This is an issue that has been going on for some time... and bothering me for some time. I work for IBM, which has a very open and gay friendly policy (actually a couple of months ago there was the 'Diversity Month', an entire month dedicated to gay pride and stuff, pretty interesting). However, I live in Argentina and most of my co-workers are not precisely the top of the heap culturally speaking... not to say they are neanderthal... Anyway, there are two people who are deemed to be gay (I say deemed to be since I have no confirmation as to their preferences). One of them no longer works at the company, the other one works at a remote location so doesn't come a lot to the office. Severl of my coworkers make some remarks that bother me. For instance, I told one coworker that I had mistaken him for one of the aforementioned alleged gays, because they have a similar haircut, and he replied 'I hope that's the only similarity'. Now, this could be a reference to his short temper... but I highly doubt it. They both went together on a business trip to europe, and when the alleged gay (I'll call him A) saw the smart car said something like 'Oh! it's divine!'. Now this other coworker (let's call him G) told us about this and made a very flamboyant gesture while telling the story, which sounded a bit discriminatory to me. Another coworker made derogatory remarks about the other alleged gay (the one that left the company). Though none of my coworker made any openly homophobic comments, they did hoever make derogatory comments about these two people and didn't make any similar comment about any other member of the team. Which leads me to believe that it's a case of ignorance/homophobia... Of course, this might just be my rampant paranoia... but who knows. Anyway... know that this is biased so read beyond the words... Do you think this is simply a case of my paranoia? or is this a way of homophobia? cheers Alan.-
well if the co worker made fun of your other coworker with flamboyant gestures and they laughed at his exspense then it is mild homophobia but more i think its beeing an ignorant jerk...
Yeah, I agree with Adam that it all sounds pretty mild. You've got a great company behind you (I grew up in an IBM family ), so if it gets worse, or those derogatory remarks were anti-gay, you can always go to your boss, HR or whatever.
Well, that does sound like homophobia, but thats completely normal. Quite mild to be honest, compared to the homophobia i live around, but its still normal. I dont think you have to worry about them rejecting you if they find out your gay. They will still be nice to you im sure, they will just be homophobic behind your back like they are to the other people. Immature schoolyard taunts is what it amounts to. Some people never grew out of the childish insecurities so they continue to poke fun at whoever is an easy target, a.k.a "The gays", to feel better about themselves.
Yeah, it's what you might call "par for the course" homophobia. Mild stuff that you might see especially in environments where people don't know any gays, and believe there are none around. Which leads me to believe you're not out at work. Are you? Lex
