Surviving Corporate Settings With Your Queerness Intact
Whose queerness is visible whether they want it to be or not; raise your hand? This is for those readers who either cannot pass, or those who can and consciously choose not to. I’ve spoken with multimedia artists, software engineers, and business owners. I’ve spoken with members of our community who work in just about every industry, from healthcare and education to Big Oil and space tech. I’ve spoken to people belonging to multiple ethnic groups and people possessing a wide range of socioeconomic statuses.
I asked them the question, “How free are we to be ourselves in this land that purportedly holds freedom as one of its foundational values?” People like a petroleum engineer who’s worked in the oil industry for over 20 years and joyfully describes herself as “so f*cking gay” to anyone who asks. People like a queer, digital marketing manager who’s trying to start an LGBTQ pride group in a Fortune 500 space tech company way behind the times. People like a nonbinary, healthcare professional whose favorite patient travels more than 60 miles to get their hormones at age 76.
The answer, like the question, is complex and different for each person. These queer professionals and many others stand out as beacons in their workplaces. As most openly queer people have experienced at least once in this day and age, the word “professional” used in a business setting is usually synonymous with cis-heteronormative, classist, racist, sexist, fatphobic, and ableist ideals, especially when it comes to the standards and practices of dress and decorum. These unfortunate standards are commonplace among even the most self-assured, progressive companies.
Take, for instance, hair. My hair, while considered beautiful in its own right, somehow becomes unprofessional when gendered male. I don’t wish to give in to conceit, but it is a fact that my hair has received compliments from both fellow hotel employees as well as hotel guests, yet when styled in particular ways, it becomes unacceptable because I am viewed as a man there. Which is one of the reasons why I’m out at work as queer but still not out as myself, a transgender woman, unless any of my coworkers read this magazine.
Related article: The U.S. Supreme Court to Vote on LGBTQ Worker Protections
When the man who is literally in charge of my hotel’s brand came a’callin, my first thoughts were: How openly queer can I appear to this corporate, cis, white man? What’s his queer barometer; how “unprofessional” will he deem me to be? I never got to answer any of those questions. The company changed my schedule just beforehand so that I would be posted as far away from him as I possibly could be. Visibility matters, and forced invisibility hurts. Even though I wasn’t fully out, I still felt shuttered, othered, and literally ostracized. This kind of story, unfortunately, is not an uncommon one.
Dress codes often subject queer people to undue stress and “subdues fabulosity and sexuality,” according to a food and beverage supervisor for a local, Denver hotel chain.
Keiko B, a queer, medical case manager serving populations with HIV, say implementing a dress code “often feels like asking us to leave a massive part of ourselves at home, like our identities are hobbies we can check at the door.” Even when they aren’t formal but gendered, they make it very difficult for nonbinary and agender people.
D, the nonbinary, transmasculine healthcare professional, had the trans flag emblazoned on their resume as a watermark, and the company that hired them is patently and apparently a very progressive one.
Their direct supervisor is welcoming and inclusive, yet this titan has a real problem with their HR department and union reps when it comes to deadnaming their trans, nonbinary, and agender employees. This corporation has more than $2.2 billion in total assets, it provided nearly one billion health services to patients in 2018, but somehow, for some reason, “real compassion or inclusion,” is impossible to come by for the employees of this revered company, and many companies stride the same casually cruel path. “Being out and trans is f*cking hard, and it’s f*cking hard even if you have everything going for you,” said a working professional at a Denver Museum, who wishes to remain anonymous.
These are but a few examples of the crass, seemingly unavoidable double-standards that plague the schemas of “professional” workplaces. An agender, mechanical engineer on the Pride planning committee at an American multinational technology company said, “Progress takes work,” and that’s the truth, but we all have to be willing to do the work, and safe spaces are something everyone can work toward. I’ve spoken to two queer, Denver teachers, both of whom have helped young queerlings (as I like to call them) feel secure in their gender exploration.
Related article: Trevor Project Releases Article on Trans, Nonbinary Mental Health
But, young queerlings aren’t the only ones who ever need help, surely. Heather T., a queer, medical underwriter at a publically traded healthcare company said, “Dress codes at best become performative, and at worst, they are an act of oppression. They say that this person or their identity isn’t valid and can be punished… The energy I spent hiding is better spent helping others. Being open, passing the mic, etc. How I feel about me is far more important than how others feel about me.”
As the queerest white person on my hotel’s staff (re: the only openly queer, white person), I consider it my duty to make my hotel as safe a space as I can make it, but as a transgender woman, how safe is the space for me? My rainbow glasses are a dead giveaway to my queerness, and purposefully so.
These accoutrements often make cameos in negative reviews of me, and I will read more than 100 of them for every, single queer person who visibly relaxed when they saw me at the front desk. I am a welcoming presence and possess a measure of power over my guests’ experiences.
More queer people are getting into positions of power these days, and as an independent contractor and co-founder of the New Orleans-based Southern Organizer Academy remarked, “Trans and queer people’s spiritual DNA is one of enduring and thriving; we’ve always found ways to exist in ways that kept us safe and still on the road to liberation, and that same, spiritual DNA is yours to draw upon!”
This can be evidenced by women like Darrah Herman, Kaia Rhodes, and Nahtalie Faulk, quoted above. Darrah is the nonbinary owner and operator of The Green Wave, a green consulting firm who has worked for solar energy firms in the past. She proclaimed, “In this day and age, networking with queer professionals is doable; it’s possible to be authentic in yourself AND be successful,” and if her three-year-old brainchild’s success is anything to go by, she is right.
Kaia Rhodes is an entrepreneur based in Miami with more than 20 years experience in multiple industries. She has worked for herself the majority of her career, and has done business with multiple, Fortune 500 companies. She is a self-made mogul, an inspiration to trans women in business, and she says stylistically, she touts the middle-ground because otherwise, it could negatively affect her business, but she encourages pushing yourself to be yourself.
“If not me, who, who is gonna stand up?” is her mentality. Existing in a relatively conservative environment like Miami, she brushes up against bigotry often, and she claims sterile, quick business interactions are a saving grace, as is “Checking online profiles. You can never escape what you do online.” Both of these outstanding women stressed the importance of having an authentic personal brand, regardless of industry or queer visibility. Hopefully, navigating these treacherous waters will become vastly easier in the near future.
To those young readers who may be stuck, just because you are in the closet doesn’t necessarily mean you have to hide all of who you are. As Trey Drama, a Mississippi-born actor, comedian, and director, remarked, “Know the situation. It’s like a team wearing jerseys on the field. You wanna play the game, you gotta wear the appropriate jersey. But, there are always ways to add your own flair to anything.”
