The Story of Writing a Resume for S, Who Was Transgender

I think this event is rare even on a national scale.

It's called "Gradation Campus".
It is hosted by a student group called "Wata-Pro," and it is an event that promotes diversity in gender and sexuality.

I collect schedule information for diversity (DE&I) events and content from all over the country every day. The number of them in the last year is about 480 or so.
However, I don't know of any other event that is run by students as a DIY project, secures public space, sets up outdoor booths and stages, and broadcasts from the street.

A major feature of this "Gradation Campus" is that it can be enjoyed by families. This is also rare.
Stamp rallies, cotton candy, pop stage performances, talk sessions that are accurate yet easy to understand, and so on.

Children are happy, and parents take home new knowledge. Such ingenuity is applied, and last year it was overflowing with family visitors.
The student staff members are also kind to children. I remember when my daughter was lost during the stamp rally, they went out of their way to crouch down and give her a hint.

For my daughter, "that cotton candy festival" meant Gradation Campus.
We headed to the venue again this year, wanting to experience that atmosphere once more and to learn that there are all kinds of people. The location was the same as last year, Yokohama's Zou-no-hana Park.

The day was the last Sunday of September.
Although it wasn't as bustling as last year due to the rain, the students' enthusiasm and hospitality were still there.
They crouched down to my daughter's eye level and smiled at her again this year.
"Do you want to do the stamp rally? You can trade it for cotton candy!"

My daughter received the card and completed the LGBTQAPXCH (in no particular order) stamps. She got her cotton candy.
And then she told me,
"I know L and G. There's a boy who likes boys in my class."
Well, there are tall kids and short kids, right? That kind of natural attitude. The reality of a second grader is reliable.

Usually, there are few opportunities for me to talk with my daughter about love and sexuality. It's hard to find a trigger. Even though it's knowledge that they actually need.
That's why this event was precious to us as parent and child. I'm glad we came again this year.

My daughter eats the cotton candy in seconds so it doesn't melt in the rain.
Over her shoulder, I saw a flag fluttering in the sea breeze. A blue, pink, and white striped flag. It was the symbol of transgender people.
And at my feet, a labor consultation booth.

Come to think of it, I once wrote a resume for S. That was about 15 years ago.
S was my mother's boyfriend, and he was a trans man. We lived together for about 6 or 7 years.

"Yuta, you're a writer, right? Can you write a resume for me?"
The "dabe" suffix. Old Shonan dialect. S put the paper on the dining table.
Only one line: "19XX–2009: Apparel work." Everything else was a desert of white space.

"You know that asking a pro costs money, right?"
"Can you do something about that?"
"Then, Haagen-Dazs."
"How about Gari-Gari-kun?"
"Don't haggle, store manager."
Even though he said apparel work, he was a store manager. Two stores in the Tokyo suburbs. One step away from being an area manager.
He looked like a go-getter to me, but apparently, he was full of anxiety.

Could he keep working until retirement? Would his salary go up properly? And could he support my mother, who would one day be an old woman?
The conventional wisdom in the mid-Heisei era was that 35 was the limit for changing jobs. It seems he decided, "I should probably do it too."

I pulled the pure white paper toward me and immediately started the interview.
What you should write in a resume is not a history of jobs, but a history of skills. And not just one, but at least three. Having changed jobs myself, I think I gave him that advice.
"Then, S, let's list your strengths in chronological order."
"I only finished middle school, you know?"
He laughed toward the ceiling.
"Have you ever consulted anyone about finding a job or changing jobs before?"
"Nope! Hahaha!"
This time, he put his hands on his hips, puffed out his chest, and laughed loudly.

He was always hunched over. His outfits were jackets or oversized clothes. It was all to crush his bust with a sports bra.
So I think the fact that he didn't hide his chest meant he trusted me in his own way.
Even with me, he would look away with a fake laugh. It was proof of how intimidated he was.

Change of plan. I took my PC out of my bag and launched Illustrator.
There's no good person who says, "We're friends, so do it cheap." But S was family. I decided to make a resume that I could only make because we were family.

I started asking about his career from the beginning again.
"After middle school. What was your first job, when and where?"
"No, I got my hairdresser's license after that."
"Then your final education isn't middle school, it's beauty school, right?"
"Well, yeah."
S took one out of his Marlboro Menthol soft pack. His smugness was easy to see.

His family was a single-mother household, and there was no money for him to go to high school.
Moreover, his mother couldn't accept his gender and stubbornly kept calling him S-ko.
He had nowhere to go and no place to be. At 15 or 16, S started living with friends right after graduating middle school.

He worked part-time from morning to night, cut his living expenses even further, and got his hairdresser's license.
"How long did you work as a hairdresser?"
"Didn't even last a year, did it?"
Smoke puffed out of S's laughing nose as he rested his chin on his hand. I didn't have to ask to know that something he couldn't say was smoldering.
"It's okay. You don't need to write down things that won't be an appeal."
The confidence a person needs to live must be provided by their family. That's me.

Even if it was only a year, being a hairdresser and an apparel clerk. What they have in common is meeting a lot of people. There must be many first meetings.
And both require instantly discerning the intersection of a customer's preferences and what looks good on them from limited clues. And the more experience you gain, the higher the accuracy.
This is a respectable skill.

