In the HRC’s new report on equality in the workplace, they found that 60% of people who are not out at work is due to the reason that it is “nobody’s business.” For me this is a foreign concept. I mean, I understand that people want privacy, but it has always bothered me that people assume that I’m straight.
I am a gay man. It is part of my genetic makeup, personality, and life. I’m not “all gay, all the time,” but want people to realize that I have a characteristic that is not typical of a stuffy office worker. While I certainly don’t consider myself “special” for being gay, I do wish that I could be known as just an ordinary guy who happens to be gay.
While our personal lives shouldn’t necessarily be the fodder of office chat, they are. For years I had this major problem with “fitting in” with the people I worked with because I was in the closet. It can be very hard to be content living that lie. Unfortunately we don’t have rainbow flags tattooed on our foreheads and some of us are not easily pegged as being gay.
What I’m getting at is this: you have to make it your business to tell people that you work with that you are gay. That should not make it the business of someone else. If they choose to make your personal life and the fact that you are gay an issue, they probably have bigger issues. You can be out without invading the lives of your coworkers. That is the way to it. Be out, but don’t throw it in their face unless you are prepared for a fight.
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It's Nobody's Business
In the HRC’s new report on equality in the workplace, they found that 60% of people who are not out at work is due to the reason that it is “nobody’s business.” For me this is a foreign concept. I mean, I understand that people want privacy, but it has always bothered me that people assume that I’m straight.
I am a gay man. It is part of my genetic makeup, personality, and life. I’m not “all gay, all the time,” but want people to realize that I have a characteristic that is not typical of a stuffy office worker. While I certainly don’t consider myself “special” for being gay, I do wish that I could be known as just an ordinary guy who happens to be gay.
While our personal lives shouldn’t necessarily be the fodder of office chat, they are. For years I had this major problem with “fitting in” with the people I worked with because I was in the closet. It can be very hard to be content living that lie. Unfortunately we don’t have rainbow flags tattooed on our foreheads and some of us are not easily pegged as being gay.
What I’m getting at is this: you have to make it your business to tell people that you work with that you are gay. That should not make it the business of someone else. If they choose to make your personal life and the fact that you are gay an issue, they probably have bigger issues. You can be out without invading the lives of your coworkers. That is the way to it. Be out, but don’t throw it in their face unless you are prepared for a fight.
http://www.hrc.org/degrees_of_equality/index.asp
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