Revisiting a Lesbian Kiss-in From 30 Years Ago and More

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

We Made History, 30 Years Ago and Today

What a treat to travel via the way-back machine of our brains with Jack Ryan and Tom Rowan of "The 10% Show," an LGBTQ newsmagazine that aired monthly on Chicago's Community Access TV from 1989-92. Here's an Instagram promo for the panel we did tonight and I'll share the replay link when it's available. [Added the replay link later: https://bit.ly/3ekb8Cx.] 

Northwestern PhD Student Lauren Herold and the Director of Gerber Hart Library and Archives also discussed the cultural and historical significance of "The 10% show" that I co-hosted ~30 years ago @ https://bit.ly/2XtzxhV.

See an excerpt of the Lesbian Kiss-in segment from 1990. Click "Watch full video" to see the whole, ~8-min. segment.

Flirting in Literature

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

On Flirting: a Facilitated Discussion in Chicago, July, 1989 

While cleaning up recently, I opened a boxful of mementos from the '80s and early-'90s, which I hadn't seen since boxing them up for our move to New Jersey from Illinois in 1996, including:

When I was 22-23 and volunteering as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) youth group advisor in Chicago, I curated a series of literature-snippets. I accompanied each of them with a question or two, and made handouts that read, "On Flirting. Consider the following excerpts and questions and bring your thoughts to this Saturday's discussion."

My first real girlfriend and I broke up the prior spring and I had no idea how to flirt with women. I created the discussion guide to help myself. Growing up, I didn't feel free to flirt, especially not with girls. Perhaps some of the youth also felt unfree, I thought, and what a gift, via this discussion guide, to plant the seed that same-sex flirting with one another was OK:

The first excerpt was from "You're Ugly, Too" by Lorrie Moore, "The New Yorker," July 3, 1989:

Often, when she spoke to men at parties, she rushed things in her mind. As the man politely blathered on, she would fall in love, marry, then find herself in a bitter custody battle with him for the kids and hoping for a reconciliation, so that despite all his betrayals she might no longer despise him, and, in the few minutes remaining, learn, perhaps, what his last name was and what he did for a living, though probably there was already too much history between them. She would nod, blush, turn away.

And then...

Q: Have you ever planned too much, too quickly with someone you've just met?

The second snippet was from *Miss Manners' Complete Guide to Excurciatingly Correct Behavior* by Judith Martin, specifically the chapter, "Courtship (for Participants, Their Friends and Relations)." She wrote of how flirtation done properly was "an end, not a means."

And then...

Q: Have you ever had fun, flirting just for its own sake without it leading to a deeper involvement?

The third bit was from *Jitterbug Perfume* by Tom Robbins, a section, where Ricki hits on Priscilla and is rebuffed.

And then...

Q: Have you ever flirted with someone who was straight or equivalently unavailable?
Q: Ever tried to turn a flirtation into something more? What were the results?

The fourth excerpt was from *Lesbian Passion: Loving Ourselves and Each Other* by JoAnn Loulan, including, "Sometimes just setting rules takes the pressure off."

And then...

Q: Can you cut off a flirtation if it causes you more pain than pleasure? 

The fifth quote was from *The Lost Language of Cranes* by David Leavitt, where two friends consider becoming a couple.


And then...

Q: Have you ever flirted with a friend?
Q: How did you resolve this flirtation?

The sixth bit was from "The Village Voice" by Vince Aletti on June 27, 1989, where he reviewed a book of Bruce Weber's photography, including, "What makes beefcake so compelling now is its nostalgia for innocence."


And then...

Q: Do you prefer seeing explicit or suggestive images? [How about language?] 

The seventh excerpt was from *Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit* by Jeanette Winterson, including:

Poor Melanie, she didn't understand any of them, she just knew she needed Jesus....I went round to Mealnie's and we read the Bible together...and I was delighted. She was my friend, and I wasn't used to that....I talked about her all the time at home, and my mother never responded.

And then...

Q: Have you and another ever shared a passionate pursuit as a substitute for a romance between you two?

The eighth snippet was from *Hey, Dollface* by Deborah Hautzig. It was a Young Adult novel, where two high school girls fall in love, but in the particular scene, they're talking on the phone about a date one of them had with a boy.

And then...

Q: Have you ever tested a romantic prospect by detailing an exciting experience you had with someone else to that person? 

The ninth quote was from "The Rug of Identity" by Jill W. Fleming in *Lesbian Plays,* selected & introduced by Jill Davis. A lesbian couple is trying to rekindle their spark.



And then...

Q: If you've ever been or are now part of a couple, how do you sustain the fliration between you? 

The tenth excerpt was from "The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt" in *The Company She Keeps* by Mary McCarthy. It included an exchange between a man and a woman, where the woman is unimpressed initially until the man is familiar with the author of the book she's reading.

And then...

Q: What makes you not want to flirt back?
Q: Initially turned off, what can persuade you to become engaged in a flirtation?

The eleventh snippet was from *The Mind-Body Problem* by Rebecca Goldstein, where a woman and a man begin flirting with each other's intellect, agreeing that mathemeticians are aestheticians.

The twelfth and final bit was from *Self-Help* by Lorrie Moore, with a funny exchange between a man and woman who just met, where the woman is reading *Madame Bovary* in a Doris Day book jacket.

And then...

Q: Which style(s) of flirting do you most enjoy, e.g., eye-contact, intellectual, humorous... 

I wonder what became of those LGBTQ youth in Chicago. Today, they would be ages 44-51. Hope that those who wanted to learn to flirt did and found the loves of their lives eventually, like I did. 

Edie Windsor's (z"l) Legacy Lives On

Reprinted from the internal Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT+) IBMers & Friends community

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

At about 57 minutes in, during the inaugural 60 Minutes to Bolder Leadership Panel on Monday, IBMer Ella Slade asked the Out-Role-Model panelists who their role models were. I was the moderator, so I didn't answer, but if I had answered, I'd have answered Edie Windsor (z"l).

We first met in 2002, when IBM alumnus Joseph Bertolotti and I organized a panel on the state of same-sex marriage around the world. IBM co-sponsored it at the LGBT Center in New York City with the United Nations' Susan Allee, an attorney who was also the head of the Middle East Peacekeeping Desk and a member of GLOBE, the LGBT employee group of the UN. Edie and her then long-time partner Thea Spyer (z"l) attended and spoke with me afterward. 

