Old Don, Dawn, New Don
Let me begin by saying that I have no idea what is going on, was going on or will be going on with ABC producer Don Ennis. Unless he has the worst sense of humor in the world, whatever it is isn’t good, or anything I would wish on someone else. I am, to a point, sympathetic. However, if I were his employer, I would tell Ennis today that he will have to work out his unusual identity issues somewhere else, and I believe that would be the right thing to do. It may not, however, be the legal thing to do, which is one of approximately 268 reasons I’m glad that I am not Mr. Ennis’s employer.
Not that it wouldn’t be exciting. If you hadn’t heard, last May Don Ennis, a well-respected ABC News editor and previously unambiguously male, entered his newsroom wearing a cute black dress and an auburn wig and announced to a stunned staff, colleagues and superiors that he was transgender. The ABC News national assignment editor said he was forever more to be known as Dawn Stacey Ennis. “Please understand,” he said in a statement, “this is not a game of dress-up, or make-believe. It is my affirmation of who I now am and what I must do to be happy, in response to a soul-crushing secret that my wife and I have been dealing with for more than seven years, mostly in secret. A father of three, “Dawn” announced that the newly-confirmed she was separating from her wife of seventeen years.
His colleagues were supportive, as was everyone else in the media, which is why you probably hadn’t heard the story. They left flowers on Dawn’s desk; ABC News President Ben Sherwood wrote her a note of support. I would have done likewise. This is a real problem, and exactly the kind of personal, medical crisis that the workplace ought to accommodate, while providing emotional support for the difficult and courageous transition. Thus Ennis continued to work at ABC sporting hormone-induced breasts, make-up, lipstick, skirts and heels. This undoubtedly caused a period of adjustment and awkwardness, but I would expect mature professionals to handle it gracefully.
Today, we learned, along with ABC, that Ennis has had a change of heart, and almost everything else. In a jaw-dropping e-mail to family and co-workers titled “Not Reportable, Very Confirmed,” Ennis explained that he was Don Ennis again. “That will be my name again, now and forever. And it appears I’m not transgender after all.”
“No, I’m not fucking with you. No this is not a joke,” he wrote, correctly divining what would have been my first suspicion. “No, this is not an episode of ‘Would You Fall For That?'” You see, Ennis, explained, he had recently had two days of “transient global amnesia,” a rare short-term episode of memory loss that is usually disorienting but harmless. (Aside: a friend of mine had this happen to him. He forgot where his veterinarian was, and lost a day to confusion, but recovered fully. I will let him know how lucky he was.) After he recovered, Dawn thought it was 1999. “I accused my wife of playing some kind of cruel joke, dressing me up in a wig and bra and making fake ID’s with the name ‘Dawn’ on it. Seriously,” he wrote. Then, when he removed his bra and found that he had real breasts (and did not have a cardiac event), he realized that it was not a joke after all. Just an episode of “The Twilight Zone,” come to life.
But wait! There’s more:
“Fortunately, my memories of the last 14 years have since returned. But what did not return was my identity as Dawn…I have retained the much different mind-set I had in 1999: I am now totally, completely, unabashedly male in my mind, despite my physical attributes. I’m asking all of you who accepted me as a transgender to now understand: I was misdiagnosed. I am already using the men’s room and dressing accordingly,” he wrote.
“It’s so odd to be experiencing this from the other side; as recently as last Friday, I felt I was indeed a woman, in my mind, body and soul.”
Uh, okay...
“Even though I will not wear the wig or the makeup or the skirts again, I promise to remain a strong straight ally, a supporter of diversity and an advocate for equal rights and other LGBT issues including same-sex marriage.”
Now, says, Ennis, everything is hunky-dory. He believes his gender confusion was triggered because his mother gave him female hormones as a child to make him appear and sound young to prolong a profitable child performing career, but he ended up developing breasts and started thinking he was a woman. He says he went to the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Md., for testing last month to understand why his mind and body changed from male to female, and learned it was a hormone imbalance that could be fixed. Now looking forward to hormone treatments and surgery, he calls his three-month odyssey into the world of women “a tremendous gift.”
I don’t think ABC considers this bizarre episode a gift. I’m pretty sure the network regards it as an embarrassment, causing people to wonder what kind of disoriented wackos it hires to make news judgment. (I learned about the episode hearing acerbic and witty conservative talk show host Chris Plante do a 30 minute routine on Ennis’s saga, and it almost made me drive off the road.) This cannot have done anything but make the actual job of gathering and reporting the news harder, and moreover, now Ennis’s employers have to face the “fool me once” rule. If he could do this, who is to say with confidence that in October Don/Dawn/Don won’t proclaim himself the Lizard King…or Queen? If you could trust an employee after this whip-lash inducing psycho-drama, my ethics hat’s off to you, but not my competent management cap. I don’t think it’s fair, reasonable or responsible to trust anyone who puts his organization through this, and I would fire him, for cause.
The fact that the laws regarding disabilities would probably stop me from doing so is a topic for another day, and someone else’s blog. Meanwhile, I am taking bets on how long it takes for Ennis to turn his story into a book and a movie deal. ABC News will be so proud!
_________________________________
Pointer: Chris Plante
Sources: New York Post, Mediaite
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work or property was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ethics Alarms 
Dafuq did I just read???
Yet, not as convoluted as this surrogate mother and the family she served
You haven’t seen convoluted. How about this one: http://www.rightentertainment.com/?p=2519 ?
My head is spinning.
Oh the side effects of a culture that has all its material wants and cravings easily ‘fulfilled’ and has nothing to worry about (but should).
Whoa, that’s some story.
Entertaining study. However, why are you comingling Dennis’ personal confusion with his professional performance? If I was his supervisor I would just look at the facts… Is he reliable, is his producing credible, and is he respected in general? All this points to his credibility for working in the news department.
Who gives a F*ck if he dresses like little Bo Peep or doesn’t, or changes from cigarettes to E-garettes? All that should matter is if Dennis is meeting expectations… If his transgender confusion has irreparably damaged his reputation then yes he should be let go.. However, it will probably only enhance it.
You are deluded in some strange ways, my friend. Just try dressing up and coming to work as Po Beep at the White House, a Wall Street firm, a bank, a law firm, a university, as a clerk at Safeway…in fact, any workplace at all other than Mother Goose’s Village. Ennis made his personal life workplace conduct. He made it the business of ABC> This is no different from the firm firing the manager who berated a fast food clerk on camera, except it’s even easier to call.
Embarrass your company, you go.
Show you’re unstable—sorry, can’t trust you.
I can’t wait for your argument about how this guy isn’t unstable.
Let me put it to you in stark terms… Under what grounds could you fire this guy/girl/guy? And would ABC HR legal department concur? I don’t think there are grounds to fire this guy unless he has violated some conduct policy
Having been a supervisor many many years, you have to have a damn good reason…
Shaking up the staff twice, bringing drama into the office and airing personal matters in a way that holds up the company to ridicule is always a damn good reason. You do realize that I began and ended by saying he probably couldn’t be hired legally.
Are you allowed to fire someone you think is unstable and nuts with smoking gun proof? Maybe not, but its still the responsible course.
No! You are so wrong on this one. There is work drama every single day in every single office — this is just “bizarro world” drama given the fact pattern. So, he decided to grow breasts and then get rid of them. How is this worse than the lover spats, divorces, drinking/drug abuse problems, office politics that get brought into the work place every day? Typically, those people get to keep their jobs as long as they can perform them. Assuming this is some sort of mental problem, isn’t the ethical (not legal) thing to do as an employer is to give that person the support he/she needs to get through it? Much like an employee fighting depression or anxiety? Unless his performance suffered, ethically he shouldn’t be fired – and as you mentioned, there is probably no legal grounds to do so. His poor wife though…. This is a nice follow-up to your pieces about the evils of child acting.
For all the reasons you listed, if they create enough disruption in the office or put the companies reputation on the line, then certainly that is grounds for dismissal.
What? If many of those things you mention find their way into the papers, it’s curtains for them! A national news organization has to have respectable judgment, and be seen as having reliable people making decisions. This guy din’t slip on a banana peel, he turned his workplace into a circus. Ennis is an editor? Who would trust such a flake? Who believes that story? How often do people who say they have been trapped in the wrong gender for life switch back in three months?
I guarantee if it weren’t that ABC is under the thumb of the liberal mafia and didn’t want the publicity and the boycotts—and if they were sure they could win the employment suit, he would be out on his ear, as he deserves to be. The news division was a laughing stock all day, and will be as long as Ennis is employed there.
