Trans Awareness Week: Carly Peterson Discusses Belonging and Allyship

This week marks Trans Awareness Week, where people around the world will come together to shed light on the challenges faced by the trans community and how we can all play a role in creating a world where every single trans person can live freely as themselves. The week is also aimed to celebrate the trans community - bringing attention to the many trans trailblazers, and raising the visibility of trans stories. 

We met Carly Peterson, the Service Innovation Manager for Microbial Solutions at Charles River Laboratories, who told us why this week is important to her, some of the discrimination she has faced in previous workplaces and how we can all better support the trans community.

Hi Carly - thanks for chatting with us. To start with, could you share a bit about why Trans Awareness Week is important to you?

I think Trans Awareness Week is important to create awareness, understanding, acceptance, and inclusion. It’s an opportunity to not just educate but to memorialize the victims so that kind of violence doesn’t get normalized.

What has your journey with your identity been like?

For me, the first few steps of coming out to myself were the most difficult, and those first few steps just happened to be while I was at the South Pole. I think it was such a paradigm shift because it should have been a moment to celebrate, but instead, I realized that I couldn’t enjoy it because I was not experiencing it as my authentic self. When I did start coming out to friends and family, I had mixed reactions, some supported, and some didn’t. Now, I don’t come out to people unless I’m getting to know someone and I’m just telling my story.

Have you always been out in the workplace? 

I have not always been out at work; as a matter of fact, the first time I came out to my employer, they fired me. Thankfully, I had been saving up for gender-affirming surgeries, so I was able to draw on that savings to pay rent and put food on the table. However, it set me back financially, and I did socially de-transition because I didn’t think I would be hired as a trans person. Once I got to the point where I had to come out to my new employer, I was terrified the same thing would happen.

What is your advice to people who wish to be visible trans allies?

That’s a difficult question because being an ally looks different from person to person. However, I would say that being an ally does mean being active, and that could be as simple as making sure you are being inclusive. For example, invite your trans coworker to a group lunch or group outing, and that could go a long to making them feel they belong.