The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
Note: Originally posted on the EAGLE online community site, behind IBM's firewall on 10 April 2005, at 6:10 pm, and posted here on 24 May 2007:
My sister Kathy, I've mentioned here before, is the principal of Brooklyn International High School, which is made up of new immigrants and refugees from many different countries. Every year, they have an international festival, which is basically a talent show, where the students get to show off the culture of their native land or demonstrate how swiftly they've assimilated into American culture, or some combo of both.
I skipped synagogue on Friday night to go, and Pat was sick, so I went on my own.
Here's what was worth the price of admission:
It begins with an international fashion show, where the female students dress in the fashions of their native countries and walk onstage to pop music and a peer emcee's announcements: "Here's Miss Russia, and Miss Vietnam, and Miss Morocco, and Miss China...and Miss...and Miss...and lucky Miss Argentina, with Mr. Ecuador and Mr. China:
Miss Argentina, in a bright, red, satin gown, is rolled onstage in her wheelchair, all smiles, beautiful and apparently completely paralyzed; Mr. Ecuador and Mr. China lift her to a standing position from her wheelchair, so she can preen like the other girls, and her smile's blinding, and she is placed back in the chair gracefully by the boys and rolled over to where the girls of the other countries are standing proudly.
I burst into tears in the dark. It's just what the world ought to be like all the time.
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Monday, April 4, 2005
Rome and Religion Reflections
The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
Note: Originally posted on the EAGLE online community site, behind IBM's firewall on 4 April 2005, at 6:37 pm, and posted here on 24 May 2007:
With the pope's passing this weekend, I'm thinking of the trip I made to Rome in late-January and about religion altogether. I was in Rome on business, but had two days ahead of my meeting to tour around the city with colleagues.
The Vatican
The Saturday we arrive, I am so happy to be somewhere western again, as we are coming from Bangkok and cool as Bangkok is as a cultural experience, it is easier to be somewhere relatively familiar after a week of being somewhere so unfamiliar. And one of my colleagues is Italian-American and seems now to be in paradise.
We check into the hotel and eat our complimentary breakfast there; I am thrilled for the great cheeses and blood-oranges, neither of which are readily available in Bangkok.
My colleagues want to go straight to the Vatican, which we do, by 8:30 am. At the admissions booth, one of my Catholic colleagues says, "I think all Catholics should get in for free."
"I think all non-Christians should get in free," I respond, smiling.
"Good point," he says, smiling, too, realizing that I am talking in terms of a recruitment tactic.
We walk around and it is remarkable to see all of the famous modern artists the collection includes and the Sistine Chapel and all of the ornate murals along the way and I tell my colleague, I do believe that Jesus is an agent for good and that he was an amazing person, but I just can't get to the Divine part. I'm fairly sure I could have had I been raised to do so, since I tend to believe Jewish doctrine that doesn't necessarily make logical sense.
He looks at me, smiling ruefully, wishing I could understand what he understands, and we keep walking and I feel I am there for a foreign cultural ride. We see preserved popes from the past, lying in St. Peter's and it is unusual to me, but again, I realize it is just what a different culture and religion values.
I look around at St. Peter's grandeur, the church's giant majesty, and say to another Catholic colleague, "How can anyone see this and challenge the supremacy of Catholicism? Do you think this was built to glorify God, or to demonstrate the might of the Catholic Church or...?"
"Yes," he answers. And then, "Think of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. Probably, it was also built for both reasons." I agree.
When we walk through the part of the Vatican Museum that exhibits all of the jeweled ritual items, I recall a Temple in Bangkok from the week before, which is likewise full of treasures. Every culture has its place for gems, it seems.
Julia
On Sunday, my two Catholic colleagues opt to go to Mass in St. Peter's Square and invite me to join them, but I prefer to spend the day with Julia, an EAGLE - Italy member.
We have a breakfast-picnic on a hilltop next to the Finnish Embassy and tell mini versions of our coming-out-stories, complete strangers that we are. It's the most at-home I have felt in 10 days. Julia is half-German, half-Italian and my heritage is Russian and I'm American, but our lesbianism gives us remarkable common ground...and our common knowledge of English, luckily for me.
Julia is generous and drives us all over Rome and particularly to where I want to go, which is especially to the Jewish Ghetto section.
There are posters pasted to walls there in Italian and Hebrew, advertising, Il giorno della memoria/Yom Hazikaron/Day of Remembrance on 27 January, which is the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, if I'm remembering correctly.
We enter the large synagogue and there will be a tour shortly. Meanwhile, there's a small museum, where we can see ritual items and it's a contrast to the Buddhist temple and the Vatican Museum; I'm whispering animatedly about the significance of each item to Julia. When I describe what Pat refers to as "the little Torahdress," I miss Pat and want her to be here with us.
We look at Torah crowns in sterling silver that are shaped like pomegranites, and with tiny bells hanging from them, and ornate Torah pointers, and utilitarian circumcision gear and castle-tower-shaped spice-boxes....And then it's time for the tour.
The tour guide is an Italian Jew and probably in her late-twenties and quite cute. I don't remember any details any longer, just the gorgeous, high-ceilinged sanctuary and the guide herself.
We take some photos in front of the synagogue, and a few other people are milling around outside it, too, and just then, a bus full of soccer players from the out-of-town professional team drives by, yelling the equivalent of "Faggots!" at all of us. At first, I'm thinking, they were yelling specifically at Julia and me, but Julia assures me that to them, everyone local is a "faggot;"it's just part of their pre-game, self-fortifying ritual.
The irony of having a gang of guys yelling this anti-gay slur at me as I stand in front of a landmark in the Ghetto, where Jews lived necessarily during the Holocaust and now a number still choose to live, does not escape me.
We head to the Jewish bookstore, where the cash register is also staffed by appealing Jewish, Italian women -- they're having a discussion about a holiday and it sounds native to them, and that's how I infer they're Jewish.
The store is a bit busy and I look around and the Italian Jewish community looks familiar, like I could be in a Jewish bookstore in New York or Chicago or Miami and the people would look similar -- except that they are more stylishly dressed than the people I've seen typically in NYC's or Chicago's or Miami's Jewish bookstores. It's not a stereotype; it's an observation: The Italians I've seen in Rome and Milan, on average, look better/more inventive in their clothing than people I've seen in the States, Jewish or otherwise.
We have lunch in a restaurant in the Ghetto and I order hot broccoli with Parmesan cheese on it. The server says it comes cold and I ask that they heat it up, or Julia does for me in Italian.
At the beginning of the day, I teach Julia an expression I think will be handy for her to know in relation to me: "high-maintenance." She doesn't get it. A few hours later, at lunch, she says, "I think I know what 'high-maintenance' means now." We laugh.
While we walk around the famous historic sites of Rome, I learn that in addition to being an IBMer, Julia's also a documentarian; she edited a film that was used for the Millennium, which tells the story of Rome's origin, including the myth of the wolf who fed the twins, as well as produced a documentary in 2001 in tribute to Piera Zanotti, an Italian lesbian pioneer.
The documentary and Julia made the rounds to all of the big GLBT film festivals in Europe and the United States: "Odio i saluti/I Hate Goodbyes."
Julia burns a DVD of it for me and graciously drops it off to me during the week. I watch it and cry at parts because of the bravery that Piera and her comrades display, and feel passion as I see still photos and current film of beautiful women, and am so grateful for who I am. The film recognizes a woman who believes that she ought to be able to be identified as a lesbian publicly and not just privately, and lives her beliefs -- since the '50s. She's a role model.
World Pride==>World Peace
While we drive and walk around, Julia describes how hectic it was for her while working on the World Pride festival that was in Rome and full-time at IBM -- and how worthwhile it was.
She smiles as we look at the infrastructure improvements of the city and says, "During World Pride we used to say, 'Isn't it great how Rome has done so much work to prepare for us?' when really, the work had been done to prepare for the Millennium celebration." Julia's a hero, too, for the millennium. Piera led the way and Julia's carrying the torch now.
I'm reminded of the front-page "New York Times" article that ran last week, on the 31st of March, where there's a photo of all the major religious leaders of Jerusalem (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) coming together in an unprecedented show of inter-faith unity to protest the upcoming World Pride 2005 in Jerusalem this summer.
My rabbi, who's mentioned in the article, since she leads the world's largest Jewish GLBT congregation, says on Friday night, "I think..." -- and Pat leans over to whisper to me, "...we ought to be given the Nobel Peace Prize this year" -- "...our [GLBT] community ought to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for how we've brought together the world's religions," the rabbi finishes.
Silence=Deaf, and Dumb/Ignorant
I'm also reminded of how I'm at dinner again recently with an IBM friend from beyond the United States -- who I wrote about here when she surprised me by coming out to me last year, as I had no idea she was a lesbian -- and how I'm telling her about a class I've just taken from a deaf rabbinic intern at my synagogue.
I tell her how he has taught us about how Judaism treats deafness and has told us about how respectful the Bible is, but how exclusive the rabbis of the Talmudwere 1,000+ years later:
Deaf people were disqualified from fulfilling commandments, the rabbis of the Talmuddeclared, since back then, deaf people had no means of communication compared to today's technologies, so most of the rabbis thought deaf people were developmentally disabled as well, and how could someone who's developmentally disabled be expected to fulfill the commandments of Judaism?
I preface this bit of learning for my friend by saying that a number of years ago while studying Talmud in Chicago, I had learned about another group that was disqualified by the Talmudic rabbis, specifically for the commandment to blow the shofar(ram's horn) on the Jewish New Year: the "toom-toom," which was Aramaic or Talmudic Hebrew for someone who's intersex.
I remember feeling excluded, since although I'm not intersex, I'm certainly androgynous. I told my friend that toom-tooms were excluded because in Jewish law, according to the Talmud, women are excluded from blowing the shofar and since the rabbis couldn't be sure which gender was predominate among toom-tooms, better to err on the side of caution because God forbid a mostly-female person fulfilled the commandment. Mind you, I've always felt excluded as a woman by Orthodox Judaism, but that's business as usual. This seemed extra-harsh.
My friend shakes her head and starts to say, "That's why -- forget it...." She doesn't want to say, "That's why I think religion can be so harmful," since she knows that I value mine and she doesn't want to offend me, so I finish the sentence for her and she affirms that it strikes her that so much trouble has come from it historically.
The next day, I remember why I want to tell her about how infuriated I was initially about the toom-tooms, so that I can tell her about some peace I gained from a classmate in this Deafness and Judaism course.
During the Deafness and Judaism class, I say, "Great! Now I'm potentially doubly-excluded if I ever go deaf!" and I talk of how bitter I felt in Chicago when I learned about exclusion of the toom-tooms.
One of the other students, I tell her, himself apparently a transgender man says, "At least the rabbis [a thousand years ago] talked about intersex people, which is remarkable. Even today, hardly anyone wants to discuss the topic."
"So to him," I tell my friend, "Any sort of discussion is at least acknowledgment of these people's existence. How's that for a positive spin?"
She answers, "...I think neglect is much worse than having a negative attitude towards someone or towards a group, so the transguy is right on....As long as "something" is at least acknowledged in its existence, it means it's being discussed, too...which is the main thing that helps eliminate the fear that most humans have about anything "strange" they don't know. Talking about "otherness" means getting to know it and that's a very good thing, of course, because we don't fear what we know."
Amen.
Note: Originally posted on the EAGLE online community site, behind IBM's firewall on 4 April 2005, at 6:37 pm, and posted here on 24 May 2007:
With the pope's passing this weekend, I'm thinking of the trip I made to Rome in late-January and about religion altogether. I was in Rome on business, but had two days ahead of my meeting to tour around the city with colleagues.
The Vatican
The Saturday we arrive, I am so happy to be somewhere western again, as we are coming from Bangkok and cool as Bangkok is as a cultural experience, it is easier to be somewhere relatively familiar after a week of being somewhere so unfamiliar. And one of my colleagues is Italian-American and seems now to be in paradise.
We check into the hotel and eat our complimentary breakfast there; I am thrilled for the great cheeses and blood-oranges, neither of which are readily available in Bangkok.
My colleagues want to go straight to the Vatican, which we do, by 8:30 am. At the admissions booth, one of my Catholic colleagues says, "I think all Catholics should get in for free."
"I think all non-Christians should get in free," I respond, smiling.
"Good point," he says, smiling, too, realizing that I am talking in terms of a recruitment tactic.
We walk around and it is remarkable to see all of the famous modern artists the collection includes and the Sistine Chapel and all of the ornate murals along the way and I tell my colleague, I do believe that Jesus is an agent for good and that he was an amazing person, but I just can't get to the Divine part. I'm fairly sure I could have had I been raised to do so, since I tend to believe Jewish doctrine that doesn't necessarily make logical sense.
He looks at me, smiling ruefully, wishing I could understand what he understands, and we keep walking and I feel I am there for a foreign cultural ride. We see preserved popes from the past, lying in St. Peter's and it is unusual to me, but again, I realize it is just what a different culture and religion values.
I look around at St. Peter's grandeur, the church's giant majesty, and say to another Catholic colleague, "How can anyone see this and challenge the supremacy of Catholicism? Do you think this was built to glorify God, or to demonstrate the might of the Catholic Church or...?"
"Yes," he answers. And then, "Think of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. Probably, it was also built for both reasons." I agree.
When we walk through the part of the Vatican Museum that exhibits all of the jeweled ritual items, I recall a Temple in Bangkok from the week before, which is likewise full of treasures. Every culture has its place for gems, it seems.
Julia
On Sunday, my two Catholic colleagues opt to go to Mass in St. Peter's Square and invite me to join them, but I prefer to spend the day with Julia, an EAGLE - Italy member.
We have a breakfast-picnic on a hilltop next to the Finnish Embassy and tell mini versions of our coming-out-stories, complete strangers that we are. It's the most at-home I have felt in 10 days. Julia is half-German, half-Italian and my heritage is Russian and I'm American, but our lesbianism gives us remarkable common ground...and our common knowledge of English, luckily for me.
Julia is generous and drives us all over Rome and particularly to where I want to go, which is especially to the Jewish Ghetto section.
There are posters pasted to walls there in Italian and Hebrew, advertising, Il giorno della memoria/Yom Hazikaron/Day of Remembrance on 27 January, which is the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, if I'm remembering correctly.
We enter the large synagogue and there will be a tour shortly. Meanwhile, there's a small museum, where we can see ritual items and it's a contrast to the Buddhist temple and the Vatican Museum; I'm whispering animatedly about the significance of each item to Julia. When I describe what Pat refers to as "the little Torahdress," I miss Pat and want her to be here with us.
We look at Torah crowns in sterling silver that are shaped like pomegranites, and with tiny bells hanging from them, and ornate Torah pointers, and utilitarian circumcision gear and castle-tower-shaped spice-boxes....And then it's time for the tour.
The tour guide is an Italian Jew and probably in her late-twenties and quite cute. I don't remember any details any longer, just the gorgeous, high-ceilinged sanctuary and the guide herself.
We take some photos in front of the synagogue, and a few other people are milling around outside it, too, and just then, a bus full of soccer players from the out-of-town professional team drives by, yelling the equivalent of "Faggots!" at all of us. At first, I'm thinking, they were yelling specifically at Julia and me, but Julia assures me that to them, everyone local is a "faggot;"it's just part of their pre-game, self-fortifying ritual.
The irony of having a gang of guys yelling this anti-gay slur at me as I stand in front of a landmark in the Ghetto, where Jews lived necessarily during the Holocaust and now a number still choose to live, does not escape me.
We head to the Jewish bookstore, where the cash register is also staffed by appealing Jewish, Italian women -- they're having a discussion about a holiday and it sounds native to them, and that's how I infer they're Jewish.
The store is a bit busy and I look around and the Italian Jewish community looks familiar, like I could be in a Jewish bookstore in New York or Chicago or Miami and the people would look similar -- except that they are more stylishly dressed than the people I've seen typically in NYC's or Chicago's or Miami's Jewish bookstores. It's not a stereotype; it's an observation: The Italians I've seen in Rome and Milan, on average, look better/more inventive in their clothing than people I've seen in the States, Jewish or otherwise.
We have lunch in a restaurant in the Ghetto and I order hot broccoli with Parmesan cheese on it. The server says it comes cold and I ask that they heat it up, or Julia does for me in Italian.
At the beginning of the day, I teach Julia an expression I think will be handy for her to know in relation to me: "high-maintenance." She doesn't get it. A few hours later, at lunch, she says, "I think I know what 'high-maintenance' means now." We laugh.
While we walk around the famous historic sites of Rome, I learn that in addition to being an IBMer, Julia's also a documentarian; she edited a film that was used for the Millennium, which tells the story of Rome's origin, including the myth of the wolf who fed the twins, as well as produced a documentary in 2001 in tribute to Piera Zanotti, an Italian lesbian pioneer.
The documentary and Julia made the rounds to all of the big GLBT film festivals in Europe and the United States: "Odio i saluti/I Hate Goodbyes."
Julia burns a DVD of it for me and graciously drops it off to me during the week. I watch it and cry at parts because of the bravery that Piera and her comrades display, and feel passion as I see still photos and current film of beautiful women, and am so grateful for who I am. The film recognizes a woman who believes that she ought to be able to be identified as a lesbian publicly and not just privately, and lives her beliefs -- since the '50s. She's a role model.
World Pride==>World Peace
While we drive and walk around, Julia describes how hectic it was for her while working on the World Pride festival that was in Rome and full-time at IBM -- and how worthwhile it was.
She smiles as we look at the infrastructure improvements of the city and says, "During World Pride we used to say, 'Isn't it great how Rome has done so much work to prepare for us?' when really, the work had been done to prepare for the Millennium celebration." Julia's a hero, too, for the millennium. Piera led the way and Julia's carrying the torch now.
I'm reminded of the front-page "New York Times" article that ran last week, on the 31st of March, where there's a photo of all the major religious leaders of Jerusalem (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) coming together in an unprecedented show of inter-faith unity to protest the upcoming World Pride 2005 in Jerusalem this summer.
My rabbi, who's mentioned in the article, since she leads the world's largest Jewish GLBT congregation, says on Friday night, "I think..." -- and Pat leans over to whisper to me, "...we ought to be given the Nobel Peace Prize this year" -- "...our [GLBT] community ought to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for how we've brought together the world's religions," the rabbi finishes.
Silence=Deaf, and Dumb/Ignorant
I'm also reminded of how I'm at dinner again recently with an IBM friend from beyond the United States -- who I wrote about here when she surprised me by coming out to me last year, as I had no idea she was a lesbian -- and how I'm telling her about a class I've just taken from a deaf rabbinic intern at my synagogue.
I tell her how he has taught us about how Judaism treats deafness and has told us about how respectful the Bible is, but how exclusive the rabbis of the Talmudwere 1,000+ years later:
Deaf people were disqualified from fulfilling commandments, the rabbis of the Talmuddeclared, since back then, deaf people had no means of communication compared to today's technologies, so most of the rabbis thought deaf people were developmentally disabled as well, and how could someone who's developmentally disabled be expected to fulfill the commandments of Judaism?