Or put it this way: you have a high profile position in a national policy organization. You release an e-mail to the staff, supposedly private, that announces that you are a Druid, have psychic powers, believe that Donald Duck is the anti-Christ, and that you were Chico Marx in a previous life. It is leaked to the news media.
Is the organization reasonable to sever ties with you? Would you be fired at the White House? Could you fly a commercial airliner? Would a law firm let you handle a major case? Would the Pentagon let you lead a major military operation?
This is no different, except it is arguably more ridiculous.
This made me laugh. There are people who think they are Druids (I worked with one once at a law firm), and hey, the only difference between her and a mainstream religious person is membership numbers. I certainly think there are lots of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, etc. who are GREAT at their jobs despite their “beliefs” that cannot be proven. In the same vein, there are people who believe in past lives. I’m not one of them — I think it’s a bunch of hooey. As for Donald Duck — I certainly never trusted him — but who’s to say that he isn’t the anti-christ vs. some “devil” about whom I learned so much in Sunday school. 🙂 It all comes down to whether or not the job is being performed well. If it is, then as an employer, I could care less, as every employee brings some level of perceived or actual crazy to job.
You’ve just articulated the Star Syndrome—as long as you’re good enough, reasonable rules of decorum don’t apply to you, just the underlings. Is that what you’re saying? Because as a manager, I believe that not making your personal life a constant distraction and not bringing unwanted publicity on the company is part of one’s job responsibilities…an important part.
No, I’ve articluated my style of management. The law says I can’t discriminate on the basis of religion, race, and gender. Here, there is a good ethical reason as well – we don’t need our workers to conform to masses’ sense of what is “normal.”
Firing Ennis would not have anything to do with discrimination. You cannot possibly read the post and think otherwise. I believe it would be prohibited by the ADA.
Jack, you’ve use demeaning stereotypes and degrading language throughout the post and throughout your follow-up comments. (“Degraded wacko,” lizard queen/king, “Don/Dawn/Don,” “psycho-drama,” “disoriented whackos,” “unstable,” etc etc etc). If you had written this and fired Don, in a state where anti-trans discrimination is illegal, making the case for discrimination would be easy, and ABC would end up paying Don a very large settlement.
It’s very easy to say Don’s condition is “exactly the kind of personal, medical crisis that the workplace ought to accommodate.” But when those easy words are followed by a barrage of commonplace anti-trans stereotypes and disparagement while advocating for someone to be fired, the bland tolerant phrases ring more than a little hollow.
Even if you actually harbor no ill-will at all towards trans people – and maybe you don’t – the issue isn’t what’s in your heart, but what you said on the record and did. (In the hypothetical situation in which you fired Don, I mean. I realize that in the real world, you didn’t fire Don. :-p )
In another comment, you wrote:
Again, unusual medical stories DO sometimes happen. Are you a medical expert who can say with authority that because transient global amnesia is a rare condition, it therefore cannot have happened in this case? Are you really going to fire Don without first asking if his doctor can confirm the transient global amnesia diagnosis?
As far as we know, this is the one and only time that Don has come in and told an implausible-sounding story about his personal life to the office. Firing someone for a single incident, or assuming that someone is a serial liar based on a single implausible-sounding story, that didn’t impact the quality of his work, seems VERY unfair.
If you’re really interested in pursuing a “anyone who tells a lie to their co-workers about their personal life should be fired” policy, however, then I suspect you’re going to have to fire many more people. It seems unfair to pick on Don while giving all the everyone else who ever told a lie to explain changes in their personal life (saying “we’ve decided to separate for a while because we’ve grown apart” rather than “he caught me sleeping with his best friend,” for instance) a pass.
Just to start with, not one of these is discriminatory or has anything derogatory to say about transgender matters, unless describing the situation is itself considered somehow unseemly.
1.“Disoriented wacko” …he though it was 1999 and was surprised to find he had breasts. Fair and accurate.
2. “lizard queen/king” Jim Morrison was the Lizard King; Lisa Simpson proclaimed herself the Lizard queen. I was making an obviously faciteious reference to future surprise persona. Not discriminatory.
3. “Don/Dawn/Don” This is factual, Barry. It’s absolutely correct. Nothing cruel in any way.
4 “psycho-drama” Accurate.
5. “unstable” Accurate.
How does one accurate characterize a ridiculous scenario without characterizing it properly?
This comment reads worse and worse the more I read it. Where is anything in the post referencing firing Ennis because he’s not normal? We are speaking about conduct, not condition.
You made your legal point pretty clearly — I was referencing the ethical underpinning in my last comment. You think the conduct here is abnormal, what was the conduct in question? Talking about an obvious physical change that was happening? If anything, wasn’t he diffusing speculation by discussing it openly? There’s nothing wrong with that and there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that caused a disruption. How is this different than a devout Muslim explaining his/her prayer schedule since it will be obvious to the rest of the office that this will be happening? Or a lactating woman explaining that her office door will be locked during her lunch hour and please don’t knock on her door since she will be pumping? These behaviors used to be called abnormal and a disruption, but now must employers wisely (legally and ethically) have decided to accommodate it. You have wrongly equated this trans/nontrans behavior as just as crazy as if he proclaimed himself to be a Lizard King. It’s not, and you are struggling to prop up your position simply on the basis that this is causing an office disruption or might be damaging to public image – well, as long as he is doing his job well, it’s not really a disruption. And, your public image argument again relates back to your own sense of what’s crazy/not crazy. Circular on your part.
Oh, come on. Read the email. It is objectively bizarre, provocative, and troubling. Where wouldn’t it be regarded as bizarre? “I told you all I was now a woman and I dressed like a women for three months and then I had a rare amnesia episode and when I recovered from it, I thought it was 1999 and realized I’m not a woman after all! So I’m a man again, and will be forever, just as I was going to be a woman forever. Well, wadya know!” Yup. I get memos like that every day.
NObody sends memos like that, and nobody ever has, which is why 1) it makes news 2) calls the stability of the sender in objective question.
Whoops! While attempting to transcribe “disorientated whacko,” I accidentally wrote “degraded wacko,” and then compounded my error by noticing that I hadn’t put in “disorientated whacko” and so put it in later.
I sincerely apologize to Jack and to everyone else here. Jack never said “degraded wacko,” although he did say all the other things I attributed to him. “Degraded whacko” was entirely a transcription error on my part, and if I could edit my comment, I would get rid of it immediately. Sorry about that, Jack.
1.
Nonsense.
If someone says “Those smarty-pants Jews sure have their claws in the banks, don’t they?” I’m going to call them on their antisemitism. So would you, I assume.
If they defend themselves by saying “I accurately characterized the situation – there are in fact a disproportionate number of Jews employed as executives in the finance industry. And Jews are smart – they have high IQs on average” I don’t think that excuse would fool you. So why do you expect the same excuse to fool me?
You’re a smart guy and a native English speaker. You can’t expect me to buy that you honestly can’t tell the difference between a respectful way of talking about a difficult situation, and calling someone a whacko.
You used derogatory language, Jack – and pretty much the identical derogatory language you’d see on any right-wing blog where bigots talk about trans people. They too call trans people “wacko” and “unstable” and make the oh-so-original “male name slash female name” sneer all the time. You have used the same language as them, and to the same effect, in this thread.
2. No one who takes it on himself to police other people’s gender changes is a friend to trans people or the trans community.
1. Barry, since you branded my completely reasonable, factual and non-disrespectful comment on your blog so “disrespectful” that you censored it as if it was swastika scrawled on a synagogue, I’d say your credibility on the matter of respect is less than nil, and certainly less than mine.
2.I can designate the conduct of a transexual/pseudo trans/ fantasy trans or whatever Ennis thinks he is at the moment as absurd, improper and bad for the workplace just as I can so designate the conduct of a Democrat, Republican or cartoonist as such without being legitimately accused of displaying bias against whatever the target of my criticism is. I know you arise from a culture that plays this despicable game regularly—valid criticism of a feckless and inept black President is racism, valid criticism of a disruptive worker who happens to be transgender is anti-trans, but it’s tired, transparent, dishonest, cheap, lazy, insulting, illogical, offensive and wrong. I hope I make myself clear.
