Best — continued from Page 32


into a room or a business, he feels he is automatically given a measure of respect simply because he is a man. John contrasted being a man with


being a woman. He explained that when he was a woman, she always felt she start- ed with little credibility and constantly had to try to prove herself in a man’s business. She felt that no matter how hard she tried and how far she excelled beyond many of her male co-workers, she was never accepted in the very traditional male business in which she worked. And there is no doubt that her male co-work- ers treated her as an outsider, including the use of derogatory gender-based terms around and toward her. Interestingly, John explained that


after he transitioned into being a man, he


was trying to mentor a wayward neighbor- hood boy and decided to take him to John’s former business. As a man, John walked into his former business and was not recognized, even though there were men there with whom John had worked while he was still a woman. As John explained the business to the neighbor- hood teenage boy, a couple of his former co-workers told him, “You really know a lot about this business. “You should put in an application. This is a great job with great pay and benefits.” John began crying as he told me this story and said that it was incredibly painful to realize that his former co-workers would invite a stranger into their fold because he was a man, but would never accept a woman who had earned and worked in the job for over a decade.


The business of litigating and trying


cases sometimes can be as blatantly gen- der-biased as John’s former business was, and, from my perspective, it is a gift when the bias comes through clear- ly. Unfortunately, the bias is often subtle. In my own experience, I have felt


that opposing counsel and juries often seem to find it interesting, unique or different, that a woman is standing up fighting for the plaintiff. Sometimes I have felt that some


jurors seem to assume that I may not do a good job because I’m a woman. But then, when they figure out that I know what I am doing, when I don’t back down and when I try a case with all the integrity,


See Best, Page 36


34 — The Advocate Magazine FEBRUARY 2012


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