I preface this bit of learning for my friend by saying that a number of years ago while studying Talmud in Chicago, I had learned about another group that was disqualified by the Talmudic rabbis, specifically for the commandment to blow the shofar(ram's horn) on the Jewish New Year: the "toom-toom," which was Aramaic or Talmudic Hebrew for someone who's intersex.
I remember feeling excluded, since although I'm not intersex, I'm certainly androgynous. I told my friend that toom-tooms were excluded because in Jewish law, according to the Talmud, women are excluded from blowing the shofar and since the rabbis couldn't be sure which gender was predominate among toom-tooms, better to err on the side of caution because God forbid a mostly-female person fulfilled the commandment. Mind you, I've always felt excluded as a woman by Orthodox Judaism, but that's business as usual. This seemed extra-harsh.
My friend shakes her head and starts to say, "That's why -- forget it...." She doesn't want to say, "That's why I think religion can be so harmful," since she knows that I value mine and she doesn't want to offend me, so I finish the sentence for her and she affirms that it strikes her that so much trouble has come from it historically.
The next day, I remember why I want to tell her about how infuriated I was initially about the toom-tooms, so that I can tell her about some peace I gained from a classmate in this Deafness and Judaism course.
During the Deafness and Judaism class, I say, "Great! Now I'm potentially doubly-excluded if I ever go deaf!" and I talk of how bitter I felt in Chicago when I learned about exclusion of the toom-tooms.
One of the other students, I tell her, himself apparently a transgender man says, "At least the rabbis [a thousand years ago] talked about intersex people, which is remarkable. Even today, hardly anyone wants to discuss the topic."
"So to him," I tell my friend, "Any sort of discussion is at least acknowledgment of these people's existence. How's that for a positive spin?"
She answers, "...I think neglect is much worse than having a negative attitude towards someone or towards a group, so the transguy is right on....As long as "something" is at least acknowledged in its existence, it means it's being discussed, too...which is the main thing that helps eliminate the fear that most humans have about anything "strange" they don't know. Talking about "otherness" means getting to know it and that's a very good thing, of course, because we don't fear what we know."
Amen.
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Impressions of 2004 GLBT Pride Parade in NYC
The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
Note: Originally posted on the EAGLE online community site, behind IBM's firewall on 22 June 2004, at 8:22 am, and posted here on 24 May 2007:
Here's what gives me hope from yesterday:
And yet...
I'm conservative in many ways and yet love-and-desire-driven, which is why I live my life as a lesbian, rather than living conventionally in terms of the shape of my family.
Yesterday, I saw a woman at the parade, who had written in grease-pen on her bare back, "I'm proud of my sister." She was outrageous. I think I saw her with her lesbian or bisexual sister later. Her sister looked a lot less wild....
When the Broadway version of the "Rocky Horror" float went by, I tried explaining to my friends that when people went to see the film religiously on Saturdays at midnight when I was in high school, and dressed up as their favorite characters, I stayed away. I didn't want to be part of that crowd, even as part of me was desperate to find a group of friends with whom I felt at home with my sexual orientation, even as I denied the reality of my orientation till senior year of college.
I didn't see "Rocky Horror" until a few years ago, until it was a Broadway play and I was with Pat for nearly a decade. God, what was the big deal? It was kind of fun, but also, I could have lived my whole life, never seeing it and still being fine. My favorite part of the show was the lipstick of the main character, which reminded me of the sparkly quality of bumper-cars.
Confidence with my sexuality, or really, confidence with all of who I am is my continual aspiration. Just when I think I'm all set, internalized homophobia springs forth from me into the energy in the air, even if I say nothing aloud, and then comes back into me as further potent poison.
I'm watching the parade and the boldest among the celebrants repel and compel me in parallel. I want to be good-natured and just surrender to it, but then, it occurs to me at various points, being here at this parade would make a number of G, L, B or T people homophobic, let alone non-GLBT people. And then I think I'm being a poor sport because would I be as put off if there were a greater number of scantily-clad lesbians? Is my reaction just sour grapes at having to watch so many guys, wearing nothing but pouches?
When one tries to shut people up historically and continue to oppress them and treat them as though they're not human, they can become extreme and fulfill one's expectations around their lack of humanity. Paradoxically, I think they're only further demonstrating their humanity, just under duress in some cases, and in others, independent of anyone's reaction to them.
The day started so conventionally, with a gay neighbor and a lesbian friend coming over for breakfast on our deck. It was a perfect day weather-wise and part of me wanted simply to stay on the deck, enjoying our friends and our home.
We went into the city because our gay friend loves to go every year and because our lesbian friend is from another country and had never seen an American pride celebration, and we had offered to be her hosts for her inaugural experience.
And because of "Al tifrosh min hatsibur," / "Don't isolate yourself from the community;" I'm reminded of the quote from Ethics of the Fathers that I've referred to in this database previously. And maybe in a number of years, after another series of pride festivities, I'll be able to say, "...and I'm no longer nearly 39, and happier than ever with who I am."
P.S. 7 July, 2004:
The more I reflected on my impressions over the past couple of weeks, the more I was reminded...that I need to reduce internalized homophobia through self-esteem-building activities. Being a spectator did not build self-esteem for me in the way that being among one of the parade delegations would have. Next time I participate in the GLBT Pride Parade in NYC, I hope to be in it, not watching from the side-lines.
Note: Originally posted on the EAGLE online community site, behind IBM's firewall on 22 June 2004, at 8:22 am, and posted here on 24 May 2007:
Here's what gives me hope from yesterday:
- The dykes on bikes motorcycle delegation seem an ultimate representation of women doing what they want with their time and money, and with their loved ones and with one another
- This morning, on my way to work, hearing Alba Ruiz(?) of NYC pop radio station 102.7FM, broadcasting her people-on-the-street interviews, asking, "What does gay pride mean to you?" with all of the answers including that it means equality and recognition of our humanity
- Hetrick-Martin Institute's float, with all of the GLBTQI students marching/dancing happily for the day
- My synagogue's big delegation, Congregation Beth Simchat Torah (see cbst.org for a beautiful "Prayer of Gratitude for LGBT Pride")
- Gay and lesbian police officers and firefighters, including a recruitment truck for the NYFD
- The Lavender Light Gospel Choir float, with its participants' loving, earnest singing
- Various countries' floats, especially Venezuala's artful cardinal-costumed marchers and Brazil's for its sheer amount of people; reminds me of how most of us in the United States are originally from another country
- I'm no longer 11 or 15 or 21 or 26 or 29, but rather nearly 39 and closer than I've ever been to being happy with who I am.
And yet...
I'm conservative in many ways and yet love-and-desire-driven, which is why I live my life as a lesbian, rather than living conventionally in terms of the shape of my family.
Yesterday, I saw a woman at the parade, who had written in grease-pen on her bare back, "I'm proud of my sister." She was outrageous. I think I saw her with her lesbian or bisexual sister later. Her sister looked a lot less wild....
When the Broadway version of the "Rocky Horror" float went by, I tried explaining to my friends that when people went to see the film religiously on Saturdays at midnight when I was in high school, and dressed up as their favorite characters, I stayed away. I didn't want to be part of that crowd, even as part of me was desperate to find a group of friends with whom I felt at home with my sexual orientation, even as I denied the reality of my orientation till senior year of college.
I didn't see "Rocky Horror" until a few years ago, until it was a Broadway play and I was with Pat for nearly a decade. God, what was the big deal? It was kind of fun, but also, I could have lived my whole life, never seeing it and still being fine. My favorite part of the show was the lipstick of the main character, which reminded me of the sparkly quality of bumper-cars.
Confidence with my sexuality, or really, confidence with all of who I am is my continual aspiration. Just when I think I'm all set, internalized homophobia springs forth from me into the energy in the air, even if I say nothing aloud, and then comes back into me as further potent poison.
I'm watching the parade and the boldest among the celebrants repel and compel me in parallel. I want to be good-natured and just surrender to it, but then, it occurs to me at various points, being here at this parade would make a number of G, L, B or T people homophobic, let alone non-GLBT people. And then I think I'm being a poor sport because would I be as put off if there were a greater number of scantily-clad lesbians? Is my reaction just sour grapes at having to watch so many guys, wearing nothing but pouches?
When one tries to shut people up historically and continue to oppress them and treat them as though they're not human, they can become extreme and fulfill one's expectations around their lack of humanity. Paradoxically, I think they're only further demonstrating their humanity, just under duress in some cases, and in others, independent of anyone's reaction to them.
The day started so conventionally, with a gay neighbor and a lesbian friend coming over for breakfast on our deck. It was a perfect day weather-wise and part of me wanted simply to stay on the deck, enjoying our friends and our home.
We went into the city because our gay friend loves to go every year and because our lesbian friend is from another country and had never seen an American pride celebration, and we had offered to be her hosts for her inaugural experience.
And because of "Al tifrosh min hatsibur," / "Don't isolate yourself from the community;" I'm reminded of the quote from Ethics of the Fathers that I've referred to in this database previously. And maybe in a number of years, after another series of pride festivities, I'll be able to say, "...and I'm no longer nearly 39, and happier than ever with who I am."
P.S. 7 July, 2004:
The more I reflected on my impressions over the past couple of weeks, the more I was reminded...that I need to reduce internalized homophobia through self-esteem-building activities. Being a spectator did not build self-esteem for me in the way that being among one of the parade delegations would have. Next time I participate in the GLBT Pride Parade in NYC, I hope to be in it, not watching from the side-lines.
Sunday, November 2, 2003
Impressions of David's and Gerard's Wedding
The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
Note: Originally posted on the EAGLE online community site, behind IBM's firewall on 2 November 2003, at 3:24 pm, and posted here on 24 May 2007:
Gorgeous day for a wedding. "The Tide is High" by Blondie plays in the car from the airport. Windmill by the Lake reminds me of my 7th grade Connecticut State Science Fair project, "An Answer [to the energy crisis] is Blowing in the Wind." Thought my 7th grade dream was being realized in Canada, but the driver suggested that it was more for show than anything. I hope he's wrong.
No security on duty on the ground floor of 79 Wellington when I arrive at ~9:30 am. New York City, by contrast, is still fully paranoid.
Richard's office is art-filled and book-filled and has GLBT signage on parade. I love it. Nice of him to agree for me to use it while he's in Orlando. The sunflower painting by Richard's late partner's remarkable, beautiful.
I'm looking up at the walls when Esther appears at the doorway to make sure I'm settling in all right and to plan for our GLBT Leadership Conference women's reunion lunch. We eat at Marche, a Swiss restaurant....
During lunch, one of the women says that getting involved in the GLBT network at IBM is "...like jet-fuel for your career." She's referring to all of the neat people she's meeting since coming out and getting involved, to whom she might not otherwise have had exposure at this stage of her career.
"A lot of people don't know what they're missing," I say.
Another: "I used to be one of those people, insisting that I had more in common with straight people. I didn't realize for a long time...."
"I think we crave one another[, we need one another in a way that is perhaps less common among non-GLBT IBMers,]" I say.
We talk about how much better even our network would be if it included even more women and also more people of color. I learn that the South Asian diversity network group (DNG) is Canada's largest.
We talk about the series, "How to Be an IBM Leader" as a way to partner with other DNGs (see Reference section of the EAGLE database). It could be revived in Canada, I suggest.
One of the women has to leave early to meet with an openly gay customer and see if he's amenable to IBM's helping him with a large project. I learn later that he wants to start with perhaps commissioning an evaluation of the concept of the project and if it makes sense after the evaluation, then he'll consider spending the multi-millions.
Back at the restaurant, one of the women offers some unconventionally packaged hard candies to all of us. "What is it?" asks one of them.
The one who offers responds, smiling, "It's a clothes-remover." Everyone laughs....
I reach the wide-open courtyard approach to the ultra-ultra-modern Toronto City Hall and think of how gorgeous the day is and how auspicious for David's and Gerard's wedding, which is in 15 minutes. On my way to the entrance, I see a big, white bull-terrier, who reminds me of a bigger version of the dog Pat used to have before we got together, Megan Jonquil, may she rest in peace. Seeing the dog also seems like a good sign.
As I come to the entrance, I think to myself, if we hadn't suffered the indignity of being second-class citizens in our own country, none of us would have had this beautiful adventure.
Brad sees me enter the building and ushers me over to the area, where David and Gerard and David's mother and younger brother are being photographed, pre-wedding. It's so great to see someone I know in such a new space. Also present are Jim and Roberto, and by process of elimination, another Brad, whom I've not yet met. He's impressed when I say, "Hi, Brad," before he introduces himself. I disillusion him that it's really just by process of elimination that I know who he is.
David comes over to greet us and I'm dazzled and very moved. I touch the right side of his face with my palm and he smiles warmly -- I'd never do that in any average setting.
I know how David disdains ties and even sport-jackets/blazers; I'm floored by the transformation of David in an elegant tuxedo with patent-leather shoes. Brad starts looking at down at David's shoes and fixing his own hair in the near-mirror of them and David's a sport.
David explains that he's wearing something borrowed, something blue, something old and something new. The something borrowed is a set of Tazmanian Devil cuff-links that are Peter's; the something blue is his tie; the something old is his underwear -- which he reassures his mother is just old, not tattered; and the something new is a gold Canadian maple-leaf tie-tack from Gerard.
We all go up to the Wedding Chamber, where we need to wait for two heterosexual couples, who are ahead of David and Gerard. While we wait, we learn from David's mother that she was 22 minutes late to her wedding because her father kept taking photos of her. The minister got worried in her husband-to-be's behalf, but the soon-to-be husband, David's late father, wasn't worried at all. I realize then that I haven't seen [David's mother] since David's dad's memorial service more than a year ago.
[David's mother] shows us a charm bracelet she's wearing, which includes a heart-shaped stone that her friend found on the beach and which she was holding between her hand and her husband's at his death.
Then I think of my own father, who died 21 years ago, and of his death anniversary, which will be in two days, on November 1st. He was comatose during his final days of six months of common bile-duct cancer, so I suppose my mom or any of us could have put something in his hand and held it, but we were too in despair, since he was no longer himself at all. Well, at least something happy's happening finally around this time of year, as I'm always sad around this time of year typically.
It wasn't that way before my dad died. As a toy and game designer, he was extra-fun when it came to Halloween, helping my two older sisters and me with creating costumes, which many of us even wore to Stamford High School -- one year, he made me an S.H.S. [Stamford High School] School Spirit costume out of a floor-length sheet of silver mylar. The year he died, he made no costume and I didn't even go to school. He died the next day.
Sad that David's dad can't be here with his mom, and for David.
The service is about to begin. Roberto's operating the video camera and the rest of us from IBM sit in a row behind David's mother and brother, along with a dear friend of Gerard and David, Ken, who it turns out takes part in the service.
The judge begins in a soothing, gentle voice, welcoming everyone. He lets David and Gerard and Ken take over and add meaning prior to fulfilling his official role of marrying them.
They invite [David's mother]to say a few words, and [his brother] to read a poem, and they explain the significance of part of the flowers they're wearing on their lapels: They've got pure white freesia surrounded by rosemary, which is a common herb of the Czech Republic, where David's mother's family's from, and they are enwrapped in a thin, white, Mexican wedding-cord, which is in a figure-eight around them, to signify infinity; Gerard's family's from Mexico.
David's mother is so clearly, selflessly present and joyous for David; she says during her remarks, "A mother's fondest wish for her son is that he grow up to be happy and successful."
Their friend Ken says that prior to the wedding, he asked David and Gerard what the occasion meant to each of them and Ken wants them to tell us as well. David talks about how important it is for Gerard and him to be able to marry legally. Gerard talks about the day being the culmination of more than a decade of wishes -- on cake-candles and shooting stars -- how he always wished for nothing more than to be able to marry David.
The judge begins the official part, saying, "I was among the people, who made the decision [to agree to same-sex marriages under Ontario law] because it was just a human thing....The day of the announcement, the first people were two girls and a baby, but they were uncertain, so we sent them away. The next day, the comedian Maggie Kasella(sp?) came with her partner and since we weren't yet used to doing these, I called her the husband by mistake."
She said, "Don't worry. This is all going into my next routine."
He is not being intrusive with these anecdotes, but rather wants to help everyone see that he has had a role in David's and Gerard's wedding being possible, and that indeed, it is still new for everyone, both the couples and the officiants. Afterwards, I ask him how many same-sex marriages he's officiated at and he tells me, "About 150." Well, he is smooth and lovely for David's and Gerard's ceremony. No faux pas.
For the entire service, my throat catches and I have tears that seem to be waiting at some gate, and then they say such loving vows to each other, which they have written themselves and exchange rings, and I burst quietly into tears finally. I look to my right and all of us are crying. Everyone.
For me, it isn't just about how moving their love is -- and it is deeply moving. It is from relief at seeing two of my people being respected as a couple by the Law. I feel so hopeful. They sign the marriage license, with Mrs. Chase and Peter as witnesses, also signing, and I think of my parents and their witnesses. This is just like it was for my parents. This marriage is real.
At David's and Gerard's intimate reception in New York City this past Saturday -- which includes close family, and only a few IBMers from the early days of the GLBT Executive Task Force, all women -- David's brother Peter reads a note from a heterosexual friend of theirs who can't be there in person. She writes of how steadfast their relationship has been while all of the "straight folks" around them have fallen in and out of such crazy relationships.
It is only right, she writes, that they, who have been happy together for 16 years, are able to marry. Her note ends with, "Now that David and Gerard are married, all is right with the world."
I am honored that David has also asked me to say something at the reception in New York and here's what I say:
I love David and Gerard. I was so privileged to be able to attend their wedding ceremony in Toronto on Thursday.
Between the ceremony at the Wedding Chamber of Toronto City Hall and our dinner at the Four Seasons, colleagues of ours, Richard and Roberto, hosted a gathering in their loft.
I overheard a moment between David and his mom while we were there that I know they won’t mind my sharing. David was looking around at the lovely almond wedding cake topped with orchids and the gorgeous, pure white flowers of all sorts that Roberto had arranged around their home in honor of the occasion.
David was marveling wordlessly and his mother said, “You deserve it. You’re a good man.”
Ultimately, I flew up to Toronto for 30 hours because I had been at David’s father’s memorial service and felt that I wanted to be there as much for a happy occasion as for a sad one. I only wish that David’s father could be here physically as well as in spirit to acknowledge how wondrously grown-up and boyishly-happy David is now.
At the ceremony in Toronto, David’s mother said a few words and among them if I remember correctly, was a reference to Gerard’s quiet strength. It can be true that whenever David and I are together, it’s challenging for anyone else to get a word in edge-wise, but Gerard manages and when he does, I’m humbled because it’s never, ever just chatter.
Gerard was so beautifully-declarative when he told everyone on Thursday that the wedding was the fulfillment of more than a decade of small wishes. He said that every time he blew out candles and every time he saw a shooting star, what he wished for each time was to marry David.
