Transsexual Sues High-Tech Firm Over ‘Wrongful Firing’

Linda Gross of Northridge said she cried a year ago when she lost her new job as an assembler of computer parts.

This week she sued her ex-employer, Pertec Peripherals Corp., alleging that the Chatsworth firm, which hired her as a woman, wrongly fired her after a physical examination revealed that the 36-year-old transsexual is anatomically still a male.

“They didn’t hire me because of what’s between my legs but because of what’s between my ears,” Gross said in an interview. “Then they didn’t like what’s between my legs so they fired me.”

In her suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Gross said she had been undergoing psychotherapy and hormone treatments for 10 months as part of a sex change from male to female when she was hired as Linda Gross by Pertec on May 5, 1984.

She was unfairly dismissed on or about May 9, 1984, she alleged, after doctors performing a routine medical examination required for employment attempted to give her a Pap test for cancer. When she was found to have male genitals, the physicians were “outrageously nasty,” according to the lawsuit.

The next day, Gross alleged, she was terminated by a Pertec staff member who told her her “sex was incorrect” on her employment application.

Claiming wrongful termination, breach of contract and invasion of privacy, Gross asked for $7 million in damages. Besides Pertec, Gross named as co-defendants the staff of National Industrial Medical Clinic in Chatsworth, where she was examined, and Triumph Adler, Pertec’s parent company.

A spokesman for Pertec said Friday that the firm was unaware of the lawsuit. Staff members of National Industrial Medical Clinic declined to comment.

Gross, who is now working as an electronics technician, said she decided to file the suit because “I want justice.”

“I feel I was discriminated against because of my sexual identity,” she said. “I know there are lots of people out there like me who are also being discriminated against. I may pave the way for them to go out and do something about it. I may give them some courage or some hope.”

Although she described herself as a “cautious, not very social person,” Gross found herself facing TV cameras shortly after filing the suit, fussing with her hair even as she tried to make the case for equal rights for transsexuals.

Gross’ attorney, Kelly O’Brien of Encino, said she felt the case could be the first to establish unequivocally the right of transsexuals to equal opportunity in employment after almost a decade of failure in the courts.

Whatever the legal outcome, for Gross, the suit means she isn’t just her “family’s secret” anymore, she said.

“I’m female from head to toe,” the former Howard Gross said, as she sat in her attorney’s office, slipping off her high heels briefly to reveal scarlet toenail polish. “I just have a few extra parts I have to get rid of.”

A burly former Air Force sergeant and martial-arts expert, Gross decided to change sex in 1983. Since then she has been behaving like a woman and seeing a psychologist who counsels transsexuals.

The psychologist helps Gross, who is 5-foot-2 and weighs 150 pounds, deal with such harsh realities as children who point and say: “Mommy, that woman looks like a man.”

A woman friend advises Gross on makeup and the subtler aspects of behaving like a woman. She walks differently now, for example. “I used to walk like a duck like most men do,” she said.

‘Nobody Stares’ at ‘Bisocials’

Gross said she met her friend at a “bisocial” in Van Nuys. “You name it, they’ve got it--gays, lesbians, TVs (transvestites), transsexuals and everything else,” Gross said of these nonjudgmental social events, popular among people who get tired of being looked at by strangers. “You can go there and have a good time, and nobody stares, nobody cares.”

Although she keeps her voice at Bette Davis timbre, Gross lapses into the phraseology of the men’s locker room on occasion. Describing the reaction of a male friend who happened upon Linda Gross after knowing only Howard, she recalled: “He couldn’t handle it. It shot him right out of the ballpark.”

As soon as she can afford to, Gross said, she hopes to complete her change by having surgery to remove the male genitals.

Meanwhile, she wears Laurel Birch earrings but still has a beard, which she is having removed with electrolysis. Hormone therapy has enlarged her breasts, but not so much that she needs to wear a bra. “They’ve also taken away my muscles and made my back end about this wide,” she said of the hormones.

‘Never Had Any Problem’

Gross said she has known her true sexual identity since childhood, when she secretly began wearing her mother’s and her sister’s clothes. She is not a “frustrated transvestite,” she said, but a female imprisoned in a male body. “I never had any problem,” she said. “I knew where I was supposed to go. It said LADIES.”

Her father has not spoken to her since she began the change, she said. “As far as my father’s concerned, his son is dead and buried up in Forest Lawn. My father’s destroyed because I was the only son. Now I’m the second daughter, the daughter he hasn’t accepted yet and never will.”

Gross occasionally sees her mother: “She’s OK, but she still has a pronoun problem and a name problem.”

In public, Gross said, she is sometimes made to feel like the gender-equivalent of the Elephant Man. People stare, she said. Sometimes she can save the moment by showing them her California driver’s license.

“It says ‘Female.’ You can see the attitude change. They think: ‘She’s not pretty but she’s female.’ ” The starers are unaware of the driver’s license of Howard Gross she carries in her purse.

Change Will Cost $100,000

Gross estimated that changing her sex will cost her $100,000 before she is through. Despite the costs, she said, she wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.

“My only regret is that I wasn’t born a woman,” she said.

For all the negatives, she said, the change has benefited her in one way. As a former male martial-arts expert, she said, she has become the Renee Richards of the judo circuit, even more distinguished in a field of women competitors.

“Almost 90 percent of the time I can outperform the men,” said Gross, who teaches privately. Now that her strength is reduced because of hormone therapy, she relies almost entirely on the mental component of her art.

“It works just as well as before,” she said.

Gross originally wanted to call herself Melinda, after a friend from her past. She settled on the simpler Linda instead.

As she pointed out: “Linda means pretty in Spanish.”