3. I don’t respect the conduct in Ennis’s case. It’s not respectable conduct. Surprise! An awful lot of members of the trans community don’t appear to respect it either, as he has come in for a great deal of criticism. Are they anti-trans biased too? Or just anti-attention seeking wacko? I submit to the court: what Ennis did is by definition bizarre, unusual, and strange. The definition of whacko (or wacko) is “A person regarded as eccentric or irrational.” Go ahead—tell me that changing one’s announced gender twice in a four month period isn’t eccentric. Is wacko tough slang for what Ennis did? Ok. Is what he did unusually eccentric? Have you heard of anyone else doing anything similar? Do I have to define “eccentric’ too?
4.Your comment is flat out despicable, Barry. No one can read my post and get the idea that it criticizes transgender people as a group or in general. It criticizes this guy for his workplace drama and shenanigans, which just happen to revolve around his gender issues. I would criticize any non-trans (which Ennis is, by the way) individual who similarly made his or her personal issues a matter of workplace disruption twice to the extent that it got into the news–be it about their marriage, plastic surgery, conversion to a new religion, renunciation of their citizenship, coming out of the closet, going into the closet, changing their party affiliation, OR ANYTHING ELSE, and the post does not suggest otherwise.
5. YOU suggest otherwise, however, because this is how you and yours try to score cheap points when you have no case—by ad hominem attacks, side swiping the issue by ignoring the substance—how much workplace disruption is an employer required to countenance, and at what point does a manager’s workplace conduct become sufficient reason to sever ties with him?—in favor of accusations of a wrongful motive–“You’re really biased against transexuals, aren’t you?”—which is like starting a fair fight with a kick in the balls. I resent it, though to anyone objective, it’s pathetically obvious what you’re doing.
6. This sentence—“No one who takes it on himself to police other people’s gender changes is a friend to trans people or the trans community”—is the smoking gun, proves my point, and is beneath contempt. Pointing out that dual workplace disruptions and per se nutsy-cuckoo messages to the world ( as those involving both amnesia and double-reverse gender identities are, but its a big category) pose serious problems for news organizations that must live or die on the perceived judgment of their editors is not possibly “policing other people’s gender changes,” or an attempt to do so, or even on the same topic. Your frankly dishonest characterization would similarly hold that a boss who didn’t want an employee’s marriage plans to be a constant distraction on the job was trying to “police other people’s marriages” or that an employer firing someone whose domestic problems kept spilling into the workplace was trying to “police other people’s love life.”
You really are shockingly shameless. I’d quote Joseph Welch, but then you’d probably say I was accusing you of being a Red-baiter. That would be as fair and logical as the rest of your comment.
I am perpetually baffled at people who feel they can describe themselves in two lives: “work life” and “personal life”.
I don’t understand it. Individuals are ONE person. When I hear people say “I try to have a life outside of work” what I really hear is “I hate my job”. Sorry folks, you are ONE person, your work life and your personal life cannot be divorced from each other. How you conduct yourself outside of work has every bearing on how you conduct yourself at work. You aren’t two people.
My turn to say, “Well spoken.”
I asked me, and we agree.
Those who actually CAN build a solid wall between their home and work lives are not only schizo, but likewise fitting the profile of some of the worst criminals in history. Essentially, one is thereby able to cut himself off from any moderating effects of friends, family and church to become just about just about anything. Of course, I’m assuming this “man” has any of those things to begin with. I rather doubt it.
It’s not about becoming two people, it’s about being able to control your behavior and what comes out of your mouth to do the job you need to be doing at that moment. An inability to regulate your own behaviour is far more in line “the worst criminals in history.” Any psychologically healthy adult can control their own actions.
I tend to go with you, and I think Jack does too, but only insofar as it is reasonable to expect an employer to accommodate someone with such identity issues.
I think it might be unfair to expect every employer (and fellow employee) to accommodate, adjust, adapt etc. in cases like this. People generally deserve equal protection and treatment. But, I think identity confusion cases like Ennis’s can be too much like throwing down a gauntlet to others (unfairly) – a “dare you” to employers and fellow employees, to prove a cause for termination – regardless of how obviously disruptive an employee’s “personal dynamics” are. It is possible for an employee to behave in a manner that justifies termination – despite the employee’s otherwise competent performance – and without culpability on the part of the employer for wrongfully terminating because the employee “could not help him/herself.”
How much cognitive dissonance are employers and fellow employees obligated to put up with as a result of one employee’s personal identity dynamics?
All that aside, I am concerned that Ennis suffers extreme vulnerability to hypnotism, or some other vulnerability to environmentally induced changes of consciousness.
You know, Jack, this trouble all started because of Mel Brooks. When he made the movie Young Frankenstein, he should’ve let the good Dr. fire Eyegore, the instant the Dr. discovered that the hump had moved. Because of course, the assistant’s mixing-up of Abby Normal’s brain could not possibly have reflected the assistant’s performance and competence as lacking enough to justify termination.
You’re absolutely wrong, Jack.
Logically, ABC shouldn’t worry about what either you or Plante (a loathesome anti-trans bigot, by the way) thinks about this case. You already loathe and mistrust ABC news, and will do so even if they do fire Don. In contrast, many liberals will have their opinion of ABC diminished if they do fire Don. Logically, it makes more sense for ABC to cater to people who are open to not hating ABC, than for them to cater to folks like you and Plante who will hate them regardless.
For a week, at most. By next week, The Post will find some other silly non-story to fixate on, and this will all be irrelevant.
Good one, Jack! Non-trans people making “which gender to use?” jokes at the expense of people who go through gender changes never ceases to be funny, and is certainly not a boring cliche.
Note that virtually the same argument could be made to suggest that it would be ethical to fire any trans person. “If Joe comes in today and says he’s now Joan, what’s to prevent “Joan” from proclaiming herself Queen of the Lizards next month?”
If Don comes in sincerely claiming to be a Lizard, or the monarch of all Lizards, then he’s demonstrably experiencing serious delusions and should be fired (someone who cannot perceive reality cannot report on it accurately). But neither being trans, nor having temporary memory loss which results in no longer being trans, is a delusion. Assuming that people who transition their gender (even more than once) are likely to suffer delusions is unjustifiable and unfair.
Similarly, if it turns out that no one at ABC can work with him, that’s a managerial problem which would have to be dealt with somehow. But a pre-emptive firing to prevent a problem that may not ever come up would be wrong. For all you know, the people who work in the ABC news office are more sympathetic, and less narrow-minded, than you’re assuming.
Don should be hired, and retained, based on his ability to do his job. Why is that so difficult?
The issue, as any honest commentator would concede…which is to say, based on this comment, not you…has exactly nothing to do with real trans issues at all, and you know it, choosing nonetheless to highlight that aspect of the story, which I made clear from the outset was not my objection to Ennis’s conduct.
The problems are the 1) the inexplicable U turn, which makes him, ABC and genuine trans individuals look ridiculous 2) his flamboyant way of announcing it it 3) his dubious story, which still makes no sense no matter how many times I read it and 4) the workplace disruption his drama causes.
“Good one” my ass, Barry. Ennis makes sexual confusion in HIS case the source of legitimate skepticism and ridicule based on his “I am! I’m not!” routine. To make the case it’s insensitive to suggest that someone who does this once is a risk to do it again is politically correct garbage. I have never been anything but supportive and sensitive to legitimate, as in real, not imagined, transgendered people. Ennis is not such a person. He is a the worst kind of employee, the one who makes his personal issues the central focus of the office, and who disrupts the work environment to draw attention to himself—and compounded it by writing everything in a “private” e-mail, to a news organization, guaranteeing that this would be publicized to that organization’s embarrassment.
The trans community should be furious with Ennis, whose stuttering journey to ambiguity plays to the worst prejudices and bigotries of those who don’t comprehend the genuine problem, a problem Ennis doesn’t have, though he clearly has some problem. They are not weird, but Ennis is, and he is a lousy and damaging representative of the transgender crisis…and apparently a false one as well. Moreover, we have already learned that he is marketing a book deal, so he quickly and invalidly becomes the unwelcome and unrepresentative face of the condition.
True bias is when someone can’t escape the grip of knee-jerk, formulaic analysis of gray area scenarios based on previously locked-in coding…since Ennis is sort-of trans—trans trans?—he cannot do wrong in your eyes. On the other hand, as a brief perusal of my commentary on this broad topic shows, my consideration of trans conduct is based not on who they are, but what they do, regardless of who they are. That’s called fairness and objectivity. I can see legitimate arguments against my position, but you have articulated none of them…just innuendo against my motives, which is pretty low.