They were there because they were planning to marry and wanted to know the very latest of trends and timing on where it was being made legal. Edie also was happy that IBM had co-sponsored it because she said she had been an IBMer. Edie and her wife were so glamorous. And so down to earth. All at once. I loved meeting a lesbian IBMer who had worked at IBM in New York City, like me, only a generation prior. And we exchanged email addresses and stayed in touch a bit. Sometime later, reading an article, I think, I learned that she and her wife were Jewish, like mine and me! A bonus. I wanted to be like Edie Windsor, even a little bit. 

And then with the help of a phenomenal lawyer Roberta Kaplan, Edie Windsor made it possible for my wife and me to marry legally, which we did, and at the newspaper's suggestion, we even made a 3-minute video about how we got together. Edie Windsor became an icon and I was moved to post a "Where were you ...?" forum entry in our internal LGBT+ IBMers & Friends community the day of the decision. That Yom Kippur, my mom (z"l) opted to join us for services at our synagogue and we were blessed to be sitting right near Edie Windsor, who had recently become a congregant.

My mom's (z"l) name also was Edie, and she was just four years older than Edie Windsor. When I introduced them, my mother started crying and effusively thanked Edie for her leadership. They hugged. My mom said she had a gift for Edie and we shipped Edie a mezuzah, though she was a less observant Jew than we were. That was my mom's final Yom Kippur. She died peacefully in her sleep the following early-June. I still had one more Edie, at least, but it was complicated because Edie had first seemed glamorous to me, and both Pat & I formed a bit of a crush on her. And then she became the Edie who was my gone mother's contemporary plus the incidental mentor and icon on whom I had a crush, and I was happy to live with the complexity.

This past June, I was privileged to speak with Judith Kasen Windsor, Edie's new wife, by phone, to arrange for a rendezvous with Edie and Judith and the IBM delegation of the LGBT Pride March in New York City, so that she could march with us for a bit. During that conversation, Judith told me that Edie displayed the mezuzah atop her piano, which held all of the awards she had received, and Judith kindly sent me a photo.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. In 2015 and 2016, we were privileged to go to Edie's house for a summer-time party; she had the best music and liked to dance, and then Roberta Kaplan's book came out and we brought it with us for Edie to sign:

   

 
In 2016, Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, Fred Balboni, Claudia Woody, Beth Feeney, Mary Garrity and Bruno Di Leo invited Edie to have lunch at IBM at 590 Madison Avenue in New York City and I was kindly invited to join along with Kim Messer of the LGBT business development team that I had helped start up in 2001 -- and which was how the event at the LGBT Center in 2002 came to be co-sponsored by IBM -- and also Leanne Pittsford, the CEO of Lesbians Who Tech. At that lunch, I was reminded of why I admired Edie so much: She was a charming, staunch activist. My favorite photo that I got to take that day was of Edie striding down the hall at 590 (and Fred's husband Geoff Collins is accompanying her, carrying her flowers). And Judith did make it possible for Edie to stride with us at the LGBT Pride March this summer:

Edie, thanks for your dedication to innovation that matters, for our company and the world, and for being someone magnificent for me to look up to. And please know that the 60-Minutes-to-Bolder-Leadership panelists in the series, and other LGBT+ IBMers and allies will keep working hard to make our clients and IBM successful while being corporate activists in parallel to honor your legacy. 

Notes from A Jewish Exploration of LGBT Musicals Part 4

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Session 4, last one about *Fun Home*, November 29


During our third session on *Fun Home*, I had meant to bring a printout of the portrait that my artist friend Riva Lehrer painted of Alison Bechdel, but I forgot, so I'll post a couple of links here -- the first to the portrait and Riva's narrative on it and the second, to a link, thanking Riva for giving a recent gallery talk in front of the portrait at the National Gallery. I'm always envious of visual artists because who wants to slog through a blog-post? It's so much more instantly moving to look at a painting, drawing or sculpture, especially by a gifted artist like Riva.

Riva can also paint with words; when we were in our 20s and both living in Chicago, where we met and where Riva still lives, she told me, "You remind me of a Carson McCullers character -- a fierce outsider with her nose pressed up against the window." I think I'm a bit less fierce now ....



The Graphic Memoir and the Play - More Comparison

The coming-out letter aftermath

We looked at pp. 77-79 and listened to "A Flair for the Dramatic". Both covered Alison's exchange with her closeted, gay father -- of whose sexual orientation she was not yet fully conscious -- after her parents received her coming-out letter.

The song version had a great couple of lines, where her father said, "The good news is, you're human."

"What does that *mean*, she asks herself, "What else would I *be*?"

Raising my hand and then speaking as Jonathan nodded to me, "I keep mentioning things my mom [z"l] blurted out to me, but this is reminding me of the time when I was 17 and she found a love letter to another girl that I had left on the kitchen table by accident/on purpose," I said, "Her first words were, 'Don't you marry some man and ruin his life!'"

"You're crazy! It doesn't mean anything!" I yelled desperately.

One of my classmates said, "Your mother had a lot of insight. How did she think to say that?"

"My mother [z"l] was very smart."

Unlike Alison's father, my mom (z"l) was paying attention to my reality, even if I wasn't yet prepared to. Before she was clued in by the letter, though -- perhaps when I was in 8th grade -- we had an informal "birds and bees" talk, but it was really all about my mother (z"l) asserting that I could enjoy myself with boys without spoiling my virtue. I don't recall her also explaining the pregnancy-danger angle.

My mother told me, "There's plenty you can do without having intercourse." I understood that sexual intercourse with a boy would wreck everything in terms of marriageability, but that I was being given permission/encouragement to do whatever else I wanted (with boys) -- not that she explained what that included.

 The scene in the car

We also read pp. 220-21 aloud and listened to Telephone Wire . Alison's and my parents (z"l) gave us so much just by giving us life, but also how frustrating it was to witness Alison's exchange with her dad during college. He was completely self-absorbed and made Alison parent him instead of rising to her occasion and being the parent.

The song version of the scene in the car reminded me of watching the Miss America pageant once with my dad (z"l). I was prepubescent and among my mother (z"l), two older sisters, my dad (z"l) and I, only my dad (z"l) and I watched the pageant; that could have been a clue about my future.

My father (z"l) also died young, at 56, and we, too, never had an explicit discussion about what I wanted for my future in terms of a spouse. In Alison's case, at least she tried to discuss her identity with her father. In my case, I was too scared at 17, which is how old I was when he (z"l) died.

