Pride: Gender Identity and the Animal Care Profession

This month, in celebration of PRIDE and BIAZA Generations of Pride, we are giving space to LGBT+ voices from across the BIAZA membership. The PRIDE blogs will provide a snapshot of the experiences of LGBT+ people working in the zoo sector and highlight diversity across the animal kingdom too.

Living and working as a transgender and gender non-conforming individual in the UK presents unique challenges, especially for those of us working in public-facing roles working with the public and students. While working in zoos as a volunteer and then keeper, I became very accustomed to hearing curious children ask me, “are you a boy or a girl?” while parents apologised profusely for what they perceived to be rudeness. These were instead moments of joy for me – especially early in my transition, every day battling with the same worries of whether I passed, or if I would receive negative comments. Now, I am overjoyed when the first question I hear at a conference, or new place of work, or during a visit is the ever-important “what pronouns do you prefer?”

I started my gender transition journey from an unfortunate place – at a single-sex grammar school, I often struggled to feel as though I could be authentic to who I was in an environment which almost guaranteed the assumption that I was something I wasn’t, and explaining it over and over was exhausting enough that I spent most of my time at university firmly in the closet. I found it hard to imagine a future where I could be authentically myself, especially with long waiting times for gender-affirming care on the NHS. And then I began work experience at a zoo, tentatively sharing my pronouns and preferred name – and experienced for the first time the wholehearted acceptance of people I had only just met, people outside of close friends and family who were able to give me hope that I could live as who I am without judgement.

And then there are of course the challenges people don’t always think about – like how to navigate going through puberty version two while working full-time with the public every day, or how animals reacted differently to me when I started to smell different (and the odd sense of gender affirmation I felt when an animal who was notorious for hating men decided I was no longer good enough for his presence!). I have been fortunate to work with people and organisations that have provided community, support, and compassion throughout my transition, and a dedicated effort to providing gender-neutral facilities, advocating for sharing pronouns, and creating a safe place where it’s always been okay for me to talk about who I am and the things I am going through on my gender journey.

Working now with AnimalConcepts, I have been given amazing opportunities to use my position to create and contribute to resources on diversity, equality, and inclusion while working with people who are understanding and supportive of who I am. I am grateful that I have been allowed endless opportunities to be my authentic self, and that I am always safe to be true to by myself while working in support of human and animal wellbeing over the globe.

- Max Norman, AnimalConcepts

All blogs reflect the views of their author and are not a reflection of BIAZA's positions.