Outed At Work! - Part 2

In follow up to my last post where a colleague coincidentally came across my photo on the Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome Wikipedia page, I just wanted to mention that this has been no big deal.  I sent my colleague a short Facebook message (since we are Facebook friends, but don't really hang out at all except for an occasional group lunch in the corporate cafeteria) mentioning that I had heard he had found out, and was available to answer any questions he had.  His response was along the lines of "Meh... No big deal," and it's been dropped since then.

I've found that this condition is usually "no big deal" to most people who find out.  I think that some of us with AIS or other DSD/intersex conditions find it a much bigger deal than those people around us.  Not to downplay it for those of you for whom it is a big deal.  But as a friend of mine is fond of saying - it's simultaneously the biggest, most important, and the smallest, most trivial thing.  How much it matters really depends on where you are in your life and in dealing with it.  For me, it's made me who I am today in so many ways, but is one of the last things on my mind on a busy day balancing work, friends, family, and health in general.

Disclosing at Work

Have any of you had any experience disclosing your AIS or other intersex status to co-workers or managers?

At the moment, I have no one to disclose to, because I am unemployed and looking for work. However, I have had the opportunity to disclose this information in job interviews. I have not yet, for fear that I might be discriminated against, but it's something I have been thinking about should the right occasion arise.

Let's do a thought experiment: Your prospective employer asks you an interview question like, "What is the biggest obstacle you've ever had to overcome?". Now, if they want the truth, maybe being intersex would be one of the bigger obstacles in one's life. Although, we don't usually talk about our genitals or our chromosomes in those situations, do we?

Or suppose you are being interviewed for a writing job. Or in my case, a web marketing job. The prospective manager wants to know I am fully web savvy and have worked a lot with social media before. Some of my blogs, like this one, would be the perfect thing to show. Yet again, there is a risk there that this type of material would be found inappropriate at this stage in the professional game. Not to mention the bias or prejudice you might encounter when you are too frank, or too genuine.

As I have mentioned before, I have thought about totally "outing" myself in some public forum. And I probably will one day. My real name is so uncommon that there is probably only one of me out there online, and it would not be difficult for me to choose what I'd like people to know about me through a single Google search.

Any thoughts on the matter?