Seeing and knowing
okay but like. This exact concept is what finally got me to be open about being queer in my day to day.
I was at work. I can't go into detail about the situation, but someone was outed without their consent. And nobody was saying anything, and it was quiet, so I outed myself, too. So at least neither of us would be alone.
I was worried about the consequences. I'd never considered my identity a secret, but I wasn't open about it, either. It felt like it wasn't relevant to my job. If someone asked, I'd tell them, but otherwise, what did it matter?
After the incident, I met privately with a higher up. Told them what had happened and why it wasn't good, and made some suggestions on what to do in the future to keep everyone safe to be in the closet or out of it on their own terms.
To my absolute amazement, they told me that others had come forwards anonymously to say the same things. Then word spread. Meetings were had. Policy and procedures were put in place. A training course on gender and sexuality was implemented for the very first time.
And of course there were protests- people who dug in their heels and kicked up a fuss and didn't want to learn about "all that bullshit", and when those people showed their colors, their superiors realized that they weren't actually good representatives of the sort of environment they wanted to provide our clients, and a small number were actually let go.
I went to a meeting again the other week. And do you know what happened?
The meeting lead introduced themselves by name and pronouns, and asked everyone to please state their name, and, if they wished, theirs as well.
I was near the front. I introduced myself with He/Him. I thought I'd stand out like a sore thumb and feel like an idiot for hoping for better.
Two people down, someone introduced themselves as They/Them. Someone I'd never spoken much to before.
Then, She/they. At least two "anything fine"s. A he/her.
It was incredible. And it wasn't even a whole year ago.
There are so many of us, now. Even more, as we teach and learn about ourselves, and it's not so scary because there are others like us.
I'm not as loud and proud as I hope to be some day, because I'm still scared, a little, but I am here.
And I've learned that being openly queer isn't about just expressing myself for the sake of it, bringing personal details into places it doesn't matter-
-it's about telling someone, it's not just you. I'm in your corner. There are more of us than they think. There is power in numbers, and you are not alone.
And I kind of love that
I bought a cheap bisexual flag bracelet at Pride this year, and I wear it daily in work. I'm a lecturer - many of my students are fresh faced eighteen year olds leaving home for the first time, and possibly considering the scary step of living openly for the first time. It's important, I think, that they can plainly and easily see that one of the authority figures in their brave new world is openly queer, and that's okay. Plus, it lets them know I'm a safe person to talk to about the whole thing.
Visibility is super important
It’s a magical thing, as scary as it can be to put yourself out there. I worked as a supervisor at a tiny coffeeshop chain for a while that was casually queer-friendly (as coffeeshops are often wont to be) and sort of...stumbled into being the catalyst that made it actively so. I’m they/them but I present very traditionally masc (for various safety reasons I won’t get into), so you wouldn’t really know from looking at me, and one day I was just...tired of everyone assuming and took a risk. I put together a very polite and company-appropriate, but very firm, email to all supervisory staff about my pronoun situation. I expected confusion at worst and maybe some fumbled attempts at getting it right sometimes at best. I did not expect for the operations manager to step forward and give their pronouns too, with an apology for having not stepped up to tell anyone and just living with the discomfort until that moment. Things progressed rapidly from there--everyone’s pronouns got entered in the time clock system alongside their name, unless they explicitly didn’t want them in there. Same with the signatures of supervisors’ emails. It became part of our introductions to new hires. I suspect some sort of hiring policy or bias may have been lifted because I started seeing a noticeably greater number of trans, nonbinary, and genderfluid folks being hired. Hell, a store manager got let go at one point when it was discovered they had been going out of their way to consistently and deliberately misgender any genderqueer employees when they weren’t around to hear--a decision made by an HR manager that was extremely new to dealing with anyone who wasn’t cishet but still knew enough to know that was toxic behavior. All that, just cuz I had a brief burst of courage to raise a hand and go “um, I’m they/them.” You never know who’s out there waiting to be their more honest self. You never know who will be able to take that step forward if you take it with them. <3 Visibility isn’t just important, visibility breeds solidarity and community.
