[in response to Love Is Infinite's musings on working in a bank]
A friend of mine is vegan and a teacher, but is not vegan at work. She says that she only has a certain number of… ‘distancing myself from colleagues’ tokens/cookies/units, and that she’d rather use those up on radical educational politics than on being vegan around colleagues.
When it comes to feeling alienated in a mainstream workplace, my being non-monogamous is the least of my worries.
When I contemplate going to work in a bank or office, I know that I will be surrounded by colleagues with a mainstream, heteronormative approach to the world. I know that they will assume me to be straight. I will have to listen to the women talking about their diets and lamenting their fat thighs in the toilets. I will be expected to participate in ‘girl talk’, to share makeup tips and dating details and diet plans and to criticise the women in the magazines that will inevitably be scattered around the coffee room.
I know that some people there will be racist, and xenophobic, and I will say nothing. I will allow casual sexism to wash off my back. It will never be quite enough to note down, record and later report: it will be office banter, just friendliness, social chit-chat that assumes a hundred messed-up norms.
If my non-monogamy is relevant at all, it’ll be so through highlighting mono-normativity as misogynistic. When my colleagues claim that men are only after one thing, or that dates will show affection through overt jealousy, or that I should get married as soon as possible, I will nod and smile, knowing that my coming out to them as poly will not change any of these views, nor their assumptions towards me.
If I am to come out as anything, I would want them to know that I am queer and feminist. Non-monogamy seems like a side issue: it is one facet of my queerness and feminism, but in the workplace, it is not the most important part. I’d want them to know that I want no part of their diet talk or ‘bikini body’ discussions, and that my dating is none of their business, and that they are not to project their views onto it. I would want to be out as queer, knowing that at least in legal word I should be protected for it, and hoping that would shield me from some of the straight-girl talk. If I have a limited number of distancing-myself cookies, I’d rather use them on that than on coming out as poly.
I recommend joining two unions. Join the IWW, the anarchist union, as well as a more mainstream and field-relevant union. Get to know your union rep, get to know your rights, and note down instances of heteronormative bullshit just in case you ever need the records.
Don’t come out as poly. They won’t get it, you’ll distance yourself further and you don’t need another area (and for forty hours a week) where people attack your lifestyle with misinformed questions and silly objections. Do come out as queer and feminist: hopefully you can find an ally at work.
Cultivate a rich and full life outside of work. Defend the boundaries between work and your real life fiercely. Take a notebook to work, and write or draw or daydream when you can. Read this. Tweet. Plan coffee dates with friends for lunchtimes. Get out and go for a walk. Arrive on time, and leave on time: work the hours you are paid for, and no more. Look forward to your evenings: fill them with projects and joy. This is your real life. Work just pays the bills. Start a tumblr to catalogue frustrations at work if you need to. Offload onto friends who understand. Phone in sick occasionally. Don’t let them intimidate you. Stay in contact with your union rep. Keep life as easy for yourself as you can. Good luck.
I liked this article a lot – and definitely remember the struggle it was during my deadly-dull (retail) job to keep my intellectual and creative side active, let alone be honest about my gender/politics in a workplace where ‘transvestites’ were the height of gossip and sensation. And, yeah, I agree that being an out queer/feminist is probably a more valuable use of those imaginary tokens, at least for the time being.
One thing that I do wonder, though – were I to end up in an office job, would I be able to -avoid- coming out as poly without straight-up lying? People tend to ask questions about personal lives and so on – do I just pick one partner to talk about, or say “I don’t talk about my personal life while at work” and come off as stone-cold and unfriendly? In my current situation, I think I’m obviously poly to anyone from university who also knows me on Facebook, because the partner who I’m listed as being with isn’t the one they regularly see me kissing.
Thanks so much – and sorry to hear about the dull job and the faily politics!
Sure – I’d say of course do what feels most sensible, and when I had two primaries it often felt kinda important to convey that in most social situations. And I’d definitely want to make sure people in a workplace wouldn’t assume I was cheating, and once super-awkwardly came out to someone in a workplace after they saw me with someone who clearly wasn’t the girlfriend I often talked about… in Love Is Infinite’s post, she talked about wanting to be able to say things like ‘my boyfriend’s other girlfriend’, which got me thinking about what sorts of things are too much information, and where coming-out and distancing-from-colleagues energy should be used.
It feels as though the options have become – be stone-cold and unfriendly, or be seen as a freak and constantly questioned about poly, or lie. And I think I’d probably go for the easiest option for me, which would be gentle lying, mostly by omission: answering questions, giving a little bit of information, but not really elaborating or engaging much. Other people’s easiest options might be different!
Thank you for writing and posting this. You’ve managed to sum up and crystallise what I was thinking and feeling about this scenario very succinctly.
I’m with you in that mainstream culture will only support so many standard deviations (to borrow mathematical terminology) from the norm, so we need to choose which ones are most important to us and represent those. All in all a long way of me saying I agree with you wholeheartedly!
