Looking Out for Each Other: Combatting the Economic Marginalization of Trans and Neurodivergent Folks
I came out as transgender in 2017, and at that time transgender acceptance and support was still more up than down.
I was also incredibly fortunate to be working in a small company at the time whose president was very progressive, so my experience was much easier than many.
Here in Canada, things still feel ‘safer’, though that safety buffer has notably eroded as well.
Despite being approximately just 4% of the entire population, transgender individuals have become targeted in a variety of different hate and vilification campaigns which have sadly been more effective than not in recent years.
It has once again become harder to find work, to receive medical care, and to even access certain basic services depending on where you live. We can’t all live in big progressive metropolitan centers.
It has been interesting as a trans and neurodivergent individual to see the difference in the acceptance level and factors of those two identities, including within job postings.
More job postings will now include a footnote about inclusive practices, but I’ve often been left to wonder, ‘did they just put that there for optics with no actual intent to follow through?’
It feels a bit ironic, but while public sentiment has become more anti-trans and more pro-neurodiversity, I feel like within workplaces, the inverse seems more true in my experience.
While I now work in accessibility with a focus on neurodiversity, I previously worked in office environments in the administration field for the last 15 years.
The prevailing consensus within the ND community is still ‘don’t disclose’. Neurodivergent workers are seen as more difficult and ‘not worth the trouble’ for our needed accommodations. Whereas queer and trans individuals are not seen as ‘needing accommodations’.
One strikes me as more of a perceived ability issue (ND), where the other is more of a social discomfort issue (transgender).
I wrote another article a few months ago where I talked about a real issue I’ve observed (and been guilty of myself). For simplicity, we can call it ‘referral bias’.
The idea is simple – when a person posts on social media looking for a referral (maybe for a photographer, maybe a lawyer, maybe a hair stylist), the most likely first suggestion they will get tends to be a white man (or a white woman). Often cis, straight, and fully abled.
Cis straight people recommend other cis straight people. Queer or trans people are more likely to recommend other queer or trans people, disabled people recommend other disabled people, and very often, with the ‘shortest end of the stick’, BIPOC folks are more likely to recommend other BIPOC folks.
As a queer, trans, invisibly disabled white person, I started to realize that while I do know others in my shared categories that I can recommend, I often struggled to think of BIPOC folks to refer in these cases. Not because I didn’t know any, but because I didn’t know *enough*. And I’ve been actively working to rectify that.
I think the best practice for anyone would be to recommend the most marginalized person that they know first. Though often we get recommended last, which serves to keep economic power in the circles it already exists in, which keeps financial privilege where it always has been.
The other crucial thing to note – marginalized people very often make less money than their non-marginalized peers. We can struggle with employment for any number of reasons (including forms of discrimination that aren’t easy to ‘prove’). And with the cost of living spiking as it has in recent years, this is more of an issue than ever.
While the median after-tax income for Canadian households is approximately $74,200 [source], individuals with cognitive disabilities often earn less than half of what their non-disabled peers bring home, frequently hovering just above the poverty line ($27,600).
Transgender individuals struggle to get hired and be kept on at jobs, so the double whammy of being trans and neurodivergent puts some of us earning 1/3 or less than our cisgender, abled peers.
I used to hear elder activists and historians say that ‘rights aren’t automatic, if you don’t keep working to defend them, you’ll lose them’. I did not understand how accurate that was until seeing the change over the last decade.
It’s easy to fall into the simple mental trap that once you ‘win’ a right, you’ll always have it. But unfortunately it doesn’t work like that in reality. So we need to ‘look out for each other’ in these times, more than ever.
It’s one way we can guarantee that our communities don’t ‘fall through the cracks’ any more than we otherwise do by default.
About the Author
Lacey Artemis (she/they) is a speaker, consultant, researcher, and creative producer. She has struggled with sensory issues her whole life and decided to do something proactive about it.
She mixed her background in media production and lived experience with science and research to develop a cross-sense, cross-sector model for sensory accessibility. Now she speaks and writes on sensory access from a systems lens, and is partnering with various organizations in the mission to establish a new standard for sensory accessibility, going Beyond Quiet Rooms.
Lacey is now known as The Sensory Nerd, and she is excited to help you design spaces that people don't need to recover from.
