Thinking about it
Aug. 1st, 2003 09:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitanziI've been thinking more about the incident I posted about yesterday.
If anything relating to that comes up again, I will say something. I'll try to think out, generally, what I want to say in advance so I can try to be clear (and not stammer) but not accusatory or confrontational. I'll try to ask questions instead of make statements. I'll answer the inevitable question of whether I'm saying this because I am gay with the truth - I'm bi - rather than playing semantics games and saying no. (Though it would be literal truth, I'd feel that I was splitting hairs, and I doubt I'd sound convincing. I almost never am in that circumstance, because I feel like I'm lying, and I'd rather tell the full truth and believed than the half truth and be called a liar anyhow. Being poly is unlikely to come up - I'm pretty sure the concept just isn't in their world view.)
I don't know if it will come up any time soon, but we'll see. I feel better about it for having decided a personal policy. At previous jobs I've kept my mouth shut, but I've never heard this level of bile at any of them. I've always divided my home and work life fairly strictly that way (with a couple exceptions) and rationalized it as being no one's buisness. It's not their business - but just how angry that made me makes me realize it must have bothered me more than I thought. Maybe I'm changing, figuring out my own mind and growing up a bit more... maybe I'm just being stubborn. That wouldn't be anything new. Obviously, all this is subject to change, but I've been doing quite a bit of intensive thinking about it in the last 24 hours or so.
Anyhow, as for why I think my job is particularly vulnerable and why I don't think the legal avenues against sexual orientation discrimination would do me much good - I'm a temp. The company I come to work at daily doesn't need a reason to let me go - they can just tell the temp agency they don't like me any more, or don't need me. If the temp agency fired me, well, I'd just be another contractor they didn't happen to have work for. They would never need to say they did fire me - "We'll call you when we have something." This is not to say that that would necessarily happen, but I am aware that I would have a lot less leverage against it that a permanent employee would.
I'd also like to add that I looked back at yesterday's post and it started out sounding awfully anti-South. Sorry for that - I was feeling very adversarial just then, and it felt a lot like them vs me, but I do like it here and those were bad lines to imply for the them vs me split.
Anyhow. Back to my day.
If anything relating to that comes up again, I will say something. I'll try to think out, generally, what I want to say in advance so I can try to be clear (and not stammer) but not accusatory or confrontational. I'll try to ask questions instead of make statements. I'll answer the inevitable question of whether I'm saying this because I am gay with the truth - I'm bi - rather than playing semantics games and saying no. (Though it would be literal truth, I'd feel that I was splitting hairs, and I doubt I'd sound convincing. I almost never am in that circumstance, because I feel like I'm lying, and I'd rather tell the full truth and believed than the half truth and be called a liar anyhow. Being poly is unlikely to come up - I'm pretty sure the concept just isn't in their world view.)
I don't know if it will come up any time soon, but we'll see. I feel better about it for having decided a personal policy. At previous jobs I've kept my mouth shut, but I've never heard this level of bile at any of them. I've always divided my home and work life fairly strictly that way (with a couple exceptions) and rationalized it as being no one's buisness. It's not their business - but just how angry that made me makes me realize it must have bothered me more than I thought. Maybe I'm changing, figuring out my own mind and growing up a bit more... maybe I'm just being stubborn. That wouldn't be anything new. Obviously, all this is subject to change, but I've been doing quite a bit of intensive thinking about it in the last 24 hours or so.
Anyhow, as for why I think my job is particularly vulnerable and why I don't think the legal avenues against sexual orientation discrimination would do me much good - I'm a temp. The company I come to work at daily doesn't need a reason to let me go - they can just tell the temp agency they don't like me any more, or don't need me. If the temp agency fired me, well, I'd just be another contractor they didn't happen to have work for. They would never need to say they did fire me - "We'll call you when we have something." This is not to say that that would necessarily happen, but I am aware that I would have a lot less leverage against it that a permanent employee would.
I'd also like to add that I looked back at yesterday's post and it started out sounding awfully anti-South. Sorry for that - I was feeling very adversarial just then, and it felt a lot like them vs me, but I do like it here and those were bad lines to imply for the them vs me split.
Anyhow. Back to my day.
Attack Of The Clones
Date: 2003-08-01 05:42 pm (UTC)forward, until you bump up against ignorance in the real world. It must have been
quite a shock after the days you just spent in a ConCertino / family environment. I
don't know if what I have to contribute will be a help, but I do have some thoughts.
We all seem to agree that, like NASA's "Quick, cheap, on target - pick any two"
philosophy, "Separate but equal" is a pick one and only one situation, and one I
had thought long discredited.
Are you familiar with the term Invisible Minority? Many of us are members of this
and not just clones. But that doesn't make being in the minority any easier. One
Commenter talked about comparing the possible gain, if any, against the possible
cost to yourself of speaking up. This is far from being an easy decision, and I don't
envy you the chance of finding yourself in such a situation again and speaking up.
I know I don't do confrontation at all well, and would be hard pressed to live up to
ideals that called for saying something. But I like to think I'd try.
For a bit of geographical perspective, remember your days at disConnection before
you moved south? Once again, feelings of being an outsider who's not quite the
same as your coworkers. And this was up here, not in The South. I'm thoroughly
familiar with that feeling from past jobs. Hell, my Chosen One and I feel it here at
home in our own neighborhood. Hint - view it as a positive thing?
One last thought, already brought up by a Commenter. My own approach to dealing
with discussing differences (which I tend to avoid, especially if the subject is religion,
politics or aliens' sexual practices [g]), is to ask questions. Sometimes more can be
accomplished when the other person comes up with their own realization, rather than
having my beliefs in hiser face.
Hugs,
Ann Onynous (hopelessly monogamous, heterosexual only, old married coot)