Do Not Let HR do this to you. It is not illegal to talk about wages in the work place. I did and got a 12% raise!
True info. Now let me add something: The power of documentation. (I was a long time steward in a nurses union.)
Remember: The “‘E” in email stands for evidence.
That cuts both ways. Be careful what you put into an email. It never really goes away and can be used against you.
But can also be a powerful tool for workplace fairness.
Case 1: Your supervisor asks you to do something you know is either illegal or against company policy. A verbal request. If things go wrong, you can count on them denying that they ever told you to do that. You go back to your desk, or wherever and you send them an email: “I just want to make sure that I understood correctly that you want me to do xxxxx” Quite often, once they see it in writing, they will change their mind about having you do it. If not, you have documentation.
Case 2: You have a schedule you like, you’ve had that schedule for a while, it works for you. Your supervisor comes to you and says “We’re really short-handed now and I need you to change your schedule just for a month until we can get someone else hired. It’s just temporary and you can have your old schedule back after a month.” A month goes by and they forget entirely that they made that promise to you. So, once again, when they make the initial request, you send them an email “I’m happy to help out temporarily, but just want to make sure I understand correctly that I will get my old schedule back after a month as you promised.” Documentation.
[Image ID: Text reading: In the middle of a busy clinic at our practice, I got pulled in by my manager to speak to HR, who must have made a special trip because she lives several states away, and told I was being 'investigated’ for discussing wages with my other employees. She told me it was against company policy to discuss wages.
Me; That’s illegal.
Them: (start italics) three slow, long seconds of staring at me blankly (end italics) Uh…
Me: That’s an illegal policy to have. The right to discuss wages is a right protected by the National Labor Relations board. I used to be in a union. I know this.
HR: Oh, this is news to me! I have been working HR for 18 years and I never knew that. Haha. Well try not do do it anyway, it makes people upset, haha.
Me: people are entitled to their opinions about what their work is worth. Bye.
I then left, and sent her several texts and emails saying I would like a copy of their company policy to see where this wage discussion policy was kept. She quickly called me back in to her office.
HR: You know what, there is no policy like that in the handbook! I double check. Sorry about the confusion, my apologies.
Me: You still haven’t given me the paper saying that we had this discussion. I am going to need some protection against retaliation.
HR: Oh haha yes here you go.
I just received a paper with legal letterhead and an apology saying there was no verbal warning or write up. Don’t even take their shit you guys. Keep talking about wages. Know your worth. /End ID]
At one of my old (shit) jobs my boss would continually come have these verbal discussions with me and would never put anything in writing I took to summarizing every discussion we had in email. Like “just to confirm that you asked me to do X by Y date and you understand that means I won’t be able to complete the previous task you gave me until Z date - 2 weeks later than originally scheduled - because you want me to prioritize this new project.
The woman would then storm back into my office screaming at me for putting the discussion in writing and arguing about pushing back the other project or whatever. At which point I would summarize that conversation in email as well. Which would bring her storming back in, rinse and repeat ad nauseum.
Anyway I cannot imagine how badly that job would have gone if I hadn’t put all her wildly unreasonable demands in writing. Bitch still hated me but she could never hang me for “missing deadlines” because I always had in writing that she’d pushed the project back because she wanted something else done first.
Paper your asses babes. Do not let them get away with shit. If they won’t put what they’re asking you to do in writing then write it up yourself and email it to them.
If you don’t have this kind of job but someday you’d might: start practicing.
After a casual conversation with friends, write up a brief synopsis of what you discussed & agreed to. (…Do not email this to friends unless you have their agreement that this would be a fun group project.) Get practice with,
“A, B, and C had a brief meeting about food options after the big game. We decided on pizza, with A&B agreeing to contribute X dollars each, and C agreeing to contribute Y dollars and also bring soda. A will call for pizza on the day of the game and schedule it for delivery at 8:30 pm.”
“A, B & C discussed movie options. A wanted something lite and fun; B wanted something scifi; C was fine with anything but horror. Nobody wanted superheroes. Decided on Lost Space Wanderers which opened last weekend; C agreed to research theatre options and report tomorrow.”
…and so on. Practice describing the results of “meetings” with friends and you’ll be ready to sum up “boss told me to set aside Project A to focus on Project B for the next two weeks” - because what’s likely is that boss didn’t say anything that clear; boss talked about how important Project B is and how the company needs parts X and Y done asap and you have the best skills for that, and when you mentioned how much time Project A was taking, boss said “eh don’t worry about that right now; marketing is breathing down my neck so we really need part X by Friday, okay?”