David and I met through IBM nine years ago. Along with Carol Vericker, everyone agrees that David is among the original agents for all the progress we’ve made at IBM with welcoming gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender customers and employees.
What most people don’t know is that David also has impeccable taste in selecting the perfect lesbian gift. When I worked in Schaumburg, Illinois nine years ago, I took a business trip to New York City and if I remember correctly, I asked Carol ahead of my trip if there were any kindred spirits I could contact while in Manhattan.
Carol gave me David’s contact information and David agreed that he and his partner Gerard would take off an afternoon to show me around Greenwich Village. They didn’t realize what a mitzvah, what a good deed, they did; until we met, they didn’t know that I had grown up in Stamford, Connecticut and used to take the train into New York in high school and take myself to Greenwich Village because I knew that was where all the gay and lesbian people lived and I wanted to be among them, if even just for an afternoon at a time.
Unfortunately, because I was deeply closeted then, I never asked anyone to direct me anywhere, and just got off the subway in the vicinity of where, ironically, my parents and sisters had lived before they moved to the suburbs before I was born. I never did find Mecca, and so David’s and Gerard’s walking tour hit the spot.
It became time for me to head to the airport that day, but I knew I couldn’t come home empty-handed and so I asked David and Gerard to help me find a gift for Pat. We happened to be in a silly novelty store at the time. David came over and said, “How about this?” and picked up a beer or soda-can-handle that looked like the curvy blond female character from “Li’l Abner,” in a midriff and Daisy Dukes hot-pants.
Pat is a big Diet Coke fan. I looked at David and at the plastic woman he was clutching and said, “It’s perfect!” and kissed him on the cheek enthusiastically. I knew we’d be friends then. And of course, it was a hit at home.
I’m so pleased that these two, good, profound, thoughtful and playful men have joined their lives to each other’s and are generously in Pat’s and my life, too. I’m also happy to be reminded that wonderful things happen along with sad ones. Today is the 21-year death anniversary of my father and usually, for the several days that lead up to it every year, I’m quite sad and contemplative.
This year, and from now on, I will have a happy association with this time of year, too. I want to believe that both of our fathers are here in spirit, smiling.
Besides the privilege of having their friendship, I’m most grateful to David and Gerard for being role models for Pat and me. Their love for each other urges us on in ours as well. If there’s a bouquet here today, I hope to catch it.
Note: Originally posted on the EAGLE online community site, behind IBM's firewall on 2 November 2003, at 3:24 pm, and posted here on 24 May 2007:
Gorgeous day for a wedding. "The Tide is High" by Blondie plays in the car from the airport. Windmill by the Lake reminds me of my 7th grade Connecticut State Science Fair project, "An Answer [to the energy crisis] is Blowing in the Wind." Thought my 7th grade dream was being realized in Canada, but the driver suggested that it was more for show than anything. I hope he's wrong.
No security on duty on the ground floor of 79 Wellington when I arrive at ~9:30 am. New York City, by contrast, is still fully paranoid.
Richard's office is art-filled and book-filled and has GLBT signage on parade. I love it. Nice of him to agree for me to use it while he's in Orlando. The sunflower painting by Richard's late partner's remarkable, beautiful.
I'm looking up at the walls when Esther appears at the doorway to make sure I'm settling in all right and to plan for our GLBT Leadership Conference women's reunion lunch. We eat at Marche, a Swiss restaurant....
During lunch, one of the women says that getting involved in the GLBT network at IBM is "...like jet-fuel for your career." She's referring to all of the neat people she's meeting since coming out and getting involved, to whom she might not otherwise have had exposure at this stage of her career.
"A lot of people don't know what they're missing," I say.
Another: "I used to be one of those people, insisting that I had more in common with straight people. I didn't realize for a long time...."
"I think we crave one another[, we need one another in a way that is perhaps less common among non-GLBT IBMers,]" I say.
We talk about how much better even our network would be if it included even more women and also more people of color. I learn that the South Asian diversity network group (DNG) is Canada's largest.
We talk about the series, "How to Be an IBM Leader" as a way to partner with other DNGs (see Reference section of the EAGLE database). It could be revived in Canada, I suggest.
One of the women has to leave early to meet with an openly gay customer and see if he's amenable to IBM's helping him with a large project. I learn later that he wants to start with perhaps commissioning an evaluation of the concept of the project and if it makes sense after the evaluation, then he'll consider spending the multi-millions.
Back at the restaurant, one of the women offers some unconventionally packaged hard candies to all of us. "What is it?" asks one of them.
The one who offers responds, smiling, "It's a clothes-remover." Everyone laughs....
I reach the wide-open courtyard approach to the ultra-ultra-modern Toronto City Hall and think of how gorgeous the day is and how auspicious for David's and Gerard's wedding, which is in 15 minutes. On my way to the entrance, I see a big, white bull-terrier, who reminds me of a bigger version of the dog Pat used to have before we got together, Megan Jonquil, may she rest in peace. Seeing the dog also seems like a good sign.
As I come to the entrance, I think to myself, if we hadn't suffered the indignity of being second-class citizens in our own country, none of us would have had this beautiful adventure.
Brad sees me enter the building and ushers me over to the area, where David and Gerard and David's mother and younger brother are being photographed, pre-wedding. It's so great to see someone I know in such a new space. Also present are Jim and Roberto, and by process of elimination, another Brad, whom I've not yet met. He's impressed when I say, "Hi, Brad," before he introduces himself. I disillusion him that it's really just by process of elimination that I know who he is.
David comes over to greet us and I'm dazzled and very moved. I touch the right side of his face with my palm and he smiles warmly -- I'd never do that in any average setting.
I know how David disdains ties and even sport-jackets/blazers; I'm floored by the transformation of David in an elegant tuxedo with patent-leather shoes. Brad starts looking at down at David's shoes and fixing his own hair in the near-mirror of them and David's a sport.
David explains that he's wearing something borrowed, something blue, something old and something new. The something borrowed is a set of Tazmanian Devil cuff-links that are Peter's; the something blue is his tie; the something old is his underwear -- which he reassures his mother is just old, not tattered; and the something new is a gold Canadian maple-leaf tie-tack from Gerard.
We all go up to the Wedding Chamber, where we need to wait for two heterosexual couples, who are ahead of David and Gerard. While we wait, we learn from David's mother that she was 22 minutes late to her wedding because her father kept taking photos of her. The minister got worried in her husband-to-be's behalf, but the soon-to-be husband, David's late father, wasn't worried at all. I realize then that I haven't seen [David's mother] since David's dad's memorial service more than a year ago.
[David's mother] shows us a charm bracelet she's wearing, which includes a heart-shaped stone that her friend found on the beach and which she was holding between her hand and her husband's at his death.
Then I think of my own father, who died 21 years ago, and of his death anniversary, which will be in two days, on November 1st. He was comatose during his final days of six months of common bile-duct cancer, so I suppose my mom or any of us could have put something in his hand and held it, but we were too in despair, since he was no longer himself at all. Well, at least something happy's happening finally around this time of year, as I'm always sad around this time of year typically.
It wasn't that way before my dad died. As a toy and game designer, he was extra-fun when it came to Halloween, helping my two older sisters and me with creating costumes, which many of us even wore to Stamford High School -- one year, he made me an S.H.S. [Stamford High School] School Spirit costume out of a floor-length sheet of silver mylar. The year he died, he made no costume and I didn't even go to school. He died the next day.
Sad that David's dad can't be here with his mom, and for David.
The service is about to begin. Roberto's operating the video camera and the rest of us from IBM sit in a row behind David's mother and brother, along with a dear friend of Gerard and David, Ken, who it turns out takes part in the service.
The judge begins in a soothing, gentle voice, welcoming everyone. He lets David and Gerard and Ken take over and add meaning prior to fulfilling his official role of marrying them.
They invite [David's mother]to say a few words, and [his brother] to read a poem, and they explain the significance of part of the flowers they're wearing on their lapels: They've got pure white freesia surrounded by rosemary, which is a common herb of the Czech Republic, where David's mother's family's from, and they are enwrapped in a thin, white, Mexican wedding-cord, which is in a figure-eight around them, to signify infinity; Gerard's family's from Mexico.
David's mother is so clearly, selflessly present and joyous for David; she says during her remarks, "A mother's fondest wish for her son is that he grow up to be happy and successful."
Their friend Ken says that prior to the wedding, he asked David and Gerard what the occasion meant to each of them and Ken wants them to tell us as well. David talks about how important it is for Gerard and him to be able to marry legally. Gerard talks about the day being the culmination of more than a decade of wishes -- on cake-candles and shooting stars -- how he always wished for nothing more than to be able to marry David.
The judge begins the official part, saying, "I was among the people, who made the decision [to agree to same-sex marriages under Ontario law] because it was just a human thing....The day of the announcement, the first people were two girls and a baby, but they were uncertain, so we sent them away. The next day, the comedian Maggie Kasella(sp?) came with her partner and since we weren't yet used to doing these, I called her the husband by mistake."
She said, "Don't worry. This is all going into my next routine."
He is not being intrusive with these anecdotes, but rather wants to help everyone see that he has had a role in David's and Gerard's wedding being possible, and that indeed, it is still new for everyone, both the couples and the officiants. Afterwards, I ask him how many same-sex marriages he's officiated at and he tells me, "About 150." Well, he is smooth and lovely for David's and Gerard's ceremony. No faux pas.
For the entire service, my throat catches and I have tears that seem to be waiting at some gate, and then they say such loving vows to each other, which they have written themselves and exchange rings, and I burst quietly into tears finally. I look to my right and all of us are crying. Everyone.
For me, it isn't just about how moving their love is -- and it is deeply moving. It is from relief at seeing two of my people being respected as a couple by the Law. I feel so hopeful. They sign the marriage license, with Mrs. Chase and Peter as witnesses, also signing, and I think of my parents and their witnesses. This is just like it was for my parents. This marriage is real.
At David's and Gerard's intimate reception in New York City this past Saturday -- which includes close family, and only a few IBMers from the early days of the GLBT Executive Task Force, all women -- David's brother Peter reads a note from a heterosexual friend of theirs who can't be there in person. She writes of how steadfast their relationship has been while all of the "straight folks" around them have fallen in and out of such crazy relationships.
It is only right, she writes, that they, who have been happy together for 16 years, are able to marry. Her note ends with, "Now that David and Gerard are married, all is right with the world."
I am honored that David has also asked me to say something at the reception in New York and here's what I say:
I love David and Gerard. I was so privileged to be able to attend their wedding ceremony in Toronto on Thursday.
Between the ceremony at the Wedding Chamber of Toronto City Hall and our dinner at the Four Seasons, colleagues of ours, Richard and Roberto, hosted a gathering in their loft.
I overheard a moment between David and his mom while we were there that I know they won’t mind my sharing. David was looking around at the lovely almond wedding cake topped with orchids and the gorgeous, pure white flowers of all sorts that Roberto had arranged around their home in honor of the occasion.
David was marveling wordlessly and his mother said, “You deserve it. You’re a good man.”
Ultimately, I flew up to Toronto for 30 hours because I had been at David’s father’s memorial service and felt that I wanted to be there as much for a happy occasion as for a sad one. I only wish that David’s father could be here physically as well as in spirit to acknowledge how wondrously grown-up and boyishly-happy David is now.
At the ceremony in Toronto, David’s mother said a few words and among them if I remember correctly, was a reference to Gerard’s quiet strength. It can be true that whenever David and I are together, it’s challenging for anyone else to get a word in edge-wise, but Gerard manages and when he does, I’m humbled because it’s never, ever just chatter.
Gerard was so beautifully-declarative when he told everyone on Thursday that the wedding was the fulfillment of more than a decade of small wishes. He said that every time he blew out candles and every time he saw a shooting star, what he wished for each time was to marry David.
David and I met through IBM nine years ago. Along with Carol Vericker, everyone agrees that David is among the original agents for all the progress we’ve made at IBM with welcoming gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender customers and employees.
What most people don’t know is that David also has impeccable taste in selecting the perfect lesbian gift. When I worked in Schaumburg, Illinois nine years ago, I took a business trip to New York City and if I remember correctly, I asked Carol ahead of my trip if there were any kindred spirits I could contact while in Manhattan.
Carol gave me David’s contact information and David agreed that he and his partner Gerard would take off an afternoon to show me around Greenwich Village. They didn’t realize what a mitzvah, what a good deed, they did; until we met, they didn’t know that I had grown up in Stamford, Connecticut and used to take the train into New York in high school and take myself to Greenwich Village because I knew that was where all the gay and lesbian people lived and I wanted to be among them, if even just for an afternoon at a time.
Unfortunately, because I was deeply closeted then, I never asked anyone to direct me anywhere, and just got off the subway in the vicinity of where, ironically, my parents and sisters had lived before they moved to the suburbs before I was born. I never did find Mecca, and so David’s and Gerard’s walking tour hit the spot.
It became time for me to head to the airport that day, but I knew I couldn’t come home empty-handed and so I asked David and Gerard to help me find a gift for Pat. We happened to be in a silly novelty store at the time. David came over and said, “How about this?” and picked up a beer or soda-can-handle that looked like the curvy blond female character from “Li’l Abner,” in a midriff and Daisy Dukes hot-pants.
Pat is a big Diet Coke fan. I looked at David and at the plastic woman he was clutching and said, “It’s perfect!” and kissed him on the cheek enthusiastically. I knew we’d be friends then. And of course, it was a hit at home.
I’m so pleased that these two, good, profound, thoughtful and playful men have joined their lives to each other’s and are generously in Pat’s and my life, too. I’m also happy to be reminded that wonderful things happen along with sad ones. Today is the 21-year death anniversary of my father and usually, for the several days that lead up to it every year, I’m quite sad and contemplative.
This year, and from now on, I will have a happy association with this time of year, too. I want to believe that both of our fathers are here in spirit, smiling.
Besides the privilege of having their friendship, I’m most grateful to David and Gerard for being role models for Pat and me. Their love for each other urges us on in ours as well. If there’s a bouquet here today, I hope to catch it.
Sunday, September 14, 2003
I'm Posting this Now Because...
The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
Note: Originally posted on the EAGLE online community site, behind IBM's firewall on 14 September 2003, at 8:35 pm, and posted here on 22 May 2007:
...I've come to see EAGLE as a global community/family that supports me greatly
I've been so out about my pursuit of motherhood here, and everywhere, that I feel I need to update you, providing more of the history than ever, and leading up to a resolution finally:
In August, 2001, I met with a friend and for the first time, really allowed myself to ask questions about motherhood. I didn't want to talk to my mothers or sisters because I didn't think they could be impartial about it. My friend gave me permission and encouragement to imagine myself as a mother. She listened to my questions and shared her experience of having two teenage sons, the second of whom was about to enter college.
"As much as I will feel lonely with the house being empty finally, I'm so glad to have them, even if just for vacations from now on," she said.
Two weeks later, one of her two sons, died of a heart attack while running with a dormmate during his first week of college. I attended the son's funeral on September 12th, 2001.
She has never been the same, and yet still is glad that she had her son for the 18 years she did.
From then on, I felt more compelled than ever to give birth to a child of my own. My friend was inspirational to me, even as I dreaded ever having to face the same tragedy, God forbid. She remained encouraging and sweet about my budding pursuit.
I remember reading about how parents weathered September 11th better than people without children, as they had to pull themselves together to make their kids feel safe and in the process, they felt purposeful. Oh, how I related to that. I wrote about it in this database, I think, if I remember correctly, about how I wished I had someone young of my own to help soothe at that time.
On my sister Kathy's birthday, November 29, 2001, I began taking a prenatal (folic acid) pill daily.
In December, we met with a doctor on my Aetna list, who was conveniently in New Jersey, and who said very affirmatively, "We'll get you pregnant." I was buoyant as we drove home.
After speaking with an EAGLE member, who was also trying to get pregnant through an anonymous donor, I was inspired to do what she was doing and began writing to the future baby every single night before bed, so I could chronicle for it how anticipatory its parents, Pat and me, were, and how excited we were to be welcoming him or her ultimately into our home.
In February, 2002, after a three-month waiting period of seeing if an ovarian cyst I had would disappear on its own -- it did -- I was inseminated for the first time with a dose from an anonymous donor, who was smart, healthy, and had Pat's features and heritage. Stats like that, they'll give you, without revealing any contact information.
It didn't take. Four times more and a histoselpingogram(sp?) later, I still had not conceived. Then I discovered that the doctor had never done the most basic fertility test on me and I was as traumatized as anyone would imagine, knowing that I had tried five times without ever knowing if I were even fertile.
I complained to Aetna, and then switched from that doctor to one who wasn't on the Aetna list, but who had helped my sister Kathy get pregnant. He took tests and determined that I was perfectly fertile, even in good fertility shape for my age, 37, and he was purely optimistic, like the first doctor had been, only he was with a famous, famous NYC hospital and had helped my sister, so I couldn't believe our good fortune in finally choosing to go there; you get what you pay for, I figured.
As soon as I got home, I became super-depressed, like I had hardly ever been. It was swift, that is, it didn't last long, but it was devastating; a day or so after it had passed, I realized that I was depressed at the prospect that it was finally real. Finally, a baby was in the offing and I was scared of how real it was.
The doctor's approach was to try one more time with the IUI method, and then, if that didn't work, to try up to three cycles on Clomid, a medication that causes depression and all sorts of PMS-type physical side-effects -- a much more extreme version of them. And if that didn't work, I should try IVF, where they put the embryo(s) directly into my womb through medical technology.
The regular IUI was unsuccessful, and so I went on Clomid, which really, really unnerved me because I don't really even like to take aspirin, but I reasoned, I can do this if a baby is the end-result.
I can't take a dramamine without becoming a zomby for two days, so medicine really effects me and the Clomid did as well. God bless Pat and Joseph, who probably bore the brunt of my non-stoicism. One of the months, I opted to go to London on business, rather than get inseminated, and so I had wasted a month on Clomid, and ended up taking it for four months instead of three.
The lab associated with my doctor was closed in July, the third time I wanted to have a Clomid-influenced IUI, so I opted to go to another hospital. It was the 4th of July, 2003 and I was lying in the substitute-doctor's office, but I thought it was a good sign that my friend Leslie's baby was on the wall as part of the collage of holiday cards all of these clinics post to get people excited about their possible future as parents.
Leslie's baby did not turn out to be a good sign. I turned 38 on July 13th, hopeful that I might be pregnant then, but I wasn't, for the third time on Clomid.
Meanwhile, a colleague of mine, who's older than I got pregnant and told me not to give up; "It'll happen."
The next IVF cycle, my regular doctor told me, was not till October.
Could I afford to wait till then, I asked?
A three month break would be OK, he said, although anything beyond that was probably pushing it.
I enjoyed the break. I told Pat that I needed to stop writing to the future baby and I did.