"So. Have you ever counted how many people you've served?"
"Hmm. Thousands, right?"
No, that's too low. It should be at least about 10,000.
Assuming a low estimate of 3 customers a day. A year is about 250 business days. If he continued that for 17 years from age 18 after graduating from school to age 35, that's 12,750 people by simple calculation.
Even subtracting regular customers and paid leave, it wouldn't be less than 10,000.

【Proposed styling to over 10,000 people through work as a hairdresser and in apparel. Possess the experience and know-how to instantly discern customer needs and characteristics and respond to them.
】
I typed this sentence at the beginning of the work history section. The first strength.
"This is a treasure you won by standing on your feet at the shop, S, and it's a weapon no one can imitate."
"Oh. I'm starting to think I'm pretty awesome myself!"If you get him going, he'll go. That was S's good point.

The second strength was quite simple.
So. What happened as a result of your hard work?
You became a store manager. And now you're in charge of two stores.
"Isn't it fast to become a store manager?"
"I started working early. I only finished middle school, you know."
"No. Even so."
"At my current shop, I'm the youngest ever? The fastest, apparently."
S has a proper story, too. His self-esteem just hadn't caught up with the speed at which his efforts were bearing fruit.
【Promoted to store manager at the youngest age and in the shortest time in the company's history. Handled the operation of two stores. Possess business achievements richer than my age, from budget management to personnel management.】
I made this the heading for the last paragraph of the resume, which is the current career section.

Now. The last of S's strengths was the problem.
"S. What did you do about the application form?"
Even without saying everything, my concern was conveyed.
"I checked 'female'."
Yeah, I figured. I could only nod.
But it's immediately obvious from the photo on the application form that he is not a so-called "gender-normative female." A tie. A soft mohawk. No makeup.

At the time, I don't think the word "transgender" was as widespread as it is now.
I'm not sure if "gender identity disorder," which S identified as back then and which we shouldn't use anymore, could even be called common.
Society lumped it in with homosexuality, sprinkled it with ridicule, and called it lesbian or butch.

If you write "male," it's called a false statement, and if you write "female," you get strange looks.
I can't deal with this. I didn't want S to be judged only by his application form. The real him isn't there.
But I couldn't think of a third strength. I changed the subject.
"Let's use photos from your current workplace."
S was liked by people. By his colleagues and by his customers.
I thought that might be an appeal point, or rather, a source of reassurance for the next company.
"Send me a lot. I'll choose."
"Is it okay to have photos on a resume?"
S sent the workplace photos to my PC one by one, looking suspicious.

Sales floor, exhibitions, drinking parties, weddings. Images arrived one after another.
As I was concentrating on the display, I heard the sound of a flip phone closing above my head. Click.
When I looked up, I made eye contact with S.
"Yuta, write this down. The third one."
"Go ahead."

"【I have an individuality that is different from others. Because I am who I am, there are feelings I can understand and problems I can solve.】

"That's all there is, right? If I'm all sneaky, the guys will say the store manager is lame."
And he added,
"Also, complexes stand out if you hide them. You should show them instead. That's the basic rule of fashion."
His way of life was the final strength. I added it to the end of the career section in a slightly larger font size.

Later. I carefully selected the typeface, wrote the whole thing, and laid out the images. I adjusted the character spacing, line spacing, and margins down to the smallest detail, and printed it on high-quality paper.
It was only one A4 sheet, but I think it was a beautiful resume. It was the beauty of S's life.
He accepted it with the look of someone receiving a certificate of commendation.

As a result, I was surprised that he got a new job so easily. And it was through a recruitment agent.
When he showed them the resume, they scouted him, saying he was an interesting guy. Is there such a pattern?
"Yuta, thanks! I'm a businessman now, huh!"

And then, just as easily, he returned to apparel.
I don't think even a year had passed. I don't remember what the reason was. Maybe I didn't even ask.
Anyway, S, who reported, "Sorry. I quit," was still laughing.
All I could do was prepare dinner and wait for him to come home.

If there had been a consultation service nearby that understood sexuality back then. If he could have consulted a professional instead of relying on someone like me. How far would S's possibilities have expanded?
I imagined him sitting in a booth at Gradation Campus. His Shonan dialect going full blast in Yokohama. His hunched, round back. His soft mohawk swaying in the sea breeze.

I hope it's sunny for next year's event. And I hope that as many people as possible can work in their own way. That's what I wished for.

By the way.
According to a survey released in 2008 by the certified NPO Nijiiro Diversity, trans men had a higher percentage of service and blue-collar jobs compared to others (Iwanami Booklet "Transgender and Gender Change," 2024). This aligns perfectly with S-kun. Although I dislike the term "blue-collar."
In 2020, a full zodiac cycle later, the results of a survey jointly released by the same organization and the ICU Center for Gender Studies showed that the trend had not changed much (see page 28 of the document below).
It can be said that for transgender people, employment options are unfairly restricted.
I, too, may be unknowingly taking a position that someone else was supposed to hold. I want to keep that in mind.

(The End)
Thank you for reading until the end. Please feel free to read this as well if you like.