There are many coming out stories and for most trans* people they are amazingly similar, even though we all have very individual paths. That’s why I don’t want to go into my various coming-out stories.

I am 60 years old and have been living openly as a woman for almost four years – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. My environment had to experience this quite abruptly. Apart from my partner and a few trusted people, nobody was prepared. Nevertheless, hardly anything changed for anyone when I suddenly walked out the door as a woman. Here I would like to describe what inspired me on my journey and what brought my life out of the gray area.

My first appearance as a woman at a seminar group meeting was a big moment for me. Apart from a brief email, I hadn’t let anyone know about my change beforehand. As I hadn’t seen some of the participants for a while, not everyone recognized me straight away – but I felt the same way. I was initially taken aback, but then the ice was broken and the unanimous opinion was that the ladies present (including me) had held up better than the more or less aged men. When I was accepted into the group of women as a matter of course, it was clear that I had arrived in my own world.

Hormone therapy wasn’t actually my goal, but I didn’t want to lose my hair, so I agreed to replace testosterone with oestrogen. What I didn’t know was that it wasn’t just my body that would change and suddenly become sensitive to cold and less strong. I was also suddenly able to perceive and allow my feelings. Sometimes I stood in the kitchen and had tears in my eyes for no external reason – with happiness that all this was still possible for me, which I would never have expected before. Later, there were also sad occasions to cry, such as goodbyes or broken friendships.

Self-confidence was never my thing as a man. Why should I be, I was a creature that wasn’t at peace with myself. I was always defensive, afraid of making mistakes or embarrassing myself. I was almost invisible because of my caution.

This was most noticeable at work. My colleagues accepted me, even though I often went out on a limb and sometimes had to back down.

Are women at a disadvantage compared to men at work? Yes, and this is mainly due to structural reasons rather than differences in personality. Nevertheless, as a late-career woman with a male socialization, I always automatically see the (working) world from two perspectives. On the one hand, I know the “typical male” behavioral patterns such as competitive thinking or fear of failure and can adapt to them. On the other hand, in recent years I have developed “typically female” characteristics such as communication skills, empathy and a willingness to cooperate, and I consciously use these to achieve the respective team goal. It never ceases to amaze me that I am much more effective in my working environment as a woman than I was previously in my imposed male role.

An important prerequisite for my transition was the support I received from my employer. The management’s statement in favor of diversity and against discrimination allowed me to embark on my journey without any existential fears. However, I received hardly any support with the practical implementation. I had to work out every step myself and obtain the necessary information. I also had no role models in my working environment apart from a colleague in the queer company network who had managed to change her first name.

I wanted to improve this situation and started offering online training sessions on the topic of transgender and also wrote a company guide. My presentations are now well attended and contribute to the visibility of transgender issues in the workplace. They bring the topic out of the dark taboo corner. We have received a lot of positive feedback on our transgender guide and an English-language version is due to be published soon. Volunteers have already come forward to translate it into other national languages.

So I started to offer my experience in the corporate environment as a consulting service for other companies. However, visibility or reach is crucial in online business and I still have a lot to achieve in this area. My new project has potential, but still has a long way to go.

I would like to conclude my thoughts with a personal experience that has shown me that I am on the right path. A few weeks ago, I saw an attractive woman through a window in a building with lots of glass. Only the upper half of her face was visible and she maintained intense eye contact. I immediately liked her and wanted to reach out and speak to her. As I started to move, I realized that I already knew her. This woman was me – reflected in the window glass at dusk.

There are many beautiful, small and big events and developments on my path – just like on the path of all other trans* people. I would like to share this here in order to focus on the positive in these difficult times.

dear marit, thank you very much for YourStory!