What Ennis did is make his organization, which depends on respect and credibility (the fact that I personally regard it as having forfeited that status long ago is 100% irrelevant, making your reference to that another cheap shot) look like it puts unstable people (go ahead, make the argument that someone who does what Ennis did isn’t unstable) in a position to control its news decisions. What he did was bring bad publicity to his employer. What he did is render himself permanently untrustworthy. While posing as a transgender individual was the means by which he did this, sufficient to make him invulnerable to justified employment action in your eyes, the issue of transgendered tolerance in the workplace isn’t part of the story, or the post, or the ethics issue at all. The story and my verdict on it would be the same in ethics terms if he announced one day that he was Napoleon, dressed in a French military uniform from the early 1800’s, and then showed up a month later in a normal suit with a cockamamie story about how it was all a big mistake, but first making sure that every comedian had access to the tale. The only difference is that there aren’t a substantial number of people who really do think they are Napoleon who would be embarrassed and disadvantaged by his conduct, while in Ennis’s case, there are real transgendered individuals whose battle to be respected and understood Ennis harmed.
They should fire him too.
I think your response to Barry was unfair. When I read your post, I saw the same problems that Barry did. In your response to Barry, you changed your logic greatly. You make it clear now that you think Ennis made it all up, that he was simply “posing as a transgender”. If that assumption was true, then firing would clearly be necessary, but you don’t claim that reason in your original post. Originally, you claimed that someone who says their trans is just as crazy as someone who claims to be the lizard king, not that someone who lies about being trans might lie about something else. You claimed that the embarrassment of a person struggling with their gender identity is a valid reason for firing the struggler, not that the embarrassment of a liar is a valid reason for firing the liar.
As I understand your position now, it’s much better than what I saw in your original post.
That said, I think you’re being a bit too uncharitable with respect to Ennis. He’s exhibiting some of the hallmarks of an “ex-gay”. He made the leap into being himself, but it was hard on him, so he’s pretending it was just a phase, not something he is. This leads to rationalizations and ridiculous stories about his change. Ennis clearly needs psychological help. If ABC cares about it’s employees, I’d think they’d try to help him get that help. A leave of absence until his comments make sense? That’s an appropriate response. Firing? Unethical.
Obviously, I don’t.
Barry’s comments, on the other hand, were definitely unfair, accusing me of some kind of anti-trans bias that is neither present in the post or relevant to my position. (And I’m sorry, but Ennis himself recognized that his absurd tale was natural joke fodder.)
I said in the original post that I didn’t know what was going on with Ennis, and I don’t. Maybe his story is true—I sure doubt that it is true as he laid it out. I though my skepticism came through—reading it again, I can see how it would be missed in favor of the over-arching “this guy is liable to say or do anything” message.
The real problem continues to be making his personal issues the workplace’s problem, and putting ABC in a ridiculous and impossible position. But again: Is it arguable that Ennis ISN’T unstable? If he’s unstable, isn’t he untrustworthy? If he’s untrustworthy, why do you think its unethical to fire him? Would it be kind to kick him into a less prominent position? Sure. That’s a better alternative. But really—he’s either nuts and lying, or just nuts. Either is grounds to say bye.
I’ve experienced co-workers going through gender-preference issues, and none of them disrupted the workplace or were turned into “news of the weird’ stories. This didn’t have to be either, and Ennis deserves the blame.
Barry’s comments, on the other hand, were definitely unfair, accusing me of some kind of anti-trans bias that is neither present in the post or relevant to my position.
I don’t see Barry accusing you of anti-trans bias. I see him calling out bad comments, but no accusation of bias.
I think the anti-trans comments are pretty blatant in the post. Heck, you admitted that you weren’t clear: ‘Maybe his story is true—I sure doubt that it is true as he laid it out. I though my skepticism came through—reading it again, I can see how it would be missed in favor of the over-arching “this guy is liable to say or do anything” message.’
That you are generally good about trans rights, doesn’t mean your post wasn’t anti-trans. Your good thoughts don’t excuse the improper statements. I think you’ve shown that most of your bad comments were unclear writing, not bad belief, but Barry’s response to the face value of the comments still seems rational to me.
The real problem continues to be making his personal issues the workplace’s problem, and putting ABC in a ridiculous and impossible position.
What? He informed them of the first change and of the second change. Assuming Ennis has good faith, what should he have done differently? Pretended that nothing happened?
But again: Is it arguable that Ennis ISN’T unstable? If he’s unstable, isn’t he untrustworthy? If he’s untrustworthy, why do you think its unethical to fire him?
I think that ethical companies stand by their employees. I think they attempt to help their employees instead of simply cutting them out. I can see a small company having to fire an employee, but abcnews can put Ennis on a leave of absense and help him get counseling to become stable again. This doesn’t seem like a general instability; it’s related to a specific issue. Once that issue is settled, it’s quite possible that Ennis would return to a stable, trustworthy employee.
Would it be kind to kick him into a less prominent position? Sure. That’s a better alternative. But really—he’s either nuts and lying, or just nuts. Either is grounds to say bye.
Nuts is too general a term here. This appears to be one issue that needs to be worked out, not a general problem.
I’ve experienced co-workers going through gender-preference issues, and none of them disrupted the workplace or were turned into “news of the weird’ stories. This didn’t have to be either, and Ennis deserves the blame.
Were you working at any high profile organizations that were hated by pundits with transphobia? It seems like you’re damning Ennis based on his employer’s enemies prejudices.
1. What statement in the post can be fairly interpreted as “anti-trans”? I don’t see it, unless criticizing this pseudo trans is considered criticizing all, and it isn’t. I’ll cop to being less clear than I should have, but not that.
2. “Assuming Ennis has good faith, what should he have done differently?” That’s easy: not put it in writing. It could and should have been low key. If I grow a beard or have a hip replacement, I don’t have to announce it to the workplace. They’ll find out. So he shows up not wearing a dress…so what? Why the drama…either time?
3. “I think that ethical companies stand by their employees. I think they attempt to help their employees instead of simply cutting them out”…IF they can do so without harming the company or encouraging detrimental conduct by others.
4. “This doesn’t seem like a general instability; it’s related to a specific issue. Once that issue is settled, it’s quite possible that Ennis would return to a stable, trustworthy employee.” I’ll spare you the fun examples I have in my head, but really—instability on this level IS general instability. It’s like saying a schizophrenic is only unstable in the area of hearing voices in his head.
5. “Were you working at any high profile organizations that were hated by pundits with transphobia?” Again, as with Barry, I don’t see that this is the issue. The issue is “Constantly changing who you say you are, equally passionately and without a good explanation, making your employer look foolish-o-phobia”
1. “I don’t think ABC considers this bizarre episode a gift. I’m pretty sure the network regards it as an embarrassment, causing people to wonder what kind of disoriented wackos it hires to make news judgment. … This cannot have done anything but make the actual job of gathering and reporting the news harder, and moreover, now Ennis’s employers have to face the “fool me once” rule. If he could do this, who is to say with confidence that in October Don/Dawn/Don won’t proclaim himself the Lizard King…or Queen?”
That’s extremely anti-trans. You didn’t mean to be anti-trans, but the words you wrote are anti-trans. If you’re willing to say your words were unclear, why won’t you cop that your unclear words meant something bad?
2. I think that if you make a major change that is likely to make people uncomfortable, an upfront letter is appropriate. It’s a courtesy so that people can prepare themselves. This is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” issue.
Also, If the letter didn’t become public, what would have been the problem? Oddly, I don’t see you complaining that this private correspondence letter was released to the public.
3. Yes, and ABC can do that.
4. I take back my allowing for you to be pro-trans. A gender identity issue does not have the same types of consequences for an employer as schizophrenia. That comparison is ridiculous. You may think of yourself as pro-trans, but you don’t seem to actually be pro-trans.
5. I don’t see ABC looking foolish. I see haters of ABC and trans people hating on trans-ness.
I don’t see a change and change back as “constantly changing who you say you are”.
I don’t see the lack of good explanation as as much of an issue as you do. It’s standard rationalization of current status.
Thanks Barry and TGT. My thoughts exactly — I was just working all day and didn’t get a chance to respond. And, why do we assume there is a work place disruption? I don’t think my work would be disrupted. And if it was, then the problem isn’t with the trans/non-trans employee, it’s with the other employees who are fascinated with this salacious tidbit. How is this different than, “I think he’s gay,” or “I think she’s a single mother who’s NEVER been married.” Not too long ago, that would be gossip that might “disrupt” work, but now we condemn that as unacceptable. That is why your post comes off as anti-trans, even though I don’t think that was your intent.
Well, if any of you guys were my HR director, I’d hope you could talk me out of firing Don. So far, you haven’t.
