So, we will move into key takeaways, and
I'll let Alyssa start with her key
takeaways.
Mine are, you know, really going
back to why this all matters. So it
matters because it's the law and you
want to protect your company, your
organization, your client from risk, and
this is good practice to mitigate risk
is to understand this world of gender
identity and to understand how to be
conversant, so if you have a - whether it's
a client who's transgender themselves, or
whether you have a client who is trying
to figure out how to accommodate or
include and welcome transgender and
gender non-conforming employees, this is
really the very minimum and - and it's
evolving, so you have to stay current. So
that does mean training and it does mean
doing research, but then going beyond
that it means, you know, do we want to be
a good business that has a highly
diverse and inclusive and an empowering
workplace where people can bring their
full selves and not cover themselves at
work? And that needs to go beyond and
that needs to get, you need - you know, you need to help your clients and your
companies and workplaces become really
conversant in this, and that takes
practice, and it might get you out of
your comfort zone and I think that this
is what is the hardest thing for any of
us that is practicing in this area, is
that because it changes quickly and
because there's such proliferation of
this language, you get a sense that
people kind of eye rolling and seeing
like sort of saying to you, "This is
annoying and it's such a burden." I
would say a key takeaway is to really
remember that the burdens are really on
the people who have to deal with that
every single day and figure out how to
bring themselves to work places that
don't necessarily understand them, or in a
culture, in a world that doesn't
understand them - may not even have
language for them. To that - to that point,
names, pronouns, language really, really
matters, so keeping up with that and
trying really hard in that area makes a
big difference and doing the necessary
audits and internal looks to see where
the language is coming into play will
help, but I would say to really mitigate
mitigate and minimize risk, showing a
good faith effort that you're trying
goes a long way. So it may be that we
have trouble saying they/them/their
pronouns, or switching if somebody is
asking for that, but I think you're going
to avoid a lot of risks just by making
that demonstrated effort that you're -
that you're doing your part to
understand it and to try.
Great, and on
the legal rights and responsibility side,
as we've talked about gender identity
and expression, or legally-protected
characteristics, we can quibble about
what Title VII does and what's going
to happen with it, but we know that here
in Massachusetts, and in many, many states across the country, transgender people
are protected and gender identity and
expression are legally protected. Within
those protections, gender identity and
transition are both broad and flexible
concepts. There's no - generally no litmus test,
there's no certain surgery that you have
to have, hormones that you have to be
taking, amount of time that you need to
be using certain pronouns. And then,
finally, remember the framework when
addressing issues in the workplace that
come up around transgender individuals: 
respect, privacy, inclusion. I cannot
emphasize that privacy piece enough,
because again it kind of goes against
our human nature to be curious about
things, but we always should be asking
ourselves, "Do I really need to know this
information?" and if not, I'm not going to
ask it.
