Dress codes create hostile environments for transgender people, though. Before transition, I went out of my way to wear baggy unisex clothes. Wearing anything

Dress codes create hostile environments for transgender people, though. Before transition, I went out of my way to wear baggy unisex clothes. Wearing anything that screamed "male" was a sure-fire way to induce dysphoria in me. That includes business casual clothing. At my first job, we didn't have a dress code 90% of the time, but whenever we had a customer visit or a board meeting, the CEO would send out an email telling us that as long as the guests were there, we all had to wear light button-up shirts with dark slacks. The idea made me so dysphoric that most of those times, I fabricated an excuse to be sick. I'd smoke a cigarette from a three-year-old pack that I never went through because they were exceedingly rough even when they were new, and then I'd call my boss with an utterly horrendous cough. Then one time I had something to take care of that day, and I couldn't do it from home (it involved hardware), so I carefully studied the CEO's email and realized it said nothing about nails. So I came in dressed in the awful shirt and slacks that made me so dysphoric... and black nail polish on both hands. Just because it was something to take the edge off the dysphoria. I'm also sure that my dysphoria affected my ability to interview, as well. Before transition, I was terrible at interviewing, and I once had a two-year spell of unemployment where I couldn't have an interview go well for the life of me. And it felt like the suit I wore to the interview was choking the life out of me. But after I transitioned, every single in-person interview I've had has resulted in me getting an offer. In fact, both my current job and my last job were the results of the first in-person interviews I had after I started sending my resume out each time. Though there was the time when I tried to interview after I began medically transitioning but before I socially transitioned... not only did the suit make me dysphoric, but I spent the interview utterly paranoid that my blazer wasn't enough to hide my growing boobs. Of course, I didn't get the job. That was the last in-person interview I failed.