Transgender New Zealand Woman Deadnamed, Harassed at Work, Quits

A transgender New Zealander says she was dead named, dehumanized, and harassed so badly at work she finally had to quit - and "nobody really cared" in management what she was going through, New Zealand news site Stuff reports.

When Storage Box employee and Auckland resident Kayte Osborne began to live as a woman, she reached out to her colleagues in order to ask them to treat her transition with respect. One fellow employee - who Osborne said was seen to be her superior - made a point of disregarding that request and harassing her with demeaning comments, including announcing transgender people don't exist and saying that rather than use Osborne's preferred "she/her" pronouns, she intended to call Osborne "it."

The woman constantly referred to Osborne by her previous name, an insulting practice known as dead naming.

The result of the ongoing abuse "really wore me down over time," Osborne said, but she couldn't get anyone to do anything about it. She began to feel "anxious about going to work," Stuff reported.

"I'd been there three or four years, but this woman ... was considered my senior," the site reported Osborne as saying. "I felt like no one would listen to me, and I was told to accept it."

When she "contacted the head office of Storage Box," she "was told everyone was entitled to their opinion," Osborne said.

"Osborne said when she told the owner of the store what was happening, the owner defended the other woman," Stuff reported.

Eventually, Osborne chose to resign her job rather than continue to endure the woman's alleged abuse.

"I feel like I've been forced to leave," Osborne said, going on to say that although the general manager, Grant Morse, did reach out to her once she submitted her resignation, "there was no apology or anything – nothing has happened."

Morse told Stuff that the woman in question was "employed by an owner-operator business trading under the Storage Box name," and added, "We are in ongoing discussions with both the employee and business owner. It's a complex matter."

The pandemic made it hard for Osborne to find another job, and she remains unemployed, the article noted.

Wikipedia notes, "Transgender and non-binary people in New Zealand face discrimination," and says "the law is unclear on the legal status of discrimination based on gender identity, and also for intersex people."

Wikipedia adds: "Transgender people have reported harassment, violations of privacy, and unfair dismissals at the workplace."