All I can do is point to one example that had similarities – bodily feminisation, transition – with comparable emotional instability, where quality of work did not suffer (though the employee did).
I think that the work I did on the Executable/Translatable Unified Modelling Language run-time environment in 2005 was pretty good, even though I say so myself. A neat, elegantly simple solution to a horridly intractable technical problem, the kind that’s so simple it’s obvious in hindsight, but rarely before. It’s been used in e-Voting and high-integrity systems since, with great success.
My professional work kept my mind off my personal issues. It was good therapy, and as it was deemed far too dangerous given the hormonal chaos for me to take so much as an aspirin, I needed it.
I informed the CEO, and then the rest of the firm, what was happening in a multi-page letter rather than an e-mail. There were lots of “I don’t knows” in there, a number of “we thinks” and so on. By then, I couldn’t “pass” as male, though hormones to accelerate the process hadn’t been authorised, and there was no indication that they ever would be.
Not the usual “textbook transsexuality” situation.
Unlike Don, I took to transition like the proverbial duck to water. Had I been male, I wouldn’t have, but it’s not something anyone can be sure of without experimentation. The hormonal imbalances don’t just mess with your mind, they mess with the physical anatomy of the brain, something intensely disorientating.
Also unlike Don, the feminisation happened over 3 months, not gradually over a few years. I got rushed, rather than informing the rest of the firm beforehand, the letter wasn’t finished before my hand was forced, so was a few days late.
My contract wasn’t terminated (in fact, it got extended to finish up the last details), the product was delivered on time, under budget, the customer was very happy with it, a win all round.
It could easily have been otherwise though. So while I think Jack’s HR decision would have been a mistake, in both my and Don’s similar situation (though with his the outcome was diametrically opposite), he would only have been “playing it safe” from a company viewpoint – though endangering a very vulnerable and valuable employee as the result.
“…or “I think she’s a single mother who’s NEVER been married.” Not too long ago, that would be gossip that might “disrupt” work, but now we condemn that as unacceptable.”
Um, nowhere I’ve ever worked has this kind of gossip been condemned. Gossip’s never encouraged, sure, but gossip is gossip, and I’ve never heard of a corporate enviroment that treated it like something more severe than time-wasting.
Okay, you seem to be making (as TGT pointed out) a new argument, which is that Ennis was “posing” when he initially transitioned – that is, that he deliberately lied – and that the entire story is just some conscious lies he made up.
Is that your argument? Because if so, it REALLY wasn’t clear to me from your initial post, at all. And I can’t imagine a motive for someone who didn’t genuinely believe himself to be trans to put himself through all that.
But maybe it’s not your argument, and I’m just misreading you.
IF that is your argument, then I’d say that you have no way of knowing if he’s lying or not. Yes, his story is bizarre, but bizarre stories do sometimes happen (just read Oliver Sacks). But sure, if the people who work with him directly at ABC have credible reasons to be sure that he was deliberately lying all along, I’d agree that’s a firable offense.
Regarding if transitioning, then transitioning back, is so implausible that we can assume it’s a lie:
I’ve known two people who have started the process of transitioning, to the point of announcing their new status to their friends, co-workers, etc, and beginning to change their lives in various ways – but then changed their minds, and having to go through the somewhat awkward process of saying “actually, I’m remaining female after all, as it turns out” to all those people.
People’s lives sometimes don’t go where they thought they would go, even when it comes to major, life-changing decisions.
That doesn’t make them “disoriented whackos.” It doesn’t make them “unstable.” It doesn’t make them the equivalent of someone who believes that they are the Lizard Queen. That you keep using such degrading language and comparisons, makes you seem neither objective nor credible.
I don’t know if Ennis is trans or not, and – although you seem to believe otherwise, in the quote above – neither do you. It’s possible that Ennis is a trans person who is going to need more than one attempt before permanently coming out of the closet. (If so, Ennis won’t be the first.) It’s also possible he’s not trans. We just don’t know, and neither do trans people observing this case from outside.
But a lot of trans people are – for excellent reason – sympathetic to people who are confused about their own gender identity, or who experience changes in gender identity. As Zoe correctly pointed out, the whole reason for the common (although not universal) practice of living as a new gender for a year before making irreversible changes is that sometimes things don’t work out.
Virtually all the sneering and disgust I’ve seen directed at Ennis is coming from conservative pundits, not from trans blogs. I think that’s not a coincidence.
That’s silly, Jack. I’ve known lots of trans folks who I think have done wrong things (ditto for non-trans folks). Trans folks make as many stupid mistakes as all other humans, obviously.
If Ennis had fired someone unjustly, or beaten someone up, or [fill in unambiguously wrong action here] and said “it’s okay for me to do that because I’m trans,” of course I’d criticize him for that. But the only thing he did is change his identity, and then change it back. Assuming he wasn’t deliberately lying, nothing about that is inherently immoral. Or a firing offense.
Here’s a comment I just read on a trans blog, in a general article about “detransitioning” that touched on the Ennis case, among other cases. Emphasis added by me.
I don’t know if this opinion is typical for the trans community, but it is a typical attitude among the trans folks I know personally.
No one person’s comments represent the entire trans community, of course. But I think it’s fair to say that many trans people don’t see this case as being as black-and-white as you do.
I wrote that we just don’t know if Ellis is “really” a trans person or not.
On second thought, I regret writing that, because it makes it seem like I’m ignoring Zoe’s comments, and Zoe does have firsthand knowledge of the case. From what Zoe says, Ellis is not trans – but neither was he deliberately lying when he changed his identity to female.
It’s not my argument.
My argument is that there is a limited amount of ridiculous publicity an employer is required by fairness or reasonableness to tolerate, and for a prominent management individual to make headlines not once but twice in a four month period by making a public spectacle out his unusual and flamboyant personal quandaries and sex life exceeds that limit in an industry that depends on credibility and judgment.
Do you think a “one high profile gender switch” per employee rule would be unfair? How about one per year? How about a one public switch, and the next two keep out of the papers?
In declining order of importance:
1. The people mocking Ennis are The New York Post headline writers, right-wing radio hosts like Bryan Fischer, and right-wing bloggers like the swell folks at moonbatty.com. These people are nothing but bigots and bullies. To do as you suggest – firing an employee whose work is good because a bunch of bullies are mocking him – would be nothing but cowardice.
2. The claim that “ABC News employs someone who thought he was trans, but then decided he was wrong, therefore their reporting can’t be trusted” is obviously illogical, because the conclusion in no way follows from the premise. I don’t think our goal as hiring managers should be to let our hiring and firing decision be ruled by irrational hysteria, any more than we should allow it to be ruled by bullies.
3. As TGT said, I think, the blame for the letter being leaked lies primarily with the leaker, whoever it is, and also with the newspapers, bloggers, and radio hosts who have eagerly covered this story even though it’s not newsworthy. (Just because something is salacious, juicy gossip doesn’t make it legitimate news.) You’re blaming the victim while giving the real culprits a pass.
4.Transitioning gender is not making one’s “sex life” public. That’s a common misconception.
5. You’re contradicting your original post, in which you wrote:
So earlier you implied that the first transition didn’t get much coverage, and certainly wasn’t mocked. Now your story has changed.
1. Actively mocking isn’t the problem. Those without any partisan agendas reasonably read the story, roll their eyes and say, What kind of circus are they running at ABC?” It’s a completely reasonable response, too.
2. That’s a misstatement of what I said and believe. I said that ABC’s credibility and judgement won’t be trusted if it is seen to be maintaining untrustworthy professionals in news assessing positions.
3.Come on. Ennis is in the news business! He puts out a tabloid ready e-mail like that, he knows its going to hit the news media. He wrote it…he’s to blame, completely.
4. Semantics. The gender one lives with is part of one’s sex life.
5. The story was headlined and reported, but quickly forgotten. It was still in the news. I remembered it.
Would someone please explain to me why:
If I’m tolerant of gays up to the point of not being a cheerleader for gay marriage, I’m called a homophobic hater by those who don’t agree with me? Or, if I think that the Zimmerman trial had the right outcome I’m a racist hater? Or, if don’t watch TV because I think the alphabet media manipulate the populace with their programming and can’t be trusted to tell the truth, I LOATHE them (along with Jack)?