Like Alison, ultimately, I did send a coming-out letter to my mother (z"l) and two more to each of my sisters and I mailed all three on the same day. I was a senior in college and my mom (z"l) must have expected it, since she had found the love letter to my girlfriend four years prior. She called me long-distance from Stamford to Ann Arbor and was purely kind. And for the first time ever, she didn't hurry our conversation due to the long-distance charges.

In the book version of the song, Alison and her dad were heading out to see "Coal Miner's Daughter". Once, when I was five, my dad took just me to see "Gigi" and then out to dinner afterward. It was my first Broadway play. I wonder if we could have experienced "Fun Home" together, and so much else, if only he had lived long enough.

*Fun Home*'s Design

Our instructor Jonathan started the session: Watch these two montages and jot down some differences you see between the Public Theater version and the Broadway version; collectively -- though mostly helped by Jonathan, who was more familiar with the footage and both productions -- we came up with:

• Cartoon panels were suggested in both productions, but at the Public, there were white frames on the backdrop behind the actors, and on Broadway, they appeared as lit-up, giant squares on the stage-floor.
• On Broadway: Alison unearthed her memories via the furniture that would emerge/pop up through the stage floor; the actors were lit from four perspectives; and the audience could see the audience's reaction, since it was theater in the round; and the follow spot[light] on the Adult Alison, "... made it look like she was floating through the memories" -- Jonathan.
• What I caught was less subtle: In the Public Theater version, the male babysitter had his shirt unbuttoned and his chest and underpants band were visible while in the Broadway version, Alison's costume was a shirt and underpants for the college scene, where she had her first intimate experience with a woman.

Jonathan explained that good scenic set designers aim to elicit audience emotions with what they design. We also learned, as an aside, that the Lincoln Center Library has practically every Broadway play and you can sit there and watch any one if you make an appointment. Who knew?

Here are links to the first, second and third in my series of notes on this course. The next four sessions are going to be devoted to *Falsettos*, another LGBT Broadway play that's currently in revival. So far, I'm noticing that the most Jewish parts of our exploration of these LGBT musicals are:

1. We, who are in the class and our instructor are Jewish.
2. For the Broadway version of *Fun Home*, the playwright, Lisa Kron, is Jewish. 
3. For *Falsettos*, the lyricist and co-playwright, Bill Finn, is a congregant of our Synagogue and Jewish.
4. Some of us share how we're relating to the play we're studying by sharing stories of what happened in our Jewish families that bear any resemblance to the play's plot.

Orlando

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Reprinted from my internal, IBM blog, "Learning to Lead":

In college, in 1984, our Women and Literature professor assigned the novel *Orlando*. In the novel, fog was practically an additional character, as there was deep cloud-cover during the period of Orlando's mystical gender transition. Coincidentally, I remember that in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I read the novel, it was unusually foggy for the duration of my reading that section of the book. And it was a foggy time for me, personally, too, as I was transitioning into allowing myself to own my lesbian identity fully, though it took till senior year ultimately. It actually struck me -- Ann Arbor's weather -- as being empathetic with my own real-life journey, at the time, as I was reading the book.

Now, a week after the mass shooting mostly of LGBT people in Orlando, Florida, perhaps by one of our own people, my head has cleared enough to reflect on it a bit more deeply. On Thursday afternoon, I spoke with Doris Gonzalez, a Latina IBM colleague, who had called to say that she was distraught about Orlando and was thinking about how to piggy-back on the great anti-bullying work that was done by Connie Bonello and Esther Dryburgh and others from IBM in Canada. When we spoke, I was on my way to the San Francisco Airport to head home from a business trip.

"May I tell you a personal story?"

"Of course!"

"The closest I ever came to what happened in Orlando was in Chicago in 1987. I had just moved to Chicago [after graduating from college] and wanted to socialize in the LGBT community, but didn't know where to begin. I found a venue that sounds as ... boring as it was [-- apologies to any Womyn's Music lovers --], the Mountain Moving Coffee House for Womyn and Children. It was at the end of the [lesbian] separatist era and I really don't like womyn's, with a Y music at all [-- I've always been more so a fan of Teena Marie and Patrice Rushen --]​​​, but I went anyhow.

It was held in a church and part-way into the performance, there was a giant BOOM. All of the women in the audience, including me, ducked down in the pews. It didn't turn out to be a bomb. We never learned what it was, but for the few moments, when I was crouched on the floor of that church, I thought, I'm gonna die and all because I came to hear this [lousy] music [because I was so desperate to be among my people, where I could enjoy a Saturday-night haven; I was not open about my sexual orientation at the magazine, where I was interning and so needed the company of others like me all the more so. I remember feeling so alone and awful that I, who had been raised with a deep Jewish identity, should die by myself in a church because I was a lesbian, who was lonely for my people, and then when it turned out to be nothing, I shook off those thoughts and didn't really re-conjure them till this Orlando tragedy and my conversation with this colleague]. But in any case, Doris, all of us went out to clubs in our twenties, didn't we?"

We agreed that it was tragic, since all of us liked to go out dancing back then, whether or not our parents were thrilled with our entertainment choices, and the same thing could have happened to us, that is, in our twenties, Doris and I could have gone to Latin Night (or any night) at a[n LGBT] club -- Doris with a gay friend and I to dance with kindred spirits -- and in fact, I did relatively often, but never was gunned down, thank God.

And now, I'm reminded of how I brought my eldest sister and brother-in-law with me to an LGBT club in 1991, to hear Crystal Waters sing both of her hits at the time. We had "100% pure fun" that night. Talking with my middle sister while in the airport, she recalled our having gone to a club in Chelsea before Chelsea was a gay neighborhood, and with my boyfriend at the time, in 1985 -- I was still on my journey then. Who didn't go out dancing in his or her twenties?

When I read the brief obituaries in today's "New York Times", I saw that only a small number of those killed were not still in their twenties. In general, their bio's weren't yet super-impressive, and neither was mine at that age. Thank God I had more time to amass experience and to make a difference and to learn -- to clear the clouds and make a primarily happy life as a lesbian.

This morning, National Public Radio (NPR) ran a story, where the reporter was covering the Latino angle of the tragedyand I was flooded with poignant IBM memories:

To my knowledge, the first senior executive, who ever said the words, "lesbian and gay" to an auditorium of IBMers was Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, the VP of the Internet Division at the time; it was 1997, though IBM had had a non-discrimination policy in place for gay and lesbian IBMers since 1984. Irving was from Cuba. IBM alumna and now IBM Watson Ecosystem Partner Maria Hernandez and I collaborated back then, so that EAGLE, IBM's LGBT business resource group (BRG) and LatinNet, IBM's Hispanic BRG could co-sponsor Irving's talk on How to Be an IBM Leader. Irving met with both of us together prior to the talk and asked, "What do your constituencies need to hear?"