By Labor Day, at the beginning of September, I knew it was time to start gearing up again. I called the doctor and the person that pre-certifies me with my insurance and the IVF nurse, and then kept putting off calling them back when they returned my calls.
I spoke with a colleague, who told me from her own experience,"The animal urge to have a child passes. It did for me....Any time I am compulsive about something, as I became about getting pregnant, I know I have to look at it."
Both comments resonated with me. With nine heartbreaks over a year and a half, the urge was pretty much gone, and I did feel the last few times as though I were just marching along without being at all reflective.
How could I stop, though? Certainly, I needed to try the heroic measure of IVF, even though women my age have only typically a 40% chance of becoming pregnant through IVF, and even though I was alienated by what the process would require: an incredible series of tests and shots and monitorings and scientific tricks, and even though my sisters both had miscarried their first pregancies, one after the third month.
This weekend, thinking about a business trip made me stop and get serious finally. I realized that I didn't want to miss an upcoming trip to Paris in order to do the IVF. I realized that this would be only the first of untold trips and meetings I'd have to miss because of my child. I was sobered. I was ashamed, and finally, considering a number of other factors, I was resolved to stop trying to conceive, to give up my life-long expectation and two-year active dream of bearing a child.
Finally, I acknowledged that all along, I refused to consider adoption as a viable option; if I didn't give birth to him or her, I had no desire to raise him or her. It really was all about my genes going out into the world, rather than a burning need to mother just any child.
Did I really ever want to do the part that came between my giving birth and his or her being sweet to me in my old age? I always figured, I'll gain the will to become selfless in the way that parents need to be; it'll develop in me once the child's here.
Only one colleague from EAGLE, a mother herself, and otherwise, only Pat ever said to me that they worried that as active as I am with my work, I might not enjoy having to make sacrifices in my career for the child. Again, I dismissed the worry, figuring, I'll rise to the occasion.
My mother said, "Won't you always wonder if you could have had a child, if you had just tried the IVF?"
"Yes, but I'm prepared to live with that because the expense to my heart if it doesn't work again, or if I miscarried or if the child had a disability is too great. I don't know how I'd survive that."
My mother, my sisters, friends I told over the weekend, all understood my sadness and my resolve ultimately.
Tonight, I feel like I'm ready to finally grieve the loss of the nine unsuccessful attempts, since each of those times, I told myself not to despair and to keep hoping. Now, I ought to give myself permission to collapse and grieve fully, but there's no time. Monday's an all-day, off-site meeting in Armonk and Tuesday night is a panel that means a lot to me and I have to stay highly-functional for both.
Will it be that my life will be about staying functional for others who need me, even if not one single child? That's not so awful.
I need to keep applying all of the loving way I am to my relationships and my work. I've done that for 38 years, so why should I change now, just because I'm suffering a giant loss?
It's my losses that make me as loving and sensitive as I am, including the loss of my:
Father of blessed memory
Expectation of living heterosexually, once I was 21 and could no longer deny my total attractions to women
Friend Robert to AIDS
Sense of fundamental safety, since September 11th
Dream of giving birth
Continual loss through acknowledgment of the Jewish and GLBT and other lives lost in the Holocaust and other genocides....
All of these losses bring gains; I:
Became less aloof and more accessible
Found the world's most lovely person to be my partner
Gained an appreciation for my friends who remained and for others' losses of loved ones from AIDS
Now arrive at airports with plenty of time to spare, rather than running to the plane like I always used to do, and more seriously,
Gained a further appreciation of the survivors' basic and graceful humanity, including my own
Am not yet sure what I'm gaining from not giving birth, but I trust I will gain something from it -- perhaps another reminder of my humanity and an added ability to relate better to people who suffer tragedies
Pride in the resilience of people to persevere against the odds.
Accordingly, I remain hopeful that God has other plans for me and that good things will continue to happen in the world and for me, but I am sad, too, and need to let myself be sad, even as I continue to help others and myself.
Note: Originally posted on the EAGLE online community site, behind IBM's firewall on 14 September 2003, at 8:35 pm, and posted here on 22 May 2007:
...I've come to see EAGLE as a global community/family that supports me greatly
I've been so out about my pursuit of motherhood here, and everywhere, that I feel I need to update you, providing more of the history than ever, and leading up to a resolution finally:
In August, 2001, I met with a friend and for the first time, really allowed myself to ask questions about motherhood. I didn't want to talk to my mothers or sisters because I didn't think they could be impartial about it. My friend gave me permission and encouragement to imagine myself as a mother. She listened to my questions and shared her experience of having two teenage sons, the second of whom was about to enter college.
"As much as I will feel lonely with the house being empty finally, I'm so glad to have them, even if just for vacations from now on," she said.
Two weeks later, one of her two sons, died of a heart attack while running with a dormmate during his first week of college. I attended the son's funeral on September 12th, 2001.
She has never been the same, and yet still is glad that she had her son for the 18 years she did.
From then on, I felt more compelled than ever to give birth to a child of my own. My friend was inspirational to me, even as I dreaded ever having to face the same tragedy, God forbid. She remained encouraging and sweet about my budding pursuit.
I remember reading about how parents weathered September 11th better than people without children, as they had to pull themselves together to make their kids feel safe and in the process, they felt purposeful. Oh, how I related to that. I wrote about it in this database, I think, if I remember correctly, about how I wished I had someone young of my own to help soothe at that time.
On my sister Kathy's birthday, November 29, 2001, I began taking a prenatal (folic acid) pill daily.
In December, we met with a doctor on my Aetna list, who was conveniently in New Jersey, and who said very affirmatively, "We'll get you pregnant." I was buoyant as we drove home.
After speaking with an EAGLE member, who was also trying to get pregnant through an anonymous donor, I was inspired to do what she was doing and began writing to the future baby every single night before bed, so I could chronicle for it how anticipatory its parents, Pat and me, were, and how excited we were to be welcoming him or her ultimately into our home.
In February, 2002, after a three-month waiting period of seeing if an ovarian cyst I had would disappear on its own -- it did -- I was inseminated for the first time with a dose from an anonymous donor, who was smart, healthy, and had Pat's features and heritage. Stats like that, they'll give you, without revealing any contact information.
It didn't take. Four times more and a histoselpingogram(sp?) later, I still had not conceived. Then I discovered that the doctor had never done the most basic fertility test on me and I was as traumatized as anyone would imagine, knowing that I had tried five times without ever knowing if I were even fertile.
I complained to Aetna, and then switched from that doctor to one who wasn't on the Aetna list, but who had helped my sister Kathy get pregnant. He took tests and determined that I was perfectly fertile, even in good fertility shape for my age, 37, and he was purely optimistic, like the first doctor had been, only he was with a famous, famous NYC hospital and had helped my sister, so I couldn't believe our good fortune in finally choosing to go there; you get what you pay for, I figured.
As soon as I got home, I became super-depressed, like I had hardly ever been. It was swift, that is, it didn't last long, but it was devastating; a day or so after it had passed, I realized that I was depressed at the prospect that it was finally real. Finally, a baby was in the offing and I was scared of how real it was.
The doctor's approach was to try one more time with the IUI method, and then, if that didn't work, to try up to three cycles on Clomid, a medication that causes depression and all sorts of PMS-type physical side-effects -- a much more extreme version of them. And if that didn't work, I should try IVF, where they put the embryo(s) directly into my womb through medical technology.
The regular IUI was unsuccessful, and so I went on Clomid, which really, really unnerved me because I don't really even like to take aspirin, but I reasoned, I can do this if a baby is the end-result.
I can't take a dramamine without becoming a zomby for two days, so medicine really effects me and the Clomid did as well. God bless Pat and Joseph, who probably bore the brunt of my non-stoicism. One of the months, I opted to go to London on business, rather than get inseminated, and so I had wasted a month on Clomid, and ended up taking it for four months instead of three.
The lab associated with my doctor was closed in July, the third time I wanted to have a Clomid-influenced IUI, so I opted to go to another hospital. It was the 4th of July, 2003 and I was lying in the substitute-doctor's office, but I thought it was a good sign that my friend Leslie's baby was on the wall as part of the collage of holiday cards all of these clinics post to get people excited about their possible future as parents.
Leslie's baby did not turn out to be a good sign. I turned 38 on July 13th, hopeful that I might be pregnant then, but I wasn't, for the third time on Clomid.
Meanwhile, a colleague of mine, who's older than I got pregnant and told me not to give up; "It'll happen."
The next IVF cycle, my regular doctor told me, was not till October.
Could I afford to wait till then, I asked?
A three month break would be OK, he said, although anything beyond that was probably pushing it.
I enjoyed the break. I told Pat that I needed to stop writing to the future baby and I did.
By Labor Day, at the beginning of September, I knew it was time to start gearing up again. I called the doctor and the person that pre-certifies me with my insurance and the IVF nurse, and then kept putting off calling them back when they returned my calls.
I spoke with a colleague, who told me from her own experience,"The animal urge to have a child passes. It did for me....Any time I am compulsive about something, as I became about getting pregnant, I know I have to look at it."
Both comments resonated with me. With nine heartbreaks over a year and a half, the urge was pretty much gone, and I did feel the last few times as though I were just marching along without being at all reflective.
How could I stop, though? Certainly, I needed to try the heroic measure of IVF, even though women my age have only typically a 40% chance of becoming pregnant through IVF, and even though I was alienated by what the process would require: an incredible series of tests and shots and monitorings and scientific tricks, and even though my sisters both had miscarried their first pregancies, one after the third month.
This weekend, thinking about a business trip made me stop and get serious finally. I realized that I didn't want to miss an upcoming trip to Paris in order to do the IVF. I realized that this would be only the first of untold trips and meetings I'd have to miss because of my child. I was sobered. I was ashamed, and finally, considering a number of other factors, I was resolved to stop trying to conceive, to give up my life-long expectation and two-year active dream of bearing a child.
Finally, I acknowledged that all along, I refused to consider adoption as a viable option; if I didn't give birth to him or her, I had no desire to raise him or her. It really was all about my genes going out into the world, rather than a burning need to mother just any child.
Did I really ever want to do the part that came between my giving birth and his or her being sweet to me in my old age? I always figured, I'll gain the will to become selfless in the way that parents need to be; it'll develop in me once the child's here.
Only one colleague from EAGLE, a mother herself, and otherwise, only Pat ever said to me that they worried that as active as I am with my work, I might not enjoy having to make sacrifices in my career for the child. Again, I dismissed the worry, figuring, I'll rise to the occasion.
My mother said, "Won't you always wonder if you could have had a child, if you had just tried the IVF?"
"Yes, but I'm prepared to live with that because the expense to my heart if it doesn't work again, or if I miscarried or if the child had a disability is too great. I don't know how I'd survive that."
My mother, my sisters, friends I told over the weekend, all understood my sadness and my resolve ultimately.
Tonight, I feel like I'm ready to finally grieve the loss of the nine unsuccessful attempts, since each of those times, I told myself not to despair and to keep hoping. Now, I ought to give myself permission to collapse and grieve fully, but there's no time. Monday's an all-day, off-site meeting in Armonk and Tuesday night is a panel that means a lot to me and I have to stay highly-functional for both.
Will it be that my life will be about staying functional for others who need me, even if not one single child? That's not so awful.
I need to keep applying all of the loving way I am to my relationships and my work. I've done that for 38 years, so why should I change now, just because I'm suffering a giant loss?
It's my losses that make me as loving and sensitive as I am, including the loss of my:
Father of blessed memory
Expectation of living heterosexually, once I was 21 and could no longer deny my total attractions to women
Friend Robert to AIDS
Sense of fundamental safety, since September 11th
Dream of giving birth
Continual loss through acknowledgment of the Jewish and GLBT and other lives lost in the Holocaust and other genocides....
All of these losses bring gains; I:
Became less aloof and more accessible
Found the world's most lovely person to be my partner
Gained an appreciation for my friends who remained and for others' losses of loved ones from AIDS
Now arrive at airports with plenty of time to spare, rather than running to the plane like I always used to do, and more seriously,
Gained a further appreciation of the survivors' basic and graceful humanity, including my own
Am not yet sure what I'm gaining from not giving birth, but I trust I will gain something from it -- perhaps another reminder of my humanity and an added ability to relate better to people who suffer tragedies
Pride in the resilience of people to persevere against the odds.
Accordingly, I remain hopeful that God has other plans for me and that good things will continue to happen in the world and for me, but I am sad, too, and need to let myself be sad, even as I continue to help others and myself.
Sunday, June 29, 2003
Seeds of Revolution
The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
Remarks Delivered to the APGA (formerly known as AABGA)
Annual Conference, Boston, 29 June 2003
by Sarah Siegel, program director, GLBT Sales and Talent, IBM
Note: I delivered these remarks in 2003 and posted them here on 22 May 2007.
David and Elayna, thanks for inviting me to speak to your colleagues. Some of my favorite experiences in nature have been in public gardens and arboreta. I grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, where my mom still lives. Is anyone here from Bartlett Arboretum or the Stamford Museum and Nature Center?
I met David DeKing through Jose Ortiz of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Cloisters.
I’m reminded of how Jose, along with a group of his most enterprising colleagues, had been telling their management for some time that it made sense for the Museum to have a booth at the annual Gay Expo. It was an intriguing idea, but not a top priority.
And then, with its being the number one tourist destination in New York City, the Metropolitan Museum was hard-hit by September 11th.
Museum and Cloisters visits were down in 2001, way-down, since New York tourism had diminished so. The Museum was ready to experiment.
A booth full of enthusiastic gay and lesbian employees along with reps from HR smiled back at the expo attendees. They gave away family passes, sold memberships on the spot and welcomed a number of employment inquiries.
I think this is a terrific example of marketing leadership. Some organizations might think that marketing to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people is a cool concept for when times are flush, when there’s room for risk-taking, but The Metropolitan Museum of Art, including the Cloisters recognized that it was precisely at the time when it was most eager to increase visits that it needed to do something fresh and more inclusive.
I don’t know how many of you here are already fully, visibly, actively inclusive of GLBT employees, members, visitors and trustees compared with the number of you, who have considered how natural it would be to be actively welcoming to GLBT people, but who haven’t yet made the progress.
For example, I wonder how many of your membership brochures have language that is inclusive of couples and families with same-sex partners. You’d only have to switch the language, so that it reads “spouse or partner” instead of just “spouse.”
Or you could do what Bartlett Arboretum has done and simply designate a “family/household” category of membership. Just for fun, I checked the Bartlett Arboretum’s site on the web and was happy to see its inclusiveness.
When David invited me to speak, some people asked me, “But what does the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta have in common with IBM?”
One simple answer is that we are your customers and hopefully, increasingly, you are ours.
The nearly 320,000 IBMers and their families worldwide, a number of whom are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender, or GLBT for short, are among your 60 million visitors, and with your operating budget topping 620 million dollars, I trust that an increasing share of that budget is being spent on information technology, such as, ever-more sophisticated database software; web site development and hosting; and hardware just for starters.
Certainly, I’m happy to take orders for any technology needs you might have after this session, and seriously, I do hope that all things being equal, everyone I ever talk to who needs technology services and products can feel good about choosing IBM, knowing that we’re visibly, actively welcoming of all customers, including GLBT and GLBT-friendly ones.
What else do AABGA and IBM have in common? Both are employers of all sorts of humanity. In my experience, employees who feel respected are remarkably productive and more innovative. For example, a number of GLBT IBMers, including me, prepared the proposal to senior management for launching the GLBT Sales and Talent team in 2001.
Doug Elix, who heads our Global Services business, which includes our consultants and which is the largest and most profitable division of IBM, said yes right away to becoming the senior executive sponsor for the team, including funding headcount market research and program dollars.
Doug recognized that along with Asian, Black, Hispanic and Women’s segment teams that already existed, it made sense to dedicate a full-time team to the GLBT segment, which includes members of all of the other diverse constituencies and all levels of organizations, including, increasingly, openly GLBT, and GLBT-friendly, executive technology purchase decision makers.
In 2001, it was a breakthrough idea, as we became the first technology company in the Fortune 500 to have such a team, and it happened because the culture welcomed such innovation.
My colleague Irwin Drucker, who’s in IBM Procurement and openly gay, raised his hand in 1999, even earlier, to be the program director of Gay and Lesbian Supplier Relations, which focuses on IBM spending its vendor-money with GLBT-owned businesses. Other companies have programs for women and minority-owned vendors, but IBM is the first to have one dedicated to spending money with GLBT business owners.
I love that this year’s conference-theme is “Seeds of Revolution.”
Marketing to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and their GLBT-friendly associates is not at all revolutionary. IBM, along with arboreta and botanical gardens all over the world, has always been doing so.
What is revolutionary is that IBM is acknowledging the full humanity of its GLBT and GLBT-friendly customers so visibly, by assigning full-time staff and program dollars for business development, advertising and cause-related marketing in this arena.
I want to use the rest of my time with you to describe how it made sense for IBM to support a GLBT sales focus, and to offer you customer insight from my experience over the past two years of serving the GLBT, and GLBT-friendly, market.
At the end of the session, I’ll provide a tip-sheet you can walk away with on how your organization can get started with GLBT sales and marketing.
It might surprise you to learn that IBM has had black and female employees since 1899 – 10 years before the NAACP was founded and 20 years before women got the right to vote.
Also, 11 years before the 1964 Civil Rights Act, our CEO at the time, T.J. Watson, said there would be no “separate, but equal facilities.” IBM was building a number of manufacturing plants in the South and this was also a year ahead of the Brown decision ending “separate but equal” in public education.
IBM added “sexual orientation” to its non-discrimination policy in 1984. I wonder if all of the botanical gardens and arboreta represented here, which have non-discrimination policies include “sexual orientation.”
If not, I hope you’ll be inspired to update the policy, so that gay, lesbian and bisexual employees will feel explicitly welcome in your organization. I know that as a lesbian, I feel better, knowing I am among the people who are explicitly welcome to work for IBM.
Another surprise, probably: IBM is the first company in the world to add “gender identity or expression” to its global HR policy; so far, most other companies only cover U.S. or North American employees while this policy covers all IBMers in all of the 160 countries where we operate.
It would be fully inclusive if each of your organizations who already have a non-discrimination policy were to add “gender identity or expression,” too, so that transgender and gender-variant employees feel welcome to work with you as well.
Now that you know that IBM’s heritage is an inclusive one, the ease we had in gaining support for launching the GLBT Sales and Talent team won’t prompt you to say, “IBM, really?” but rather, “IBM, of course.”
IBM has diversity task forces for eight constituencies: Asian, Black, GLBT, Hispanic, Men, Native Americans, People with Disabilities and Women.
It also has employee networking groups for each of the constituencies and probably has the world’s largest GLBT employee group, with 1,100+ members in 30 chapters worldwide.
My counterpart, Joseph Bertolotti, and I consider all of them to be among our virtual sales force and we’ve established a GLBT Sales Network accordingly, so that they can develop sales leads with us as needs arise among any of their GLBT customers or friends.
