El’Jai Devoureau, a woman who decided she was really a man, embarked on hormone therapy and surgery to release her inner man before starting a highly sought-after job watching other men urinate. After the discovery that Devoureau’s outer appearance didn’t entirely match her inner aspirations, she was fired because her employer only hires men to watch other men urinate. Devoureau is suing because her employer “discriminated based on birth gender”; Devoureau wants to continue watching men urinate.
El’Jai Devoureau’s lawyer commends her courage – not, as one might think, for taking the job in the first place – but for “drawing a line in the sand” on behalf of the all the other ex-women waiting to take up similar employment:
‘As our society becomes appropriately more tolerant, I hope that there are more brave people that are willing to endure the collateral problems by drawing a line in the sand and saying they won’t stand for discrimination,’
And a professor of law muses on unusual interview questions that lab employees may have to look forward to:
‘I would have absolutely told them to retain the employee and think about how to address transphobia and heterosexism in their environment.
You don’t ask someone: ‘What do your genitalia look like?” she said. ‘That was a very poor choice on the employer’s part.’
All of which makes me grateful that I work with computers.