Category: Sexuality
Transgender Training in NYC
Factive consultant Dean Laplonge just finished attending the ‘Transgender Training of Trainers Intensive’ 3-day program in NYC and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. We encourage you to check out their website for more details and information if you are interested in learning more about the Transgender Training Institute (TTI) and their excellent courses. The following content about the TTI is reposted from their Facebook page:
By Transgender & Non-Binary People, For the Benefit of Transgender & Non-Binary Communities
THE TRANSGENDER TRAINING INSTITUTE · SUNDAY, JUNE 17, 2018
The Transgender Training Institute (TTI) provides training and consulting services that are informed/provided by transgender and non-binary people, for the benefit of transgender and non-binary individuals and communities. We work across the United States, providing services including: expert facilitation of transgender-related professional development trainings, training of trainers/facilitators (TOTs), ally empowerment classes, online course design, climate assessments and technical assistance. We combine our topical expertise, formal training as educators, and decades of facilitation experience to provide your participants with powerful professional development trainings that inspire change.
Our hallmark program, the Transgender Training of Trainers Intensive is a three day program that helps transgender people, their loved ones and cisgender allies increase skills and success with teaching others about transgender people’s lives and experiences. We break down a “Trans 101” training, segment by segment, to help our participants understand the best ways to leverage their power as an educator to inspire advocacy and change. In 2018, we are proud to be taking our open enrollment courses to new locations!
Our newest program Ally/Advocate Training Camp, is a 15-hour course designed for individuals who want to be better allies to members of the transgender and non-binary communities – personally or professionally.
We offer both courses in Philadelphia and other locations by request. We are also able to come to you for an onsite course. Check out our website for more details and information!
Oil, Gas Firms Hit High Scores on LGBTQ Equality Index
Several oil and gas firms have achieved high scores on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s latest corporate equality index (CEI), which rates Fortune 500 workplaces on their treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) employees.
Find out which ones here!
Exploring queer lives in the steel industry
It’s not often we come across a piece of writing which challenges how we understand gender and sexuality in extractive industries. Most of what we read promotes the idea that gender is primarily a women’s “problem”, and that sexuality only affects gay people. There’s never enough focus on exploring diversity of genders and sexualities, or diversity of experiences. The debate about “women in mining”, for example all too often assumes that all women who work in mining are the same kind of woman, and that their workplace experiences and desires are all the same.
But now we think we have found a book that challenges us to think about gender and sexuality in masculinised workplaces in more complex and diverse ways.
Steel Closets (2014) explores the diversity of genders and desires among gay, lesbian, and transgender people who work in the steel industry in northwestern Indiana. It draws extensively on interviews with queer people who work in this industry, some of whom are open about their sexuality at work, others who choose to keep it secret. It discusses the discrimination and harassment these people face, but also explores the pleasures many of them find in their workplaces and with their non-queer colleagues. This book challenges not only what it means to be a normal employee in the steel industry, but also what it means to be a normal queer person.
The book covers topics such as gay men and masculinity, female masculinity, secrecy and openness, workplace dangers, and union representation for queer people. For those who are familiar with queer theory, it shows how we can use this particular academic theory to think about the experiences of queer people in an industry where queerness is not obvious or overt. For those who are not, it provides an easily understandable introduction to some of queer theory’s key concepts.
About a year ago, Factive was approached by a Brisbane-based consulting company to see if we were interested in partnering on the development of a training course to educate mining companies about GLBTQ issues. We were certainly interested in the issue, but definitely not the proposed work. We were concerned the proposed training course was being developed without adequate research, and that it was making too many assumptions about the needs of GLBTQ people who work in mining. Importantly, it assumed that all gay people needed to “come out” at work, and that this would somehow automatically bring an end to the discrimination they face. In our view, this oversimplifies what it means to be queer in otherwise highly heterosexualised and masculinised industries. It also promotes the idea that all queer lives are the same, which actually stifles effective diversity work.