…at no point did you get a direct instruction.
Which is why anyone who is not the screaming-drama boss mentioned above would think it was perfectly reasonable for you to say, “I want to clarify the discussion we had earlier - you told me to focus on Project B to the exclusion of Project A for the next two weeks, even if that means Project A will miss its deadline; is that correct?”
Genuine question: what do I do when the boss in question doesn’t reply to my confirmation email, then says that he never approved the project delay?
In person or over the phone you say “that doesn’t match with my memory of the project but let me check my records and I’ll get back to you about what happened on this project.” Then go back to your desk and write the pettiest email in the world.
To: Boss
From: you
Cc: work group, team lead, project partner, direct supervisor, etc.
(Depending on severity of problem) Bcc: your personal email
“Hi Boss, I’m trying to resolve some confusion here. After our conversation about priority projects on [date] I reached out to you for confirmation of these details (see attached outlook item) and didn’t receive an update to the timeline since that communication. I have been working from the agenda we discussed (summarized in attached outlook item from [date]) in absence of further direction. Do you have a copy of your response updating the changes or correcting mistakes in my summary? It’s possible that I didn’t see your email and I’d like to identify where a communication was missed so that we can avoid issues like this in future projects.
Best,
[Name]”
For this to work you have to be militant about sending summary emails and firm with coworkers and supervisors that you will be documenting project plans via email, but once they’re used to your MO it’s worth the work.
hey, hi, I was just on the former bird app and came across this info from a brand new study and now I cannot stop screaming internally??? what the actual fuckkkk
Timing in la verdadera destreza: the three considerations
Timing in la verdadera destreza: the three considerations
This article assumes you’re reasonably familiar with a number of terms and concepts in verdadera destreza. If you’re not, visit Movement and Tactics in the Spanish True School, then come on back. While the linked article ably covers the information I discuss below, I arrange the information a little differently, and these varying approaches may together help readers make sense of a very precise…
currently enjoying the stage of recovery where I have enough self esteem to get pissed off
Other sweet and sexy psych recovery milestones:
1. I can say the words “abuse”, “trauma”, and “flashback” out loud without feeling like a guilty liar
2. I’m angry and I don’t feel bad about it
3. Accidentally discovered a personal boundary halfway through asserting it
4. I said something confident as a joke and someone agreed with me
5. Oh shit I *enjoy* things
6. I’m angry and it feels really really good
7. I genuinely think this person is a moron and I have no desire to rationalize their stupid choices
8. I’m a good person, actually
9. Just realized that the minor thing I thought I was upset about is actually a placeholder for the really old thing I’m *actually* upset about and suddenly the new thing isn’t such a big deal
10. “Same trauma!” *fist bump*
11. Self-deprecation makes me uncomfortable, actually
12. Fuck it, I deserve nice shit I don’t need
13. I fucked something up and I’m not a bad person, literally just moving on
14. Wild that I don’t feel like apologizing
15. This thing that gave me a panic attack once is only uncomfortable now, fuckin righteous
16. I’m ugly in public cause I don’t need to impress anyone and I literally do not care
So a while back I won a cheap eBay auction listing for a collection of love letters from the first world war.
They arrived today, and…the listing was WAY more than I expected for the price I won it for. There’s over 100, and they’re not just from WWI, but from 1906 (earliest I’ve found so far) through to 1915.
Charlie writes to his girlfriend, Gertrude. This is the most beautiful, lovesick stuff I’ve ever read. He sends her so many letters, sometimes twice a day, and lots of poems. He seems to have been an artist, as he talks a lot about small exhibitions of his stuff, and included a flyer for one. He also talks about how her parents don’t approve of them and how he’s desperately awaiting the day they’ll be married.
I haven’t found the latest of the letters, but the fact it’s up until 1915 and then stops…doesn’t give me hope for a happy ending.
This man continuously refers to his precious beloved Gertie as his queen and goddess, and whilst most of it is sickly sweet, there’s some raunchy stuff too, with him talking about how he can’t wait until they have a little house together and can ‘please each other all day’…
There’s. So many.
I’m going to put them in order by date, read them through, and then maybe even transcribe them so we can find out a bit about Charlie and Gertie’s love story.
This man was absolutely lost in the sauce
Y'all he writes about sending her pressed poppies and postcards for her collection 😭😭😭
111 years after Charlie got his dick touched in 1910, I decided to tell you all about it. Sorry Charlie.
Some more finds:
And some CODE!!!