We had done some experimenting with GLBT events and advertising since 1995, but each effort was a one-shot and so while each was appreciated by the community and increased its brand loyalty to IBM, there was no sustained activity around welcoming GLBT business.
We had even assigned a third of a headcount to the gay and lesbian market from 1997-2001, which was dedicated to the market only a third of the time, so the results were good, but limited.
When Doug Elix agreed to sponsor the team, I raised my hand to be one of the members, and we did a job posting for the other peer position.
I remember wondering how many people would apply. I was shocked that close to 100 candidates emerged, which reminded me that the homophobia that has held me back most in my career is my own. Not everyone was even G, L, B or T. One of the non-GLBT candidates said simply, “It seemed like a great startup opportunity.”
My favorite part of my job has been working with non-GLBT sales colleagues to drive revenue from openly GLBT decision makers among IBM’s Fortune and Global 500 customers. We’ve driven millions and millions of dollars in GLBT-attributable revenue since our launch two years ago.
I’m going to share some of my customer experiences with you, so that you’ll have a close-up view of what has worked for me in appealing to the market, and they might inspire you to want to serve GLBT members, visitors and trustees actively, if you don’t already.
The first customer example shows how IBM’s GLBT sales focus resonates with non-GLBT, that is, GLBT-friendly customers:
I attended a dinner to benefit Equality Forum, a GLBT organization, and sitting to my right was a married couple. They wondered what IBM was doing there as a major sponsor and I wondered at their connection to the organization, since they appeared not to be G, L, B or T.
They told me that the man was the chair of the Media Arts department of a nearby university, and that a group of his students had done a GLBT photography exhibit recently and that the university was supportive of the organization, just like IBM.
I told him about my role and then he said, “I’ve been talking with one of your competitors and they haven’t been helpful. I need to outfit my computer animation lab with all new equipment and I’d rather work with a vendor who will care.”
“As a matter of fact,” I told him, “Mike Fuller, the head of the whole Education industry at IBM is here tonight and I’d love to introduce him to you.”
I asked Mike to come to the table to meet the couple and the department chairman ended up choosing IBM, and writing really gracious e-mail to me about how helpful IBM had been.
Through IBM’s support of Stonewall, a GLBT organization in the UK, we met an openly lesbian decision maker at a Global 500 firm there, which is already a big IBM customer. The account team, however, had not yet met with her.
We invited her, along with her partner and one of her GLBT-friendly colleagues and the colleague’s husband to join us at the IBM table at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Media Awards dinner in New York City a few months ago.
It was a memorable evening, just as we’d hoped; the customer took photos of the celebrity award presenters and entertainers, including Nicole Kidman; Marlo Thomas; Tony Bennett and kd lang.
Her mother, who was in the hospital, healing from hip surgery, instructed her to take photos. Along with the four customers, I invited Liz Grant, an openly lesbian IBM colleague from London, who knew the customers already through Stonewall activities with them, and who would also be able to introduce them to the account team upon their return home.
Liz followed up with the customer and now, the customer’s talking with the account team about potentially helping her with a substantial consulting project.
There was the deeply closeted senior executive of a giant financial services firm, who wouldn’t return IBM’s phone calls because he didn’t see how IBM was different from its competition…until he learned of our GLBT Sales and Talent mission.
We respected that he did not want to be identified as gay, and he was willing to speak with the rep accordingly. The rep is now demonstrating IBM’s services capabilities further, now that the customer’s granting him an audience.
Perhaps my favorite recent experience involved hosting a couple at a Human Rights Campaign dinner in the Midwest. HRC is probably the biggest GLBT organization in the world.
I invited a customer from one of our Fortune 500 accounts to attend with her partner and then also invited the IBM client director of the account to join us.
The customer and I had met at a conference of GLBT employee groups sponsored by an organization called Out & Equal, and I had met her partner, an author and transgender educator, when he had come to IBM to do transgender education for our GLBT Task Force.
The customer identifies as bisexual and her fiancé – that evening, I learned they’re getting married in the fall – identifies as a heterosexual transgender man. The client director and I had never met and I had no concept of the level of his GLBT-friendliness, but figured it was a good sign that he wanted to be at the dinner.
We had a wonderful evening. Serendipitously, the client director and the fiancé were both bantam, the same height, and spoke with me during the VIP reception about some of the tall women each had dated.
The customer was speaking with the ED of HRC while the men were kidding around. It was just a couple of guys, seeing eye-to-eye, and me, smiling down at them.
At the end of the evening, the client director and I debriefed and I said, “You were terrifically respectful. A number of people are confused initially by transgender people. You were great. I don’t know how many GLBT people you’ve had as friends or family in your life, but –”
“My freshman roommate was gay and my sister-in-law is, and besides, no one’s all-Democrat or all-Republican; no one’s all-male or all-female.”
“Well, I’m glad you were able to do good will, though I wonder if you think any business might come of your having met the customer.”
“She needs Computer-based Training services that could add up to tens of millions of dollars.” Jackpot!
The client director wrote a great e-mail follow-up note after the dinner to the customer’s fiancé:
I hope that some of you here today are inspired to become more demonstrative in your inclusion and welcoming of GLBT visitors, trustees and also colleagues. It’s really so much lovelier an organization when we find our common ground and acknowledge one another’s humanity, I’ve found.
The botanical gardens and arboreta that are the most inclusive are the most prosperous in the long run, if IBM’s success is any indication.
I added a bonus image to the tip-sheet I’ll hand out to you; it’s a static version of a dynamic web ad banner that we’re hosting on planetout.com and gay.com, just for additional inspiration. Any of your organizations could do the same thing if they like fairly inexpensively.
Supported as I am in making a contribution to the business, you can imagine that I enjoy working for IBM. Finally, I’ll share another reason for liking the company that you’re most likely able to appreciate, also, which is about the property of our headquarters in Armonk, New York.
Armonk is about 20 minutes from where I grew up and so the topography’s the same. To get to the building from any of the parking lots, I need to walk along trails among boulder-laden woods.
Every time I visit headquarters, I feel like a happy kid. It’s like being back at the Stamford Museum & Nature Center or the adjacent Arboretum. I enter the building for a series of grown-up meetings and then return to the nicest part of my childhood as I walk back to my car in the lot. I’ve been struck by this and couldn’t imagine a more appreciative audience with which to share it.
I guess what we have in common, ultimately, is our humanity.
Annual Conference, Boston, 29 June 2003
by Sarah Siegel, program director, GLBT Sales and Talent, IBM
Note: I delivered these remarks in 2003 and posted them here on 22 May 2007.
David and Elayna, thanks for inviting me to speak to your colleagues. Some of my favorite experiences in nature have been in public gardens and arboreta. I grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, where my mom still lives. Is anyone here from Bartlett Arboretum or the Stamford Museum and Nature Center?
I met David DeKing through Jose Ortiz of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Cloisters.
I’m reminded of how Jose, along with a group of his most enterprising colleagues, had been telling their management for some time that it made sense for the Museum to have a booth at the annual Gay Expo. It was an intriguing idea, but not a top priority.
And then, with its being the number one tourist destination in New York City, the Metropolitan Museum was hard-hit by September 11th.
Museum and Cloisters visits were down in 2001, way-down, since New York tourism had diminished so. The Museum was ready to experiment.
A booth full of enthusiastic gay and lesbian employees along with reps from HR smiled back at the expo attendees. They gave away family passes, sold memberships on the spot and welcomed a number of employment inquiries.
I think this is a terrific example of marketing leadership. Some organizations might think that marketing to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people is a cool concept for when times are flush, when there’s room for risk-taking, but The Metropolitan Museum of Art, including the Cloisters recognized that it was precisely at the time when it was most eager to increase visits that it needed to do something fresh and more inclusive.
I don’t know how many of you here are already fully, visibly, actively inclusive of GLBT employees, members, visitors and trustees compared with the number of you, who have considered how natural it would be to be actively welcoming to GLBT people, but who haven’t yet made the progress.
For example, I wonder how many of your membership brochures have language that is inclusive of couples and families with same-sex partners. You’d only have to switch the language, so that it reads “spouse or partner” instead of just “spouse.”
Or you could do what Bartlett Arboretum has done and simply designate a “family/household” category of membership. Just for fun, I checked the Bartlett Arboretum’s site on the web and was happy to see its inclusiveness.
When David invited me to speak, some people asked me, “But what does the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta have in common with IBM?”
One simple answer is that we are your customers and hopefully, increasingly, you are ours.
The nearly 320,000 IBMers and their families worldwide, a number of whom are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender, or GLBT for short, are among your 60 million visitors, and with your operating budget topping 620 million dollars, I trust that an increasing share of that budget is being spent on information technology, such as, ever-more sophisticated database software; web site development and hosting; and hardware just for starters.
Certainly, I’m happy to take orders for any technology needs you might have after this session, and seriously, I do hope that all things being equal, everyone I ever talk to who needs technology services and products can feel good about choosing IBM, knowing that we’re visibly, actively welcoming of all customers, including GLBT and GLBT-friendly ones.
What else do AABGA and IBM have in common? Both are employers of all sorts of humanity. In my experience, employees who feel respected are remarkably productive and more innovative. For example, a number of GLBT IBMers, including me, prepared the proposal to senior management for launching the GLBT Sales and Talent team in 2001.
Doug Elix, who heads our Global Services business, which includes our consultants and which is the largest and most profitable division of IBM, said yes right away to becoming the senior executive sponsor for the team, including funding headcount market research and program dollars.
Doug recognized that along with Asian, Black, Hispanic and Women’s segment teams that already existed, it made sense to dedicate a full-time team to the GLBT segment, which includes members of all of the other diverse constituencies and all levels of organizations, including, increasingly, openly GLBT, and GLBT-friendly, executive technology purchase decision makers.
In 2001, it was a breakthrough idea, as we became the first technology company in the Fortune 500 to have such a team, and it happened because the culture welcomed such innovation.
My colleague Irwin Drucker, who’s in IBM Procurement and openly gay, raised his hand in 1999, even earlier, to be the program director of Gay and Lesbian Supplier Relations, which focuses on IBM spending its vendor-money with GLBT-owned businesses. Other companies have programs for women and minority-owned vendors, but IBM is the first to have one dedicated to spending money with GLBT business owners.
I love that this year’s conference-theme is “Seeds of Revolution.”
Marketing to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and their GLBT-friendly associates is not at all revolutionary. IBM, along with arboreta and botanical gardens all over the world, has always been doing so.
What is revolutionary is that IBM is acknowledging the full humanity of its GLBT and GLBT-friendly customers so visibly, by assigning full-time staff and program dollars for business development, advertising and cause-related marketing in this arena.
I want to use the rest of my time with you to describe how it made sense for IBM to support a GLBT sales focus, and to offer you customer insight from my experience over the past two years of serving the GLBT, and GLBT-friendly, market.
At the end of the session, I’ll provide a tip-sheet you can walk away with on how your organization can get started with GLBT sales and marketing.
It might surprise you to learn that IBM has had black and female employees since 1899 – 10 years before the NAACP was founded and 20 years before women got the right to vote.
Also, 11 years before the 1964 Civil Rights Act, our CEO at the time, T.J. Watson, said there would be no “separate, but equal facilities.” IBM was building a number of manufacturing plants in the South and this was also a year ahead of the Brown decision ending “separate but equal” in public education.
IBM added “sexual orientation” to its non-discrimination policy in 1984. I wonder if all of the botanical gardens and arboreta represented here, which have non-discrimination policies include “sexual orientation.”
If not, I hope you’ll be inspired to update the policy, so that gay, lesbian and bisexual employees will feel explicitly welcome in your organization. I know that as a lesbian, I feel better, knowing I am among the people who are explicitly welcome to work for IBM.
Another surprise, probably: IBM is the first company in the world to add “gender identity or expression” to its global HR policy; so far, most other companies only cover U.S. or North American employees while this policy covers all IBMers in all of the 160 countries where we operate.
It would be fully inclusive if each of your organizations who already have a non-discrimination policy were to add “gender identity or expression,” too, so that transgender and gender-variant employees feel welcome to work with you as well.
Now that you know that IBM’s heritage is an inclusive one, the ease we had in gaining support for launching the GLBT Sales and Talent team won’t prompt you to say, “IBM, really?” but rather, “IBM, of course.”
IBM has diversity task forces for eight constituencies: Asian, Black, GLBT, Hispanic, Men, Native Americans, People with Disabilities and Women.
It also has employee networking groups for each of the constituencies and probably has the world’s largest GLBT employee group, with 1,100+ members in 30 chapters worldwide.
My counterpart, Joseph Bertolotti, and I consider all of them to be among our virtual sales force and we’ve established a GLBT Sales Network accordingly, so that they can develop sales leads with us as needs arise among any of their GLBT customers or friends.
We had done some experimenting with GLBT events and advertising since 1995, but each effort was a one-shot and so while each was appreciated by the community and increased its brand loyalty to IBM, there was no sustained activity around welcoming GLBT business.
We had even assigned a third of a headcount to the gay and lesbian market from 1997-2001, which was dedicated to the market only a third of the time, so the results were good, but limited.
When Doug Elix agreed to sponsor the team, I raised my hand to be one of the members, and we did a job posting for the other peer position.
I remember wondering how many people would apply. I was shocked that close to 100 candidates emerged, which reminded me that the homophobia that has held me back most in my career is my own. Not everyone was even G, L, B or T. One of the non-GLBT candidates said simply, “It seemed like a great startup opportunity.”
My favorite part of my job has been working with non-GLBT sales colleagues to drive revenue from openly GLBT decision makers among IBM’s Fortune and Global 500 customers. We’ve driven millions and millions of dollars in GLBT-attributable revenue since our launch two years ago.
I’m going to share some of my customer experiences with you, so that you’ll have a close-up view of what has worked for me in appealing to the market, and they might inspire you to want to serve GLBT members, visitors and trustees actively, if you don’t already.
The first customer example shows how IBM’s GLBT sales focus resonates with non-GLBT, that is, GLBT-friendly customers:
I attended a dinner to benefit Equality Forum, a GLBT organization, and sitting to my right was a married couple. They wondered what IBM was doing there as a major sponsor and I wondered at their connection to the organization, since they appeared not to be G, L, B or T.
They told me that the man was the chair of the Media Arts department of a nearby university, and that a group of his students had done a GLBT photography exhibit recently and that the university was supportive of the organization, just like IBM.
I told him about my role and then he said, “I’ve been talking with one of your competitors and they haven’t been helpful. I need to outfit my computer animation lab with all new equipment and I’d rather work with a vendor who will care.”
“As a matter of fact,” I told him, “Mike Fuller, the head of the whole Education industry at IBM is here tonight and I’d love to introduce him to you.”
I asked Mike to come to the table to meet the couple and the department chairman ended up choosing IBM, and writing really gracious e-mail to me about how helpful IBM had been.
Through IBM’s support of Stonewall, a GLBT organization in the UK, we met an openly lesbian decision maker at a Global 500 firm there, which is already a big IBM customer. The account team, however, had not yet met with her.
We invited her, along with her partner and one of her GLBT-friendly colleagues and the colleague’s husband to join us at the IBM table at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Media Awards dinner in New York City a few months ago.
It was a memorable evening, just as we’d hoped; the customer took photos of the celebrity award presenters and entertainers, including Nicole Kidman; Marlo Thomas; Tony Bennett and kd lang.
Her mother, who was in the hospital, healing from hip surgery, instructed her to take photos. Along with the four customers, I invited Liz Grant, an openly lesbian IBM colleague from London, who knew the customers already through Stonewall activities with them, and who would also be able to introduce them to the account team upon their return home.
Liz followed up with the customer and now, the customer’s talking with the account team about potentially helping her with a substantial consulting project.
There was the deeply closeted senior executive of a giant financial services firm, who wouldn’t return IBM’s phone calls because he didn’t see how IBM was different from its competition…until he learned of our GLBT Sales and Talent mission.
We respected that he did not want to be identified as gay, and he was willing to speak with the rep accordingly. The rep is now demonstrating IBM’s services capabilities further, now that the customer’s granting him an audience.
Perhaps my favorite recent experience involved hosting a couple at a Human Rights Campaign dinner in the Midwest. HRC is probably the biggest GLBT organization in the world.
I invited a customer from one of our Fortune 500 accounts to attend with her partner and then also invited the IBM client director of the account to join us.
The customer and I had met at a conference of GLBT employee groups sponsored by an organization called Out & Equal, and I had met her partner, an author and transgender educator, when he had come to IBM to do transgender education for our GLBT Task Force.
The customer identifies as bisexual and her fiancé – that evening, I learned they’re getting married in the fall – identifies as a heterosexual transgender man. The client director and I had never met and I had no concept of the level of his GLBT-friendliness, but figured it was a good sign that he wanted to be at the dinner.
We had a wonderful evening. Serendipitously, the client director and the fiancé were both bantam, the same height, and spoke with me during the VIP reception about some of the tall women each had dated.
The customer was speaking with the ED of HRC while the men were kidding around. It was just a couple of guys, seeing eye-to-eye, and me, smiling down at them.
At the end of the evening, the client director and I debriefed and I said, “You were terrifically respectful. A number of people are confused initially by transgender people. You were great. I don’t know how many GLBT people you’ve had as friends or family in your life, but –”
“My freshman roommate was gay and my sister-in-law is, and besides, no one’s all-Democrat or all-Republican; no one’s all-male or all-female.”
“Well, I’m glad you were able to do good will, though I wonder if you think any business might come of your having met the customer.”
“She needs Computer-based Training services that could add up to tens of millions of dollars.” Jackpot!
The client director wrote a great e-mail follow-up note after the dinner to the customer’s fiancé:
Thanks for helping to make the evening a very enjoyable one.
I also want to thank you for letting me spend some (OK a lot) of
the evening talking with [your fiance]. I mentioned to Sarah and your fiancé alike
that I found the experience to be very personally broadening. Your fiance
helped to clarify some points of confusion that allowed me to have
a better understanding of the GLBT landscape and issues.
I hope the flight back was uneventful and relaxing.
Thanks again.
PS Best of wishes for both your upcoming marriage and new book!
I hope that some of you here today are inspired to become more demonstrative in your inclusion and welcoming of GLBT visitors, trustees and also colleagues. It’s really so much lovelier an organization when we find our common ground and acknowledge one another’s humanity, I’ve found.
The botanical gardens and arboreta that are the most inclusive are the most prosperous in the long run, if IBM’s success is any indication.
I added a bonus image to the tip-sheet I’ll hand out to you; it’s a static version of a dynamic web ad banner that we’re hosting on planetout.com and gay.com, just for additional inspiration. Any of your organizations could do the same thing if they like fairly inexpensively.
Supported as I am in making a contribution to the business, you can imagine that I enjoy working for IBM. Finally, I’ll share another reason for liking the company that you’re most likely able to appreciate, also, which is about the property of our headquarters in Armonk, New York.