Zuerst ein paar Fakten über mich: Ich bin 29 Jahre alt, trans* und lebe seit etwas mehr als fünf Jahren als Frau. Aufgewachsen bin ich in einer Kleinstadt in Süddeutschland, wohne aber nach einigen Stationen hier und da mittlerweile in Düsseldorf. Dort arbeite ich bei einem Versicherungsunternehmen als Aktuarin und bin im LGBTIQ+ Mitarbeitenden-Netzwerk aktiv.

Als Aktuarin beschäftige ich mich viel mit Formeln und Zahlen. Ich setze mich zum Beispiel mittels mathematisch-statistischer Methoden mit der Modellierung, Bewertung und Steuerung von Risiken auseinander – bin also ziemlich rational im Job unterwegs. Gleichzeitig freue ich mich als Teil des LGBTIQ+ Netzwerks über jeden Austausch mit Menschen, um Gedanken, Gefühle und Perspektiven besser verstehen zu können, insbesondere zu Themen aus dem Bereich DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) und LGBTIQ+. Daraus können viele Ideen und Verständnis entstehen und ein gemeinsames, inklusives Miteinander wachsen. Beide Seiten der Arbeit machen mir viel Spaß!

Im Umgang mit geschlechtlicher Vielfalt am Arbeitsplatz stehen für mich folgende Fragen im Fokus:

• Schweigt man über einen wichtigen Teil der eigenen Identität oder kann man offen damit umgehen?
• Kann man ein authentisches Selbst mit der Welt, den Mitmenschen und den Personen im Arbeitsumfeld teilen?
• Wird man angenommen, wie man ist?
• Funktioniert der Arbeitsplatz als System für eine Person?
• Wird inklusiv mit Personen, Identitäten und ihren verschiedenen Bedürfnissen umgegangen?

Es geht um die Fragen: Wer bin ich? Wer möchte ich sein? Und dann auch: Kann ich diese Person am Arbeitsplatz sein? Diese Fragen sind sehr tiefgreifend. Das zu erkunden und herauszufinden war ein langer Weg für mich, der auch nie wirklich zu Ende sein wird, denke ich. Ein essenzieller Teil meines Weges waren die Menschen, die ich um mich hatte.

Sie haben manche Fragen gestellt, aber gleichzeitig oftmals keine Fragen gestellt und mein Sein sich einen Weg bahnen lassen.  Das Gefühl, wenn sich etwas richtig anfühlt, ist unglaublich erfüllend und überwältigend. Dieses Gefühl musste ich zulassen können. Mit diesen Menschen habe ich viele dieser Momente zusammen erleben dürfen: gemeinsam Sport zu machen, den eigenen Körper wahrzunehmen und eine Beziehung dazu aufzubauen, den Körper als Medium des Ausdrucks zu nutzen, zu tanzen; Kleidung, Make-Up, Musik und Kunst als Interaktion mit der Außenwelt zu sehen und zu nutzen. In ihrer Vielfalt können sie so viel ausdrücken: Freude, Freiheit, Stärke und das Gefühl, die Welt umarmen zu wollen – aber genauso Ruhe, Schwäche, Trauer und das Gefühl, sich unter einer Decke verkriechen zu wollen. All das hat eine Dynamik in sich, die mir sehr viel gegeben und mir geholfen hat, die Fragen „Wer bin ich? Und wer möchte ich sein?“ zu erkunden.

Dabei führe ich gern Gespräche auf einer sehr menschlichen Ebene, die etwas Verbindendes ist, ohne dass man sich lange kennt. Menschlichkeit zu spüren und sich zuzuhören kann viel verändern: Man wird sich besser der eigenen Perspektive bewusst und erkennt auch eigene Privilegien. Gleichzeitig erweitert man die eigene Perspektive und sieht auch die Zusammenhänge und systemischen Aspekte. Sich über Erlebnisse, Gedanken, Empfindungen, Gefühle und Wahrnehmungen auszutauschen und dabei eine Verbindung zu Menschen zu spüren, ist ein Aspekt von Vielfalt, auch geschlechtlicher Vielfalt, den ich sehr wertvoll finde.

