By Lila Hartelius
What belongs with children? Balloons, animal crackers, jump ropes … bisexuals?
What belongs at school? Notebooks, pencils, teachers … bisexual teachers?
What belongs in the definition of bisexual teachers? Pedophiles, creeps, and perverts? Or ordinary people who earnestly want to make a positive difference in young people’s lives and who simply happen to have the capacity to have crushes on members of more than just one gender?
In my encounters with scholastic environments in the West, I have often come across what seems to be a phobia about young children hearing the word “sex” or any words that contain it. The name for my sexual orientation happens to include that very word. In the debate about whether to come out at work, I am confronted with the awareness that I may be contending with not only homophobia, and not only biphobia, but also sex phobia.
Most of my work-time interactions in schools are with students ages five to ten. Coming out to my students would be out of context and uncalled-for. I am there to help them learn English, not to tell them about my personal life. My interactions with staff and other instructors are brief, time constrained and focused primarily on the immediate pragmatics of my or their job. Commuting and a full schedule render after-work socializing with colleagues a moot point. These factors leave little room to create any ground from which coming out at work might even seem relevant.
Even if I took precious time out of my schedule to get to know some of the staff or instructors, the risk in revealing to them that I “like both guys and girls” is that, even if I express it in a roundabout way, there is a good chance their thoughts will lead them around to that term that has the word “sex” in it. If I worked in an office where all interaction pertaining to my job happened between adults only, I might feel more comfortable coming out to co-workers (and I might even use that scandalous word to do so). My colleagues, however, know that I work with children – indeed, the very same children they endeavor to protect and look out for. Needless to say, I, too, endeavor to protect and look out for those children. Yet misconceptions about bisexuality (e.g. that it is synonymous with pedophilia or sexual perversion) can sometimes unfortunately open the door to co-workers casting a wary eye on a colleague known or suspected to be bisexual.
While I am reluctant to risk my co-workers assuming an attitude of mistrust toward me if I were to come out to them, I am driven to ask myself, “Am I O.K. with keeping my personal and professional lives separate?” At times, I think, “I am at this job to do something I do well and love to do. My sexual orientation is none of your business.” Yet behind this self-assured thought I often sense in myself traces of fear, insecurity, and a longing to be accepted by my colleagues for who I am without having to monitor or edit what I say to them. A feeling that I am leading a double life or “waiting in the wings” (for a more accepting workplace, perhaps) plagues me with anxiety and discontent. Hiding is exhausting.
Perhaps the stress I feel in keeping my personal and professional lives separate comes partly from the fact that I am still in the process of coming to accept my bisexuality. My longing to be approved of by others may come to feel less painfully urgent as I become more self-affirming.
At the same time, feeling that one is accepted in their community is often important to maintaining a sense of personal well-being. Someone who is fearfully hiding aspects of themselves from what may incidentally be one of their primary communities – their work team – may feel anxious or unhappy as a result.
Conventional wisdom (a.k.a. “common sense”) counsels against mixing the personal with the professional. However, has it not been discovered in many a workplace that colleagues who feel themselves to be part of a cohesive team do their jobs better? And wouldn’t the element of co-workers getting to know one another be a fundamental part of creating a sense of cohesion among them?
True, in many workplaces, sexuality may not be the most relevant topic to broach. Subjects such as dating and relationships, however, do tend to come up from time to time in “water cooler conversations” (or the equivalent, in absence of a water cooler). If while at work a person has no desire to talk about their love life anyhow, then this separation of personal and professional may be a self-empowered choice and pose no problem. If, however, they feel they are deliberately withholding or altering information about themselves for fear of being viewed negatively because of misconceptions about bisexuality, this separation of personal and professional may reflect the person’s sense that they have to pretend, to a degree, to be someone else in order to be accepted at work. This may create an invisible rift between themselves and their colleagues.
Rifts tend to be counterproductive to team building and job performance and are generally something to be avoided in the promotion of an effective workplace. On top of that, something in the quality of one’s performance may be lost if one is “hiding in the wings.” Of course, in coming out at work, the invisible rift caused by hiding in fear may simply be replaced by a visible one – that created by confronting hostile or alienating attitudes in one’s colleagues.
“Pick your poison” (or “pick your rift,” as the case may be) is the theme of the day for me at this point with regard to coming out to colleagues or staying in the closet at work. The lesser evil currently seems to be that of remaining in hiding, yet it is still a poison. The detrimental effects of this poison reside not so much in the actual act of hiding, however, as in the fear with which it is done. It is this fear which can eat a person alive, or at least hinder them from feeling a sense of belonging and contentment.
While coming out to my colleagues is something I would like to feel comfortable doing, the person to whom I feel it is the most important for me to come out while at work is myself. Many schools have felt to me like hyper-heteronormative, sex-shaming environments, where the volume is turned up on unspoken homophobia, biphobia, and sex phobia. Putting on a self-protective, asexual “straitjacket” when I walk into work has become so automatic to me that the detrimental effects these internalized cultural phobias have on my happiness and well-being often slip under my own radar.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with actually being straight or asexual. However, any persona one assumes because one is afraid of being oneself can feel pretty claustrophobic. What I do internally in order to assume this persona sometimes even feels like an act of psychological violence against myself. I effectively cut myself off from my own sexuality. It feels like holding my breath. Of course, this does not mean that I feel the need to deliberately express my sexuality at work. It simply means that, whatever I do or do not tell my co-workers about myself, I need to feel that, while at work (or anywhere else, for that matter), I am being honest with myself about who I am.
Still, it does get a bit lonely if I am the only one at work with whom I can be honest about the person I am without fearing hostility or alienation. What a sad thing it is to live a life confined to what one’s fear allows. What an unfortunate thing it is that living a life unbound by fear evokes too often the unfounded suspicions of others.
My only hope is that as I continue to cultivate self-acceptance with regard to my bisexuality I will either feel more at peace with keeping my personal and professional lives separate or care less how my colleagues respond when I act on a resolution that feeling free and whole is more important to me than being accepted for something I am not.
Until then, I’m waiting in the wings.
Lila Hartelius, BA is a published writer who has written funded grant and business proposals and served as editorial assistant for the International Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. Her work has been published in Weird Sisters West and Tendrel (Naropa University’s diversity journal), and she has contributed to the efforts of Bennington College’s Queer Student Union, Naropa University’s GLBTQ student group, and Boulder Pride.
Featured Image: Kate Estrop