My job wants me keep me at my desk

In general, my job has been quite good about my gender transition. The first two weeks were rocky, especially since they kept me confined to my office to prevent me from encountering bigotry. Confinement to my desk ended after about a week and a half. Things have been quite good since then. Aside from some overprotectiveness by management and coworkers, things have pretty much gone back to normal. However, that changed today in a way that really upset me. Today, I was told by my boss and several other people that my job would be changing in some pretty significant ways.

I figured out something was odd pretty early this morning. In a random conversation with the manager of a different department, she mentioned that I was wasting my talents by spending so much time in the factory and that I should really only be focused on work that kept me at my desk. This was an extremely out-of-place comment, especially since this had never come up before, but I brushed it off as her being odd. That is, until an hour later when my boss came to speak to me. In order to “better use my abilities”, they were taking away any job responsibilities that required me to leave the office environment. They would be hiring someone to take those tasks. Instead, my job will change to involve more administrative work that requires less interaction with other people. This completely blindsided me.

This is a significant shift in the work that I do. My current job requires a significant amount of interaction and collaboration with people across departments and seniority. I enjoy it and I have been very successful at building relationships throughout the company. The new role that they have created is the complete opposite of that, it is a desk job that requires no interaction with people. It sounds miserable and I can’t ignore how it basically makes me invisible. Even if their intent was to “better use my talents”, it looks bad and it feels bad.

I am pretty upset about this change. It just feels wrong. My job confined me to my desk, for my safety, after I came out and now they seem inclined to do it again, permanently. It feels like they are still concerned about me being mistreated for being trans and have decided the answer is to limit my interactions with others. I don’t buy the justification that they want to “better use my talents”. I have done very well in my current role and see no justification for changing it so suddenly. Ultimately, I can’t actually do anything to stop this change. I am going to be moved from my very social position to one where my interaction with others is incredibly limited. It is incredibly disappointing.