Liebe julia, vielen Dank für YourStory!

When I came out to my single mother at the time, she didn’t know what to make of it because she was unfamiliar with same-sex partnerships. After a few attempts to explain, she simply said: “Emre, all your life you’ve known how to tell the good from the bad and always take the right path. If this way of life is right for you, then I’ll support you.” That really was one of the best moments of my life and strengthened the bond between my mother and me. Because it wasn’t always easy …

I didn’t get my A-levels, but after graduating from secondary school, I completed my intermediate school leaving certificate and then trained as a personnel services manager. While working, I completed further training to become a business administrator and thus gained admission to university. Happily, I rocked both my Bachelor of Law and my Master of Science in HR alongside my job.

I didn’t have much free time back then, but it had always been my lifelong dream to study. From my perspective at the time, I always associated studying with a privilege for people from a good family background with a corresponding financial background.

In my life, ethnic discrimination meant that I was told at school, for example, that I wouldn’t have many opportunities because of my ‘background’. Unfortunately, I also dropped out of two apprenticeships because I experienced extreme forms of classism and homophobia due to my poverty and non-binary background. Today, I work at Google, live an openly non-binary life, work as an anti-discrimination expert and have received several awards. I speak as an expert to ministries and the world’s largest corporations.

I am also a passionate soccer player. During my time in Munich, I played in Germany’s first gay soccer team and got involved in LGBTQIA+ in sport. Most recently, I founded the association ‘WeSpeakYouDonate’, which campaigns for diversity, and ‘Occtopus’. Occtopus is a company that develops children’s games to uncover prejudices and stereotypes in children and parents. I am also a content creator on LinkedIn and run my own YouTube channel ‘Emres Pink Pillow’.

Giving up was never an option for me. I kept motivating myself and just kept going.

dear emre, thank you very much for YourStory!

I don’t really know when my conscious and arduous journey to myself began. I’m not even sure if that’s the crucial point for this story. When I look back on my life today, I realize that I need and want to make a distinction between the journey towards me as a transgender woman and my life as a trans* woman. This distinction is important to me personally, because life after coming out in 2015 has shaped me as a trans* and queer person much more than anything before.

I became more and more certain that I was not the man the world saw in me and treated me as such. However I couldn’t and didn’t want to deal with these feelings. I pushed back my true identity and forced myself into the classic heteronormative patterns. I married my first wife in my mid-twenties. At that time, I was already a soldier in the German army. I was drafted in 1994 and then decided to become an officer. My life was shaped by two institutions that both saw me as a man and always expected me to be. I was good at suppressing my needs. The lack of trans* role models in society reinforced my need to actively work against my inner self. Shame and disgust towards myself were my constant companions.

I finally broke this pattern in 2015. I couldn’t go on and I didn’t want to. It wasn’t courage, it was desperation. I finally wanted to live. I wanted to be me. This step marked the beginning of the second phase. During the transition, I realized that I could be me, but that this path was also marked by obstacles and a society that was not always accepting. I wanted to be visible to other trans* people. I wanted to be a point of reference for others and I wanted to tell my story. This thought awakened an incredible amount of strength in me. I got more and more involved and slowly became an activist for trans* and queer rights – both in my workplace and outside of society.

Which attributes on me, on my body, confirm me as a woman in the perception of others and which give an indication of my non-cis nature. I am happy to have finally reached the point where I no longer need confirmation from others. For years, the feeling of not being able to exist outwardly as a woman has held me back in my identity. And my non-conformity, my visible expression as gender non-conforming, does not take away my womanhood.

I’m Anastasia, 49, colorful, loud and queer. I’m a unicorn in camouflage and I fight to the utmost for the cause I believe in. Revolution instead of evolution.

dear anastasia, thank you very much for YourStory!

Privileges, Education & Coming outs.

