The Femme Continuum: The "Highs" and "Lows" of Visibility

[Ginger]

Originally Posted by girl_dee

i read this and i hear you. A while back i would have agreed 100%.

i don't agree. i want to be visible but more as a whole. We are a huge part of the gay population and the gay rights movement, i don't see myself as much of an individual as i do as a community among sisters in a big gay world. Our presence shows people that gays aren't so bad and we live and breathe among the rest of the world. The shock effect, i love the shock effect.

i feel the more visible we are, the more knowledge we bring to people, like at my current job which i just spoke of. My job as a gay woman is not to convert people but i feel when we educate people about assumptions and hatred, and how we are not all deviants trying to convert their children, the easier it will become for those coming up behind us to live in this world. i know it's getting better but i am reminded daily that we have a long way to go.

i used to feel like *fuck em*.. it's not my job to educate the world. Now i feel like it is, i wish someone had gotten thru to my father, maybe my life would be a lot different. Being gay was not an option. i feel like if by using my invisibility helps change the mind of a couple people, like the ones i work with, maybe life will be better for their children.


i guarantee you if i had walked in for my interview being visible, i would not have gotten this job. Privilege at its finest. A month later and we have all had a great time and bonded a bit, being gay isn't such a big deal.

I really hear you on the employment issues, Dee. I never judge people who are not out at work. We all pretend at our jobs in one way or another, or most do anyway.

I'm out at work, but I wasn't for the first few months.

Being out at work usually doesn't have an impact on how it feels to be there but this past week I had a meeting with the chair of a department at my college, and it came up.

He was commenting about a guy in my department who is regarded as a kind of "womanizer." I said I "don't get" the appeal of the guy, but I'm gay, and since the only way he relates to women is by flirting, I don't even notice he's there most of the time.

The department chair looked kind of startled. Then he told me his daughter is gay and she's about to marry her partner of ten years. He said it was hard for him at first; he kept asking her, "Are you sure?" but now, he's happy for her. He looked at me differently when I left. He walked me all the way to the exit, past all the other offices.

I don't think I'm out at work to change the world. I just don't have the energy to constantly reinvent myself to make others comfortable.

It's also personal for me and not about being gay. I recently left my partner and felt invisible in her house for a lot of reasons that were amplified once I withdrew from the twice-weekly family dinners where her mother glared hatefully at me and jumped in to invalidate everything I said. I went everywhere by myself and never felt so alone in my own home and life when I was in that relationship. That kind of invisibility damaged me in ways that are going to take a while to heal.

Maybe that's why I also, lately, stepped out as a gay person at work (I'm already out at work and it doesn't usually come up but there is a certain subtext in place when I make a comment about gay stuff as opposed to a straight person making it), and laughed at my boss when he said he didn't want to write an article about a queer lit professor because "it's not his thing." He seemed really uncomfortable that we even have a queer lit class at the college.

And I laughed out loud at him, which he didn't like. I said, "I've just never heard a manager be so open with his homophobia." Then I said, "Just don't make comments like that at Cabinet!" and laughed more.

The guy was embarrassed and back-pedaled strenuously to justify his comments. I said look, what if I say I don't want to cover a Jewish history class because "it's not my thing." (I'm not Jewish, but my boss is, and anti-Semitism is the only "ism" that gets to him, IMO.) I was playing devil's advocate, of course. To his credit he didn't play the "boss" card, and we just moved on.

I work in a very politically correct environment with a lot of institutional protections in place for gays and people of color but it doesn't sound like you do. I can say those things because I have protections in place.

But did I "change the world" as you describe that act of being out in the world?

I don't know. I enjoyed the exchange. And guess what, he has changed. He's much cooler now about this gay guy that works in another department that he used to make unkind remarks about, for one thing. I wonder if it's related.