Steel Closets offers an easy read for anybody who wants to explore gender and sexuality in extractive industries in more complex and diverse ways. It helps to move the reader beyond thinking about gender and sexuality in singular and simple terms. The stories of the workers are unique. Yet they also share a lot in common with other stories we have heard throughout our work in similar industries, like construction, mining, and oil & gas.
Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers. By Anne Balay.
Factive: You discuss several times in the book how gay people in the steel industry often experience pleasures and dangers because of their refusal to be open about their sexuality. These include sex with co-workers and harassment at work. Why do you think we might find this position so hard to accept or approve of when looking at it from a gay liberationist context?
Balay: At some point, a particular way of being gay become dominant: white, urban, coastal, coming-out centered. And that’s all fine, but there are lots of other types of behavior that might still be called gay. They just became invisible because people got trained, kind of, to look for only this one type. I would like one message of my work to be that ALL queer and trans people need to be seen, heard, and have their lives and jobs respected. Progress like marriage equality is nice, but doesn’t reach down to the many workers who can’t access it because they will be fired if they come out.
Factive: Do you think the stories you tell and analyse are particularly North American in content? If so, how so?
Balay: I don’t know. I interviewed people in the US and Canada. Lots of steel gets made in China, India, Finland, Austria. I have no idea what it’s like there.
I think the fate of the industry, and its workers, is important. Often, industries or jobs are evaporating now, at the same moment that queer folks get access to them. They are being replaced with shitty, precarious, demeaning, part-time work, if at all. That struggle is disproportionately affecting queer folks because we’re often fired, marginalized, or unconsciously devalued.
Factive: What has been the response from people from inside the steel industry to this “outing” of a queer presence in their industry and workplaces?
Balay: Many steelworkers have contacted me, usually online, expressing happiness and gratitude. They typically give the book to family or partners as a way of describing what it’s like, and feeling less alone.
Gender in the Workplace in Vietnam
In the broader research on gender, there is regular criticism of the way “gender” is too often and too exclusively discussed with reference to white women and/or to women who work in the global north (also sometimes referred to as the “developed world”). This criticism seeks to point out that ideas about gender ignore the lived experiences of women of colour and women in the global south (or “developing nations”). We can extend on this to include men too. What it means to be a man and to work as a man in Australia, for example, is going to be very different to what it means to be a man and to work as a man in China. Too often, we discuss “gender in the workplace” as if it is a singular issue, and as if it is understood and experienced by all people in the same way. This is not the case.
Gareth Durrant is an Australian expat working as a Business Development Advisor at Marie Stopes International in Vietnam. We have invited Gareth to answer some questions about gender in the workplace and to explain the work he is doing in this area.
Briefly explain an average workday for you. What kinds of work do you do?
A lot of my day is spent communicating with our external stakeholders, donors, and other NGO partners and corporates. I write proposals and also design sexual and reproductive health programs. Internally, I liaise with the project teams who are responsible for the implementation of those programs
Where does gender come into this?
Obviously any sexual and reproductive health program would be pretty ineffective if it ignored they way men and women relate, self-identify, behave, and perform. So an example of this is would be if I designed a program to address condom and contraceptive use and negotiation within couples. If I ignored the relationship between a woman and her mother-in-law, it would miss the mark. The issue is not condoms and contraceptives; it is son preference.
On a more macro level there is the gendered way that aid, as a mechanism and development in general, can work. Aid programs that are not participatory and women-led essentially tell women what to produce, when, and how. They can also exacerbate the triple burden women face in terms of paid work, unpaid work, and reproduction. When we talk about empowerment and particularly when we talk about the economic empowerment of women, we need to ask the question who is doing the empowering, and reflect on why.
Lastly, I am a queer cis white male who works in the area of safe abortion and family planning. I obviously bring my own experiences to the work I do. This includes body politics, body autonomy, sex positivity, third-wave feminism, and queer theory. It doesn’t include a lived experience of reproduction, abortion, or abortion stigma. So I consider myself a reproductive rights ally similar to how a straight person might identify as an ally on the topic of marriage equality or LGBT rights.
