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What’s a Perfect Ally?
An AT&T office in Dallas recently denied a gay employee 12 weeks of leave to attend to an ailing spouse, despite a policy that allows heterosexuals to do the same. AT&T gets a 100% rating from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) on its Corporate Equality Index (CEI) and there are many people, including perhaps some at HRC, who questioned the legitimacy of AT&T’s rating, given the fact that despite responding to the CEI survey that they did grant such leave to gay employees, they were claiming the law did not require them to do so.
AT&T has reversed itself and has granted the 12-year veteran leave to attend to the physical needs of his partner of 30 years who had suffered a debilitating stroke. Few of us will ever know what happened behind the scenes to prompt the Fortune 50 corporation to back off its initial decision, but all of us should recognize that what matters in this instance is the end result. Bryan Dickenson is on paid leave at the bedside of his beloved Bill Sugg. Read more…
Can We Compare Our Oppression?
In response to my bringing up the issue of racism in a recent piece on homophobia and transphobia, I heard from one reader who objected to my making any comparison. Read more…
The Greatest Generation of Workers
Much has been made—and rightly so—of the fortitude of the generation that fought World War II, but little is said of their children, the greatest generation of workers. At no time in human history have people been required to stretch so far beyond their emotional comfort zones to understand and value others who represent many differences, to be relocated so often, to be forced to learn new skills in order to survive, and to lack so much security in their jobs.
In the past 50 years, the average person in most Western cultures has been called upon to treat with professional respect as an equal team member people they were raised since childhood to fear and hate. This generation of workers has done so not without struggle but more so with grace, acceptance, and understanding. And no one says to them, "Thank you." This same generation has been forced to give up white, male, Christian, and heterosexual privilege. Their families have needed to be flexible enough to change schools, doctors, dentists, and all else that was familiar in order to accommodate reassignments. And few employees could trust that the company they signed on to serve would maintain ownership, size, purpose, or benefits. Read more…
Wrong Charges Against Letterman
There was a recent uproar over a skit on the Late Show with David Letterman, with most national gay and transgender organizations charging transphobia. Though the joke was about Amanda Simpson, a transsexual woman appointed by President Obama to a government post, the offense was rooted in homophobia, not transphobia. It isn’t helpful to a nation just learning about transgender issues to confuse them with the inappropriate use of a word.
On the program in question, announcer Alan Kalter ran from the stage in horror when Letterman announced that Simpson was born male. The humor was supposed to come from Kalter realizing that he had been intimate with a woman without knowing that he had been with someone born male. His reaction of disgust was not to Simpson’s sex reassignment surgery but to his horror that he had been involved with a man. That’s homophobia—the fear and hatred of homosexuality in others or in ourselves. Transphobia is a fear and hatred of the transsexuality of others or of ourselves. Read more…
A Parent’s Love Trumps Bias
It appears likely that I’ll be doing some work on gay and transgender workplace issues with corporate senior managers in Tokyo, Japan and in Mumbai, and Delhi, India this year. Anyone who is attuned to the potential power of education and love shares my excitement about the possibilities this presents for positively impacting the lives of gay and transgender people and their families there. As has been true throughout all of history, commerce has provided one of the primary vehicles for cultural change in the world.
That is not to say that I see these Marco Polo voyages as means of secretly engaging in social engineering. I’m just aware—as happened with my trips to Singapore and Hong Kong—that professional presentations on the need to value diversity at work have a way of enlightening the lives of people in their homes, too. After my two-hour presentation in Singapore, I spent two more hours standing with women from the workplace who wanted to talk about their children and other loved ones. It is indeed the heart of the mother and the father that prompts breakthroughs in attitudes and beliefs. Their innate desire to protect their offspring makes them more open to hear about the challenges their children face in the world. Read more…
A Man of Values & Good Humor
When I die, my good friend Bob Witeck has promised he will notify people that I’m gone. Given Bob’s great skills as a public relations and marketing genius, he will undoubtedly make my passing seem like it was a significant event. It will be a bigger deal when Bob dies and, like so many of life’s injustices, his many accomplishments in the work world won’t be adequately noted. Though he wasn’t listed with Tom Ford, Lily Tomlin, Cherry Jones, and Neil Patrick Harris in The Advocate’s predictably West Coast, star-dazed "Year in Review", Bob’s annual contributions to the everyday lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people far exceeds that of these gay celebrities. So too do his efforts on behalf of people with disabilities and those with HIV. Read more…
After ENDA, How Do You Get an “A”?
In order for any organization in the future to get 100% on the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index (CEI), they will need to require that all of their senior managers go through my training on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues in the workplace.
I just made that up. It’s not true. I threatened Daryl Herrschaft, my Ever-Ready buddy who pioneered workplace issues at HRC, developed the CEI, and is nearly impossible to get a hold of, that if he didn’t call or e-mail me with the information I requested I would say what I just said. The truth is, he did get back to me, but we’ve been wrestling for so long on the importance that should be given in the CEI to diversity training that I decided to say it anyway. Read more…
Ducky, Ducky, How’s Your Neighbor?
When I was a child, a favorite kindergarten game we played asked the question, "Ducky, ducky, how’s your neighbor?" The response was, "I don’t know, but I’ll go see." It was the tagged person’s job to then go ask the same question to another child.
In the adult version, the question is "Gay and transgender employees, how are your counterparts in other places?" And the answer today must be, "We don’t know, but we’ll go see." Gay and transgender people who work in corporate offices in New York need to find out how their counterparts are doing in Colorado Springs, Mobile, Singapore, and Dubai. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees in Toronto need to need to know what it’s like to work in Calgary and those in London need to address what’s happening in Bournemouth and Mumbai. If it isn’t ducky, all resources need to be pulled together to ensure that corporate policy transcends cultural and regional differences, even if same-sex intimacy is punishable by law in those sites. Read more…
What Makes You So Special?
Next June, I suspect there will be considerable interest in the release of The A-Team, a film version of the popular television program from the mid-1980s about a group of Special Forces men, each with his own skill, who work together to solve problems. We see the same format in today’s most popular television programs such as NCIS, The Mentalist, CSI, Bones, and Law and Order. Teams are pulled together based upon the unique contributions of each member. They succeed because they value each other’s gifts.
If you were in the corporate role of Col. John "Hannibal" Smith, the A-Team leader whose favorite line was, "I love it when a plan comes together", would you add to the team a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender person because they had unique skills acquired from their life experiences? Do gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people imagine themselves as perfect choices for the A-Team, or do they feel they belong in the B-Team? Read more…
Two Steps for Transgender Competence
Many (if not most) gay, lesbian, and bisexual people in the workplace don’t have a clue what the word "transgender" includes, what people who are transgender need in order to feel safe and valued, nor what is considered proper terminology. ("Transvestite" and "Hermaphrodite" are no-nos.) Neither do most Human Resource (HR) and Diversity professionals have answers to their questions, and the majority are afraid to ask. If that’s true for them, imagine the anxiety or antipathy of the organization’s senior executives and middle managers. The "T" has been added to the "GLB" by many companies to secure a 100% rating on the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index. Appearing to be inclusive is essential in the war for talent. But the "T" is often privately experienced by the "GLBs" and others as an unwanted second-cousin, forced into the family at an inconvenient time, whose anticipated appearance or behavior creates feelings of embarrassment or dread. Read more…