Guest post: True inclusion requires more and more and more
Via J.A. at Miscellany Room, a little missive from his HR department:
Written by PRIDE: LGBTQIA2S+ employee resource group
Getting to true inclusion for LGBTQIA2S+ employees requires much more than an inclusive and respectful workplace policy or rainbow branding each year for Pride month.
True inclusion for LGBTQIA2S+ employees means creating a psychologically safe workplace environment and expanding allyship practices across all departments.
The PRIDE employee resource group has been actively advocating and working toward inclusion for LGBTQIA2S+ employees in both big and small changes this year, such as promoting inclusive benefits and policies for LGBTQIA2S+ employees and intentionally recruiting for LGBTQIA2S+ representation. PRIDE has also been working with HR on smaller steps like including personal pronouns in communications and HR systems and providing employee training to decrease the frequency of microaggressions (such as automatically asking women about husbands/boyfriends, asking men about wives/girlfriends, misgendering, tokenization of identity, use of derogatory language, failure to acknowledge queer relationships, exclusion from socializations, etc.).
And part of true inclusion starts this week with National Coming Out Day which is commemorated each year on Oct. 11 and aims to “continue to promote a safe world for LGBTQ individuals to live truthfully and openly,” (Human Rights Campaign website). National Coming Out Day can trace its roots back to the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The march aimed to draw attention to the federal government’s inaction in confronting the AIDS crisis and the Supreme Court’s 1986 ruling upholding Georgia’s anti-gay sodomy law.
The march marked the unveiling of the AIDS memorial quilt (a massive patchwork honoring those lost to the virus) and at the time an unprecedented show of support for gay rights: More than half a million people showed up to demand their rights that fall.
36 years later, the PRIDE employee resource group recognizes that there are still areas where employees experience a workplace environment where “coming out” is not welcomed. Coming out of the closet, shortened to “coming out,” is often a metaphor used to describe LGBTQIA2S+ people’s self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation or gender identity. “Coming out” is often framed and debated as a privacy issue in the workplace. “Coming out” is experienced variously as a psychological process or journey. In coming out there is: decision-making or risk-taking; a strategy or plan; a matter of personal identity; a rite of passage; liberation or emancipation from oppression; feelings of LGBT pride, shame and social stigma; or even a career-threatening act.
Our PRIDE employee resource group acknowledges that “coming out” has been the common term for someone who acknowledges being LGBTQIA2S+ but it is a lived experience and therefore is experienced differently by different individuals. It is also important to note that this language centers on the people that are the audience to the “coming out” rather than the LGBTQIA2S+ individuals themselves who are coming out. It gives the impression that people who don’t identify as cisgender or heterosexual are hiding something from society and need to be honest and come out, rather than acknowledging how homophobia and transphobia create an unwelcoming environment.
When publicly identifying as LGBTQIA2S+, an individual is inviting people into a personal part of their life journey. A part that requires being vulnerable and that should be protected and celebrated. “Coming out” is not about your LGBTQIA2S+ co-worker(s) asking permission to be themselves. “Coming out” is the opportunity for LGBTQIA2S+ people to control the narrative, as well as who and what they allow into their life.
This October the PRIDE employee resource group wants you to focus on the collective power of expanding allyship practices across all departments and creating a psychologically safe workplace environment. We want you to not look at National Coming Out Day as a mandate for gays to out themselves but as an opportunity to uphold an inclusive and respectful workplace environment for all employees and celebrate the month of LGBT history.
Everyone deserves a life free from bias, discrimination and hate — and we are working hard every single day to make sure that is a reality for you and for everyone. We are going to build a world where every LGBTQIA2S+ person can be healthy, safe, liberated, celebrated and joyful in every area of our lives – without exception!
Ironic that a missive demanding ‘total inclusion’ manages to be rather exclusive:
Why are they excluding biphobia, queerphobia, intersexphobia, asexualphobia, twospiritphobia, questioningphobia, plusphobia, etc. etc?
So, do transgender people want people to know that they are transgender, or don’t they? They want to “pass,” to be invisible, and you’re a bigot if you surmise that they are transgender, AND they want to “come out,” and be celebrated and speshul and “stunning and brave,” and you’re a bigot if you don’t know and recognize that they are transgender. They want it both ways. Heads, you’re a bigot; tails, you’re a bigot.
About the desire to have inclusive benefits and policies for LGBTQIA2S+ and intentionally recruiting for LGBTQIA2S+ representation, I’m wondering if that’s legal or not. Is a better candidate for a job who isn’t LGBTQIA2S+ not going to be hired then? Or is a better candidate for promotion going to be passed over in favor of another who is LGBTQIA2S+? IMO, I don’t think HR should be in the business of social engineering the workplace because your identity is not your job.
J.A., you seem to be extrapolating a lot from the HR statement.
All the statement says is that they’re going to recruit for representation. That usually means things like reaching out to student and industry groups, promoting themselves as a welcoming workplace, etc., to encourage applicants from that group. It’s not the same as preferentially hiring or promoting members of a particular group.
I don’t know your industry or company (and I’m not encouraging you to provide such details), so this may or may not apply in your specific instance. But it’s not unusual for an employer to find itself in a bit of a self-perpetuating loop with respect to minority hiring: they don’t have many employees who are members of Group X (and/or not many Xs in senior management), which gets noticed by candidates from Group X, who would rather seek employment from a competitor who doesn’t have that problem. (Either because they’re worried about potential discrimination, or they simply don’t want to feel like the “token” X employee, or whatever.) Which means that they’re not attracting enough high quality X candidates, which means they either have to do what you don’t want them to do (lower the standards to preferentially hire Xs), or else continue to have low representation of Xs.
