It's been about a month and I thought I would update y'all on my terrible male coworker situation.

It obviously went from 0 to 1000 real fast. He now does nothing but share inappropriate details about his life, talk about his "oppression", and corners others into affirming his gender. He wears wildly inappropriate clothes to work now. Short, short, skirts, tops with no sleeves but bra straps hanging out everywhere, then started a conversation in our weekly staff meeting about the fact that he's wearing bras with boob replacements (I don't know what this is, I don't want to know) so he can "get used" to the boobs he's going to grow now that he is on HRT. He keeps saying how happy he is to wear shorts now that the southern heat is really kicking in. References how "airy" it is. I caught one of my coworkers rolling his eyes.

He let us know he'll be going through a second puberty so if he's short, or rude, or grumpy, just be patient. He literally started HRT two weeks after "coming out" which was two weeks after he "realized" his gender in therapy. It is insane. Maybe just because of where we are? I really never thought it would be that fast.

So I grey rocked for a while (ok, maybe a week) but kept being cornered into conversations with him so I spoke to my boss and said that I was really uncomfortable because of these inappropriate things, I gave her examples, posited this was because I might be one of the only LGBT people he knows so he's trying to get me to relate to him but it wasn't appropriate and it made me uncomfortable. I was super nervous.

She said she agreed that what was going on was inappropriate and that she didn't know anything about LGBT stuff and was just trying to be kind. She said she'd heard many trans people were treated awfully or killed themselves and she just didn't want that for my coworker. I agreed that I didn't want that either (which is true, I don't want anyone to kill themselves or be harmed. I just don't think he's in any danger of that.) She used his actual name and "he" the whole time. Some of what I repeated to her made her gasp and she said she'd be speaking one on one with my other coworkers, especially the other lesbian, to see if they are having similar issues.

Ultimately she ended on the note that maybe he was trying to find someone to teach him to be a woman but that was definitely not my responsibility and that a lot of what he said to me sounded very homophobic and inappropriate for the work place. That he deserves support but not at other employees expense.

We agreed that I would move remote and just stay that way unless I decided I wanted to come back or an office opened up and I wanted to take it.

Over all I am really pleased with how it turned out, my boss has checked in several times to make sure I am not continuing to be virtually harassed and I'm glad to say that I haven't been.

Other than a couple messages lamenting how oppressed "we" are as minorities he's mostly left me alone. I've even gotten bold enough to tell him "sorry, I don't know anything about gender issues, just homophobia. You should try to find someone who understands gender minorities to discuss this with." In a staff meeting this week during a lull in the meeting he started talking about how difficult it was to find a lesbian to date him. I straight up said "hey, can we move this back to work information? This is making me really uncomfortable and feels super homophobic and sexist to be discussing women this way." He unmuted himself to reply and the other lesbian broke in with "I agree, I don't want to hear stuff like this as a lesbian. We can break if no one has anything else but I would really like to have work meetings focus on work." And later we both got a short, curt, apology from him that cc:ed our boss and an HR rep.

So there is hope for at least the bare minimum relief here at my company. I think my repeated point that "if anyone else was saying or doing this stuff this would be a sexual harassment lawsuit. I shouldn't have to deal with this at work" combined with a mostly female work place has worked in my favor.

I hope it sticks, I'm still nervous and a little scared but overall feeling good.