In your work with factory workers in Vietnam, what are some of the gender issues that you see as problematic?
Many of the factory workers in Vietnam are migrants who end up working in factories far away from home where they are subject to excessive work hours, poor working conditions, poor quality housing, and are vulnerable to sexual exploitation and gender-based violence, and unwanted pregnancy as well as HIV/STIs.
In terms of HIV/STIs and unwanted pregnancy the driving factor is access (i.e., health centres at the factory do not offer sexual and reproductive health services or they are offered but inappropriate). This often means the clinics are perceived to lack basic quality, confidentiality, or privacy.
Gender-based violence is often framed in terms of husbands, fathers, family, and community (and rightly so). However, migrant women are specifically vulnerable while away from home work due to their isolation and lack of social support. We can then add to this a largely male cohort of managers, who at the very least may lack the capacity to address violence, or actively condone and perpetrate violence towards women in the workplace. A specific example would be sexual coercion—the expectation that sex will be exchanged for preferential shift or a day off. Women’s groups may also normalise violence if harmony within the workplace is promoted over individual rights.
That said, I don’t want to paint all young migrant factory workers as lacking agency. My experience so far suggests that there is a lot of resilience and strength. Recently we did a baseline survey of knowledge, attitude, and practice of female migrant workers in two particular factories in Vietnam. Over half had basic knowledge of STIs and understood how to prevent them. Just over 90% of those surveyed knew that HIV was sexually transmitted. Between 91 and 94% percent of women knew the number of recommend health checks during pregnancy, the necessity of regular single radial haemolysis (SRH) tests, and the role of regular SRH care for women and its benefits. This says to me they are informed.
Over 88% said they had the ability to negotiate sexual and reproductive health decisions within their relationships with boyfriends or husbands. This says to me they are empowered and taking charge of their sexual health at least within the context of their immediate partnerships. Again, the issue is having access to sexual and reproductive healthcare rather than say confidence or knowledge.
Have you identified any different approaches to addressing gender issues in Vietnam than you might expect to see in Australia?
There is a lot of good work being done in the private sector in terms of gender mainstreaming within OHS, work policies, and corporate social responsibility strategies of companies working in Vietnam. The European Union has been a big proponent of this through their gender equality programme for Vietnam. The donor landscape is such that social and economic empowerment of women is a key priority, as is private partnerships. Migrant factory workers in situations of marginalisation intersect with these priorities. However it isn’t all external or donor driven. Workers themselves, the Vietnamese government, and transnational corporations are pushing for better policies and standards that reflect the needs of this largely female workforce. I’m not sure to what extent this is being done, or has been done in Australia. Rights-based approaches, structural reform, women’s unions and labour movements are pretty universal.
Sexuality in Resource Industries
What’s the situation for gay men and lesbians who work in resource industries? How does the workplace culture affect non-heterosexuals? Will they benefit from better policies? We have posted on this topic before. An article on this topic was also recently published in Corporate Knights. Here we provide some further ideas about this issue and propose some effective responses.
The issue is certainly more complex than simply telling people to “come out”. Here are some points that are often missing in the debate and which need to be considered when looking at how to address the broader issue of sexuality in the workplace:
• We can’t assume that every gay person dislikes the existing culture of resource industries. It is possible to be gay and to enjoy a hyper-masculine environment.
• The identities of people who experience same-sex attraction are complex. Not everybody who is in a same-sex relationship or who engages in sex with people of the same sex identifies as “gay”. And their reasons for rejecting the gay label are not always because they are “closeted”.
• If we encourage gay and lesbians to come out at work, can we be sure we have the skills and knowledge to respond adequately and appropriately? If the workplace doesn’t have the right support systems in place, or if human resource personnel haven’t studied the relationship between sexual identity and work, we may be placing people at risk of being bullied and further ostracized.
