The Contradictions of Being Tolerated

When your employer celebrates Pride, but bans transition-related healthcare on religious grounds

For over ten years I have taught at the Jesuit university from which I also received my Master’s degree and my PhD. I’ve been a student here, a postdoctoral researcher here, a part-time adjunct instructor, and now I’m a full-time professor. My relationship to the school runs deep. So too do my ambivalences, particularly in a month like Pride month, when it’s most clear to me that my existence as a transgender faculty member is contradictory and fraught.

Today I entered the university’s information commons (a computer lab and studying area connected to the library) to find this display celebrating transgender, nonbinary, and intersex authors:

A bookshelf featuring several books by transgender, intersex, and nonbinary authors.

I wish I could feel buffeted and supported by these displays, but all they do is fill me with bitterness. It makes me think of the email I received from the employee benefits department several years ago, when I inquired about whether the university’s health insurance covered transition-related care. I was told the university follows the lead of the Catholic Church, and therefore chooses not to support any transition-related surgeries, hormones, or doctor’s visits, just as it refuses to pay for birth control.

An email from the university’s employee benefits specialists, stating “Transgender services along with contraceptive services are both excluded from our health plans as a part of our religious exemption. The university’s policies follow the lead of the Catholic church. If you wish to discuss this in more detail please reach out to our AVP Danielle Hanson.” This email was sent to me October 23, 2019.

Seeing this cheery pride display also reminds of the time a few years ago, when I witnessed a faculty member accept a prestigious teaching award by thanking the university for allowing him to have a transgender person speak to his class. He spoke with something I can only describe as self-awe as he discussed how fortunate he was to get to challenge his students and open their minds by exposing them to people who were so different.

The idea that a professor at my institution could win a teaching award (at least in part) for presenting a trans person to their class as some novel curiosity chilled me. It clearly had never occurred to this professor that there might be a transgender faculty member sitting in the room as he said all this. He considered himself a bastion of progressive thinking…