Also all this is poems:
UHHHHH…👀👀👀
This has a lot of notes so I need everyone to know:
They got married 😭😭😭❤ (thank you to @lovesjustachemical for finding this!!!)
Kinda fucked up that you just stole somebody’s mail
Don’t know how to explain to you that acquiring, preserving, and transcribing historical ephemera that would have otherwise just been trashed from people who have been dead for over 50 years and don’t appear to have any living descendants isn’t the same as ‘stealing someone’s mail’ but Tumblr never ceases to amaze me with it’s cold takes.
Making this a separate thing from that last post on the matter, because I want to let that one be specifically about transandrophobia, but I’m now having a lot of thoughts about like… the way that there’s an expectation that AMAB trans people need to go on E while AFAB trans people should stay off of T.
Like, you’ll occasionally see positivity for AMAB trans people that don’t hormonally transition, but it doesn’t ever seem to translate into better treatment or any acknowledgment beyond trite positivity posts, and I could probably count on my fingers the amount of times I’ve seen positivity for AFAB trans people going on T except from transmascs. I don’t know enough about how this manifests for intersex people to say anything on the matter, but if any of my intersex followers want to give input, feel free.
tl;dr, all but the most palatable masculinity in trans people is demonized.
Yeah. “Testosterone poisoning” - I mostly hear this in mixed trans spaces, and from cis women, and god help you if you try to say that’s biological essentialism and please don’t do that. Then sometimes from cis men “well, you’re on steroids.” I almost never hear trans guys categorically trash-talking estrogen in the same way, especially in mixed trans spaces, even though a fair number of us have used estrogen/progestin based hormonal contraception and reacted badly to it, and even though many of the effects of a first estrogen-dominant puberty are permanent and may continue to cause us pain. I am also not intersex but some afab intersex people talk about having been dosed with estrogen to “fix” their “excess masculinization” and similar without having had the chance to give fully informed consent or allowed to choose their preferred hormone balance.
This also shows up in medical gatekeeping of testosterone cross-sex HRT for mentally ill people in particular - some mental health providers make unfounded assumptions about its likely impact on anger and aggression, especially if there’s an anger component to mental health challenges (or if they perceive you as angry - and surely no one seen as a masculine girl/woman has been mistakenly read as angry, especially if they aren’t white and/or are autistic…). There is research out there on the emotional effects of testosterone [1] but I don’t really want to dig in on it here because it shouldn’t matter except insofar as figuring out how to give transitioning people the specific support they need - until we’re categorically putting cis men on testosterone blockers, trans men and anyone else who needs testosterone to transition should have access. So yes. Demonizing the effects of testosterone has impacts on access to sometimes lifesaving treatment.
[1] though this reminds me to dig up those refs for a therapist I know so they can very carefully bring them to a provider who has the ability to decide which trans people get to transition how.
I am also not intersex but some afab intersex people talk about having been dosed with estrogen to “fix” their “excess masculinization” and similar without having had the chance to give fully informed consent or allowed to choose their preferred hormone balance.
ME ME ME ME ME ME ME
Literally like. I was deliberately, intentionally not told that my birthing doctor told my mother that I was potentially intersex. I was told that he thought I was a boy even after birth and it took a second look for him to find a vagina and write “female” on my certificate. Literally I was almost AMAB. Despite boobs and vagina as an adult.
When I went through a very early puberty and also at the same times had puberty symptoms both male and female, a blood test was performed and we discovered that I produce both the correct amount of testosterone for a boy of that age and the correct amount of estrogen for a girl of that age. Naturally, without therapy.
Throughout my early childhood, pre-teen, and even early teen years I was placed on various estrogen-based medications to try and “fix” the rising levels of testosterone in my blood without anyone telling me what that would do to me or checking first to see if I even wanted it. Unsurprisingly my already horrific periods became worse and my mood swings began to border on the edge of violent, and my disability (which does not like estrogen) began to rear its head to put me into another health crisis yet again. I came out as transgender at 13 and my mother’s response was that she never should have told me the doctor thought I was a boy or the results of that blood test, and had the doctors put me on yet another different type of estrogen-based birth control. The implications of this are that if she could do it over she would not have told me why I was being forced to take these medications or would have outright lied to me to convince me to take them rather than risk my “knowing”.
At some point I just. Stopped. Things came to a head for many aspects of my mom and I at 16 and basically I told her that if she wanted me to take these medications she would have to pin me down and force them down my throat because I wasn’t doing it willingly.
