Kaleidoscope recently held a discussion event that asked questions around being out in the workplace, specifically here at the University of Bath. As it is LGBT+ History Month, we wanted to share with the whole university community some of the key themes and quotes (anonymised) from that discussion...<\/p>\n
The hardest thing can sometimes be admitting to yourself that you\u2019re LGBT+<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cI think the most difficult thing for me was actually outing to myself, to actually recognise who I am inside and fighting that.\u201d<\/p>\n
People are very different in terms of how open they want to be at work<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cI work in\u00a0Professional Services\u00a0<\/i>and I would say the department that I work in is probably known for being inclusive, and we work directly with students from all different backgrounds and that\u2019s probably a big part of our remit, to me it\u2019s not surprising that it didn\u2019t really feel like a big deal, coming out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not as if I am secretive in the university, I wouldn\u2019t not tell people, it\u2019s just that I\u2019ve never had any reason to say to anybody, you know, this is who I am and what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m an\u00a0academic staff member\u00a0<\/i>and ... I completely agree that coming to a new place ... there is always the question of how supportive the environment is going to be ... [it] can feel daunting and it can feel monumental and it always does, despite having gone through this process several times \u2026 I still remember the first definite incidence where I basically sent an email out to the department with the link to some article \u2026. regarding \u2026 LGBT issues in academia ... I wasn\u2019t sure how this would be taken, whether this would feel like it was out of place at the workplace for instance ... but after that I did feel that I got a lot of positive feedback from it...\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel quite comfortable being out now, I\u2019m in\u00a0Professional Services<\/i>\u00a0and I\u2019m in quite a nice department so everybody is really supportive. I came out in a meeting and afterwards everybody came up to me and was like, \u2018if you need any support I\u2019m here for you\u2019, and things like that. But I was still shaking when I said it, even though I\u2019d been out since I was 15 with my friends. Making it official at work still seemed like a bit of a big deal to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a\u00a0doctoral student<\/i>\u00a0\u2026 I am fairly comfortable with being out. I have been out for a while and it is like, kind of in my personal life so I don\u2019t really see it as a separate \u2018thing\u2019 being out at university versus just being out when I\u2019m with friends or in public. \u2026 [but] actually the first time I came out to my supervisors, that felt like a big deal ...\u201d<\/p>\n
Some staff feel the need to hide being LGBT+ from students<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cI think in this university obviously you have got the academics who have got to portray a persona to their students and I think it\u2019s not just with LGBT+ identities, it\u2019s everything, you keep all of your personal life away from the students because it\u2019s not something they should be seeing. You should almost be like on a pedestal.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c...so in my department ... I think academics are a little bit more open about their personal life ... not in detail, but I know my supervisor has children and goes on holiday, that\u2019s quite a normal thing to talk about but I don\u2019t know of any gay members of staff in my department but I went to a conference last year and I think the chair of the conference happened to be LGBT and just seeing that person, that role model there made a little difference to how I felt at that conference\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c...in terms of a barrier that maybe I do have ... as somebody that works with students... I mean I don\u2019t mind students knowing that I\u2019m gay, it doesn\u2019t really make a difference, I suppose it\u2019s whether it makes a difference to them\u00a0...\u00a0for some of them it might make it better because actually they can open up more about their difficulties but for others it might be, I don\u2019t know, depending on their viewpoint they might be less comfortable with that, I don\u2019t know...\u201d<\/p>\n
As a minority you can sometimes feel like an ambassador for your whole community<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cThe other is this issue of feeling like one is an ambassador for one\u2019s community and then you are certainly tasked with holding up the flag for the community in more ways than one, and basically being responsible in some way for other people\u2019s perceptions of the community as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kaleidoscope should support the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion team in any way we can<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cThe Equality Diversity and Inclusion team are overstretched. They are working on issues of race, gender and disability, so LGBT+ issues have not been a focus up until now. Kaleidoscope are currently helping out with potentially looking at getting on the Stonewall Equality Index, but that is a long-term project.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kaleidoscope should have increased presence at staff induction so to encourage people to be more open and feel more comfortable about being out at the University<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201c... it was surprising to me when I heard that there wasn\u2019t a presence [The LGBT+ Staff and PGR group], or such a big presence at staff induction earlier in the year so I think that\u2019s a big thing that the university could ... do to help.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c<\/b>I know that there\u2019s that half day induction, it would be great if someone from Kaleidoscope could go along and say \u2018hey, this is us, this is what we do\u2019. Every new member of staff has to go to that induction so it would be beneficial.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kaleidoscope recently held a discussion event that asked questions around being out in the workplace, specifically here at the University of Bath. As it is LGBT+ History Month, we wanted to share with the whole university community some of the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1404,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,19,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-lgbt-history","category-news"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd4Pwk-2Q","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/kaleidoscope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/kaleidoscope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/kaleidoscope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/kaleidoscope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1404"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/kaleidoscope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/kaleidoscope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/kaleidoscope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/kaleidoscope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/kaleidoscope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}