I struggled to sit down and write this. It often feels like I don’t have something meaningful to share, but when it comes to my coming out story, it also feels like it was just super uneventful.  It is a super privileged position unavailable to many members of our community who have to fear for their safety if they come out. I wish for all members of our LGBTQIA2S+ community to have uneventful coming outs and possibly even no need at all for coming out in the future.

When I was 15 years old, I realized I was bi. I cared more about Xena, Warrior Princess and her soulmate situation with Gabrielle than I did about whatever straight girls my age were supposed to care about. I was attracted to men and women and didn’t know at the time that the gender spectrum held many more beautiful expressions.

I’m not attracted to only one gender identity. I just didn’t know because there wasn’t a lot of queer representation back in 2003.The L Word came out in 2004, and while it hasn’t aged well and is not a great example of an intersectional approach, it changed my world at the time, as did The L Word podcast.

I told my mom very soon and it wasn’t a big deal. Mostly because she’s super tolerant, but also because it probably didn’t feel real. I’d never had a boyfriend or girlfriend when I lived at home.
But I must have been worried about her reaction because I kept my first girlfriend a secret. I like to think that this wasn’t just because of her gender but also because we met online, had not met in person as there was an ocean between us and I associated the whole situation with shame. I was 19 and  left Germany to move in with my Canadian girlfriend in Brighton, a queer hotspot in Europe. We broke up after 6 months, and I think to this day, most of my family and friends thought she was a roommate. My second relationship was with a man. No coming out needed there, everyone knew him as my boyfriend.

The queer community remained a fixture in my life. Most of my friends and housemates were queer, I had fallen in love with the art of drag and went to every show that I could. I owe a lot to the queer community; they have helped me overcome whatever was holding me back from normalizing my own queerness while I was celebrating everyone else’s. They have shown me how to accept myself, how to fight for my community, how to exist in a world that assumed everyone is straight. It was black trans* women who educated me about our community’s history and present, the privilege of being queer in Europe, in a queer city, and about the long way we have to go to eradicate discrimination for ALL the beautiful members of our community who face violence and discrimination for simply living the life they were born to live. I was an ignorant 20-year-old and have been educated by their kindness and their fights. I wish I could say that I educated myself – I did, in later years – but that initial education was done by the people most marginalized in our society, and I owe them so much. I became an activist for queer and women’s rights and continue learning to this day. Although there is still a long way to go, one of the biggest achievements of our community is this: An elder trans* woman (she allowed me to say that) said to me last year, “Finally, trans* people can have a future! When I grew up, there simply was no representation and only the threat of dying young. I didn’t know I would be happy; that simply wasn’t in the cards. Today, trans* kids can see a future; we have trans* actors and actresses, athletes, politicians, ordinary couples who are happy.” That being said, we both agree that a lot remains to be done to ensure a safe future for trans* kids and adults.

I met the woman who would become my wife in 2012. We were colleagues first and then close friends for years before our friendship turned into love. It seems to be an unwritten rule that whenever two women are colleagues, not married, and hang out, they must have an affair. At least that was the rumour at work long before we developed romantic feelings for each other. I remember when we went to the cinema, it was the hot topic at work in certain gossip circles for a whole week. Sometimes rumors got back to me about sightings of us doing suspicious things like drinking coffee and sometimes these rumors were even completely made-up.
People were talking about us being together long before we were together, so when we started dating, we didn’t tell anyone but two friends at work. We just “were.”

Same with my mom. She immediately clocked that we were together, and that was that. I just walked through the world, normalizing the fact that I had a girlfriend who then became my wife, and most people respond in kind. I’ve been privileged enough to be working at a diversity-aware company when I fell in love with her, and when I switched companies, I was in senior enough positions that people did not dare to comment anything homophobic to my face. I’m not ignorant though; I’m aware it happened behind my back. I’m aware it happens to others, and I know that homophobia still is rampant in the workplace and our society. After years of remarkable progress for queer rights (which are, fundamentally, human rights), we find ourselves confronted with a historic backlash that threatens to roll back the hard-fought gains of decades, not just in terms of legal protections but also in public perception.