Just because someone is able to do something, should he/she? Should we be cloning people? Creating creatures with bodies in all sizes, shapes, and forms and no brains, to harvest their organs or to have sex partners with whom anything goes? Shouldn’t nudists and exhibitionists be allowed to be accepted in public in their natural state? In a country obsessed with privacy, how can we also be obsessed with normalizing and flaunting behaviors that were previously considered disruptive or “different” in public or the workplace? Some of these issues have been around forever – quietly or privately – and every family had it’s own “character” who was different in one way or another, but nobody made a big deal out of it until someone decided it was time to “come out of the closet.”
This trend of anything goes, under the umbrella of political correctness, has resulted in a country of individuals who think they are entitled to whatever they can think of, call whoever disagrees with them names and labels while they are offended by being “labeled” or “profiled,” and expect millions of people to accept that which has never been so public before.
Personally, I don’t give a damn who does what as long as it doesn’t affect me. The light’s at the end of my tunnel and getting closer by the day but I can only imagine what the future will be like for my children and grandchildren as it’s trending now. Selfishly, I’m glad I’m old.
Would someone please explain to me why:
If I’m tolerant of gays up to the point of not being a cheerleader for gay marriage, I’m called a homophobic hater by those who don’t agree with me?
Would someone please explain to me why:
If I’m tolerant of [blacks] up to the point of not being a cheerleader for [interracial] marriage, I’m called a [racist] hater by those who don’t agree with me?
If I’m tolerant of [women] up to the point of not being a cheerleader for [a legal equality, like, say, speech], I’m called a [sexist] hater by those who don’t agree with me?
In a country obsessed with privacy, how can we also be obsessed with normalizing and flaunting behaviors that were previously considered disruptive or “different” in public or the workplace?
You said it. Women don’t belong in the workforce. Women should be quiet in public. The men are speaking.
Some of these issues have been around forever – quietly or privately – and every family had it’s own “character” who was different in one way or another, but nobody made a big deal out of it until someone decided it was time to “come out of the closet.”
I agree. We should pretend that strong women don’t exist. They should pretend to be meek helpmates in public.
This trend of anything goes, under the umbrella of political correctness, has resulted in a country of individuals who think they are entitled to whatever they can think of, call whoever disagrees with them names and labels while they are offended by being “labeled” or “profiled,” and expect millions of people to accept that which has never been so public before.
Yea. Women improperly think they’re entitled to equality, and they improperly label me a misogynistic asshole when I label them as bad at math and profile them as too stupid to work for my company. They can’t expect us to accept that which has never been so public before.
Personally, I don’t give a damn who does what as long as it doesn’t affect me. The light’s at the end of my tunnel and getting closer by the day but I can only imagine what the future will be like for my children and grandchildren as it’s trending now. Selfishly, I’m glad I’m old.
I don’t care about the world that doesn’t affect me. Some sexual harrasser’s a mayor in San Francisco? Well, I don’t live in San Francisco, I don’t care. The police shot a black kid that was minding his own business? I don’t know him, so I don’t have an opinion. Some gay guy wants the right to get married? That’s not right.
Oldgraymary, you’ve been “tgtd.” It’s an honor. Really.
The adjective “tgtd” (also a verb, viz., “to tgt”), is defined here as: The quality or state of a person, having been mocked arrogantly, derisively, and dismissively as closed-minded (and as inferior to the mocker), by another person who exercises religious faith (even when denying doing such) in entitlement to mock based on being closed-minded also (and/but self-presumed superior to the person mocked).
(I had to say, “…is defined here as” above, just in case a different term is already associated with the above definition, or an equivalence of it, in the Urban Dictionary or elsewhere.)
Thanks, Eeyoure. I think I’ve been “tgtd” before, though. I haven’t responded to this post though, because tgtd either did not really read or understand my post, or I did not express myself plainly; therefore, I would be wasting time and energy trying to repeat myself or rebutting his post line-by-line.
I will say this much, though: What bothers me the most about people today and the likes of the Don Ennis’ and the Eugene Robinsons (who would have been considered an adulterer if he had left his wife for a woman instead of a man) and the Thomas Beaties of the world is that all their actions have consequences not just for them but for their families. I pity the wives and children of them all. Not only is this confusing in the workplace, consider the devastation to these families. So, in order for three people to try to be comfortable in their own skins, how many in their families have their lives turned upside-down forever?
Your position is bigotted. It’s an appeal to the tradition of secrecy. It’s horrible.
I pity your family too. Does that make me bigot-bigotted?
The “the atheism is religion” canard is so tired. The comments about me specifically, that I dismissed oldgraymary as closed minded, that I think my targets are inferior, that pointing out logical parallels is arrogant, that I’m close-minded, etc… are all bullshit.
On the plus side, if you had a valid response to my post, you wouldn’t have gone with an ad hominem attack.
Could it be that Ennis is finagling for a reality show?! But that aside, the fact remains that he willingly invaded the privacy of young females in the guise of a woman and continued to do so with the open conivance of the responsible authorities. This was all blatant and, by the weird standards in play, not only lawful but, apparently, laudable to some. Not long ago, this would be considered felonious criminality… and rightfully so. In their zeal to curry favor with perverts, the powers-that-be have rejected their prime duty as authorities and as decent human beings; the protection of woman and children from predators. Ennis managed to illustrate that danger with his incredible behavior. Nor do I doubt he’ll get away with it, too. This is how low we’ve sunk.
I can’t say much, as I have some personal knowledge of the case.
There were apparently unusual medical issues.
Apparently, Don is not Trans.
Given the medical situation, he is not to be blamed for thinking he was. That’s why we have a period of living as the opposite gender before permanent treatment is considered. It’s a diagnostic.
Here the system worked – all treatment so far is reversible. We have apparently identified the underlying biological cause, and a new therapeutic regime has been instituted. Hopefully we have it right this time. Unfortunately there have been unwanted side-effects, possibly by moving too quickly to deal with the biological issues, and not considering the psychological effects.
If there’s any blame – blame me. I was the one who identified the biological anomalies and strongly advised Don to get his endocrine system checked out by professionals, that whatever the situation was, it was not the usual textbook case of transsexuality.
I’m at the other end of a long communications line, getting data often 2nd hand rather than directly from clinicians, for all I know I could have it completely wrong. But the data I was given matched a few, rare syndromes, at least some of which could cause serious but temporary confusion about gender identity, and a few of which could be treated therapeutically by courses of hormones.
Apparently this was one of them.
I’m not a qualified physician; I can only advise people to see qualified physicians; there is no “patient relationship” here. But the ethics of patient confidentiality still apply, so I can’t go into detail about this particular case, even if I knew more than I do.
I can talk about generalities. Assuming someone mostly anatomically male with an anomalous endocrine system suddenly found themselves with a female sex hormone balance (as I did myself), there would be external physical changes, but also neurological ones.
See
Changing your sex changes your brain: influences of testosterone and estrogen on adult human brain structure by Pol et al, Europ Jnl Endocrinology, Vol 155, suppl_1, S107-S114 2006
This changes your mind – literally. And you can feel it happening. It is extremely disorientating, calling into question your whole identity.
It is vital to realise that just because your body is changing to look female, and some feminine personality traits are induced, that doesn’t necessarily mean you *are* female, with a female gender identity.
One way of diagnosing this is to live as a woman, and later have a course of feminising hormones to accelerate the process. A man will get extreme discomfort from this. A woman will blossom.
Meanwhile, the biological reaction to the medication may provide clues as to what the heck is going on to cause the hormonal anomalies in the first place.
Thanks, Zoe—this is why I wanted you to weigh in, although I didn’t suspect that you were actually involved. Enlightening, as ever.
So, Jack: Are you going to retract anything you’ve said, now that Zoe has commented? (Did you retract something, and I missed it?) I’m countin’ on ya, man – not sayin’ I’m gonna be agreeable with ya, just…countin’ on ya.
What should I retract? Zoe clarified the guy’s problem—I said he had problems. My position remains that workers do not have an unlimited right to destabilize the workplace with their own personal dramas, and when they go beyond that to making it headline news, twice in four months, making a news organization appear as if it leaves its news choices to someone with a tenuous grip on reality, that’s a firing offense in my book.
No one’s persuaded me that this in incorrect of unfair. Tgt says that the instability is localized…I don’t believe someone can compartmentalize instability, and besides, appearances are the issue. I could be persuaded, if Beth or Barry were my sensitive HR directors, that maybe Don-Dawn should be kicked into a less visible, less responsible position, if there is one that he would accept. But news editor? For someone who peddles the amnesia story with complete credulity? (I don’t say he’s lying, I say that his explanation is manifestly unbelievable by anyone but him).
I’m not retracting anything.