Screechy Monkey, good points and I can understand that the goal could simply be to get the word out to the pool of LGBTQIA2S+ candidates. And also that the suggested benefits and policies are things like providing reasonable accommodations and health insurance that covers their specific care needs. I know my workplace does make accomodations for lactating mothers at work, for instance.
This reads like a recapitulation of history. Being respectful, not making assumptions, not excluding people from social groups – all laudable goals that feminists, the gay movement and many others have worked hard for (and also just human decency). But then we dive deep into the nonsense of “inviting people into a personal part of their life journey”. Where did that come from? When did progressive politics become an arm of the self-help publishing industry?
FFS, social distance exists for a reason. Not everyone can be friends with everyone let alone BFFs. Mature adults can deal with people they don’t actually like (because surprise some people just don’t get along) but that means everyone needs to understand that they can’t invite people into their life (that what’s Jesus is for – your imaginary friend for life!) or at least if they do they need to be prepared to accept a firm “no”.
Oh? “Much more?” For most people, you’d think that would be sufficient.
Please define “a psychologically safe workplace environment. ” Isn’t this a good thing for everyone to have? Why do I get the feeling that “psychological safety” isn’t going to be as “inclusive” as it should be, and that some employees “needs” are going to be prioritized over others. We saw this with Maya Forstater and Alison Bailey. All this “true inclusion” seems to come with not-so-fine print and a hefty price for women being forced to stay silent about sex-based rights, which are inevitably eroded when men who declare they are women make claims to women’s positions and facilities. That would seem to run counter to women’s psychological safety.
Allyship? When someone goes to work, they’re expecting to be joining as colleagues within their company, not storming the beaches of Normandy or joining NATO. In the context of trans “rights” the concept of “ally” has been thoroughly poisoned, as many of the most beligerent, hair-trigger bullies in this movement are self-styled “allies” using this supposed struggle on behalf of the “most marginalized” as a convenient pretext and licence to unleash their misogyny. So forgive me if the call to “expand allyship across all departments” sounds more like a recruitment drive for the office Stasi.
Wait, we’re at work, right? Isn’t oversharing considered rude? I’m not interested in some trans-identified person using aspects of their personal life as some sort of “centering,” team-building exercize that makes them more special than anyone else. I don’t want to be forced to be part of someone’s narc supply. And as for “celebrating,” let’s leave that to the occasional staff birthday, wherein everyone in the workplace (assuming they wish to be so acknowledged) gets their own special day. Pass me a slice of cake, but don’t make me kiss your ring.
All this “allyship” and “celebration” is just so infantilizing. TiMs (and let’s face it, their demands are the driving force behind most of this twaddle) are grown-ass men. Dress it up with all the language of the oppressed, downtrodden, and fragile, but men are not “marginalized,” and to help them don the mantle of the “most victimized” is insulting to anyone who is actually an oppressed, downtrodden victim.
Forced teaming allows the T to hitch themselves up to the history of Gay Rights and AIDS awareness that is not theirs, projecting the “presence” of transness (as it is currently promulgated) decades farther back before it existed. The aspiration to “continue to promote a safe world for LGBTQ individuals to live truthfully and openly,” would be great if “TQ” individuals actually did live honestly as the sex they are, rather than insisting that the entire world recognize, treat, and “celebrate” them as the sex they are not. Making the world safe for the propagation and enforcement of lies is not a laudable goal.
When I first became aware of the concept of “coming out” it referred to sexual orientation and nothing else. Again forced teaming at work. The problem with T is that it’s not content with coming out of the closet, it wants to ascend the throne, with all the bowing, scraping, and hosannahs thrown in to boot. Still not kissing that ring.
With the T it’s also a power play when it invades women’s spaces. Resisting or even questioning this intrusion can be a career-threatening act.
Does that include women who know, and say openly, that men are not women?
But you can’t do this. Trans ideology is profoundly misogynistic, homophobic, and untrue. Making the world safe for it means making it unsafe for half the population. The world you’re proposing is a nightmare we’re supposed to welcome with rictus grins and hymns of praise. Genderism encourages body-hatred to the point of self-mutilation and lifelong , debilitating medicalization in pursuit of an impossible goal. How does any of that lead to health, safety, or liberation? It doesn’t. It is not my responsibility to make people who’ve encouraged to follow this ghastly pathway feel “joyful” about their decision to do so, and to demand our obedience, compliance, and silence in the face of this monstrous untruth. I’m not going to kiss the ring; I’m not even going to smile.
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What person on Earth has this? We always have places where we don’t feel joyful, and most of us are not celebrated. We might be respected, admired, liked, taken for granted…a whole slate of possibilities. But we are not celebrated, except when there is a reason. We win an award, we have a birthday, we retire…then we might be celebrated. Most of the rest of the time, we just are. We work, we play, we raise a family or don’t, we eat, drink, and sleep…in short, we are doing what human beings do.
The demand to be constantly celebrated is a give away that they are asking for something that is not a right. And why would anyone want it? They don’t want to be treated like everyone else, they want to be special. That is the “right” they demand…among others, such as the right to access spaces that aren’t theirs.
I would think being constant celebrated and joyful would be exhausting.
It is just a tiny bit greedy and entitled, isn’t it.