there was such a thing as a dress down day it meant you could possibly wear a sport coat without a tie.
Also an accountant here, but not a CPA. Back in the mid/late 70s dress down Friday for me was a navy blazer, grey slacks, shirt and tie. Also maybe a sweater vest in the winter. My alternative was a camel sport coat with leather buttons, brown slacks with the rest the same.
Now my dress down Friday extends all the way to skirts. Progress has been made in 40 years. :) 8)
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Re: After Action Report: Meeting in re: Transgender Rights

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skirted_in_SF wrote:Now my dress down Friday extends all the way to skirts. Progress has been made in 40 years. :) 8)
And you likely look better than many, if not most, of your co-workers on that same "dress-down day".
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Re: After Action Report: Meeting in re: Transgender Rights

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All this week I have been appearing in Federal Court here in Washington DC, and thus have donned (as close as I can with my wardrobe) the uniform. It's surprisingly grating to me! I mean, I did dress this way daily for decades, but now it seems I can hardly wait to get 'home' to the hotel to cast off the uniform and don a skirt.
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Re: After Action Report: Meeting in re: Transgender Rights

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Federal Court in DC? Uniform? Here's hoping that's not as bad as it sounds!

At least at the end of the day you can pop on a skirt and relax.
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Re: After Action Report: Meeting in re: Transgender Rights

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I see to recall in previous posts that some have done jury service in a skirt. As I seem to recall it was shorts that were being objected to, a skirt was deemed suitable.
I believe in offering every assistance short of actual help but then mainly just want to be left to be myself in all my difference and uniqueness.
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Re: After Action Report: Meeting in re: Transgender Rights

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Sinned wrote:I see to recall in previous posts that some have done jury service in a skirt. As I seem to recall it was shorts that were being objected to, a skirt was deemed suitable.
I was very strongly tempted to wear a skirt when I got called up for jury duty a couple of times but never worked up the stones to actually do it.

Nowadays, it's entirely likely that I am ineligible as I've been subjected to the bite of the business end of what passes for a "judicial system" here (an outright acquittal aside). It's not that I would be unable to render a fair and rational verdict, it's more that I would trust the State very, very, little in what it presents as "evidence" figuring that I'm in all likelihood being lied to all the while. I won't miss getting called up.
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Re: After Action Report: Meeting in re: Transgender Rights

Post by Darryl »

I'd probably throw together a nice skirt suit.

The last three times I was called up, during the selection process they asked "Do you know any of these people: X, Y, Z?"

My hand shot up: "Y, he's Senior Vice President of the company I work for."

"Dismissed."

Even an IT guy "knows too much" about torts, personal injury, wrongful death and other things our experts serve attorneys as expert witnesses for so they would apparently be guilty of negligence or something if they let any of us on a jury.

Sometimes they just ask who your employer is, and when I tell them I can see their eyes roll just before the "Dismiss." :mrgreen:
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Re: After Action Report: Meeting in re: Transgender Rights

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Darryl wrote:Even an IT guy "knows too much" about torts, personal injury, wrongful death and other things our experts serve attorneys as expert witnesses for so they would apparently be guilty of negligence or something if they let any of us on a jury.
The key thing is that potential jurors not have any connections with the various parties that might sway their verdict. Other than that, the juror's main function is to serve as a bull-sh!t filter to even out the assorted lies that both the prosecution and defence will be telling in the proceedings. "Evidence" is supposed to be factual (an entirely different thing from "truth", mind), but opening and closing arguments are almost entirely BS -- and "evidence" only works if it hasn't been tampered with or outright falsified. The latter is very difficult to detect if the falsification is done well -- and States are grand-masters at that art, with no accountability whatsoever.

As far as juror selection goes, I can't say for sure whether there's a bias against computer types (I detest the term "IT") serving as jurors, but the typical stereotype of the computer type is that of being highly intelligent, being able to pick up abstract and unfamiliar concepts quickly, and being able to figure out on-the-fly when they're being lied to. In other words, they make for bad jurors whom both prosecution and defence want as passive types to be won by argument not analysis of fact.
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Re: After Action Report: Meeting in re: Transgender Rights

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I'd definitely wear a skirt to a jury duty call. Why should that be any different?
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Re: After Action Report: Meeting in re: Transgender Rights

Post by Pdxfashionpioneer »

Hello Caultron,

You make a great point. The times I've been called to jury duty I've dressed for comfort, as have the other jurors.

Hello Carl,

The court just calls people up off of the voter registration list without regard to their history.

I remember legal history (have you ever been in a case?) coming up in voir dire, in which case the court dug into the specifics to see if there would be any conflict.

As far as one's intellectual ability being a disqualifier, I've served on 3 different juries, you be the judge if I possess the intellectual skills you cited. Btw, I'm a management accountant, not an IT person.
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Re: After Action Report: Meeting in re: Transgender Rights

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Pdxfashionpioneer wrote:The court just calls people up off of the voter registration list without regard to their history.
That's the way it's said to work, but historical precedent in Massachusetts indicates that once you've been picked you tend to get picked every three years. I've sat on a couple of juries (one Federal), once as an alternate, and been dismissed twice. I haven't been picked in the decade since, for which I'm grateful, but which differers from just about everybody else's experience here in MA. I suspect there are additional flags in the selection process that don't get mentioned.
I remember legal history (have you ever been in a case?) coming up in voir dire, in which case the court dug into the specifics to see if there would be any conflict.
Yes, I've been involved in a couple. I recall both sides in the Federal case having very little interest in seeing me get empanelled but not quite being able to nail it down. As I was the last individual in the pool of potential jurors it was either me or a delay. In the one I was an alternate I watched a jury convict on an allegation with no proof of guilt and couldn't say a peep about it.
As far as one's intellectual ability being a disqualifier, I've served on 3 different juries, you be the judge if I possess the intellectual skills you cited. Btw, I'm a management accountant, not an IT person.
I suspect the lawyers are leery of anybody who even looks like that they can form an independent thought -- and computer types have a bad reputation for that. However, it's certainly not anywhere near a monopoly, and I've met a few computer people who couldn't think their way out of a game of Adventure.
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