Family Stickers 10/28/2011
 
A little levity on a Friday afternoon….with a message, of course.

I walked into the pet store earlier this week and was confronted with a large cardboard marketing campaign for Family Stickers – the new thing in advertising who we are through our vehicles. You may have seen them – they are stick figure stickers that one is meant to put on the back window of the vehicle to depict ones family – including pets.

I have seen these on people’s cars, so the concept wasn’t new. What was new was the idea of choosing the figure that “fits”. Of course I scrutinized the poster from a diversity lens and noted several concerns – now that I’ve been to the website, some of these are less, but here are a few after a quick perusal.

On the website you can choose your family members  (adult, teen, child, baby and pet) and then you are given a multitude of options to complete the image by choosing a head and a body. You can also create them in colour. Although I’m not sure about the names (white to dark mocha), hooray for options!

I was pleasantly surprised to see a mixture of possible hairstyles and activities the bodies could be doing. As an example, there is a dreadlock option for hairstyles for males and females (yay!). But there is also some stereotypes/cultural misappropriation like the feather head-dress option for boys (ugh).

The bigger issue that stood out for me today (and what I’m going to focus on)was gender: Before you get to these choices of colour or body or head, you have to choose male or female (adult, teen, child or baby). Too bad!

Here’s the issue:
While it seems that the body choices are doing similar activities, not all of the activities are the same: both have “doctor” options, for example, but only females have a “fairy” option and only males have a “business suit” option. What about guys who take themselves, lightly or a woman who is in Corporate Canada? And what if you’re trans-identified?

Ah the world of binary gender and gender role stereotyping.

I, for one have a hairstyle that more closely matches a choice in the “adult male” category. While I suppose I could just go into the adult male category for my stick figure representation and call it a day (it’s just a stick figure for crying out loud), it bugs me. There is a bigger message; an undercurrent that can add to the perpetuation of lack of choices, expectations, sexism and homophobia, biphobia and transphobia.

What is so gendered about a stick figure that I should have to choose? Seems like a safe place to start challenging some of our ideas and expectations of gender and gender roles and opening these up.

 Wouldn’t it be great if all of the options were available for each family member category so that everyone had the same choices of how to represent themselves? In fact, wouldn’t it be great if there were no categories at all, just a bunchof choices for colour, heads and body?

See more.

Copyright 2011 Annemarie Shrouder
author, speaker & facilitator on issues of diversityand inclusion


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Today President Obama started the process of making Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell a thing of the past. Hurray! The video is moving, and he makes some amazing statements about civil rights and recognizing people for their contributions.  It’s a decision that from this side of the LGBTQ human rights debate, makes perfect sense. Sexual orientation has nothing to do with how men and women serve their country (or any other job). But it’s long been an excuse to exclude some, while supporting homophobia.

I applaud President Obama’s commitment to this issue, but here is my question:

What is the US military going to do to make sure that their men and women are safe? Already today I have read that one of the considerations is how to assign barracks. This suggests that homophobia is alive and well and that possibly, while it may be ok to be gay in the military, it will be a lonely life that will ask certain soldiers to prove their allegiance and be reminded every day that they are “different”.  That is not a place where I think anyone would like to find themselves, and certainly doesn’t engender confidence that we can really be who we are.  

Signing papers is a first step. I hope there is a lot of education, training, discipline, and zero-tolerance to back it up to make sure gay and lesbian soldiers are safe and truly feel welcome.

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This evening I attended a networking event and panel discussion. The topic was how LGBT women navigate heterosexism in the corporate world. The 4 speakers were all dynamic, accomplished business women. However only one of them addressed the topic. One wasn't LGB or T, and the other two shared their stories of how and why they came out at work, and the implications.

Don't get me wrong. We need allies and they are important. Sharing our stories is also important - it helps us to understand each other better. But I can't help but wonder at what is left out of conversations when we focus on our coming out stories.

While it is true that each coming out story has, as it's context, heterosexism and homophobia (or else we wouldn't spend so much energy deciding if and when and how and to whom to come out) - these usually form the background. What we miss, then, are opportunities to talk about the things that are not just about us, as LGBTQ people, but about everyone and the society we live in, and what has to change for our workplaces, schools, and communities to become inclusive.
 
Heterosexism and homophobia are the reason we don't come out, that LGBTQ youth suicide rates are higher, and that depression is an issue in our communities.  We need to talk about what these look like (particularly heterosexism, since it is systemic and insiduous, and hard to detect if you are not impacted by it) and how to eliminate them. Coming out stories can provide a context to explain the intricacies of heterosexism and homophobia, but usually we stop at the story, and don't go far enough to accomplish this.

Creating LGBTQ inclusive and safe spaces is important. Lesbians, gay men, bisexual individuals and transgender individuals benefit: less stress, more engagement, more productivity, more belonging.  Our straight allies benefit: the opportunity to see different perspectives. Compnaies benefit: broader ideas, greater reach to communities. But to create these spaces and reap these benefits we have to ask the hard questions, talk about the tough realities, and work together to create awareness and change. Stories are not enough.


© Annemarie Shrouder 2010
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So Ken Mehlman has come out. 

It's not shocking to me to find out that someone who has been backing right wing views against all things gay actually is gay.

Homophobia is alive and well in our societies and internalized homophobia is no exception.

I'm sure the question has arisen in many minds "how could he be part of the RNC and their agenda as a gay man?" and this is what I'd like to talk about today.
  
Because I'm sure a lot of people don't get it.
  
Coming out publicly is the only part of this process that is seen - because it involves other people. Coming out as a public figure is probably many times more stressful. But before someone who is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender comes out to the people they know and love (and in this case, the world..) they first have to come out to themselves.
And that - in a society that still tells us it's wrong and bad to be gay, in a country like the USA where you can still be fired in some states for being LGB or T, where you have no rights to marry the person you love in most states, and where you can still be imprisoned in some parts of the country for being intimate with that person - is not an easy thing.

Everyone has their own journey Ken Mehlman is quoted as saying. And he is right. The process of realizing, recognizing, and then accepting that you are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender is different for everyone. But the messages and laws in many countries make this journey much harder than it needs to be.  Even in a country like Canada, with good human rights laws, homophobia and heterosexism continue to shape how (and if) we are seen and acknowledged.

So it is possible to deny that you are gay until the cows come home - if it means the difference between having and losing everything and everyone you know - or even the risk of that. It is possible to try to convince yourself you are straight, because it would be so much easier. And we can cultivate the art of pretending we are okay with a life that is not really ours.  Because the alternative seems worse - and sometimes is. And when we do this, we choose roles that fit the role we have chosen. If not to prove to others we are not gay, then to bolster our hope that it could be true.

Internalized homophobia is painful. It means you cannot love yourself, because you don't like who you are. Of course you would want to be someone else under those circumstances. if only because of the erroneous belief that you will feel better.

Ken Mehlman's journey is his. I have no idea what it was like. But I can imagine the torture of denying who you are, and of supporting a cause that continued to drill it into your head that who "those people" are (who you are) is fundamentally flawed.

It's no shock to me that Mehlman also said that he is happier and wishes he had done it sooner.

© Annemarie Shrouder 2010
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(c) 2011 Building Equitable Environments