The apparatchiks of Big Computer Corp can go...

Right - the end of the woe party. Enough with the negativity!

Big Computer Corp wants me to do what Dana worked very hard and uselessly to accomplish? They want to keep their database and gender demands intact and their requirement for conformity hidden? So be it.

I can't make them be positive toward transgendered developers. Only they can figure out how to be that - and they're not inclined to be that way.

In the meantime, I'm plowing ahead with my projects. I'll figure out what to do later. They won't stop me and their identity will become apparent within a few weeks - they can't actually stop that process. (Because, as it happens, it's their own process.)

This isn't a positive event, by any means. But I'm not going to have Big Computer Corporation dictate any more than they have to. If I decide to out myself, I'll do it my own way. (Dana will be happy; and a certain Baltimore-based lawyer likely will be, too.) If I can't manage the timing, I can make a vague attempt to manage how I am forced to come out. I can note why I am being forced to do that. And I can demonstrate that I take pride in being me.

We might not be able to control how others perceive ourselves, but we can manage how we perceive ourselves. Those Big Computer Corp paper pushers can't take that from me. (They'll argue they're not trying to. They simply need to keep their database all nice and tidy and by the way they're part of a Big Organization that doesn't have to care about transgender developers like me. And because they don't have to - they won't and don't!)

As a friend said: this is the Land of the Free. I'll add to that: this is the Land of the Free, and petty, capricious, faceless corporate bureaucrats won't stop it being so - no matter how hard they try. At the risk of being overly dramatic - I'm not going to let some hidden, petty, arrogant cubicle-dwelling apparatchik decide my identity.

I am me. And try as they might - they are not going to take that away.

Carolyn Ann