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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 21, 1994)
V ju s t out ▼ Ja n u a ry 2 1 , 1 9 0 4 ▼ 2 7 , Perform ance an x iety OLD TOWN ANTIQUE by Grant Michael Menzies t is a familiar scenario for all too many of us. tive is, it only helps hand on the key to the closet to You’ve been through that first interview, the next gay employee. As Woods indicates, lying and the recommendations from the person is often condoned when it is part of the effort to nel director carry you on to the second. survive, to avoid harm or to avert crisis. Many gay You’re one of the chosen few. You sit men, he says, “are quick to argue that deception is before your future superior—you hope, or justified do by the circumstances.” They make a you?—and another witness who asks the questions “Faustian bargain.” the department head can’t think of. Your resumé The Corporate Closet points up the myth com and your letters of recommendation lie on the table mon in business settings: That professionals arc, or between you. You are grilled about all aspects of ought to be, asexual at work. At the same time in work: You sail ............ ■ »■ mostprofessionalsiluationsthcrcopcratcsadouble through. You are standard, fortifying the hegemony of heterosexism posed hypothetical to where it invades every person, every conversa human relations tion, in the office, lunchroom or toilet. The mug problem s: You shots of kids and wives on desktops or plastered to confidently solve a computer monitor, the wedding bands promi them.Every nently displayed, the “bring-a-girlfriend” com thing’s going your ________________________ pany picnics—all militate against effective com munication, trust and productivity where gay pro way. At the end, .......... fessionals arc concerned .Gay employees can be so there is nothing more to say, just smiles all around. It is then they ask, after a pregnant pause, “Are obsessed with “managing” their sexuality in a heterosexist work environment they can lose sight you sure there isn’t something else you should tell us?” The pregnant pause lasts a moment, then of their real professional role. breaks water and gives birth to smiles no longer “Although many have tried,” Woods says in his welcoming. You’re in your 30s after all. They chapter tilled Dismantling the Closet, “no one yet noted you wear no wedding ring. You’re a tad too established the relevance of sexual orientation to nattily dressed. Know what? You’d better forget the performance of most jobs (excepting, perhaps, about this place. As much as you wanted and those that require actual sexual contact). Only under exceptional circumstances would the type or needed the job, as much as the job needs your talents, you’ve been had. ‘They think I ’m gay.” intensity of a man’s erotic interests interfere with his ability to, say, trade municipal bonds, teach And they’reright. Even if this doesn’t sound famil geometry, or design iar, The Corporate Closet is for you.r software.” Objections Especially if it doesn’t sound familiar. |to gay employees “are Beginning in 1990, author James D. quickly exposed as the Woods, now professor of communica most brutal, circular tions at City University of New York/ form of prejudice: A Staten Island, with the help of Jay Lucas, gay man’s sexuality is interviewed a core group of 70 gay men disruptive only be regarding their lives and careers as pro cause others despise fessionals in a heterosexist work world. him for it.” Somewhat surprisingly, many of If gay male profes those interviewed expressed a stronger sionals arc still out interest in keeping the peace in their there, making up work environments than confronting imaginary girlfriends homophobic bosses and co-workers and sexy weekend whose hobnail boots leave daily marks Ijaunts, reading up on on their closeted sensitivities. Says gay football to hold forth employee Eric, whose name, as all the in the company john, others used in the book, is changed for flirting with female protection, ‘T here’s an attorney that secretaries, and show works for us and they say he’s a little bit ing up to work the day strange or gay. One time my boss said, after a lover’s or close friend’s death knowing they ‘Watch out. He’s a great attorney, but watch out for dare not speak of it to anyone, then there is no “gay him because he’s gay,’ ” alluding no doubt to the community.” If a community existed, so would the well-known gay propensity for attacking anything empowerment to stand up, shout your lover’s name, in a three-piece suit. Eric, unwilling to confront his be seen at a concert and ballet or gay bar and drag boss, accommodated him by nodding and saying, club and not care what the firm, the school board or “Okay, I’ll be sure I watch out for him.” the secretary thinks. Stuart, after making the grade with a senior Woods is optimistic. “More and more gay pro associate of a law firm he hoped to join, thought it fessionals can now point to a gay peer who showed right during the interview that he tell her the truth them an alternative to the closet,” he writes. “Busi not just about his background but also about his ness is only now waking up to the presence of its being gay. He approached it subtly. “I wanted to lesbian and gay employees...[bringing] the resis hear more about the social atmosphere of the firm,” tance, misunderstanding, and social clumsiness we he related to Woods later. He asked the senior would expect to accompany so fundamental a associate if the firm “was also a tolerant place for change. By making themselves visible, lesbian and a gay man.”The senior associate, previously poised, gay professionals arc helping to shatter the pre now seemed puzzled, until Stuart spoke the fateful “G” word. Though taken aback, the senior associ sumption that the closet is a necessary, or even desirable, response to hctcroscxism." ate murmured something about another attorney at Perhaps the best response, when the boss starts the firm “rumored to be gay.” “He has a lot of spouting Monday night football, is to leave The antiques,” she floundered. “We could go by his Corporate Closet firmly on his or her desk. office and you’ll sec what I mean.” “I realized I had made a terrible mistake,” Stuart says. The firm declined to make him an The Corporate Closet offer. Unfortunately, the experience was so trau by James D. Woods with Jay II. Lucas matic for Stuart that he declares he will never “out” • , i . V v ir i * ' The Free Press, 1993\ himself again. As understandable as this perspec-* i.i.'. , i j h j ' i i a .» i i'i ». i i SCOTT CAPURRO & CAROL STEINEL Next to Saturday Market 32 N.W. 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