"Ours just needs to hear you say the words, lesbian and gay," I said; unfortunately, it was 1997 and we were not yet explicitly inclusive of bisexual and transgender IBMers; that happened explicitly a few years later. Still, what we were asking for felt a bit revolutionary, and Irving said, Fine. And then he spoke brilliantly. 

In the mid-90s, "Wired" magazine called Irving Wladawsky-Berger "the smartest person at IBM.” Here are just a few of his remarks:

Well, first of all, the environment in which you exist is all-important. Clearly, if I were talking about a career in Germany in the 1930s, that was not a good place to be Jewish. Being black in the 1950 or '60s in the deep South, some may even say in the North, was not pleasant either. Only more recently have women begun to significantly progress from the point of view of careers while, as far as gays and lesbians are concerned, movement is now beginning.

...what observations do I have about my career, especially given the fact that I'm a minority in more ways than one, being Hispanic, Cuban-born, always speaking with an accent and second, being Jewish? …  Don't waste the energy trying to be what you're not. Be comfortable with who you are because, again, it takes too much energy to pretend to be anyone different ....

You'll never, ever be able to focus on your job if you are concerned with who you are or whether the world accepts who you are because then your energy will be dissipated. If you're comfortable with who you are, if you're comfortable that the world will accept you and that for those people who don't, it's their problem, you have so much more energy.

So, it's a good time to be in IBM. It's a good time to be whoever you are. It's a good time in our country to be whoever you are because we're about as open as I can imagine any nation has been and the rest is up to us as individuals.

The other marvelous memories I have are from the early-2000's, during one of our first IBM Global LGBT Leadership Conferences, if not the very first one:

Bruno Di Leo, who was from Peru, and was then the GM of IBM in Latin America​, flew to IBM in Palisades to address and encourage us as up-and-coming lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender leaders at IBM. Currently, Bruno is the SVP of all of IBM Sales & Distribution, globally, as well as the senior executive sponsor of the LGBT Council at IBM, and Bruno jumped on a web cam to talk about the Orlando tragedy and to reaffirm IBM's inclusiveness and support for all IBMers, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender IBMers. Seeing the short video from Bruno and recalling Irving's remarks makes me realize that since the late-90s, Latino IBM leaders have been among our staunchest allies.

But I want to wind back the clock again finally to the early-2000's; after the penultimate day of sessions, at night, there was ice cream in a common room at the IBM conference center. I didn't want ice cream, but thought I'd go, just for more of the fun company of LGBT IBM colleagues from around the globe. On my way, I heard fantastic music coming from another ballroom-sized room. I peeked in and spotted a bunch of conference goers dancing Salsa. Apparently, they preferred dancing to the ice cream, and so did I, but I was shy.  

Cristina Gonzalez saw me admiring the dancers from the door and invited me to join them. It was the Latin-American conference delegation and they were so welcoming. I felt silly, as all I had ever learned was the cha-cha, and that was when I was taking ballroom and Disco lessons as a pre-teen many years prior, when David Kaplan from my Jewish day school class was my partner; all of us from the school took dance lessons in preparation for the Bar Mitzvah circuit. Dancing with Cristina and others was much, much more fun. No offense meant to David, who was a fine, 12-year-old dancer, and still a kind friend and ally today .... "Who's singing?" I asked Cristina. "She's gorgeous."

"That's Celia Cruz", Cristina told me.

The next and final day of the conference, Cristina came up to me and handed me an envelope and told me it was a gift. In it was the Celia Cruz CD that had been playing the night prior. We beamed at each other.

The NPR radio report about Orlando ended with Celia Cruz, singing "Yo viviré (I will Survive)". And we will survive, and thrive, as long as we follow Irving Wladawsky-Berger's advice.  I just wish I weren't imagining dancing in a bullet-proof vest at the moment. I will get past such thinking. I'm glad I read *Orlando* in my twenties and lived beyond those decades to gain clear-headedness about who I am. And I will keep dancing.

When Did I Become a Sage?

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Feeling Self-possessed and of Service Accordingly

At 25, I was just starting what would become a real career, was romantically insecure and much less solvent, as well as a bit lost. I was also searching, earning, dating, and pursuing a career.

Twice this week, younger lesbians wanted to talk with me about my experience -- one along with her non-lesbian classmate, so that I could be the subject of their MBA project on women in business who advance change, and one who wanted tips on how to come out at work.

When did I become qualified to talk about this stuff? Perhaps by 26 if we consider the core definition of a mentor simply as someone who has been there before you. When did I become recognized for being qualified to talk about this stuff? Now, at nearly 50, when I'm so much more self-possessed.

I was touched by both discussions. The first of the lesbian women made it clear that she liked my response during our conversation: "Think bigger." And the non-lesbian classmate posted positively about our discussion on Instagram.

It was gratifying to be quotable/referenceable. The context for the quote was her asking what I'd have done differently in helping start up the LGBT Business Development team at work, which is still going strong nearly a decade and a half since its founding; I moved on to our Learning organization 11 years ago and remain proud to have made a lasting change at work.

The second discussion included the other lesbian, young woman telling me that when we first met and I talked so openly at work about my family-life, she asked herself subconsciously, "Could that be me one day?" 

When I was their age, I wasn't pursuing an MBA, nor was I super-successful at work. Instead, I was hunting for purpose, a partner and prosperity. Back then, I don't think I'd have foreseen that I could be me one day. And yet I have managed to become me. Thank God.

Channeling Desire in a New Direction

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

When Did My Desire to Leave a Legacy Trump More Conventional Desire?

Six years ago over dinner, I told a friend, Desire is the engine that fuels my creativity. He said he understood and that it was basically what Theologian Paul Tillich said. (Just found the original blog post about our evening and am reminded that I was moved to my confession by a stunning woman sitting near us in the restaurant, whom I didn't notice till my friend went to the men's room and my view of her was no longer obscured.)

Yesterday, as Pat & I met with a male couple of friends, much of our discussion centered on the meaning we felt from the work we were doing. With the product that one of the men is going to launch in June, I said, "You could become ultra-rich while doing a lot of good," since the invention will help health care providers. And the work I'm doing also feels right, including my current project around helping IBMers understand all that IBM Watson can do for the world. And certainly Pat's work with building a bee sanctuary should contribute to saving our planet, and ultimately, the literature that one of the couple writes enriches our understanding of humanity.

