By Diana Martínez
My name is Diana Martínez, I am a software engineer. I’m Mexican. I was the lead of the regional LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group in my company. And I’m openly bisexual. My coming out to myself, at work, and in my ERG happened pretty much at the same time. I joined a large tech company about three years ago, and one of the first things I loved about it was the existing ERGs. I have always advocated for what I feel is right, and that was true even when I considered myself only an ally to the LGBTQ+ community. I am an empath, and meeting people and hearing stories about their struggles just because they existed in a way others didn’t understand made me angry.
I have always been bisexual—that part is clear now—but I didn’t realize it earlier. I was born and raised in Mexico, and Latin American culture, like many others, is heavily heteronormative. Because of the media, I knew gay people existed and had heard about “men who dress up as women”—these were not considered good things to be. Rather, they were something you laugh at, something you whisper about, something shameful. It also didn’t represent my feelings, because I liked boys, so I figured I could not be anything but straight with particular feelings towards girls. Joining my company directly from college meant moving from a small town to a big city, leaving my parents, and learning to live by myself and with myself. It meant a lot of self-discovery and asking myself uncomfortable questions.
I was already vocal about my allyship. I began learning and exposing myself to unique queer spaces that I wanted to understand. When I learned the company had a group specifically to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, I knew I wanted to be a part of that.
It was a safe space, there were a lot of people, and we got together and shared our stories: about coming out, about activism, about the workplace. There was one particular story about a bi+ person that made everything inside me click. That was me. I had exposed myself to experiences far from mine because I wanted to understand them, but I had failed to explore my own feelings. I had defined bisexuality as feeling romantic and sexual attraction to men and women equally. But I am attracted to nonbinary folks, and I experience attraction to femininity and masculinity in different ways, so I brushed off the possibility of being bi myself. I didn’t give myself time to explore, time to think, time to redefine what bisexuality or the general bisexual experience was.
I thought my feelings were those of a straight woman (who apparently could date non-men if they asked her out first because that’s still 100% straight and not just her being shy) because I never asked someone else about it. I didn’t ask my straight friends how they felt, and I didn’t know any bisexual people yet. It took some time for me to come to terms with it, to admit it to myself first, and then to others. I remember I told my ERG board first. The first time I ever said it out loud (I hadn’t even done that to myself either) was to people I had known for maybe two weeks because I felt safe, seen, and cared for. I knew they would get it, and they would stand by me.
Bisexual advocacy in the workplace for me meant finding a door that led right back to me, the real me. It meant finding a place where I belong and where I can thrive. It meant identifying biphobia and intolerance within my work group and realizing all the tools I had to speak up against it and bring about change, which empowered me to not only stand up for myself but for others; my company had my back, too. I honestly didn’t feel safe to come out to all my peers back then, but I changed groups and became my LGBTQ+ ERG lead and now I’m out in my team, too. I want to be that person for others, I want my story to resonate with someone, or to be the person someone feels safe to reach out to when they’re struggling or questioning.
This is why targeted advocacy is important: people with different identities have different needs, and especially for those with nonbinary identities, belonging is always hard. We need people to understand our specific struggles and to help us overcome them and become the best version of ourselves, just as my ERG helped me find myself.
Diana Martínez is a Mexican software engineer who came out as bisexual in 2019. Her background is in mechatronics but shifted to software once in the workforce. She was head of the Pride Employee Resource Group in her company for four years and has been a vocal ally for the entire LGBTQIA+ community for most of her life.