Armonk is about 20 minutes from where I grew up and so the topography’s the same. To get to the building from any of the parking lots, I need to walk along trails among boulder-laden woods.
Every time I visit headquarters, I feel like a happy kid. It’s like being back at the Stamford Museum & Nature Center or the adjacent Arboretum. I enter the building for a series of grown-up meetings and then return to the nicest part of my childhood as I walk back to my car in the lot. I’ve been struck by this and couldn’t imagine a more appreciative audience with which to share it.
I guess what we have in common, ultimately, is our humanity.
Tuesday, May 14, 2002
Mother's Day
The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
Note: Originally posted on the EAGLE online community site, behind IBM's firewall on 14 May 2002, at 6: 52 am, and posted here on 24 May 2007:
I started this on Mother's Day weekend and it's dedicated to all who were missing a parent on Mother's Day:
Pat and I woke up on Saturday morning to a Lullabyes feature on National Public Radio, in honor of Mother's Day. I lay there, singing in my head the one that my father always sang to us; my mom didn't sing lullabyes.
My dad would sing in Yiddish, "Shlof mein kind. Mach deine aygalach, lulilulilu; shlof mein kind und troim fun faygelach, lulilulilu."/"Sleep my child. Close your eyes, lulilulilu. Sleep my child and dream of little birds, lulilulilu."
Later in the morning, we caught up on some of our videos, including the most recent episode of "ER," which centers on Dr. Mark Green's last days before dying. Two parts of it made me cry: when he's teaching his daughter to drive and when he shows his happiness that she's finding romance with a boy she met during their Hawaiian vacation.
My dad died when I was 17, the November prior to my graduation from high school, so the last rite of passage we shared was his teaching me to drive. And he was also particularly encouraging of the romance I was doggedly developing with a male high school classmate and unaware of the other romance that I was developing in parallel with a girl I met the summer before, as he lay dying in Columbia-Presbyterian in NYC.
I think about it being Mother's Day, and about the work my parents did as parents, and about my mother, sisters and I losing my father so early, and I am sad.
And I think of my not yet being pregnant -- I know, I know, I've barely begun trying, but I ache to be a mother, particularly since September 11th. I wrote in the EAGLE database that day about how comforting it was to be with my mother, but I also recall feeling sad that our house was empty when I got home the next morning; Pat was still at work and I had no one to care for then, since we don't yet have a child.
Parenting is profound. I used to want to be taken care of above all and now, I find myself craving a next generation that needs my care. It's not rational. And for me, it's no longer enough to say that I can help my niece and nephews, or that I can volunteer to help GLBTQ youth, like I did in my early twenties. I want a child of our own to parent with Pat. I was thinking that we'll have a double Mothers Day always, and then always be doubly sad on Fathers Day, since neither of us has our father and neither will our child have a father s/he can celebrate.
I dropped Pat at the Newark airport on Saturday afternoon, so she could fly out to the Mayo Clinic to support her friend who's getting tests there, and felt as lonely as I expected to, driving home. I needed some groceries and an excuse not to go right home to our empty house. Standing in the cheese section, I looked at Explorateur from France, remembering my parents talking about how tasty it was, and so I put it in my cart.
Just then, a man asked me to turn around: "May I see the front of your sweatshirt?" On the back, was the back of a cartoon bull terrier dog, by the "New Yorker" cartoonist, George Booth. On the front was the front of the bull terrier.
"I used to go to school with George Booth. He was something else."
"How neat. Where was that?"
"At The School of the Visual Arts [in New York City], in the early Fifties."
"My dad was at RISD [Rhode Island School of Design] in the late Forties. He introduced me to the cartoons of George Booth. We loved his cartoons. Our favorite one was of a deranged, but happy-looking woman, standing next to one of these signature dogs of his and the caption read, 'I feel idiotically happy today.'"
"Yeah, that sounds like him."
"Once in class, George was wearing this square, plaid tie and he rested it on a sheet of paper on his desk and extended it with watercolors."
"That's great and reminds me of how my father drew a naked woman on his bedroom wall as a teenager and when his mother saw it, she said, 'Chaim, at least put a bathing suit on her.'"
"I would have used push-pins, so I could have removed the bathing suit whenever she left the room."
I laughed and said, "I'm honored to meet you. I'm so glad you came up to me. You reminded me of my dad, who I lost when I was young."
"Haven't we all lost people?" he asked.
Yes.
Note: Originally posted on the EAGLE online community site, behind IBM's firewall on 14 May 2002, at 6: 52 am, and posted here on 24 May 2007:
I started this on Mother's Day weekend and it's dedicated to all who were missing a parent on Mother's Day:
Pat and I woke up on Saturday morning to a Lullabyes feature on National Public Radio, in honor of Mother's Day. I lay there, singing in my head the one that my father always sang to us; my mom didn't sing lullabyes.
My dad would sing in Yiddish, "Shlof mein kind. Mach deine aygalach, lulilulilu; shlof mein kind und troim fun faygelach, lulilulilu."/"Sleep my child. Close your eyes, lulilulilu. Sleep my child and dream of little birds, lulilulilu."
Later in the morning, we caught up on some of our videos, including the most recent episode of "ER," which centers on Dr. Mark Green's last days before dying. Two parts of it made me cry: when he's teaching his daughter to drive and when he shows his happiness that she's finding romance with a boy she met during their Hawaiian vacation.
My dad died when I was 17, the November prior to my graduation from high school, so the last rite of passage we shared was his teaching me to drive. And he was also particularly encouraging of the romance I was doggedly developing with a male high school classmate and unaware of the other romance that I was developing in parallel with a girl I met the summer before, as he lay dying in Columbia-Presbyterian in NYC.
I think about it being Mother's Day, and about the work my parents did as parents, and about my mother, sisters and I losing my father so early, and I am sad.
And I think of my not yet being pregnant -- I know, I know, I've barely begun trying, but I ache to be a mother, particularly since September 11th. I wrote in the EAGLE database that day about how comforting it was to be with my mother, but I also recall feeling sad that our house was empty when I got home the next morning; Pat was still at work and I had no one to care for then, since we don't yet have a child.
Parenting is profound. I used to want to be taken care of above all and now, I find myself craving a next generation that needs my care. It's not rational. And for me, it's no longer enough to say that I can help my niece and nephews, or that I can volunteer to help GLBTQ youth, like I did in my early twenties. I want a child of our own to parent with Pat. I was thinking that we'll have a double Mothers Day always, and then always be doubly sad on Fathers Day, since neither of us has our father and neither will our child have a father s/he can celebrate.
I dropped Pat at the Newark airport on Saturday afternoon, so she could fly out to the Mayo Clinic to support her friend who's getting tests there, and felt as lonely as I expected to, driving home. I needed some groceries and an excuse not to go right home to our empty house. Standing in the cheese section, I looked at Explorateur from France, remembering my parents talking about how tasty it was, and so I put it in my cart.
Just then, a man asked me to turn around: "May I see the front of your sweatshirt?" On the back, was the back of a cartoon bull terrier dog, by the "New Yorker" cartoonist, George Booth. On the front was the front of the bull terrier.
"I used to go to school with George Booth. He was something else."
"How neat. Where was that?"
"At The School of the Visual Arts [in New York City], in the early Fifties."
"My dad was at RISD [Rhode Island School of Design] in the late Forties. He introduced me to the cartoons of George Booth. We loved his cartoons. Our favorite one was of a deranged, but happy-looking woman, standing next to one of these signature dogs of his and the caption read, 'I feel idiotically happy today.'"
"Yeah, that sounds like him."
"Once in class, George was wearing this square, plaid tie and he rested it on a sheet of paper on his desk and extended it with watercolors."
"That's great and reminds me of how my father drew a naked woman on his bedroom wall as a teenager and when his mother saw it, she said, 'Chaim, at least put a bathing suit on her.'"
"I would have used push-pins, so I could have removed the bathing suit whenever she left the room."
I laughed and said, "I'm honored to meet you. I'm so glad you came up to me. You reminded me of my dad, who I lost when I was young."
"Haven't we all lost people?" he asked.
Yes.
Tuesday, November 13, 2001
Dealing with Homophobia in the Workplace
The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
Note: Originally posted on the EAGLE online community site, behind IBM's firewall on 13 November 2001, at 9: 51 pm, and posted here on 24 May 2007:
Last night, I presented my perspective on dealing with homophobia in the workplace at the GLBT community center in White Plains, NY.
Following my prepared remarks, I handed out copies of the new recruiting brochure produced by Paul Carey and written by EAGLE - Raleigh member, Deb Davisson, of IBM Marketing Solutions.
The program coordinator agreed to put a stack in the room where the 20-something group meets, too.
I talked about the brochures in the context of IBM offering a barrier-free environment for GLBT employees, and that despite how good we have it at IBM, people are still not yet out en masse.
I welcome hearing others' perspectives on dealing with homophobia at work, including our own internalized homophobia.
[Here's the transcript:]
Dealing with Homophobia in the Workplace
presented by Sarah Siegel at
The Loft, White Plains, New York, 12 November 2001
Lovonia, thank you for inviting me to contribute to The Loft's series on dealing with homophobia in the workplace. And thanks to Mary Seminara for connecting us. Mary is a member of the Tri-State chapter of EAGLE, IBM's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) employee group and she is also active at The Loft.
When Lovonia made the invitation, I said, "Well, I hope it'll be OK that I'll be speaking from my perspective and won't be sharing sad stories because I've had a positive experience at IBM." And I have. And it was OK.
I have felt no career-limiting discrimination for being openly-lesbian at IBM and have observed that high-performing, openly-GLBT colleagues have gone only upward in their careers at IBM.
Still, I'm grateful to have had this assignment for The Loft series because it gave me the opportunity to reflect further.
When I dug a bit, I realized I do have substantial experience with dealing with homophobia in the workplace -- my own. It feels risky to say that; I'm a leader of the GLBT business community and I worry that if I admit my own not-yet-fully-loving pride in my lesbian identity, I could slow down progress.
It's a risk I'll take, though, because perhaps someone who's looking for inspiration to become more visibly proud can see my example as one of someone who has fears, but ultimately channels them to become a stronger, more loving leader.
Over the course of my career, my fears around being lesbian have been wide-ranging, including worries about:
· Coming out to my management
· Coming out to peers
· Coming out to teams I've managed
· Helping closeted colleagues on my teams be fully productive
· Getting my feelings hurt by closeted colleagues who are threatened by my visibility
· Standing out as too unfeminine in the conventional sense
· Speaking out against anti-gay jokes
· Being exemplary at my job to reflect well on the GLBT Community
· Representing the GLBT business community optimally
These are just a sample. In each case, I've acted despite my fears and feel I've been successful.
Today, it seems that any sort of phobia is both more and less understandable than ever. For example, considering the recent terrorist acts, as a Jewish-American lesbian, I can look at myself as more vulnerable than ever in several ways, but I don't feel so vulnerable at work.
In my experience, other than among my loved ones, my workplace is the safest place for me to be myself, now more than ever.
Among the first colleagues to check on me on September 11th were two non-gay, non-Jewish Austrian and British IBM colleagues based in Vienna and Hursley, England.
One's father is Egyptian and the other's parents are East Indian – one Hindu and one Sikh. I was so moved when their instant messages of concern popped up on my computer screen.
Both know that I'm Jewish and lesbian; one even accompanied my partner Pat and me to a Chanukah celebration at our GLBT synagogue in New York City a few years ago and we had a delightful time together.
I mean it about work being among the safest places for me now. IBM and an increasing number of employers are ahead of their in-country governments in their policies toward being equitable to GLBT employees.
IBM offers the added bonus of being a global company, so I've been able to work with people from all over the world throughout my career. I've been out to all of them and we've worked well together and even felt affection for one another.
It has, however, been more challenging to be openly-lesbian when I am working with colleagues in their countries than when they are working in the States with me; that has been due to my own insecurities, rather than any negative vibes sent by them or their colleagues, and that's another example of getting past my fears and ultimately succeeding.
Last fall, I was lucky to be among a panel from the private sector, addressing GLOBE, the GLBT employee group of the United Nations. The group wanted my co-panelists and me to talk about best practices for GLBT employees at our respective companies.
I was moved ultimately when I learned that if I remember correctly, at least 60 percent of the people attending our talk were not native-born, not American citizens, and that they can be deported if their management has a problem with their identifying as not heterosexual.
At IBM, I've never needed to worry about being fired for being a lesbian. By contrast, what a brave group of people, who have opted to trust that homophobia in their workplace will not adversely affect them, or who have concluded that hiding their sexual orientation is not worth it to them no matter what.
I said that any phobia seems more understandable and less understandable at once these days – more understandable because these are uncertain times, but also less understandable as follows:
I have nothing left to lose by being me. All hands are needed on deck now and if my hands are capable, I believe that their productivity will matter more than what shade they are, or that they stroke a woman's smooth face as a daily gesture of love.
Love needs to replace fear, now more than ever. The GLBT Sales and Talent team that my counterpart Joseph Bertolotti and our manager Mike Fuller and I are starting up for IBM is a prime example of love overcoming fear. Again, the fear was my own, not IBM's.
I worried about the risk of leaving ibm.com to work full-time on appealing to the GLBT Community. I had spent nearly seven years building my reputation as a leader of ibm.com and had gained respect for my contribution particularly to the revenue-producing section of the Web site; my teams designed, developed and built much of the online store.
My heart wanted to be dedicated to the GLBT mission, but I was nervous about the all-lesbian-all-the-time quality of the role I was going to take on.
I spoke with my non-gay manager about the opportunity without sharing my homophobic reservations and she said, "Sarah, this is an amazing startup opportunity. IBM always looks at startup experience in evaluating people who become general managers ultimately."
I had never voiced a desire to be a GM, but was flattered at her vision. I can remember my own well-meaning, older sisters Deb and Kathy asking me very early on in my career, "Sarah, is it such a good idea for you to be so out at work?" And that was when I was a technical writer, who didn't even know I had management aspirations.
In fact, it was my colleague David Chase's and my leadership of EAGLE – Tri-State that led me to want to be a manager. I realized that I enjoyed helping people be a bit happier and more productive through my influence, and EAGLE gave me a taste of what management was like in that respect.
And I have gained insight through helping to lead EAGLE: I have much to learn from the closeted and semi-closeted among my colleagues and a number of them are open to having a dialogue with me. In my role with EAGLE, they know they can open up to me because it's understood that it's between us.
Before I became a leader of EAGLE, and before I took on the role of helping start up IBM's GLBT Sales and Talent team, it was unlikely that closeted professionals would be drawn to me, as I was too poster-childish for them. Now, we have excuses to talk.
I said that I wasn't planning to tell sad stories, but upon reflection, I realize I've experienced a particularly heartbreaking aspect of homophobia in the workplace and I feel it's worth sharing: I'm going to talk now about the sort of internalized homophobia that hurts other GLBT people and not just oneself.
Even with having the mission to reach the GLBT market and attract, retain and motivate the world's best GLBT talent, sometimes I worry about talking to the particularly closeted among my colleagues for fear of getting hurt.
For example, I have presented myself to some on the one hand cautiously -- because I've got this notion that I need to be super-diplomatic -- and then since I feel tense from being overly-polite, I blurt out on the other hand an impossible question like, "What would it take to make you comfortable enough to come out?" Or "Too bad you couldn't bring your partner to that function; she's probably more appealing than many of the guys' wives."
When I say things like that, I'm making these colleagues uncomfortable and forcing them to respond with their discomfort. The typical result is that both of us feel hurt.
However, when I'm brave and also extend myself more naturally and meet them on their own terms, we have a respectful exchange and even become friendly.
Even as I'm about to talk of my own experience before I came out, I'm having a hard time relating to some colleagues' position that it's not self-hatred that keeps them closeted, but rather self-consciousness. There are truly private people in the world; obviously, I am not one of them.
Ideally, I should come to realize that not everyone wants to be as self-disclosing as I do and I'd like in turn for all of the more quiet among us to respect that I wish to be open about my sexual orientation.
I like how my colleague Rob Shook sums it up: "No one should need to hide his or her sexual orientation out of fear [of retribution]," he says.
As long as it's not fear that's motivating the non-disclosure, then I say, Terrific.
My challenge, as a super-open sort of person, is imagining that there would be any other reason than fear for keeping my sexual orientation to myself.
I do respect that there are other reasons, but in my experience, it was fear that kept me from telling colleagues about my lesbianism at my first job out of college.
I need to keep fresh my memory of how it was for me when I was closeted at work. Nothing anyone could have said to me would have helped me till I was ready to be visible.
Once I was ready, though, I wish there had been more in the way of resources around me, like there are at IBM. At Sears Technology Services – the technology arm of Sears, Roebuck and Co. in Schaumburg, Illinois, before much of it became part of IBM -- I was entirely out on my own 10 years ago.
How gratifying it was earlier in the fall to participate in a weekend gathering of the EAGLE – Midwest chapter and see two guys I used to pass in the halls in Schaumburg all the time. If we had been part of a company that had had a GLBT employee group back then, we could have been not so isolated.
During that same weekend, EAGLE hosted a GLBT employee group panel that included reps from Sears' GLBT employee group, which was formed following my move to IBM, and that was also satisfying.
Through our work, so far since June of this year, Joseph and I have discovered what we call the Outness Continuum. We have had a number of experiences both with colleagues and customers, who are not fully-out, but who are in any case eager to help us in our mission.
Recognizing all that I've just said about the potential tenderness of exchanges with semi-closeted and closet colleagues, typically, I'm more comfortable speaking with the often non-gay client team directors and managers about the mission and how Joseph and I can help them sell more to their clients whenever we have a GLBT decision maker for them to meet.
Joseph and I find that they respond to our enthusiasm and understand that what we're doing fundamentally is the same as any classic relationship- selling model, that we're using our network in order to sell. Personally, it's easier for me to be enthusiastic with non-gay people of both genders because somehow, less is riding on their response.
Again, with closeted colleagues, my own homophobia bubbles to the surface and has to be channeled compared with non-gay colleagues, who typically don't bring the same fears to the exchange.
Internalized homophobia is so poisonous because when I'm talking with someone who feels it's too dangerous to be out, part of me always loses a bit of my footing; I think to myself, What do they know that I don't? Why am I so brazen?
Ultimately, I remind myself that I get past my homophobia and come out to people for several reasons:
1. As a Jew, my parents raised me to be openly-proud of my heritage
2. I don't feel I can pass as non-gay, and don't want to try to
3. Being openly-lesbian has become a leadership opportunity; I've become somewhat of a mentor for GLBT colleagues who aspire to become managers, for example
4. I'm convinced there are more potential career and spiritual opportunities for me by being out than by being closeted, at least more of the sort of which I'd prefer to take advantage
For example, in my current GLBT Sales and Talent role, our team presents routinely to Doug Elix, who leads IBM's largest and most thriving division, IBM Global Services. It's a tremendous opportunity to get feedback on my performance directly from one of IBM's wisest leaders.
