Coming Out at Work: Transitioning, Visibility and Allyship

“You Have to Allow Them to Get Used to It”

Coming Out at work MS Amlin Rebecca header

Twenty-five years after transitioning, her portrait hangs in Lloyd’s

Rebecca Mason transitioned in the London market in 2001, when most people had no idea what was involved. Here she talks about allies, allowing gossip to work for you – and what the portraits on the wall at Lloyd’s mean about LGBQT+ visibility.

Picture, if you will, the challenge of transitioning in the workplace. Now picture how that might have felt a quarter of a century ago.

This was the experience of Rebecca Mason, Head of Wordings at MS Amlin, who has long been an LGBTQ+ role model, but back then had to transition at a time when most people had no real idea of what was involved. “It’s not just you who are transitioning, it’s your colleagues getting used to this,” Rebecca says, “and you have to allow them to get used to it.”

“The whole perception of me had changed”

Rebecca is clear that what her colleagues had to get used to was of a different order from a colleague coming out.

“There’s a world of difference between transitioning in a workplace and coming out as gay, lesbian or bi,” she says. “If a cisgender man or woman comes out, they are still Damien or Jane or whoever.

“Whereas in my case, I left work at the end of July 2001 in a suit and a tie, and on 15 August 2001 I turned up in a skirt with make-up on, and using a different name. The whole perception of me as an individual had changed. My place in the world had changed a bit. You’ve gone from there to there.”

Even though she depicts a 2001 in which the wider world was starting to accept homosexuality, “with people being trans, it was like: what is this? We don’t know.”

“Let the gossip chain do the work”

That August morning had been a year in the making. Rebecca’s transition at Aon Underwriting Managers was planned over a year with no policy to follow – “we were making this up as we went along” – and with one ally, Sarah, who supported her “immediately, with absolutely no hesitation”.

Then came a piece of London market cunning: “We cooked up this crazy idea to let the gossip chain do the work for us and leaked the news to a few people.”

By the time of a company breakfast at Christmas 2000, everybody was talking about it: “So then we had the first conversation with HR.”

The firm dropped a client for misgendering

Once Rebecca was back at work, people getting used to her meant, at first, being misgendered.

“I like to think I was okay. I cut them some slack,” she says. “That was because my ally took me to one side and said: ‘You’re not the only person going through this transition. They’re having to adapt to this as well. They are adjusting in the same way as you’re adjusting.’ I needed that. Sometimes you need an ally to be truthful with you as much as to be your bodyguard.”

There were limits though. When a client’s email referred to Rebecca as “he/she”, her firm stopped doing business with them that day.

And there were surprises in the other direction. “A client we had – in terms of work, he was a pain in the arse. But he was absolutely wonderful post-transition. He used my correct name; we had a lunch and had several drinks together. Perfect gentleman. That was the kind of thing where I felt, yeah, I think I’m going to succeed at this.”

“Allow people to be human”

Her advice to anyone transitioning now comes straight out of that experience.

“Allow people to be human,” she says. “Don’t be too demanding.” She pauses. “But at the same time, if someone’s being deliberately obtuse, then there should be a policy in place to support you.”

The visibility test

And for anyone coming into the market who doubts they belong, Rebecca has a test that doesn’t involve reading a policy.

“When I sat in that room (the Old Library in Lloyd’s) for the first time in 1980-whatever, and looked around at all those old white faces looking very sternly back at me from the walls, I just thought: can’t see my face being up there any time soon,” she says. And yet, today her portrait hangs there, in the Old Library, and she’s a Women in Insurance Awards recipient.

“So I keep going back to the portraits on the wall. That’s a simple, profound statement, and three years on, I’m still up there. And this is Lloyd’s – an institution which isn’t exactly known for being progressive. I would take that individual for a walk along Fenchurch Street and say: have a look around you. Go into Lloyd’s itself and have a look around. Look at the women, look at the people from diverse backgrounds. You’ll still see a strong contingent of the public school guys. But they’re not dominant anymore.”