Thanks – I was not meaning to suggest that you should retract anything. I was counting on you to explain further about where you stand, after thanking Zoe. Thanks again (and thanks, Zoe).
This “presto-change-o” case (I know: that oversimplification is unfair to Ennis, but I said it that way on purpose, to avoid being unfair to co-workers) got me to thinking about that school that fired the stalked employee, for the safety of the rest of the workforce and student body.
Moving right along (pondering), I started thinking about a what-if regarding an employee’s flip-flopping on religious faith, instead…
Without accusing any specific faith(s), what if an employee – who, of course, was merely exercising freedom of religion, a matter of their PERSONAL LIFE – announced to co-workers his or her conversion from one particular faith to another particular faith…a “new” faith that many of us might call a “dangerous cult” for the simple reason that it is common knowledge that one who converts IN, dares not convert OUT, lest deadly violence be visited upon the “blasphemer” (or whatever term would apply, in the “cult’s” lexicon, to one who converted in and then declared or professed conversion out)…and then some relatively near time later, announced conversion BACK to the “pre-cult” faith?
A worse (in my opinion) variation on that circumstance: What if the employee did the conversion and conversion-back, and did NOT tell co-workers?
That got my head to hurting, as I imagined all the nervous calls to me (imagining myself as the HR rep to that employee’s division), from other employees who feared impending violence in the workplace. There is no way the employee could be fired. (Or is there?) So, what recourse does anyone have? Wait for the inevitable exploding package to be delivered to the employee? Counseling the employee, thereby setting up a slam-dunk discrimination lawsuit?
I would not even bring up those what-ifs, if I did not (in my mind) liken the impact of Ennis’s dynamics on co-workers as something akin to, if not equivalent to, violence in the workplace. Oh sure, people all up and down the hall, all across cubicle-land, at every floor where the elevator stops, would strive to be gracious to Ennis – “supportive,” as has been alleged. I’m not buying it. A nest of ABC news wonks is as much of a minefield of lying, deception and insincerity as anything you’d find between the tenor and bass sections of a church choir. But I don’t want to hear it: the tell-all office gossip, about who is horrified about Ennis, about who thinks heshehe is unstable. I not only don’t want to hear it; I DON’T WANT IT TO GO ON.
So I think there is a conflict of priorities in this case, pitting reasonable permissiveness toward an individual against fair expectations of others to treat that individual fairly. My priority: the team.
The team…and the team’s “mission.”
Thanks very much for your post, Zoe.
(See? I can agree with Jack about something. :-p )
One never sees such a volume of mindless, empty blather as one does in the fervor of rabid leftists to paint themselves “more perverted than thou” in defending and/or promoting the “virtues” of the most evil, pathetic, insane and dangerous behaviors that a twisted mind can devise. Congratulations to the same old crowd for the same old garbage.
In this case, I caught myself remembering something General Patton said in one of his speeches – not in lockstep with him, but with much empathy and sympathy: “This individual heroic stuff is [a bunch of CRAP!].” That was in context of saying how the Army is a team. I guess we’re all supposed to be superior to such these days – and be “professionals.”
Boy, you got back in fighting trim fast!
Jack, perhaps you should hire Steven as your HR Director.
Seriously, how could transsexuality possibly be “the most evil, pathethic, insane and dangerous behavior that a twisted mind could devise”? For that to be true, it would have to worse than things that actually harm other people, like murder. Surely you’re not saying that for me to live as a gender other than the gender I was assigned at birth – something that harms no one – is worse than murder?
For that matter, I’d say the people who call transsexuality “evil” and “pathetic” are the ones actually being evil. That kind of attitude, when its commonplace in a society, teaches trans kids that they are hideous and unworthy of love, which is an incredibly painful way to go through life, and hard to recover from. That sort of attitude also encourages people who abuse transsexuals, sometimes fatally – transsexuals are murdered at a much higher rate than any other minority.
Before you expend more energy judging others, perhaps you should invest in a mirror?
Huzzah!
Mainly because it’s so blatantly false and repugnant on all levels, Barry. Nor can it any longer be dealt with on a basis of, “let ’em go off and do insane things to each other if they want”. They have become not only a health hazard and an ongoing danger to children (along with being insane for what should be obvious reasons), but they’re now endowed with the power of a bloc vote by the liberal establishment to commit those outrages to their heart’s content. They ARE a danger to society and I WILL judge them on the basis of know facts, not on equally lunatic political theory or expedience.
BTW: That usual nonsense about poor, “abused” deviants- in the events where it’s actually true- can often be associated with their dealings among themselves; either sexual, via bad drug deals or their frequent “domestic disturbances”. The time might be forthcoming that you consider the rapes and murders that are and have traditionally been part of the pervert underworld. They are no less apparent today. Only now, the perpetrators are far more likely ton get away with it, as they’ve become a “protected species”.
Could you please explain in what way I’m a “health hazard” as you put it? And in what way do I endanger children?
Hopefully without plagiarising “Der Ewige Jude” or similar classic works. You know, “The narrator states that, as rats are the vermin of the animal kingdom, Jews are the vermin of the human race and similarly spread disease and corruption….” etc etc. Because right now I can’t tell the difference between those ideas and yours, apart from the targets.
Do you understand that’s not actually an argument? Neither is “for what should be obvious reasons,” or using the words “ARE” in all caps (as in “they ARE a danger”). You consider transsexuality false and repugnant and a danger, but since you don’t provide coherent reasons to support any of these views, it would be illogical to listen to you.
Let’s keep in mind that what you’re talking about are things that don’t actually effect your daily life, because (I assume) you’re not transsexual.
In contrast, what the transsexual community wants is to live their own lives in a manner that makes their lives as pleasant as possible. They want to be treated civilly, to hold jobs, to not be attacked in public, to have the same access to the public square (renting apartments, etc) that everyone else has, and to have the medical care they need. This is basic “pursuit of happiness” stuff; it is moderate and reasonable, and it harms no one.
To call such behavior “the most evil, pathethic, insane and dangerous behavior that a twisted mind could devise” is unfair and over the top, and not justified by any rational argument whatsoever.
There is no health hazard, no risk to children (nor did you provide any evidence to support these smears). You object to transsexuals voting, but in this or any decent democracy; they have the right to vote, just as you do. (And, considering their tiny share of the population, transsexuals are not and never will be a powerful voting block. Alas.)
Earlier, I pointed out that hateful attitudes like yours are actually harmful, both because they encourage the torture of self-hatred, and because they encourage violence against transsexuals. You implied that if trans people are murdered that’s okay because the murders are “either sexual, via bad drug deals or their frequent “domestic disturbances”.”
There’s no evidence to support those smears. I don’t think anyone keeps statistics on this, but nothing in the many newspaper accounts I’ve read indicates that murders of transsexuals are especially likely to be drug-related, sex-related, or domestic violence – on the contrary, a huge number of them appear to be attacks committed by strangers or near-strangers. (Read this news account, for instance.)
That said, even if you were correct – and I’m sure you’re not – that would not justify a single murder, or erase the way anti-trans hatred plays into many of the murders.
In contrast, what the transsexual community wants is to live their own lives in a manner that makes their lives as pleasant as possible. They want to be treated civilly, to hold jobs, to not be attacked in public, to have the same access to the public square (renting apartments, etc) that everyone else has, and to have the medical care they need. This is basic “pursuit of happiness” stuff; it is moderate and reasonable, and it harms no one.
I honestly do not understand how anyone could disagree with this, anywhere, ever. I never have. Even when reading about the first well-publicized transexual, Christine Jorgensen, when I was a kid, I didn’t understand the hate and the jokes directed her way. The idea of feeling as one gender and having the external characteristics of another always seems horrifying to me, and in a time when homosexuality was so stigmatized, a problem where Jorgensen’solution seemed to be the obvious one. I thought Jorgenson was obviously courageous, as was Renee Richards, simply to publicize what such people go through. I imagine that before the surgical option, a common end result was suicide.
But getting back to the original post, this does not relieve a transsexual from the shared obligation to avoid unnecessary harm to others in the process of doing what is necessary in the pursuit of mental and emotional health, peace, stability and happiness.
Obviously, you and I are agreed on that central issue.
Regarding this:
We don’t disagree on the principle. We just disagree on its application to this case.
The only “unnecessary harm to others” you’ve talked about is whatever embarrassment ABC has suffered because this story has been in the news.
However:
1) We can now say with confidence that this was a flash-in-the-pan media story, not a lasting story. A google news search turns up only one mention of “Don Ennis” in the last 24 hours – and that mention was a one-sentence mention on a LGBT blog, not a story focused on Ennis. In a week, no one outside of a few bloggers and LGBT activists will remember who Ennis is.
