‘Help! Our DEI Trainer Won’t Stop Talking About Kink’

Dear Emily,

The individual straight cises whom I work with are pretty nice for the most part. Still, people (mostly my boomer co-workers) often misgender other people (mostly the younger they/thems) at my office and bristle when corrected. This has led to hurt feelings all around and some trans workers leaving the organization. Clearly, trans staffers including me thought, We need some outside help. So we requested that a trainer, outside our org, be hired to do a cultural-competency training that would cover pronoun use. As part of the approval process, the DEI consultants we work with had to pick the trainer, and wow, what a pick they made.

The trainer is an interesting person who belongs to many identity groups, including being trans, but more significantly identifies as being “kinky.” Of course, I celebrate every time anyone but especially a trans person finds sexual gratification in this world. But their own kinkiness has come up a lot in this 101-level training on gender identity. We asked for an “intersectional perspective,” but perhaps we should have specified the intersection. Is there a way to offer constructive, respectful feedback that would not be perceived as sex shaming?

Sign up to get Brooding, a subscriber-only newsletter interrogating modern family life, written by Kathryn Jezer-Morton.