And it's the ultimate example of homophobia not being at work in the workplace – just the opposite. Doug speaks of what we're doing as helping burnish IBM's reputation in the market and among prospective employees – not the GLBT market, but the market at large, and not GLBT prospective employees, but all prospective employees. He says, "Keep in mind the star-burst effect your work is having."
I'm reminded of having hired an employee last year, who said he decided on IBM because his sister's a lesbian and he liked IBM's diversity commitment.
I said I'm out also because I prefer the sort of spiritual opportunities that being so affords me:
For example, last Friday, a leader of one of our competitor's, Accenture's, GLBT employee group invited Joseph and me to be the outside speakers that Accenture brought in for a special Diversity program; employees from the various employee diversity groups at Accenture in New York City attended, including the GLBT employee group.
The program marked the debut of the GLBT group in joining the rest of the family of diversity employee groups at Accenture. The group was formed last May and after our presentation, we got to meet with the members of that group in particular.
Yes, I relished that a competitor gave IBM an opportunity to demonstrate thought leadership; and yes, it felt good from the standpoint that we're already working together on projects around the world; and it was nice to connect for the purpose of celebrating our respective employees' diversity, but there were additional opportunities that felt particularly spiritual as well:
I felt like Joseph and I were visiting from their future. Their status as an employee group reminded me of IBM circa 1997 and I was moved that I was able to play a part in their early progress. I'm all for competition, but I'm also all for the advancement of all GLBT businesspeople.
In the elevator on the way out, one of the Latino participants said, "Good presentation. What's next for you?"
"I'm going to speak at the GLBT community center in White Plains on Monday about dealing with homophobia in the workplace and how it's not really the non-gay people who are the problem," I said, "but us, being our own worst enemy."
I responded with no self-consciousness because I was still inspired by the premise and success of the program at Accenture, and then it struck me, this guy might be gay himself. And I walked away from the exchange hopeful because he seemed receptive.
The spiritual part is knowing that there's a positive star-burst effect and a loving quality to my career that extends beyond any prior job. I feel like I can re-affirm for my sisters Deb and Kathy enthusiastically, "Yes, it's a great idea for me to be so out at work," but they came to that conclusion themselves years ago as they watched my progress.
My hope is that I'm able to deal ever-more effectively with my own internalized homophobia, so that I'm natural with GLBT and non-gay colleagues alike, and that unswervingly, I heed my own declaration that love needs to replace fear, now more than ever.
* * *
Note: Originally posted on the EAGLE online community site, behind IBM's firewall on 13 November 2001, at 9: 51 pm, and posted here on 24 May 2007:
Last night, I presented my perspective on dealing with homophobia in the workplace at the GLBT community center in White Plains, NY.
Following my prepared remarks, I handed out copies of the new recruiting brochure produced by Paul Carey and written by EAGLE - Raleigh member, Deb Davisson, of IBM Marketing Solutions.
The program coordinator agreed to put a stack in the room where the 20-something group meets, too.
I talked about the brochures in the context of IBM offering a barrier-free environment for GLBT employees, and that despite how good we have it at IBM, people are still not yet out en masse.
I welcome hearing others' perspectives on dealing with homophobia at work, including our own internalized homophobia.
[Here's the transcript:]
presented by Sarah Siegel at
The Loft, White Plains, New York, 12 November 2001
Lovonia, thank you for inviting me to contribute to The Loft's series on dealing with homophobia in the workplace. And thanks to Mary Seminara for connecting us. Mary is a member of the Tri-State chapter of EAGLE, IBM's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) employee group and she is also active at The Loft.
When Lovonia made the invitation, I said, "Well, I hope it'll be OK that I'll be speaking from my perspective and won't be sharing sad stories because I've had a positive experience at IBM." And I have. And it was OK.
I have felt no career-limiting discrimination for being openly-lesbian at IBM and have observed that high-performing, openly-GLBT colleagues have gone only upward in their careers at IBM.
Still, I'm grateful to have had this assignment for The Loft series because it gave me the opportunity to reflect further.
When I dug a bit, I realized I do have substantial experience with dealing with homophobia in the workplace -- my own. It feels risky to say that; I'm a leader of the GLBT business community and I worry that if I admit my own not-yet-fully-loving pride in my lesbian identity, I could slow down progress.
It's a risk I'll take, though, because perhaps someone who's looking for inspiration to become more visibly proud can see my example as one of someone who has fears, but ultimately channels them to become a stronger, more loving leader.
Over the course of my career, my fears around being lesbian have been wide-ranging, including worries about:
· Coming out to my management
· Coming out to peers
· Coming out to teams I've managed
· Helping closeted colleagues on my teams be fully productive
· Getting my feelings hurt by closeted colleagues who are threatened by my visibility
· Standing out as too unfeminine in the conventional sense
· Speaking out against anti-gay jokes
· Being exemplary at my job to reflect well on the GLBT Community
· Representing the GLBT business community optimally
These are just a sample. In each case, I've acted despite my fears and feel I've been successful.
Today, it seems that any sort of phobia is both more and less understandable than ever. For example, considering the recent terrorist acts, as a Jewish-American lesbian, I can look at myself as more vulnerable than ever in several ways, but I don't feel so vulnerable at work.
In my experience, other than among my loved ones, my workplace is the safest place for me to be myself, now more than ever.
Among the first colleagues to check on me on September 11th were two non-gay, non-Jewish Austrian and British IBM colleagues based in Vienna and Hursley, England.
One's father is Egyptian and the other's parents are East Indian – one Hindu and one Sikh. I was so moved when their instant messages of concern popped up on my computer screen.
Both know that I'm Jewish and lesbian; one even accompanied my partner Pat and me to a Chanukah celebration at our GLBT synagogue in New York City a few years ago and we had a delightful time together.
I mean it about work being among the safest places for me now. IBM and an increasing number of employers are ahead of their in-country governments in their policies toward being equitable to GLBT employees.
IBM offers the added bonus of being a global company, so I've been able to work with people from all over the world throughout my career. I've been out to all of them and we've worked well together and even felt affection for one another.
It has, however, been more challenging to be openly-lesbian when I am working with colleagues in their countries than when they are working in the States with me; that has been due to my own insecurities, rather than any negative vibes sent by them or their colleagues, and that's another example of getting past my fears and ultimately succeeding.
Last fall, I was lucky to be among a panel from the private sector, addressing GLOBE, the GLBT employee group of the United Nations. The group wanted my co-panelists and me to talk about best practices for GLBT employees at our respective companies.
I was moved ultimately when I learned that if I remember correctly, at least 60 percent of the people attending our talk were not native-born, not American citizens, and that they can be deported if their management has a problem with their identifying as not heterosexual.
At IBM, I've never needed to worry about being fired for being a lesbian. By contrast, what a brave group of people, who have opted to trust that homophobia in their workplace will not adversely affect them, or who have concluded that hiding their sexual orientation is not worth it to them no matter what.
I said that any phobia seems more understandable and less understandable at once these days – more understandable because these are uncertain times, but also less understandable as follows:
I have nothing left to lose by being me. All hands are needed on deck now and if my hands are capable, I believe that their productivity will matter more than what shade they are, or that they stroke a woman's smooth face as a daily gesture of love.
Love needs to replace fear, now more than ever. The GLBT Sales and Talent team that my counterpart Joseph Bertolotti and our manager Mike Fuller and I are starting up for IBM is a prime example of love overcoming fear. Again, the fear was my own, not IBM's.
I worried about the risk of leaving ibm.com to work full-time on appealing to the GLBT Community. I had spent nearly seven years building my reputation as a leader of ibm.com and had gained respect for my contribution particularly to the revenue-producing section of the Web site; my teams designed, developed and built much of the online store.
My heart wanted to be dedicated to the GLBT mission, but I was nervous about the all-lesbian-all-the-time quality of the role I was going to take on.
I spoke with my non-gay manager about the opportunity without sharing my homophobic reservations and she said, "Sarah, this is an amazing startup opportunity. IBM always looks at startup experience in evaluating people who become general managers ultimately."
I had never voiced a desire to be a GM, but was flattered at her vision. I can remember my own well-meaning, older sisters Deb and Kathy asking me very early on in my career, "Sarah, is it such a good idea for you to be so out at work?" And that was when I was a technical writer, who didn't even know I had management aspirations.
In fact, it was my colleague David Chase's and my leadership of EAGLE – Tri-State that led me to want to be a manager. I realized that I enjoyed helping people be a bit happier and more productive through my influence, and EAGLE gave me a taste of what management was like in that respect.
And I have gained insight through helping to lead EAGLE: I have much to learn from the closeted and semi-closeted among my colleagues and a number of them are open to having a dialogue with me. In my role with EAGLE, they know they can open up to me because it's understood that it's between us.
Before I became a leader of EAGLE, and before I took on the role of helping start up IBM's GLBT Sales and Talent team, it was unlikely that closeted professionals would be drawn to me, as I was too poster-childish for them. Now, we have excuses to talk.
I said that I wasn't planning to tell sad stories, but upon reflection, I realize I've experienced a particularly heartbreaking aspect of homophobia in the workplace and I feel it's worth sharing: I'm going to talk now about the sort of internalized homophobia that hurts other GLBT people and not just oneself.
Even with having the mission to reach the GLBT market and attract, retain and motivate the world's best GLBT talent, sometimes I worry about talking to the particularly closeted among my colleagues for fear of getting hurt.
For example, I have presented myself to some on the one hand cautiously -- because I've got this notion that I need to be super-diplomatic -- and then since I feel tense from being overly-polite, I blurt out on the other hand an impossible question like, "What would it take to make you comfortable enough to come out?" Or "Too bad you couldn't bring your partner to that function; she's probably more appealing than many of the guys' wives."
When I say things like that, I'm making these colleagues uncomfortable and forcing them to respond with their discomfort. The typical result is that both of us feel hurt.
However, when I'm brave and also extend myself more naturally and meet them on their own terms, we have a respectful exchange and even become friendly.
Even as I'm about to talk of my own experience before I came out, I'm having a hard time relating to some colleagues' position that it's not self-hatred that keeps them closeted, but rather self-consciousness. There are truly private people in the world; obviously, I am not one of them.
Ideally, I should come to realize that not everyone wants to be as self-disclosing as I do and I'd like in turn for all of the more quiet among us to respect that I wish to be open about my sexual orientation.
I like how my colleague Rob Shook sums it up: "No one should need to hide his or her sexual orientation out of fear [of retribution]," he says.
As long as it's not fear that's motivating the non-disclosure, then I say, Terrific.
My challenge, as a super-open sort of person, is imagining that there would be any other reason than fear for keeping my sexual orientation to myself.
I do respect that there are other reasons, but in my experience, it was fear that kept me from telling colleagues about my lesbianism at my first job out of college.
I need to keep fresh my memory of how it was for me when I was closeted at work. Nothing anyone could have said to me would have helped me till I was ready to be visible.
Once I was ready, though, I wish there had been more in the way of resources around me, like there are at IBM. At Sears Technology Services – the technology arm of Sears, Roebuck and Co. in Schaumburg, Illinois, before much of it became part of IBM -- I was entirely out on my own 10 years ago.
How gratifying it was earlier in the fall to participate in a weekend gathering of the EAGLE – Midwest chapter and see two guys I used to pass in the halls in Schaumburg all the time. If we had been part of a company that had had a GLBT employee group back then, we could have been not so isolated.
During that same weekend, EAGLE hosted a GLBT employee group panel that included reps from Sears' GLBT employee group, which was formed following my move to IBM, and that was also satisfying.
Through our work, so far since June of this year, Joseph and I have discovered what we call the Outness Continuum. We have had a number of experiences both with colleagues and customers, who are not fully-out, but who are in any case eager to help us in our mission.
Recognizing all that I've just said about the potential tenderness of exchanges with semi-closeted and closet colleagues, typically, I'm more comfortable speaking with the often non-gay client team directors and managers about the mission and how Joseph and I can help them sell more to their clients whenever we have a GLBT decision maker for them to meet.
Joseph and I find that they respond to our enthusiasm and understand that what we're doing fundamentally is the same as any classic relationship- selling model, that we're using our network in order to sell. Personally, it's easier for me to be enthusiastic with non-gay people of both genders because somehow, less is riding on their response.
Again, with closeted colleagues, my own homophobia bubbles to the surface and has to be channeled compared with non-gay colleagues, who typically don't bring the same fears to the exchange.
Internalized homophobia is so poisonous because when I'm talking with someone who feels it's too dangerous to be out, part of me always loses a bit of my footing; I think to myself, What do they know that I don't? Why am I so brazen?
Ultimately, I remind myself that I get past my homophobia and come out to people for several reasons:
1. As a Jew, my parents raised me to be openly-proud of my heritage
2. I don't feel I can pass as non-gay, and don't want to try to
3. Being openly-lesbian has become a leadership opportunity; I've become somewhat of a mentor for GLBT colleagues who aspire to become managers, for example
4. I'm convinced there are more potential career and spiritual opportunities for me by being out than by being closeted, at least more of the sort of which I'd prefer to take advantage
For example, in my current GLBT Sales and Talent role, our team presents routinely to Doug Elix, who leads IBM's largest and most thriving division, IBM Global Services. It's a tremendous opportunity to get feedback on my performance directly from one of IBM's wisest leaders.
And it's the ultimate example of homophobia not being at work in the workplace – just the opposite. Doug speaks of what we're doing as helping burnish IBM's reputation in the market and among prospective employees – not the GLBT market, but the market at large, and not GLBT prospective employees, but all prospective employees. He says, "Keep in mind the star-burst effect your work is having."
I'm reminded of having hired an employee last year, who said he decided on IBM because his sister's a lesbian and he liked IBM's diversity commitment.
I said I'm out also because I prefer the sort of spiritual opportunities that being so affords me:
For example, last Friday, a leader of one of our competitor's, Accenture's, GLBT employee group invited Joseph and me to be the outside speakers that Accenture brought in for a special Diversity program; employees from the various employee diversity groups at Accenture in New York City attended, including the GLBT employee group.
The program marked the debut of the GLBT group in joining the rest of the family of diversity employee groups at Accenture. The group was formed last May and after our presentation, we got to meet with the members of that group in particular.
Yes, I relished that a competitor gave IBM an opportunity to demonstrate thought leadership; and yes, it felt good from the standpoint that we're already working together on projects around the world; and it was nice to connect for the purpose of celebrating our respective employees' diversity, but there were additional opportunities that felt particularly spiritual as well:
I felt like Joseph and I were visiting from their future. Their status as an employee group reminded me of IBM circa 1997 and I was moved that I was able to play a part in their early progress. I'm all for competition, but I'm also all for the advancement of all GLBT businesspeople.
In the elevator on the way out, one of the Latino participants said, "Good presentation. What's next for you?"
"I'm going to speak at the GLBT community center in White Plains on Monday about dealing with homophobia in the workplace and how it's not really the non-gay people who are the problem," I said, "but us, being our own worst enemy."
I responded with no self-consciousness because I was still inspired by the premise and success of the program at Accenture, and then it struck me, this guy might be gay himself. And I walked away from the exchange hopeful because he seemed receptive.
The spiritual part is knowing that there's a positive star-burst effect and a loving quality to my career that extends beyond any prior job. I feel like I can re-affirm for my sisters Deb and Kathy enthusiastically, "Yes, it's a great idea for me to be so out at work," but they came to that conclusion themselves years ago as they watched my progress.
My hope is that I'm able to deal ever-more effectively with my own internalized homophobia, so that I'm natural with GLBT and non-gay colleagues alike, and that unswervingly, I heed my own declaration that love needs to replace fear, now more than ever.
Wednesday, October 10, 2001
Out & Equal Excellence Award IBM Acceptance Speech and Presentation
The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
Note: Originally posted on the EAGLE online community site, behind IBM's firewall on 10 October 2001, at 6: 30pm, and posted here on 24 May 2007:
I was honored to represent IBM in accepting this year's Out & Equal Workplace Excellence Award and was advised to focus graciously on the people conferring the award, and not on IBM.
Selisse Berry, executive director of Out & Equal and the award giver, stated a number of the highlights that distinguished IBM and that earned it the award, including that IBM provides more than just basic health domestic partner benefits and the specifics, that IBM held a Leadership Conference with attendees from eight countries, and that IBM recently formed a dedicated GLBT Sales and Talent team. I said the following:
Excerpt of Out & Equal Workplace Excellence Award IBM acceptance speech:
I am thrilled that IBM has earned this year's Out & Equal Workplace Excellence Award.
Standing here, I knew I'd be reminded of being in 7th grade. When I was 12, I entered a science fair project in the Connecticut State Science Fair. It was 1977, and the project won an award for being on a popular theme, namely, providing an alternative energy resource; I made the case for wind power.
Standing here reminds me of that first important award of my life, and the recognition feels similar: Out & Equal is acknowledging IBM for its efforts in supporting the case for tapping alternative energy.
Everyone in this room whom I've had the pleasure to meet is an exciting energy resource, and the most compelling energy of all is that of Selisse Berry, the Executive Director of the Out & Equal...powerhouse....
* * *
During the conference, IBM was also well-represented, since Paul Carey held a session on GLBT employee recruiting and I served on a panel along with Rhona Berenstein of PlanetOut Partners and Wes Combs of Witeck-Combs Communications on being effective employees and employers online. Rhona spoke of IBM, Capital One and US Airways and Wes spoke of American Airlines, Coors and HRC's Worknet. Here's the transcript and visuals from my section of the presentation:
Top 5 Tips for Being Effective
LGBT Employees and Employers Online
Delivered at Out & Equal Workplace Summit 2001
by Sarah Siegel, Program Director, GLBT Sales and Talent, IBM
The following tips work for us in reaching lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender employees online and we believe they can work for anyone interested in appealing to this remarkable group; if you plan to inform, recruit or motivate LGBT employees:
1. Endure; have stamina
2. Be credible
3. Find a role model
4. Join a professional LGBT organization
5. Inspire loyalty.
Transcript
I'm grateful to have a history of being effective online.
My previous manager, Jeanine Cotter, the VP of Web Strategy and Design, gave me an ibm.com seven-year anniversary T-shirt that reads, "ibm.com: seven years, 11 versions," which reminds me of my first tip: Endure; have stamina.
Typically, these days, when customers hear the ibm.com story of how the company transformed itself into an e-business, they marvel and want IBM's help to do the same for them, which reminds me of the reactions I get when I talk to people who are impressed with IBM's achievements in the LGBT arena.
It's sort of like the occasional writers, painters or musicians who seem wildly popular all of a sudden, but who, in fact, have been practicing and honing their art for years. IBM coined the term e-business in the mid-90s and has been inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and heterosexual employees since 1984, when it added sexual orientation to its equal employment opportunity policy.
That leads me to my second tip, which is: Be credible. If you are not with an organization that was born on the Web, then it's key to have a good offline story that you can tell if possible. Offline gestures, such as Domestic Partnership Benefits for employees, feed online success. It is much easier to build LGBT employee commitment when the organization has a solid record of treating all employees fairly.