2) There was no way that Ennis could guaranteed that this story wouldn’t be picked up briefly by the news (led by crass right-wing news mockers). In an earlier comment, you blamed Don for writing a memo – but in fact, you yourself built much of your case against Don with material that wasn’t in the memo (“He believes his gender confusion was triggered because his mother gave him female hormones as a child,” etc), which proves that the memo is not the only source for this story.
3) Moreover, Ennis would have caused MORE workplace disruption if he hadn’t written a memo. After all, Ennis couldn’t have kept the fact that he was now presenting as male form his co-workers, and his co-workers inevitably would have wondered why. It’s better to have gotten the whole story out at once, rather than having it come out piecemeal over weeks of workplace gossip, which is the only alternative.
4) Reporting having had a rare medical condition is not a firing offense, and cannot reasonably be called “unnecessary harm to others” unless you have evidence that Ennis was lying, which you do not.
Again, it’s not the principle that you and I disagree on. We disagree on whether or not you’re correctly applying the principle to this case.
And I agree with that as well, Barry.
“I honestly do not understand how anyone could disagree with this, anywhere, ever. ”
One explanation from Professor of Ethics Janice Raymond: First, the mechanism of systematic exclusion of human rights as a means to eliminate Transsexuality:
— Paper Prepared for the National Center for Health Care Technology on the Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery, June 1980
As to the justification:
— The Transsexual Empire : The making of the She-Male, 1979, reprinted 1980,1994, 2007
It’s a religious/ideological belief, common to both far left and far right, and still taught as fact in many Gender Studes courses..
Professor Raymond’s 1980 paper, submitted to the Carter administration, was used by leftist idealogues to justify rollback of existing trans-friendly legislation and medical care, a process later continued by their far-right opponents when they got into power.
The situation is best illustrated by the following exchange:
While Steven Mark Pilling’s reasoning would be not just different, but diametrically opposed, the conclusion is the same, and indeed, there have recently been a handful of so far informal alliances made between Radical Lesbian Feminist collectives and Christian and Muslim Family coalitions to combine efforts to fight human rights legislation for Trans people.
Stunning.
Amongst themselves? Hardly. As a consequence of leading a “risky lifestyle”? Yes, but when those like you have made it impossible for them to live non-risky lifestyles, I feel the blame lies at your feet, not theirs.
A typical example:
Dwayne Jones was relentlessly teased in high school for being effeminate until he dropped out. His father not only kicked him out of the house at the age of 14 but also helped jeering neighbors push the youngster from the rough Jamaican slum where he grew up.
By age 16, the teenager was dead – beaten, stabbed, shot and run over by a car when he showed up at a street party dressed as a woman.
His mistake: confiding to a friend that he was attending a ‘straight’ party as a girl for the first time in his life.
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2389284/Dwayne-Jones-16-year-old-transgender-teen-latest-die-Jamaican-mob-violence-LGBT-community.html#ixzz2bjwZclKu
‘Judging by comments made on social media, most Jamaicans think Dwayne Jones brought his death on himself for wearing a dress and dancing in a society that has made it abundantly clear that homosexuals are neither to be seen nor heard,’ said Annie Paul, a blogger and publications officer at Jamaica’s campus of the University of the West Indies.
Apparently you agree. Not that she was gay.
Dwayne was the center of attraction shortly after arriving in a taxi at 2am with his two 23-year-old housemates, Khloe and Keke.
Dwayne’s expert dance moves, long legs and high cheekbones quickly made him the one that all the guys were trying to get next to.
Like most Jamaican homosexuals, Dwayne was careful about confiding in others about his sexual orientation.
But when he saw a girl he had known from church, he told her he was attending the party in drag.
Minutes later, according to Khloe and Keke, the girl’s male friends gathered around Dwayne in the dimly-lit street asking: ‘Are you a woman or a man?’
One man waved a lighter’s flame near Dwayne’s sneakers, asking whether a girl could have such big feet.
Then, his friends said, another man grabbed a lantern from an outdoor bar and walked over to Dwayne, shining the bright light over him from head to toe. ‘It’s a man,’ he concluded, while the others hissed ‘batty boy’ and other anti-gay epithets.
Khloe says she tried to steer him away from the crowd, whispering in Dwayne’s ear: ‘Walk with me, walk with me.’ But Dwayne pulled away, loudly insisting to partygoers that he was a girl.
When someone behind him snapped his bra strap, the teen panicked and raced down the street.
But he couldn’t run fast enough to escape the mob.
The teenager was viciously assaulted and apparently half-conscious for some two hours before another sustained attack finished him off, according to Khloe, who was also beaten and nearly raped.
Steven Mark Pilling – you obviously must have some reason to believe that large numbers of Transsexuals are the perpetrators of “rapes and murders”. So, care to share that evidence with us? Or is it something you “just know” because it’s “obvious”?
Perhaps you got this idea of mobs of rampaging Transsexuals invading churches and performing involuntary surgery on innocent children from MassResistance, and organisations of the same ilk.
From their 127-page report on the subject, opposing human rights legislation covering Trans people, and warning of the inevitable consequences if it were passed:
I expected something like that from you, Zoe. First, you attempt to deny the well established fact that homosexual activity (particularly among males) is filthy beyond belief and promotes both disease and a significantly lowered statistical lifespan among such individuals.
Second, you likewise attempt to deny that homosexuals are connected to pedophilia. Where any form of sexual deviance exists, all potentially exist… and child depredation is the worst of them all. The reason that organized homosexuals are so fixated on gaining legal sanction for their “marriage” is not in seeking any “domestic bliss”, but a cold, calculated means of gaining custody of children through their adoption into their unholy households.
Your last assertion was the most predictable of all. You attempt to draw a parallel between opposition to the “gay agenda” and that of racism; in this case, anti-Semitism! There is none. Ancestry is the product of genetic inheritance and is beyond the power of anyone to alter. Deviance is a behavior and is the result of mental illness, sometimes accentuated by glandular imbalance. Please don’t try to insult everyone’s intelligence by openly advocating the preposterous theory of a “gay gene”.
So… what has homosexuality got to do with the subject?
You do know there are both straight and lesbian Transssexual women, right? And gay and straight Transsexual men too?
Sorry, I don’t see where you’re coming from, talking about “gay genes” and pedophilia. If you’d talked about handedness, that would be one thing, for Transsexuality is associated with increased rates of ambidexterity.
Sorry, but I don’t have any sympathy for Mr. Ennis. There’s a reason doctors advise you not to transition at work until a couple years down the road, precisely because some people figure out they weren’t transsexual afterall, and going back is just double the humiliation. All he’s done is make the rest of us look bad, so fuck him.
“Sorry, but I don’t have any sympathy for Mr. Ennis” was a title I considered. It seems nicer than what I wrote, but actually isn’t: I have sympathy for him, but I just wouldn’t want him working for me.
There were biological issues here. Intersex as opposed to classic Transsexuality.
The misdiagnosis was quite reasonable, as were Mr Ennis’s actions under the circumstances.
Biological sex is not a strict binary. Here we’re in the grey areas, where biological anomalies make the situation fraught.
You know it’s really difficult keeping medical confidentiality here? I have the data in front of me, the raw reports of radiologists and so on. And I have to shut up and let someone be treated unfairly instead of being able to explain what happened.
In general terms though, it involved anomalous hormone levels over a long period. This has neurological effects, some temporary (ie they last as long as the anomalous hormone levels do), some permanent.
See:
Changing your sex changes your brain: influences of testosterone and estrogen on adult human brain structure by Pol et al, Europ Jnl Endocrinology, Vol 155, suppl_1, S107-S114 2006
Here, there was no “treatment”, levels had a natural cause.
Well, turns out ABC agreed with you.
Congratulations on being ahead of the curve.
Thanks, Dawn. Good luck.
She’ll need it, Jack. And support from those who have been through the ordeal – though not many of us have the yellow press to contend with as well.
Your well wishes mean more than you know, we get darned few of those..
Nor do you deserve any.
You are of course entitled to that opinion.
I wish you well too, oddly enough. I find it easier to only wish ill on those obviously deserving of it, and there’s no way you qualify, unless you’ve murdered a bunch of people without us knowing.
Words on the net don’t count.
I think they do. Furthermore, it’s not a matter of my “wishing ill” on anybody, but that of advocating for truth and justice. “We get darned few of those.”