• Understandings of gender affect how gays and lesbians are treated in the workplace. The issues of gender and sexuality can’t be separated. A dislike or rejection of femininity is something that has been explored in the research on gender in male-dominated industries like mining. Gay men might have a hard time in these industries because it’s often assumed they are feminine. This assumption needs to be challenged, as does a dislike of femininity.
• It’s easy to introduce a policy to ensure discrimination doesn’t happen in the workplace. It’s also easy to run a training program to teach employees about discrimination based on sexual orientation. It’s not so easy for an organization to research how its workplace culture is already sexualized in such a way that might make it difficult for gays and lesbians to work comfortably.
• It’s not just gays and lesbians who are affected by cultural ideas about gender and sexuality that circulate in the workplace. We also need to consider the situation for transgender people, bisexuals, intersex people, and other “queer”-identifying people.
Here are some alternative approaches to this issue. From our experience, these have more of a long-term impact, and they help address the issue at the source:
• Focus groups with employees to explore how they understand sexuality and sexual identity.
• Workplace behavior observations to identify how workers construct their sexual identities in the everyday.
• Education for key personnel (managers, human resources personnel, safety professionals etc.) on what “sexual identity” is, how it impacts our lives, and what role it might play in the workplace. Get them reading and discussing. Get them really thinking about how this particular issues impacts their business and workplace culture.
• Research and discussions about how a workplace already preferences heterosexuality. Why do heterosexual men and women feel more comfortable than people who have a different sexual identity? How do assumptions about sexuality affect the business’ communications, policies, and operations? The focus now is on how the workplace defines what is “normal”, rather than always on those who are marginalized.
• Where we also need more high-level research into this topic is in exploring the links between specific male-dominated industries and human concepts of sexuality. For example, we need to think about how mining has developed as a particularly masculine industry within a wider human culture that has also created categories of sexuality and assumptions about what is “good” masculinity.
Dr. Dean Laplonge, Director, Factive:
“It’s not right that people have to be subjected to discrimination at work because of their sexuality. In adult workspaces, too often we see people acting out as if they were still in the school play area. It’s really disheartening and sometimes it can have devastating impacts on people’s lives. I have heard so many stories from gay, lesbian, and transgender people who work in the resources sector over the years. But let me tell a bit of my own. I can think of two specific examples when homophobia has impacted me directly in the workplace.
I was once heading up some leadership training for a group of senior managers who worked on site for a large, global mining company with operations in Western Australia. For whatever reason, they became obsessed with asking me questions about my sexuality. It took me a long time and a lot of patience to get them to refocus on what we were there to study. These were grown men, senior professionals working for a company that had clear policies about anti-discrimination and even some policies that actively supported gay employees. It was quite shocking.
The second time was when I was doing some consulting work for a Japanese oil and gas company which had recently started a new operation in Australia’s Northern Territory. There was one senior manager who couldn’t stand being around me. He went out of his way to undermine me and I received numerous reports back from others in the office about what he was saying about me and particularly his homophobic comments. I reported him to Human Resources and was told there was nothing that could be done. I reported him to his manager, and was told “he’s really a good guy who cares about safety”. I decided to quit what was a highly toxic and unpleasant culture. This same company has recently started to put its name to a range of very public diversity initiatives, even though (based on what I continue to hear from friends who work there) this particular manager and the workplace culture haven’t changed at all.
There’s a big difference between being a company that says it respects diversity and being a company that does diversity every day in the workplace. This is why I am more interested in looking at how diversity runs through a workplace’s entire culture rather than responding to the issue with a diversity policy or equal opportunities training.”
Later this year, Factive will be launching two new research projects to explore different aspects of what it means to be “queer” in the resources sector. Dr. Laplonge is also working on a new book which includes a number of chapters that discuss sexuality and mining using different approaches. If you have any questions about this issue, you can post a comment here or contact us through our website.