There it goes. My Coming Out is not a very interesting story. In fact, a lot of what’s interesting is between the lines: about my own internalized stuff, stuff I had to unlearn, and things about which I was completely and utterly wrong. Like when I assumed my until-then 100% straight girlfriend would only treat “us” as an experiment, that she would never tell her family about us, that this new experience would shake her self-image to the point where she’d run. Or that she would have difficulty adjusting to a relationship after being single for 16 years and wouldn’t be able to make space for me. That it wouldn’t last.

We’ve been together for 100 months in July 2023, married for 4 years. She still doesn’t know how to load the dishwasher like a human being, but other than that, we’re fine.

Attacks against our community are increasing on a global scale. Merely celebrating the few rights and limited acceptance that gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals have achieved is not enough. The TIN* community is far from experiencing the same rights and acceptance. We must continue fighting until discrimination against queer BIPOC, queer people with disabilities, LGBTQIA2S+ migrants, and especially discrimination against our trans and non-binary siblings is eradicated. We cannot settle for mere awareness and visibility. Society is aware of us; what we need is equal protection, respect, and opportunities that should be extended to everyone within our global community.

(Note: *TIN refers to the transgender, intersex, and non-binary community)

Dear aLex, Thank you very much for YourStory!

At the PROUT AT WORK Foundation’s 6th DINNER BEYOND BUSINESS, hosted by Deutsche Post DHL Group in Bonn, the focus was on the commitment of companies and their leaders to the LGBTIQ community. “We are all united tonight by the desire for people to be able to come to the workplace with their authentic selves and not have to hide a significant part of their personality.” – said Dr. Thomas Ogilvie, Member of the Board of Management and Labor Director of Deutsche Post DHL Group in his welcoming speech. More than 35 senior executives from major companies and institutions accepted the invitation, including representatives from BASF, Clifford Chance, Continental, Commerzbank, Ergo, IKEA, ING Diba, NTT Data, Oracle, Otto, Robert Bosch, Sandoz, Sodexo and UniCredit. In the immediate vicinity of the Rhine, the participants of the top-class information and networking event enjoyed an exclusive dinner. Albert Kehrer explained the background of DINNER BEYOND BUSINESS in his welcoming speech: “We believe that there is a business case behind the support for LGBTIQ: an individual one for the people who come out, but also on a corporate level – whether B2B or B2C.” The highlight of the evening was the “Fireside Chat” by the CEO of the host PROUT AT WORK Foundation, together with keynote speaker Dr. Shivaji Dasgupta, Out Executive and Chief Data Officer at Unicredit on diversity, responsibility and leading by example.

At the beginning of the 45-minute talk, Dasgupta shared private insights as an out executive: “99% of the reactions to my coming out have been overwhelmingly positive. Having the freedom to be who you are gives you so much more agency, and allows for so much higher productivity because you don’t have to hide anything.” At the same time, it has a clear impact on the professional environment: “People then know they can trust you on other issues – you get an extra trust bonus as a leader if you’re completely open and honest.” According to Dasgupta, companies also benefit considerably from their commitment to LGBT*IQ equal opportunities, whether through better results due to more diverse teams or when recruiting talented employees.

Also highlighted in the “Fireside Chat” was the influence of Allies: “Executive Allies are so important because they send a very strong signal in the organization that discriminatory behavior will not be tolerated.” Against the backdrop of different legal realities for LGBT*IQ around the world, the Indian-born executive is also concerned about valuing and taking advantage of freedoms here:

Drawing of the talk with DR. SHIVAJI DASGUPTA

Mit dem Laden des Videos akzeptieren Sie die Datenschutzerklärung von YouTube.
Mehr erfahren

Video laden

YouTube immer entsperren

More information about the event is available on the Rainbow Day website (German):

Informationen für Besucher*innen – RainbowDay

RECAP

We were pleased to welcome Maxi Pichlmeier as a guest at our PROUT PERFORMER Lunch Talk on Thursday, May 4, 2023.