My beard began to grow. My face continued to masculinize. I grew taller. I started putting on more muscle. I was no longer a skinny waif bordering on underweight. My periods resumed their typical horror show rather than the extreme one. I was more in control of my emotions. No one told me that I could have had this as an option. I spent years resenting the time I was forced to “de-masculinize” by having estrogen forced onto me. I spent years wishing I could have had a choice. I spent years wishing I could have gotten rid of the estrogen and gone on testosterone instead.
I was finally told in my early 20s that my mother was informed that I was probably intersex at birth, when a different problem led to an emergency room visit that accidentally found what appears to be a testicle in place of one of my ovaries. I confronted my mother about it and she revealed that not only had she known my entire life the reason for my hormonal imbalance, but that she had willfully kept it from me because she did not want me to transition to be male. She expressed regret, not for taking away my autonomy and agency, but for the doctors revealing to me what she strongly suspected was true. She had never let me have an ultrasound to find out why my periods are so bad. She figured there was probably something biological that was the cause of all this.
And now knowing this has made HRT much more complicated, because we know that swinging the pendulum too far in one direction is not a great idea, so what will happen if we swing it too far in the other? It’s why a hysto is a priority to me- I need one anyway just due to family history of cancers but also because at some point they’re going to have to remove that internal testicle or I’m going to have A Bad Time as someone AFAB with testicular cancer. My doctors are very willing to label me intersex after a review of my medical history, despite not having quite completed further diagnostics due to COVID19 interrupting our progress, but that also means that it’s now much more difficult to figure out exactly how forcing estrogen into me will affect me going forward.
I wish things could have just been explained to me. I wish I could have had a choice, all those years ago. I don’t know for sure what I would have chosen. I was raised and socialized to want to be female. I was unhappy with that life. I was very aware that my entire social group expected this of me. I did not know yet of the world outside of my incredibly homophobic town. If things were different… if people had been as accepting as they are now… if I could go back in time… I would have asked to be a boy. But as it was, the little girl that I was at the time, there was a lot of pressure to remain a girl. I don’t know that 8yo me could have broken through that just yet. I was just figuring out that I liked being assumed to be male, despite the vicious bullying that came along with it, and that wanting that meant I was broken in their eyes.
Instead, I took estrogen for eight years. Against my will. Against my wishes. Without ever being told why.
“just not seeing enough people talking about carl clemons-hopkins, the first out nonbinary actor to be nominated for an emmy, and the nonbinary flag gown they wore last night”
And to those who say, but second hand books and read them, what about the one who buys a second hand book, reads it, thinks wow how awesome is this i need to find more and starts supporting JK not knowing what an terf asshole she is.
You are still perpetuating the fandom.
It does make me wonder if she was a homophobe, racist, facist etc whether her ‘fans’ would still be like - but you can support the art but not the artist’
She isnt like Lovecraft who everyone knows he was a racist bigot. He is dead, his work is known for it’s time but it’s not affecting current policy, like JK Rowlings work IS.
The UK anti trans bills that came in were also a direct result of HER LOBBYING PARLIMENT.
Caption: [Happy fancy Friday pals. Um I’ve got some thoughts. So you’re trans and you’re considering testosterone. And you’re a professional vocalist so you have some questions. So you go to a doctor who is supposed to help you.
And nine times out of ten, they’re going to tell you something like, “Well… this is really new. Are you sure you want to make such a big decision? Well you know there was this one professional singer who went on testosterone and their voice was ruined forever. You’ve worked so hard for your voice, aren’t you worried you’re gonna ruin your voice forever?!”.
Do we ever tell cis men that when they go through puberty? No! Why would you tell someone that they will be less successful when they are more themself? Here’s my soapbox and I’m just gonna tell you. Testosterone will not ruin your voice, it will be an asset to you.
I am almost nine months on low dose testosterone. I cried about that decision for so long because I was so worried about ruining my voice. My testosterone level is a little under three hundred, I’m planning to keep it there. Everyone is different.
But I have to remind myself that my voice sounds more like me than it ever has. I personally haven’t really lost any range. Because I wasn’t really utilizing a higher range in the high soprano range before anyway.
I, sure I can’t vocalize above a high C anymore but I wasn’t using that range. Now I have the lower range that I will be utilizing. Doing great, do you, when you become more you, it’s more of an asset to you and your career and all of the things you want to do in life!]
Hello! I was singing when I had a Testosterone puberty for my first puberty.
I’m not a singing coach or anything, but when I was going through that puberty I was told to keep using what you want to keep.