I hope that all of us here today discuss lessons learned and best practices, so that we can collectively shrink the amount of time needed for each of our organizations to be more effective, and even wildly popular among LGBT employees.
Like a number of us here who've worked for corporations for the past decade or longer, I have had e-mail access courtesy of my employer for my entire corporate career.
I've been using e-mail, the Web, and more recently instant messaging, to be effective in helping IBM and myself reach lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees, with positive results, and I'll provide examples of some.
Ten years ago, I found Kathleen Dermody, the leader of LEAGUE, AT&T's LGBT employee group. Her e-mail address was in an article I read -- I can't even remember where -- and when I contacted Kathleen online, I was the only out LGB or T person I knew of at work; I was based in Schaumburg, Illinois at the time.
Kathleen was entirely generous in sharing with me her experience of leading LEAGUE. She was a friendly face, no, a friendly voice, no, a friendly screenful of words to me in my isolation then.
As it turned out, my partner Pat and I moved to New Jersey in '96 for Pat's job, and coincidentally, we live one town over from Kathleen and her partner Karen, and we get together regularly.
Kathleen was a role model for me, along with AT&T; they demonstrated that employees and employers could be visible effectively among the LGBT community. So the third tip is: Find a role model.
Of course, it's a special pleasure to find kindred spirits in your own organization as well. The online directory of NOGLSTP members led me to Rob Shook, the first openly-gay IBMer I was able to identify.
NOGLSTP is the National Organization of LGBT Scientists and Technical Professionals and I was a member electronically, since the organization is based in Pasadena, and since most of the conferences where members got together were scientific, rather than technical.
Rob was based in Boca Raton at the time, so like Kathleen, Rob was another friendly screenful, rather than a colleague whom I could meet in person, at least initially. I was still in Schaumburg, with a joint venture of IBM and Sears at the time, and I was so glad to know that I was no longer the only openly-gay person I knew of who was affiliated with either company.
The fourth tip, then, is: Join a professional LGBT organization. The Out & Equal consortium did not exist back then, and now it does. Nearly a decade ago, NOGLSTP helped me affiliate with an organization where I could meet others online who were interested in advancing LGBT people in the workplace and marketplace.
Rob and I did get to meet in person when IBM first sponsored the National Gay and Lesbian Business Expo in New York City. Together, we presented "Cruising the Information Super-highway," which included our top 10 tips for creating successful Web sites.
We also enabled IBM booth visitors to create their own home page. This was in 1995 and we hosted the home pages of nearly 50 LGBT people on ibm.com for more than a year, including a number that were created by LGBT IBMers, who were IBM product demonstrators at the Expo.
As more LGBT IBMers saw the content, they were excited that IBM was hosting it, that IBM was so visibly welcoming LGBT customers. That enthusiasm reminded me of the fifth and most important tip, which is particularly for employers: Inspire loyalty.
The rest of what I have to say relates to the importance of inspiring loyalty in current and future employees. I believe it's the secret to succeeding in attracting, retaining and motivating LGBT talent and it's what makes any employer popular in the LGBT workplace and marketplace.
Before we had diversity network groups in the United States, where U.S.-based IBMers from diverse constituencies could get together in person, LGBT IBMers joined the Friends of Dorothy electronic distribution list. Carol Vericker, who just retired from IBM, started the anonymous list in 1993 and it spread by word of mouth.
It had 100 U.S.-based members and served as the foundation for EAGLE, the LGBT employee group that would form three years later.
I specified the United States because IBM in Canada started its LGBT employee group in 1991, five years before the U.S. chapters of EAGLE were formed. And now, there are EAGLE chapters that have begun in Australia, the U.K. and Mexico as well.
All of us who are members, plus a number who prefer to remain anonymously interested parties, are able to meet electronically more actively than we could through the distribution list because now we've got an electonic bulletin board and repository for our self-created profiles.
The profiles include LGBT IBMers from all over the world, whether or not a formal EAGLE chapter exists in a particular country yet. For example, here's one that I like of Mikael Boe Larsen from IBM in Denmark especially because it features two photos of him with his husband at their wedding.
Here's a poignant one of a necessarily anonymous gay IBMer from Singapore, where it's illegal to be gay; his photo shows him going into the surf in full scuba gear, so that he's unidentifiable, yet still registering his presence.
Here's mine. When you scroll down, which I won't do here, you can see that I've included a selected autobiography in pop music.
You might wonder how I had the time to put together such content and that's the beauty of this database: All IBMers can access it and all can add to it on our own time. An IBMer from the UK contacted me to let me know that he also loves "Illusion" by the British R&B group, Imagination. An Australian colleague told me that she also loves Sandra Bernhard as a singer.
The only unique challenge I see in informing, recruiting or motivating LGBT employees online is the periodic anonymity requirement.
LGBT employees at IBM are making progress in their willingness to be out in proportion to gestures made by IBM to demonstrate repeatedly that it welcomes LGBT employees. Friends of Dorothy was a list of 100 people. That was in 1993. Now, there are 850 members of EAGLE worldwide. And this month marks the premier issue of an online EAGLE newsletter, which will be debuting on National Coming Out Day, I'm happy to e-mail it to anyone who gives me his or her card.
This past summer, Bruce Brothers, an EAGLE member in Boulder, was moved to organize three online teams of openly-LGBT IBMers for IBM's seasonal fitness challenge and published a weekly motivational e-zine that was a hit with the IBMers who joined the teams.
Sharon Lum from San Jose led another team and Michael Batal led the third one from LA.
It didn't matter that teammembers were from all over the country, since they were online teams.
The teams charted their progress online as well, and knowing that my team was counting on my participation led me to getting into the best shape I've been in in a few years.
I even made a new friend and recruited an additional EAGLE member; Frank was fairly new to IBM and contacted me because he saw that we were on the same team and both worked in the same Manhattan office building.
We've had lunch a few times and I don't know that I'd have met him as soon without Bruce's team bringing us together. Among other terrific benefits of working for IBM, all of the freedom that IBM provides its employees online yields remarkable loyalty, as I've described.
Here's a very recent, profound example of being an effective employer online: My manager Mike Fuller specified Gay and Lesbian and GLBT in the listing he created for our team on IBM's internal job postings. Nearly 100 people from Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. responded to it.
Like the LGBT Web content that ibm.com hosted in 1995, the GLBT job posting generated energy, excitement and best of all, still further loyalty among LGBT IBMers worldwide.
It was historic for an IBM job posting to contain the terms Gay and Lesbian and GLBT, even though it wasn't the first time IBM was dedicating headcount to the LGBT market.
Four years ago, my IBM Procurement colleague Irwin Drucker went to his management with the idea of being a program director for Gay and Lesbian Supplier Relations, since IBM had established a similar program for companies owned by other historically-underrepresented groups, such as women-owned businesses.
Irwin's management saw the wisdom of the idea and said yes right away.
This time, Mike thought it would be a good idea to post the position and see who emerged. Within a day of posting it, he received more than 40 requests for an interview.
And the credit for that huge, swift response goes to David Chase, a leader of EAGLE, for e-mailing it to the EAGLE Council of Delegates; it fanned out through the network from there.
That was a recent example of being an effective employer internally and I look forward to Rhona telling you how PlanetOut Partners helped IBM demonstrate externally its effectiveness as an employer of GLBT talent worldwide.
[IBM in France employee recruiting portal -- IBM posted a recruiting banner on gay.com/fr that linked directly to this page.]
Earlier, I mentioned instant messaging. It has become still one more tool for IBM to engender LGBT employee loyalty. In July of 2000, we hosted the first IBM Gay and Lesbian Leadership Conference.
Nearly 100 IBMers from eight countries participated. It was an intense few days of warm community and we needed a way to sustain what we had begun building at the conference. So we created the GLLC instant messaging list and all of the attendees imported it. More than a year later, when asked, "You there?" I still answer my IBM colleagues with pleasure, "Yeah."
Note: Originally posted on the EAGLE online community site, behind IBM's firewall on 10 October 2001, at 6: 30pm, and posted here on 24 May 2007:
I was honored to represent IBM in accepting this year's Out & Equal Workplace Excellence Award and was advised to focus graciously on the people conferring the award, and not on IBM.
Selisse Berry, executive director of Out & Equal and the award giver, stated a number of the highlights that distinguished IBM and that earned it the award, including that IBM provides more than just basic health domestic partner benefits and the specifics, that IBM held a Leadership Conference with attendees from eight countries, and that IBM recently formed a dedicated GLBT Sales and Talent team. I said the following:
Excerpt of Out & Equal Workplace Excellence Award IBM acceptance speech:
I am thrilled that IBM has earned this year's Out & Equal Workplace Excellence Award.
Standing here, I knew I'd be reminded of being in 7th grade. When I was 12, I entered a science fair project in the Connecticut State Science Fair. It was 1977, and the project won an award for being on a popular theme, namely, providing an alternative energy resource; I made the case for wind power.
Standing here reminds me of that first important award of my life, and the recognition feels similar: Out & Equal is acknowledging IBM for its efforts in supporting the case for tapping alternative energy.
Everyone in this room whom I've had the pleasure to meet is an exciting energy resource, and the most compelling energy of all is that of Selisse Berry, the Executive Director of the Out & Equal...powerhouse....
During the conference, IBM was also well-represented, since Paul Carey held a session on GLBT employee recruiting and I served on a panel along with Rhona Berenstein of PlanetOut Partners and Wes Combs of Witeck-Combs Communications on being effective employees and employers online. Rhona spoke of IBM, Capital One and US Airways and Wes spoke of American Airlines, Coors and HRC's Worknet. Here's the transcript and visuals from my section of the presentation:
LGBT Employees and Employers Online
Delivered at Out & Equal Workplace Summit 2001
by Sarah Siegel, Program Director, GLBT Sales and Talent, IBM
The following tips work for us in reaching lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender employees online and we believe they can work for anyone interested in appealing to this remarkable group; if you plan to inform, recruit or motivate LGBT employees:
1. Endure; have stamina
2. Be credible
3. Find a role model
4. Join a professional LGBT organization
5. Inspire loyalty.
Transcript
I'm grateful to have a history of being effective online.
My previous manager, Jeanine Cotter, the VP of Web Strategy and Design, gave me an ibm.com seven-year anniversary T-shirt that reads, "ibm.com: seven years, 11 versions," which reminds me of my first tip: Endure; have stamina.
Typically, these days, when customers hear the ibm.com story of how the company transformed itself into an e-business, they marvel and want IBM's help to do the same for them, which reminds me of the reactions I get when I talk to people who are impressed with IBM's achievements in the LGBT arena.
It's sort of like the occasional writers, painters or musicians who seem wildly popular all of a sudden, but who, in fact, have been practicing and honing their art for years. IBM coined the term e-business in the mid-90s and has been inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and heterosexual employees since 1984, when it added sexual orientation to its equal employment opportunity policy.
That leads me to my second tip, which is: Be credible. If you are not with an organization that was born on the Web, then it's key to have a good offline story that you can tell if possible. Offline gestures, such as Domestic Partnership Benefits for employees, feed online success. It is much easier to build LGBT employee commitment when the organization has a solid record of treating all employees fairly.
I hope that all of us here today discuss lessons learned and best practices, so that we can collectively shrink the amount of time needed for each of our organizations to be more effective, and even wildly popular among LGBT employees.
Like a number of us here who've worked for corporations for the past decade or longer, I have had e-mail access courtesy of my employer for my entire corporate career.
I've been using e-mail, the Web, and more recently instant messaging, to be effective in helping IBM and myself reach lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees, with positive results, and I'll provide examples of some.
Ten years ago, I found Kathleen Dermody, the leader of LEAGUE, AT&T's LGBT employee group. Her e-mail address was in an article I read -- I can't even remember where -- and when I contacted Kathleen online, I was the only out LGB or T person I knew of at work; I was based in Schaumburg, Illinois at the time.
Kathleen was entirely generous in sharing with me her experience of leading LEAGUE. She was a friendly face, no, a friendly voice, no, a friendly screenful of words to me in my isolation then.
As it turned out, my partner Pat and I moved to New Jersey in '96 for Pat's job, and coincidentally, we live one town over from Kathleen and her partner Karen, and we get together regularly.
Kathleen was a role model for me, along with AT&T; they demonstrated that employees and employers could be visible effectively among the LGBT community. So the third tip is: Find a role model.
Of course, it's a special pleasure to find kindred spirits in your own organization as well. The online directory of NOGLSTP members led me to Rob Shook, the first openly-gay IBMer I was able to identify.
NOGLSTP is the National Organization of LGBT Scientists and Technical Professionals and I was a member electronically, since the organization is based in Pasadena, and since most of the conferences where members got together were scientific, rather than technical.
Rob was based in Boca Raton at the time, so like Kathleen, Rob was another friendly screenful, rather than a colleague whom I could meet in person, at least initially. I was still in Schaumburg, with a joint venture of IBM and Sears at the time, and I was so glad to know that I was no longer the only openly-gay person I knew of who was affiliated with either company.
The fourth tip, then, is: Join a professional LGBT organization. The Out & Equal consortium did not exist back then, and now it does. Nearly a decade ago, NOGLSTP helped me affiliate with an organization where I could meet others online who were interested in advancing LGBT people in the workplace and marketplace.
Rob and I did get to meet in person when IBM first sponsored the National Gay and Lesbian Business Expo in New York City. Together, we presented "Cruising the Information Super-highway," which included our top 10 tips for creating successful Web sites.
We also enabled IBM booth visitors to create their own home page. This was in 1995 and we hosted the home pages of nearly 50 LGBT people on ibm.com for more than a year, including a number that were created by LGBT IBMers, who were IBM product demonstrators at the Expo.
As more LGBT IBMers saw the content, they were excited that IBM was hosting it, that IBM was so visibly welcoming LGBT customers. That enthusiasm reminded me of the fifth and most important tip, which is particularly for employers: Inspire loyalty.
The rest of what I have to say relates to the importance of inspiring loyalty in current and future employees. I believe it's the secret to succeeding in attracting, retaining and motivating LGBT talent and it's what makes any employer popular in the LGBT workplace and marketplace.
Before we had diversity network groups in the United States, where U.S.-based IBMers from diverse constituencies could get together in person, LGBT IBMers joined the Friends of Dorothy electronic distribution list. Carol Vericker, who just retired from IBM, started the anonymous list in 1993 and it spread by word of mouth.
It had 100 U.S.-based members and served as the foundation for EAGLE, the LGBT employee group that would form three years later.
I specified the United States because IBM in Canada started its LGBT employee group in 1991, five years before the U.S. chapters of EAGLE were formed. And now, there are EAGLE chapters that have begun in Australia, the U.K. and Mexico as well.
All of us who are members, plus a number who prefer to remain anonymously interested parties, are able to meet electronically more actively than we could through the distribution list because now we've got an electonic bulletin board and repository for our self-created profiles.
The profiles include LGBT IBMers from all over the world, whether or not a formal EAGLE chapter exists in a particular country yet. For example, here's one that I like of Mikael Boe Larsen from IBM in Denmark especially because it features two photos of him with his husband at their wedding.
Here's a poignant one of a necessarily anonymous gay IBMer from Singapore, where it's illegal to be gay; his photo shows him going into the surf in full scuba gear, so that he's unidentifiable, yet still registering his presence.
Here's mine. When you scroll down, which I won't do here, you can see that I've included a selected autobiography in pop music.
You might wonder how I had the time to put together such content and that's the beauty of this database: All IBMers can access it and all can add to it on our own time. An IBMer from the UK contacted me to let me know that he also loves "Illusion" by the British R&B group, Imagination. An Australian colleague told me that she also loves Sandra Bernhard as a singer.
The only unique challenge I see in informing, recruiting or motivating LGBT employees online is the periodic anonymity requirement.
LGBT employees at IBM are making progress in their willingness to be out in proportion to gestures made by IBM to demonstrate repeatedly that it welcomes LGBT employees. Friends of Dorothy was a list of 100 people. That was in 1993. Now, there are 850 members of EAGLE worldwide. And this month marks the premier issue of an online EAGLE newsletter, which will be debuting on National Coming Out Day, I'm happy to e-mail it to anyone who gives me his or her card.
This past summer, Bruce Brothers, an EAGLE member in Boulder, was moved to organize three online teams of openly-LGBT IBMers for IBM's seasonal fitness challenge and published a weekly motivational e-zine that was a hit with the IBMers who joined the teams.
Sharon Lum from San Jose led another team and Michael Batal led the third one from LA.
It didn't matter that teammembers were from all over the country, since they were online teams.
The teams charted their progress online as well, and knowing that my team was counting on my participation led me to getting into the best shape I've been in in a few years.
I even made a new friend and recruited an additional EAGLE member; Frank was fairly new to IBM and contacted me because he saw that we were on the same team and both worked in the same Manhattan office building.
We've had lunch a few times and I don't know that I'd have met him as soon without Bruce's team bringing us together. Among other terrific benefits of working for IBM, all of the freedom that IBM provides its employees online yields remarkable loyalty, as I've described.
Here's a very recent, profound example of being an effective employer online: My manager Mike Fuller specified Gay and Lesbian and GLBT in the listing he created for our team on IBM's internal job postings. Nearly 100 people from Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. responded to it.
Like the LGBT Web content that ibm.com hosted in 1995, the GLBT job posting generated energy, excitement and best of all, still further loyalty among LGBT IBMers worldwide.
It was historic for an IBM job posting to contain the terms Gay and Lesbian and GLBT, even though it wasn't the first time IBM was dedicating headcount to the LGBT market.
Four years ago, my IBM Procurement colleague Irwin Drucker went to his management with the idea of being a program director for Gay and Lesbian Supplier Relations, since IBM had established a similar program for companies owned by other historically-underrepresented groups, such as women-owned businesses.
Irwin's management saw the wisdom of the idea and said yes right away.
This time, Mike thought it would be a good idea to post the position and see who emerged. Within a day of posting it, he received more than 40 requests for an interview.
And the credit for that huge, swift response goes to David Chase, a leader of EAGLE, for e-mailing it to the EAGLE Council of Delegates; it fanned out through the network from there.
That was a recent example of being an effective employer internally and I look forward to Rhona telling you how PlanetOut Partners helped IBM demonstrate externally its effectiveness as an employer of GLBT talent worldwide.
[IBM in France employee recruiting portal -- IBM posted a recruiting banner on gay.com/fr that linked directly to this page.]
Earlier, I mentioned instant messaging. It has become still one more tool for IBM to engender LGBT employee loyalty. In July of 2000, we hosted the first IBM Gay and Lesbian Leadership Conference.
Nearly 100 IBMers from eight countries participated. It was an intense few days of warm community and we needed a way to sustain what we had begun building at the conference. So we created the GLLC instant messaging list and all of the attendees imported it. More than a year later, when asked, "You there?" I still answer my IBM colleagues with pleasure, "Yeah."
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