When did that happen? When did my attention to my life's work trump my alertness to female beauty around me? Maybe it hasn't trumped it, but now, it's actively paralleling it. Recently, I was speaking with a younger colleague at work whose current dilemma is whether or not to aspire to a more senior role or to focus on family. "Each of us," I said, "has such a personal story around why we do what we do at work. In my case, I aspire to a more senior role because I feel like I want to leave a legacy of helping a huge group of people learn, since I don't have kids through whom I can leave a legacy."

A Sense of History Mashed Up with Survivor's Guilt -- Powerfully Motivating

Perhaps I'm feeling especially reflective because the longer I'm alive, the more time has passed during which I can notice my own and history's progress. Earlier in the week, a former colleague sent me an invitation to celebrate the 20th anniversary of ibm.com. Twenty years! And I've been around for 19 of them. We launched ibm.com/globalservices in 1995 (which IBM since sold to AT&T) and I worked on ibm.com/software and associated microsites, and then ibm.com/shop -- when we sold ThinkPads -- through May of 2001. I remember being much younger, and being spoken of around IBM as the GenXers, the way some talk about Millennials now.

Twenty years ago, we were also in earlier days of corporate activism around lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) inclusion. And they were heady times because there was so much progress to make. These days, we channel our energy into helping our peers in less LGBT-friendly countries around the world to have positive experiences ultimately. Still, in my self-absorbed experience, it's not the same to help others as it is to feel the benefits directly. Yesterday during our diner-meal, one of our friends said, "Who would have predicted the sea change in our favor over just the past couple of years?"

"Yeah, 19 years ago, during my work on ibm.com," I said," Everyone knew about Pat, but who would have imagined we'd ever be legally married?"

In this morning's NYT, I read Frank Bruni's tribute to Larry Kramer and felt a bit chagrined that I haven't been as dogged as Larry Kramer has been all these years about working for our equality. After all, I did not die of AIDS or breast cancer (k'ayn ayin harah) like too many in our community. And then it's also Yom HaShoah Eve today, which commemorates the loss of ~6,000,000 Jews in the Holocaust. The coincidence of the holiday occurring during this period of self-reflection on desire and purpose only accentuates my drive to channel my desire into leaving a meaningful legacy.

Yesterday, a close relative told me, "You're the best person I know." I hope she turns out to be right. Probably, at this stage, at least as much as being alert to beauty around me, that's my most ardent desire -- to be and do good, the effect of which lasts beyond my life.

Total Honesty

After stepping away for a moment, I was reminded of what would make this blog post as honest as it can be: It is true that the longer I'm alive, the more urgency I feel to do lastingly, meaningful work in the world *and* it's also true that part of my decreasing alertness to the female beauty around me is that the longer I'm alive, the less visible I feel as anyone's object of desire in return. With meaningful work, where others are involved, there's at least the potential for healthy, mutual appreciation. By contrast, being intentionally monogamous with Pat for all of our nearly 23 years together, even with the more and more remote chance that someone would appreciate me aesthetically in return, such appreciation wouldn't necessarily be productive.

Why write aloud about this last bit? Why? Because it's honest. Spring is in the air, which is when my mind is most inclined to turn to conventional desire more so than at less bloom-filled times of year. What's surprising about this spring, I think, is that it's the first one where my desire to do good work so powerfully parallels my usual desires.

I'm reminded of getting the newspapers from the driveway this morning. One of our female neighbors is openly lesbian and also in her mid-late 70s. When I walked out of our house in my purple terry-cloth bathrobe to get the papers, she was sitting in her driveway, apparently waiting for her Dial-a-Ride service for Seniors to pick her up for church. I've never walked out at that time before, never before bumped into her in my bathrobe. I waved to her and we called out Good morning to each other. I walked back in the house, flattering myself that she might have been alert to my relative youth. I suppose this is hopeful, as maybe when I'm her age and noticing younger lesbians, they'll give me the benefit of the doubt about still being observant and fully alive.

Making a Difference Serendipitously

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Talking with One of the People Who Cleans Our Home Weekly

"Would you like to write a reference for me?"

Pause.

"Only if you want to."

"Sure. Who is the audience?:

"I'm not sure."

"It's fine. I need the spelling of both your names." (I forgot his first name, and he's been working in my home for nearly a year(!) Usually, I'm on teleconferences while he's here and don't ever really chat with him. In fact, didn't talk with him till he announced he was leaving to go to school and that this week would be his last week. Still, shame on me.)

I give it to him, google "quick study" and ask him to read the definition, and go get an envelope:

June 28, 2013

To Whom It May Concern:

Xxxxxx Yyyyyyyyyy is a quick study, both at work and in learning English.

Xxxxxx has worked with me, since September, 2012 and in that time he has demonstrated an excellent work ethic. He is client-focused, efficient and lovely to work with – always gracious and friendly.

I am sorry to lose his services, but happy for him that he is pursuing further education.

I am confident that Xxxxxx has the drive, intellect and personality to do very well in his studies and in his career afterward.

Sincerely,

Sarah Siegel

[Address]

[email address]

"Thank you. It's beautiful."

"I can only imagine what it's like to be an immigrant."

"It's hard."

"When I moved to Chicago, when I was your age -- what are you? Twenty-two?"

"Twenty-three and almost 24."

"Sorry."

"That's Ok."

"Well, I was a Literacy Volunteer and helped a family from Russia.... I used to think -- because my whole family is from Russia --"

"You're Russian?"

"Well, Jewish, so we didn't count." (On Russian passports, historically and perhaps still today, Jews were stamped, "Jewish" (in Russian), rather than "Russian".)

He nodded.

"And the family was Jewish from Russia, too. And I used to think, I could be her if I had been born in Russia and she, here. We were the same age."

He nodded again.

"I took her and her sons, both under five, to the public library and helped all of them get library cards. She was so depressed at the time, she acted like it was nothing special, but told me later that it was fantastically helpful. We're friends on Facebook now, in fact, and her two sons graduated from college and she became a nurse and her husband became successful, too. I know it's probably awful right now, but I believe you will be all right. Especially because you had the courage to be assertive and ask for a reference. That's just one sign."

He thanked me. "Do you want the door closed?"

"Yes, please."

A few minutes later: A knock on my door.

"Yes?"

"May I talk with you for two minutes?"

"Ok."

"I was thinking about our conversation and I'm...." (He stood there with his beautiful face, full of five-o'clock shadow, looking so vulnerable.)

