Quote Originally Posted by colby View Post
One issue faced here was transgendered/transexual people, and it was decided that gender identity (how a person identifies themselves) took precendence over biological identity (a person's physical sex). To me that's the only reasonable course of action, but it was debated -- some people see someone who is physically male but identified female as male, and no argument will change their mind.

As long as we've settled the other issue, I will offer some levity.

A number of years ago, I worked at the Seattle Processing and Distribution Plant. For the locals to me, that's the end of the Interurban Trail on the north end, by Boeing.

One year we had a casual employee named Lei. Lei was a transgendered person, and she was physically a male, but preferred to be known as, and acted, female.

My supervisor at the time, a testosterone filled guy who wore pointy toed cowboy boots with little silver tips, could not handle this. Whilst everyone else in our pay location considered Lei 'her', my supervisor would not and apparently could not accept the idea of a transgendered person.

Me: Mark, did you want Lei to go to 040?
Supervisor Mark: No, send him to the barcode sorter.
Me: Will we be able to get her back at 1:00?
SM: Lei is not a girl. Lei is a guy.
Me: Well, Lei would rather be referred to as 'her'.
SM: I don't care. He's a guy.

Nowadays this would be considered gross discrimination, and my supervisor could have gotten sued for this, but it was the first time we had had the situation come up. We all just thought it was funny that the supervisor could not handle someone not wanting to be a man. After all, aren't men superior?

I was always so envious of Lei's hair. She had the most amazing long, thick hair. I coveted that hair. Sigh...

East Hill