Boss Refuses To Accommodate Employee's 'Confusing' Second Name & Pronoun Change After Explaining Their DID Diagnosis
Winter just wanted their job to stop using their dead name, but now they might be discriminating against their disorder.
TikTok Under the TikTok username @thwintersystem, one user has been bravely sharing their experience living with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).
Their entire TikTok page is devoted to spreading awareness about their disorder and bringing others along for the journey — often explaining frequently asked questions or simply sharing what it’s like to switch or how their other “alters” go about their day.
For this video, however, Mason shared what happened when they tried to talk to their job about their condition in the hopes that it would clarify some things for them and hopefully get them to stop using their dead name.
TikTok user @thwintersystem's job said they could not accommodate their Dissociative Identity Disorder.
“Their reaction was that ‘Winter’ and ‘they/them’ was too much. They could not accommodate that. It would be too confusing,” they explained in the 84-second clip. “They also told us that we had to dress more professionally.”
Mason explains near the start of the clip that they had recently decided to refer to themselves and their system as “Winter” and wanted to be referred to with “they/them” pronouns. A “system” is the term used to describe the relationship between all of the distinct identities residing within one body. Mason is one of those identities and is currently the one “fronting” for this video.
“I told my work more about having DID and it was definitely a mistake,” they explained. “I had been having issues with them calling me my dead name,” Mason continued, hoping that the conversation would shed some light on their situation and help the job be more accommodating — to no avail.
They mentioned that one of their alters, Sage, had been having issues for over a year at the job because they kept dead naming her after she transitioned. It’s important to keep in mind that all nine of the alters that reside within the Winter System have their own individual names and pronouns that they are comfortable with, so it can be hard for them when they switch in and aren’t referred to correctly.
“We hadn’t, until now, told them what to call us besides Sage — we just were going by Sage at work,” they explained. “Today we decided that we wanted to go by Winter and use they/them pronouns,” and we all know how that turned out.
Mason said it was really hard to hear that their job couldn’t accommodate them.
“I honestly hope that they will be more accommodating because I really like this job,” Mason wrote in the caption of the video, and even in the video they express that it was hard for them to hear that.
“They had such a hard time switching to Sage in the first place,” Mason explains. “Sage and she/her, that’s been the hardest thing for them in the world.”
“I believe that they won’t be able to do Winter and they/them. Just makes me feel really bad.”
According to the American Psychiatric Association, “the extent of problems functioning can vary widely, from minimal to significant problems.” Many people in the comments claimed that what happened to Winter could be considered discriminatory, as DID could be considered a protected disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Their job is supposed to be accommodating, but only time and Winter could tell us what the outcome could be.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Keep up with his rants about current events on his Twitter.