I was told to do singing exercises both for warmup and to keep sorta “stretching” (it doesn’t quite work like that i think) my voice. It’s worth doing I think. I managed to keep a lot of my high end and with my naturally low T and the pratice and vocal exercises, I could comfortably sing a lot of Baritone stuff, Tenor stuff (when i figured out my passaggio), Alto stuff, and sometimes Soprano 2 stuff.
BUT if you start experiencing pain, stop! Singing shouldn’t hurt, it should never hurt. If it is hurting, stop for then, take a break. If the pain persists talk to either a vocal coach or a doctor please.
Testosterone only “ruins” your voice if you think that your voice has to stay exactly the way it was beforehand, but it will always still be *your* voice.
Voices change with age even when not doing puberty. Your voice will always be different, that’s life. Make the transition moves you want to make. Do vocal exercises. Stay safe <3
- Former choir member enby
I was not actively singing when I went through my T puberty, but I am someone who’s done a bunch of choral singing. My voice switched very rapidly from first soprano to first bass, with about a week of being in the vaguely tenor range in the middle. I didn’t really have a lot of squeaks, and my cis male best friend (also a chorister) said that was his experience with it, too, when he went through puberty.
Eight or nine months after my voice settled, I joined a choir. Partly because it was something I’d wanted to get back to, and partly to help me feel more settled in my new range. I found after my first year that I was more comfortably a second bass, but I suspect a lot of that has to do with the fact that the lower end of my range is what I’ve been exercising.
I suspect that it’s possible for a voice to be ‘ruined’ by taking T, simply because there are the stories of choirboys who were ‘ruined’ by going through puberty. I suspect that has a lot more to do with the quality of voice that your voicebox had beforehand, compared with the qualities it develops afterwards. And I think that perception of being ‘ruined’ comes from an outside perspective, which has specific things they want you to achieve with your voice. Which doesn’t necessarily match with your own perception of your voice, or what you want from it. We also don’t think it’s okay these days to pressure a cis boy into becoming a castrato so he keeps the youthful qualities of his voice, so I don’t think it’s all right to pressure a trans masc person to avoid hormones either.
I don’t think it’s purely a ‘if you have a beautiful high voice, going through T will ruin your voice’ thing, either. I had a first soprano voice (although with a very large range) that was comfortable and strong at the top end of my range, and now I have a deep voice that I’m much more comfortable with. The only downside is that it’s a lot harder to find audition songs for basses than it is for sopranos ;P
I was a first soprano ranging down into alto before I started T. Now, I currently don’t have the same range as that, but I wasn’t really working with that range ANYWAY most of the time anymore.
Singing has always been a big part of my life, and I honesty put off seriously considering Testosterone for about a decade due to being afraid of having my voice drop and just… not having a nice voice anymore. I did grow up with someone whose voice just lost a lot of his clarity, tone, and range when he hit puberty, though I think now he could’ve probably become a lovely singer again with some training. But it scared me.
But I finally this year realized that I can still sing even if I don’t sound OMG GREAT anymore, and I’d rather be on T than not, so I started 5 months ago. I’m already solidly a tenor and still dropping, and my voice sounds… fucking AMAZING y ‘all. No, I can’t do the things I used to. And I’m gonna have to learn how to falsetto bc it is NOT the same as head voice, apparently. But I can also go SO NICE AND LOW and it’s so satisfying!!!
Also, if you are actively engaged in choir stuff, any choir person worth their stuff should be willing to work with you and shift your part as needed. If I hadn’t had a schedule conflict, I’d be in my university’s choir this semester, starting as a tenor and moving down if necessary.
Don’t be scared. Yes, your voice will change. Your range will change. But there’s no reason that you shouldn’t be able to still sing. If you’re having trouble, seek out a vocal coach bc maybe you’re trying to use your voice incorrectly due to being so used to having a higher one, but you should be fine.
This turns up on my dashboard. And I read it and am impressed that someone writes exactly the post that I’d write, without actually reading the name of the person who posted it.
And then I’m puzzled at all the Neil Why’s, and realise that this was me in the Wayback Long-ago.
At least I’m consistent.
And, I should point out, we are no closer to being able to spot the extra-dimensional stick “people” who move unobserved among us.
Mainly for following others, but I'll likely use this to record quick thoughts on the run. You know, for me. But in public. What could go wrong?
(Visit Storytrade or about.me to learn more.)
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Mainly for following others, but I'll likely use this to record quick thoughts on the run. You know, for me. But in public. What could go wrong?