Click here for the recording of the conversation (German):

Mit dem Laden des Videos akzeptieren Sie die Datenschutzerklärung von YouTube.
Mehr erfahren

Video laden

YouTube immer entsperren

about Maxi:

Night of REalization.

It took 47 years for my life to make any sense at all. That’s how long it took before I was able to admit to myself that something very essential had always been wrong. But it was only then that I fully understood what that was.

Since then, I understand my life, looked backwards at and lived forwards, at all!

As a child, the awareness that I was different was already there, but it was more of a background noise. As time went on, however, these experiences, encounters, and thoughts that always felt so out of place and that I couldn’t really place began to accumulate. These things ran through my life like a red thread and only in retrospect did I really understand them.

For example, the first time I had painted toenails – long before my inner outing – I didn’t think, “Oh, how nice,” but “now it finally looks right!” I wondered about this thought in the same second and didn’t really understand where it came from.

When I was about 15 years old, I was, as I see it today, very close to understanding what was going on with me. For example, I was waiting for my figure to develop in the same way as my girlfriends and wondered why it didn’t. When I look back now, it was quite clear. But at that time I couldn’t and didn’t want to dig any further…

Many years later, it came to – what I call – my “night of realization.” The night when all the puzzle pieces of my life finally fell into place. The night I then had to understand that I am a woman and always have been. That night when everything suddenly and fully made sense. On the one hand, it was simply great to finally have the explanation for everything that had moved me for decades: “Hanna, you are a woman and always have been. From the first day you were born, you have always thought, acted, and felt like a woman.” On the other hand, the realization of actually being a woman was extremely difficult to master and I oscillated back and forth between euphoria and suicidal thoughts! The topic “trans*” was in the room, but I just did not want to accept that I am also trans*.

And of course, I still had doubts, so I often said to myself, “You are crazy! You are sick! That’s why I found it very special that after my coming out there were some people who told me:

That helped me to manage these permanent doubts.

The reactions in the rest of my environment were mixed. My parents didn’t find out that their supposed son was actually a daughter, because they had already passed away before I came out. I couldn’t even begin to estimate how they would have handled it. Part of my family had the most difficulty dealing with it, and they tried to completely hide the issue. It wasn’t until years after I came out that they really started to confront the situation. Today everything is fine, but the journey was long and painful.

Simultaneously, I also had to sort out some important things for myself. My internal outing was one thing, but how should I implement it – especially at work? At the beginning, I still believed that I could keep it completely out of my everyday professional life, continue to pretend that I was a man, and only live out my true self in my free time. How naive I was back then… I then looked for a new job relatively quickly. Of course, I also applied for a job as the woman I am. It took a little while, but today I’ve been with my current employer for almost 8 years, and I took over my current position about 2 years ago.

Looking back, I realized for myself that only since I’ve been truly me, I’ve had something like a career. I always knew I was a good employee, but I could never really stand up for myself. I’ve been working openly as a woman for 8 years now, and I find it amazing how far I’ve come professionally. From night auditor to reception manager and service manager within a few weeks, then site manager with a team of 21 employees and now in my dream role.

I summarize it for myself like this: I first had to understand that I am a woman in order to be able to appear as self-confident as men usually do.

My coming out and my transition have of course not only brought changes at work, but also in the relationship with my wife. We have been together for over 27 years now and we have found that despite the changes and the turbulent time during my transition, our relationship has gained in quality and depth! Most of the people who know us from the past simply accept us for who we are and should there ever be any questions, our message is: Love knows no gender!

For a very long time I was searching for myself and at times I confused this with the search for other, material things – and I had to realize that these things did not really make me happy. I have found true happiness in myself and only since I have found myself, I know what happiness really means!

DEAr Hanna, Thank you very much for YourStory!