I work for a bank and I keep very quiet, there may be some people who are willing to listen and accept, and I know of a number of polyamorous people in our organisation. However they, like me, are in the closet and will probably remain so for the moment, equally they’re also the ones on the LGBT committees at work and working hard to be activists on that front.
That’s a really interesting and well-written article – thank you!
I think it does, as you say, depend on personal circumstance. Being poly is such a massive part of me, and my social life, and my internal monologues (and/or daydreams!) that I feel for me, it would be worthwhile using up some of those distancing-cookies if it became necessary. Mind you, I’ve been incredibly lucky with the people I’ve worked with in the past, so that probably influences me a lot – I don’t want to *less* out now than I used to be.
I would mildly disagree with the ‘office work is just dull and pays the bills, keep it mostly at arms length – your *real* life is stuff you can’t do at work’ mindset. This isn’t necessarily true for everyone. I love my job. Yes I’m a 9-5er, who works in an office running education programmes, but that doesn’t make my work life just a dull tedium that I need to endure to get to Real Life. I can get my fun and socialising and creativity at work too. I’m just aligning it with what is productive for my organisation.
Mind you, I have been very fortunate to find a job where I can feel comfortable doing that, and I’m aware that this is not, perhaps, a typical experience.
I would agree with Serina here. If you are working in a job where people don’t see it strictly as paying the bills striving to see it that way will alienate you to an extreme in an environment that might be alienating in other areas. I would say engage and see how you can get and stay motivated in a way that works for you. It has to be a good relationship. Like with people, that means that you get good stuff when you put in extra work. You do it because you want to and you get sweet rewards and work and you rejoice together at what you have managed to do. If you put work in and don’t get recognition and, if anything, feel worse, you can either not put any extras in or change job.
Regarding being out, I am out as bi to those who are willing to discuss it and I have come out as poly to a few colleagues. I have to say the reactions have always been good. One of them regularly asks me about both my boyfriends. Playing the “singular”/”plural” game is very tiring. You have to remember which facts you have shared about your partner so as not to contradict yourself. I would say, test the waters. See if people are open minded. If they are, they will likely be ok. If they aren’t and you see them acting in bullying ways towards other people in the workplace, don’t do it. If your boss or someone senior seems open minded, you can come out to them and share your concerns. At best they will offer to fight your corner. At worst, they´ll leave you to fend for yourself. I doubt very much they would out you and they have a legal responsibility to take care of your well-being. I would tell you to join the lgbt network if you are lgbt. If there is a point when there is an issue of harassment you might do well to have someone who represents you, and most harassment isn’t explicitly around one topic, so being covered by lgbt will give you strength. Finally, I would say that coming out is only something that you can decide. It’s not an exact science. If you decide to come out, do it feeling confident and calm about your decision. There´s no need to rush it. If you don’t, join mostly poly people, who aren’t!
(Partly cross-posted from my comment on the Love Is Infinite post you linked to…)
I’m out at work (in a medium-sized third-sector organisation), and I was at my last job (in a small, private software firm) too. I’m aware that there’s no legal protection for being poly, but I also know that my colleagues are basically nice people and that they like me, and that they understand or try to understand that polyamory works for me and that both my partners are very important parts of my life.
I don\’t talk about polyamory all the time, any more than I talk about bi activism all the time, or being a Quaker or being vegetarian – and I probably haven\’t used the word \’polyamory\’ more than once or twice – I just talk about my life in the way my colleagues talk about theirs, and if they ask me questions about how any of it works I answer them honestly
I know I’m lucky that I’ve found a job where there’s community spirit and where my colleagues care about each other’s wellbeing. In that situation, I believe that being open about what and who is important in my life gives me an easier ride and more protection than trying to keep my relationships secret.
Frankly, if I found myself in a job where I couldn\’t be myself and where the 9-5 was just paying for the \’real life\’ in the evenings and at weekends, I\’d be looking very hard for another job. I want my real life to be happening all the time.
Thanks for this, really important! Will try not to complete reiterate whats already been said. To me there’s definitely a distinction between what I would do in my future career and ‘just a job’. Personally, as I want to go into teaching, I would probably feel comfortable coming out as poly as from my experience, teachers are generally very progressive and more accepting (for example, in school some of the teachers I get on best with were the first people I came out to as queer, and were very supportive regarding the shit I got from other students about it, and was also very lucky that I had an openly poly teacher in sixth form) however in my part time retail job being in a VERY rural and reactionary area, I feel I’ve used all my ‘tokens’ (a concept I LOVE btw) simply by being noticeably political (and even sadder, a trade unionist) as well as originally having tried to call people out on homophobia/sexism/racism etc
I think one thing that should be added is to be careful of who you add on social media from work. Personally I’ve always avoided it but have known many people who have had things reported to managers, gossiped about among colleagues etc and if its something as potentially complex as being poly and you’re not comfortable with people making their own assumptions about it then its best to be wary
Thanks again for the article
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