"Gay?"

"Yes."

"I know."

He smiled with relief.

"And everyone knows I am, too," I said.

He smiled some more.

"I was so excited when I started working here because I saw that you were two women and you had a house and...."

"We were married legally two years ago."

"And married! I want to be someday, too."

"Do you want kids?"

He made a face. "First, I need to have money, and an education and a partner."

"Do your parents know, and are they kind?"

"My mother knows. I told her when I was 13."

"When you were still in Bulgaria?"

"Yes. And she listens to me tell her about boyfriends and...."

"So she's kind."

"Yes."

"And your father?"

"He probably knows, but they are divorced."

"Well, if you are like I was when I was in my 20s, I was miserable!"

"What is 'miserable'?"

"Very, very unhappy."

"Yes!"

"My older sister told me that turning 30 is like being let out of jail."

"I hope so!"

"You will be all right. You're cute!"

"Thank you," he said, smiling and looking at the floor.

"You are. You're very attractive, and lovely, so it will be all right ultimately. When I was your age, I had a bike -- not a motorcycle, but a bicycle."

"And now, you have a house and a wife --"

"Yes, and at first, I think Pat's mother might not have been happy because Pat earned much more money than I did, but for the past 10 years, I've been the primary provider."

"I thought so. You look like you... -- and that's good. That's how it should be with a couple. Nothing separate."

"Yes, I agree. So I hope you find a husband."

Smiling dreamily. "Me, too!"

"And with the Supreme Court decisions this week, you can marry and American man and become a citizen, depending where you live."

"I have a Green Card already."

"Oh, that's great!"

"Yes, my grandmother helped. And my father's already here."

"Terrific! You know, when I was growing up, I read the wedding section of "The New York Times" every Sunday, wishing that I could be in it and then once I knew I was a lesbian, feeling bad that I never could be. But then it began publishing same-sex wedding announcements and Pat & I got in! If you give me your email address, I'll send you a link to the announcement and to a little video we made -- less than three minutes, about how we met."

He wrote down his email address.

"Also, I'd like it if you kept in touch with me and let me know how you are doing."

He smiled and nodded -- seemed pleased.

He said goodbye to go back to work and I shook his hand.

I wrote the email:

Hi Xxxxxx. Thanks for our conversation.

Here are the two links that I promised to send:

• Patricia Hewitt, Sarah Siegel: Weddings: http://nyti.ms/13dCNxY
• Video: Patricia & Sarah http://nyti.ms/10poILr

Good luck with work and with your studies at Aaaaaaaaa Community College.

Please stay in touch with me.

Best,

Sarah

This time, he was the last of the three workers to leave and yelled to my closed door. "Ok. Goodbye!"

I opened my door and asked if I could give him a hug.

He hugged me sweetly. Our ears rested against each other for a moment. I walked him to the door.

"Thanks for sending me the email."

"It's already in your inbox."

We waved at each other.

Emotional Leadership

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

The Delegate Couldn't Know How Deeply His Comment Resonated with Me

Just prior to our saying goodbye, one of the IBM Global LGBT Leadership Workshop delegates, remarked to me one on one, "American culture has a different way of public speaking... and the way you facilitated -- I would call it -- 'emotional leadership'."

Is it part of American culture to facilitate warmly, or is it just my style, and I happen to be American?

It's true that I touch participants on the shoulder and back occasionally and also laugh easily as well as hope to move people -- to activate them -- but it's not even fully conscious on my part...until now, as I'm reflecting on what the delegate said.

In terms of emotions themselves, I always feel so many when facilitating learning, and perhaps, more than ever with this series: a summit for openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) IBM executives, and a global leadership development workshop for LGBT not-yet-exec. leaders.

For the workshop I co-designed and facilitated last Friday, I felt sad, desirous, anxious, competitive, thrilled, super-invested, touched and loving. And then afterward, while sitting in the hotel bar with a number of delegates, I felt the same emotions, plus exhausted.

Sad: My father of blessed memory died at ~11:20 pm, November 1st, 1982 and had grown up in D.C., 40 minutes from where I was facilitating in Baltimore. Could I do all I did on November 1st and 2nd to honor his memory? Would he be proud of me, or would we be estranged if he did not approve of my lesbian identity?

Desirous: All of the female delegates and even a few of the male ones are attractive to me. It's exciting to know that none of them is heterosexual -- never happens in any other learning arena. Please God, let me remain appropriate and not cause anyone to feel harassed verbally. Please don't let me embarrass myself by leaking any of these feelings, even as I have a pact with Pat never to act on any such feelings, and haven't in the 20 years we've been together. Don't want to express 'em either.

Anxious: Will I be able to be a great agent for their learning and activation? Am I reaching all of them, or am I leaving some behind? Will the timing of the agenda work out? Can I adjust it effectively if need be? Are they finding the exercises meaningful? Are they willingly opting in to one of the teams being formed around the 2013 Vital Few? Is this learning experience one of the best they've ever had or not? And if not, why not?

Competitive: What is it about the execs. that enabled them to lead such huge missions? What would it take for me to be recognized as worthy of leading one? Which one could it be? Will I ever be recognized as meriting the exec. stripe? Do I look as fit as the other women? Why am I one of the only women in the entire room with short hair? Who am I better-/worse-looking than? How can I stay quiet instead of revealing competitiveness by what I say? How can I remain poised and just listen and be happy for others' success?

Thrilled: What a rush to see them enter the ballroom and pick up their name-badges and tent-cards and to know that it's really happening: nearly 50 LGBT IBMers from around the world, together -- just us -- for a whole day. And thrilled by the international panel -- charming, lovely delegates from Bangalore, Moscow, Vienna and Tel Aviv. How lucky am I to get to ask questions that make me curious and to invite questions from participants! What a privilege to be the moderator!

Super-invested: I want these learners to succeed, especially because they are my people. Also, am concerned that being one of them, I will be judged even more strictly by them than I might be if I weren't one of them.

-- Disclaimer -- : I'm sitting in front of a football game on TV because Pat and I want to be together this evening after my having been away for half a week, and so it's harder to focus on my feelings for this blog-entry. By the way, her Green Bay Packers won, so the mood around here is buoyant.

Touched: When one of the executive panelists -- who's responsible this year for 3/4 of a billion dollars of IBM revenue -- responded to my moderator-question about when he first became aware of his gender identity, I was moved because he spoke of how abused he'd been as a kid by peers, since they saw him as effeminate. Most of all, I was touched that the delegates apparently bought in to my upfront premise of the workshop -- that self-awareness leads to authenticity, which leads to premier leadership -- as demonstrated by their willingness to reflect with one another so openly, especially since a good number of them had never met one another prior to the workshop.