Opening the closet on LGBTQI people in heavy industries: Who will profit?
A similar version of this article was published on 10 September 2014 in the online magazine Archer. That version can be accessed HERE.
There has been no discussion on LGBTQI people working in industries such as mining, construction, or oil and gas. Even consultants like me who have been interested in exploring gender issues in male-dominated industries have remained silent on this issue. Should this change?
Given what we know about the impacts of societal norms on LGBTQI people in general, we can be fairly confident that some LGBTQI people who work in heavy industries will have experienced workplace bullying. Some will be feeling guilty because they are not speaking out whenever they hear a colleague make a homophobic comment. Others will be struggling to act out in ways which do not match their preferred gender. We could argue that we must help these people deal with the mental health issues they must be experiencing. We could insist they need support to help them remain resilient at work.
When I first started investigating the role of gender in resource industries, I pointed out that a consulting company could make a fortune by offering a workshop on gender for leaders in these industries. In an article on “Doing safer masculinities” published in m/c Journal in 2013, I further argued that gender training in these industries is driven more by “commercial imperative” than by proven methodologies of learning in this field.
As we break the silence on LGBTQI people working in these industries, we will no doubt find that consulting companies will also start to offer workshops that seek to raise awareness of LGBTQI issues. This training will be promoted as improving the “people skills” of senior leadership; or it will be targeted at human resources personnel who are encouraged to expand their knowledge in “diversity”. The LGBTQI-in-resources market carries one massive pink dollar sign.
There’s no denying that personnel who work in heavy industries are extremely ill-equipped to deal with issues that might affect their LGBTQI colleagues. Discussions about sexuality or sexual identity are non-existent here. The links between safety and sexual identity, or between gender preferences and gender practices, are only now starting to be explored in academic research, but this work is barely trickling down into the workplaces. Instead, we continue to see industry resistance even to expanding the debate about gender beyond the subject of women.
But quick workshop training is not the solution. This will not make the workplaces of heavy industries any safer or better for LGBTQI people. And it will not help to create queer-friendly companies.
Firstly, it is wrong to suggest that all LGBTQI people working in heavy industries need help. For some the silence that exists is welcome. They are able to “pass” unnoticed. They can go about their work without their sex, gender identity, or sexuality identity having anything to do with their career. They can enjoy the financial and professional rewards that are often more readily available to straight men.
We also need to be careful about forcing open the closet doors in a way that could put individuals at risk. There are different reasons for why somebody would choose not to announce their sexual or gender identity; and not all of these reasons indicate that the person is repressed or oppressed or even unhappy. Any forced opening of the closet can lead to violence, self-harm, despair and depression, ridicule, and abuse.
The idea that LGBTQI people need help also reinforces the belief they are weaker than other people. It’s an attitude which mimics that often taken towards women. The women-in-mining debate, for example, is not a sexist concern; it aims to provide opportunities for women to find fulfilling careers in the mining industry. But it is a sexist approach which sees women as lacking and in need of assistance, while at the same time we ignore the histories and structures of the mining industry which continue to make this industry more suitable for men.
More damage than good will be done by offering an off-the-shelf workshop to discuss what it means to be gay or anything similar. This approach may well meet the desires of management to show they are doing something “good”. But we will end up with people who are working in very small communities suddenly thinking about who among them might be gay, transgender, or queer. And while leaders and personnel in human resources might have a better awareness of what these terms mean because they have been “trained”, the rest of the workforce and community will not. Everybody else will have to rely on gossip, assumptions, innuendo, and ignorance to help them respond.
If we are going to explore what it means to be a LGBTQI person in heavy industries, we need to focus on long-term education. We need to think about how the structures and culture of a workplace function to create the “normal” person, and what this means for LGBTQI people in that workplace. We need to consider how it is that organisations and workplaces create LGBTQI people as “different” to begin with. If we don’t, we will always see LGBTQI people as the problem.
Author: Dean Laplonge, PhD.