Mick Hartley

Amy Hamm at Reduxx:

A trans-identified male in the Maine-et-Loire region of France has been awarded €7,000 in compensation after a court determined he was the victim of “gender discrimination” by his former employer.

Syntia Dersoir, 22, had filed a complaint against the McDonald’s franchise where he worked after management referred to him by his legal, male name and asked him to remove the makeup he wore during his shift.

Dersoir began working at a McDonald’s located in Segré-en-Anjou Bleu beginning from September 2022. He was hired under his birth name and was legally registered as a male at the time. In early 2023, he began wearing makeup and prosthetic breasts to work, and, by the spring of 2023, he obtained an alteration of his identification documents.

Dersoir alleged that the discrimination happened over several weeks in 2023 after he began wearing his prosthetic breasts and makeup to work. Management at the McDonald’s branch where Dersoir was employed continued to refer to him by the name he had been hired under, his male name, despite his requests to be called by his feminine preferred name.

I know. Can you begin to imagine how he must have suffered?

According to his legal complaint, Dersoir detailed that during one shift, when he was wearing lipstick, a manager asked him to leave or to go to a nearby store and purchase makeup remover. In March of 2023, Dersoir obtained a note from his doctor allowing him to take sick-leave, citing the stress he was suffering from the discrimination he had been subjected to.

Dersoir complained to the French Labour Inspectorate, and was provided a lawyer by the French Democratic Confederation of Labour (CFDT), a conglomorate of national labour unions. He also filed a criminal complaint against the management at the McDonald’s where he had been working….

French media has run sympathetic stories on Dersoir, profiling him as a victim of discrimination. Some outlets are criticizing the managers at the fast-food chain, which uses the slogan “come as you are” in the country. One outlet suggested that Dersoir’s bosses had “trampled on” the sentiment behind the slogan and are “guilty of moral harassment and discrimination.”

On June 24, the employment tribunal of Angers ruled in Dersoir’s favor, ordering the franchise to pay him €7,000 in compensation. Dersoir’s lawyer was excited about the verdict, noting that it set a precedent and that other “victims” may now be able to come forward.

“As soon as a large brand is convicted … it necessarily provokes a discussion. This is a first to condemn McDonald’s, which presents itself from the angle of tolerance, for precisely the opposite,” the lawyer said.

Charlotte Duval, the Deputy Secretary General of the Maine-et-Loire Services Union, similarly praised the decision, stating: “This ruling is very positive … it is the recognition of [Dersoir’s] victimization. It may also open the door to other people who are experiencing this kind of situation to talk about it.”

So which is it? A young man who, realising he'd been born in the wrong body and was really a woman, at last found the courage to live as his true self – or another chancer who saw how in the current climate he could indulge his sexual fetish for dressing as a woman with loads of make-up and prosthetic breasts…and be the victim, getting sympathy and financial compensation. Hmm. It's a tricky one…