Loving: Just before kicking off the workshop, I sat down next to a delegate with whom I wasn't previously acquainted, introduced myself and asked, "How's it going?"

"It's all sort of a whirlwind," she said, "I'm just taking it all in." She looked like I remember feeling in the early days of my coming out: bombarded. I felt flooded with compassion, listening to her. At the end of the day, when she said goodbye, I saw that she had dimples. They were visible, now that she no longer seemed overwhelmed.

And after the international panel was done, I stood and looked at each of the panelists from Austria, India, Israel and Russia, and felt tearful with a rush of affection; it seemed that they were similarly moved when I looked in their eyes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've been sitting on this blog-entry for weeks, wondering why I couldn't write something more perfectly expressive of my feelings post-Baltimore and as self-revealing and honest as I've been above, I didn't post the above prior to now because it was missing the full expression of my most embarrassing feelings of all (though I did leak a bit of it above in the "Competitive" section....) In the spirit of my friend Richard's belief that it's the things about which we're most embarrassed that are most interesting about us, I'll express it finally, 23 days later:

Am I a hypocrite? Am I practicing what I preached, about pursuing our potential? I invested imagination-time x 2, design-time x 2, sponsor-review-time x 2, room-setup-time x 2, facilitation-time x 2 and all-of-the-above-emotions-time x 2 in dedicating sessions to the advancement of IBM, the LGBT community at large, and very specifically to a selected group of LGBT IBMers, but when will I know when I've fully advanced and reached my own potential? What *is* my own potential? What is healthy ambition vs. unhealthy ego? How much ego do I get to have before it's unhealthy?

I am qualified and repeatedly invited to help develop premier leaders, but am I recognized as a leader myself? And if so, why am I not literally leading people again, with a title to match? And is it enough to me if I myself recognize myself as a leader? And when did I gain this craving for outward status? When I joined the company, I did not even aspire to be a first-line people manager, and then did, but for pastoral reasons -- really -- and the people-manager role did satisfy my pastoral bent. And I left management to help start up the LGBT business development mission, and didn't return. Why am I thinking so literally now?

Would it wreck the amazing experience a number of delegates told me they had if they knew that their facilitator had these questions? Or might it paradoxically reinforce my credibility?

And what will I do with these questions? How can I answer them in a way that benefits my work and me altogether? All I can do is make a personal pledge that co-designing and delivering the sessions is rededicating me to further pursue my own potential in addition to having promoted that the delegates pursue theirs. Time for more prayer, too, I think: God, please help me follow your direction. Amen.

In a State of Anticipation

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Anticipation and Agitation

Ever since graduating, I have been reading whatever I want, including Billy Collins' poetry, the rest of *Carry the One* by Carol Anshaw, the science fiction issue of "The New Yorker" even though I'm not historically a big sci-fi fan, and now, a few Dara Horn novels from the library at my sister Deb's recommendation. Otherwise, though, I'm agitated by the bonus time I have. Just writing about it decreases the agitation a bit, though, so I'll keep going.

It's like I'm uncomfortable with sitting still till I figure out how to spend the time. An IBM mentor said, "You could spend more time with Pat, you could become a volunteer...." Another friend to whom I bemoaned my less-than-routine exercise regimen over the past several months said, "Now, you'll have more time for exercise."

I have been trying to spend more time with Pat, though I'm finding that I keep feeling compelled to do more in the work realm to fill the gap, like last night: We were going to eat out and I was doing LGBT Community stuff for IBM past 6 pm on a Friday. And I didn't even realize Pat was waiting for us to head to dinner.

As far as volunteering, do I work with LGBT youth? Do I do something with animals? Do I become a docent?

Certainly, I have more time to blog now. Do I start vlogging (video-blogging)? This might be among my more tedious posts, but it's actually helping me to splay my anxieties here. If I have time back, I need to be using it well. What if I just get swept up into the mindless part of Facebook? What if I use social media as a tranquilizer, rather than as a way to feel more connected to humanity? What if I just become average again? When I was in school, I was special because I was heroic -- working full-time while studying part-time. How virtuous. Now, I'm just another person, going to and coming from work.

I want to be special always. I want not to pressure myself so much. Why can't I just relax? The classic observation that therapists and all of my close friends have made is: "You're very hard on yourself." I want to be more at peace. After all, I'm far from how I was in my early-20s: daydreaming with a spoon of ice cream in my hand, then mouth, then hand, then mouth, telling myself, Any day, I'm going to start writing. And it'll be published and loved by millions, and I'll be famous. A childhood friend remarked recently that she just assumed she'd be famous and it hasn't happened yet. Me neither. Still, since my 30s, I have written and then blogged routinely, have had a creative job, and since my mid-20s, no longer numbed myself with sugar, so that's huge. Who am I trying to convince? Myself.

More to Anticipate Anxiously

The other thing that's happening is I'm feeling agitated about Pat's and my upcoming trip to Israel, which Pat is giving me as a graduation present. I want so badly for her to love it like I do. I find Israel to be an addictive place. I need to go back there at least every decade, now that I can afford to. This is Pat's first trip and I wish I could wipe away her worries about terrorism. She's coming with me to Israel with the same attitude I had about going with her to Alaska: I knew she wanted to go, so I went. Last night, Pat said, "But you liked the glaciers and the whales." She realized that those were the high-points for me. I also liked swimming in a community pool in Juneau and reading on the ship. And the ship's naturalist, who looked and sounded vaguely like Alfred Hitchcock and who gave great lectures.

I keep saying, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, and I hope she is. In addition to wanting to control Pat's reaction to a whole country, I'm feeling anxious about seeing family while we're there. Pat & I have been together for just about 20 years and yet these relatives, other than my first cousin Maishe, who's been here for a Bar Mitzvah, have never met her.

Israel can be fraught with danger for me, too, though different from the danger that worries Pat -- the danger of flashbacks to my early, tortured romantic reaches, all of which were ultimately thwarted there: a lovely Israeli girl at 15; at 20: a Costa-Rican guy on his way to Jewish conversion; a Jewish-American guy, who also went to the University of Michigan; a Jewish-Australian guy with Israeli parents; a French woman, who was also deeply closeted then, and who was also on her way to Jewish conversion; a tall, handsome Orthodox-Jewish-American guy for whom I wore a modest skirt on our one date; two Jewish-American women I met through my program, a couple of months apart; and a wonderful Israeli childhood friend who became a gorgeous, rugged-looking, gracious-acting man -- the ultimate clue that I could not be attracted to men sufficiently to make a life with one.

If I catalog all of this Israel-based romantic fumbling, maybe I'll feel less haunted by it. Instead of feeling celebratory about this trip, I'm feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of being in Israel for the first time with someone who loves me back and with whom I've been in a healthy, 20-year relationship. In all of those cases of misbegotten cupidity, the people loved Israel, but didn't love me. Finally, I'm with someone who loves me, but who does not necessarily love Israel. It's not that she dislikes Israel, it's just that she isn't drawn to it -- kind of like how the objects of my affection in Israel ultimately felt about me. I have to go meet some friends shortly, by 9:30, so I wonder if I will want to write more later, or if I've already said more than enough....

What Will We Do When We're No Longer Outsiders?

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Death and Art Propel Big Questions This Weekend

At the funeral of our neighbor Megan of blessed memory earlier today, bookmarks-as-mementos sat next to the guestbook. One of them featured a girlhood photo of Megan and a quote: "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." -- Wayne Dyer

The quotation reminded me of some insights shared with me earlier this weekend, and how I might change the way I look at lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) identity.

Last night, with our friends David & Gerard, I attended a lecture by Jonathan Katz, the co-curator of Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. Most of the works he featured in his slideshow included metaphors and symbols and codes that were dense and tense and rich for eyes that could recognize the homosexual subtext of them; in a number of cases, Jonathan Katz decoded them for us, as a number of them were subtle.

As I watched and listened, I was touched by the artists' ability to make visible to any degree a segment of society that between 1898 and 1991, and even still, today, depending on where in the world we live, typically was marginalized, stigmatized or at the very least, in the shadows.

During the Q&A afterward, I asked, "What happens when LGBT artists are no longer outsiders?"

Jonathan Katz said, "Other differences will emerge....It will not be central to their themes."

I was shaken by this answer. And I told David and Gerard so after walking through the exhibit together.

Gerard: "He was saying something hopeful, I thought, like that even heterosexual artists might include us as subjects and we'd just be more visible."

Me: "Maybe I'm too literal, but I don't ever want to be lesbian just incidentally. It's part of my core identity."

David: "I'm literal, too, but maybe assimilation's not so bad. I mean, isn't it nice being married now?" (He meant, he to Gerard and me, to Pat.)

"Yes, *so* nice. Your use of the word 'assimilation' helps me a bit because it reminds me of some alarmist Jews in my community who say that Jews will disappear if we assimilate too much, and yet, we've been here for 3,000+ years. I don't really think we're gonna disappear, since we've hung on for this long."

Dance? No, Lurk Around the Margins.

We said goodbye, since I was ready to go home, while they wanted to linger at the exhibit a bit longer. Making my way toward the exit, I found a free dance party on the third floor of the museum.

Oh, the music was so good with Rhianna's voice bouncing off the paintings in the nice and dim, cavernous room. I was nearly ready to enter the dance floor and move alone among the crowd, which likely would have been fine had I not been too shy.

I wished that Pat were with me, so that I'd have a partner. It struck me that no one would even notice us; in fact, we might stand out more so for being older than most of the crowd, rather than for being a same-sex couple -- to Jonathan Katz's earlier point. After "Sweet Dreams" by the Eurythmics played, I slunk away to my car in the parking lot. When that song was first popular, I was most of the dancers' ages, and I just owned a bicycle and a subway pass, and a radio/tape-deck I got as a premium for opening a bank account.

Driving home, I thought, Oh, no! Have I become like the lesbian separatists who used to alienate me when I was first getting involved in the gay community in the late-'80s? Who thought that "womyn"-only spaces were supreme while I thought they were unappealing and even obsolete as a group due to their insularity?

There's an analogy, right? AIDS and other societal realities made lesbian separatism untenable back then, just like today, staunchly gay, lesbian, bi or transpeople were misguided whenever we ghetto-ized ourselves, smothering ourselves with an insecurity blanket; more and more polls showed that younger people weren't half as discriminatory as previous generations, so why did any of us hang on so fiercely to separateness and outsider status?

Still, the chip on my shoulder had become comfy after all these years of hauling it and the prospect of heeding Wayne Dyer's/Megan's advice to change my thinking was scary. Earlier today, I spoke with a heterosexual relative, to tell her of my new confusion around my identity, and of my fear of losing my minority status and as usual, she had great on-the-spot wisdom in response:

Sarah, you don't have to be ghetto-ized or Marrano-like anymore [in this area of the world]. And compared to Jews, I think there's less of a chance of LGBT assimilation causing the end of LGBT people, since you won't intermarry.... And in any case, don't worry that you'll lose your identity when people stop being hateful, as there will always be hateful people; there are persistent taboos in every stripe, like unwed mothers. There's always someone who will make sex dirty.... Sex is the engine for intrigue and betrayal and murder and art and politics.... Your sort of desire won't disappear just because it's more so accepted. It will simply be less underground, which should be good, right?

We Are All Outsiders.

In 1998, two years after Pat & I moved in to our neighborhood, Megan, Steve and their young son Ben moved in three houses down from us. I never brought them a house-warming gift, or any food or drink. Never invited them over. Promptly forgot their names as soon as Megan introduced her family and herself to us one day in the street. Thereafter, Megan would drive by us while we were raking leaves or gardening and would always wave. Whenever she had her car-window down, she'd address us by name, and I always felt bad that I had to try to stretch "Hi" into a multi-syllable word, since I was too embarrassed to ask Megan to tell me her name again.

Every time she passed us, she smiled whole-heartedly at us, but after all, what did we have in common with a woman who had a husband and a young kid? So why bother to be friendlier and learn more about her by talking with her? When other neighbors with whom we've been friendly since we've moved in, called to tell us of Megan's sudden death from a massive heart attack the other night, first, I was relieved and ashamed finally to know her name, but then realized that I'd lost the chance of ever being friendlier with her.

What did we have in common? Through loving eulogies from her husband, son, brother and best friends, I learned what I never bothered to find out from her while she was alive: One of only two other families in the neighborhood (that I know of), Megan's family and she were Jewishly-affiliated, attending High Holiday services and bar mitzah'ing their son, who was now 18 -- our nephew and niece's age...like Pat & me, originally, Meg & Steve spotted each other across a room...like part of Pat's heritage, Meg's was French-Canadian...and volunteered from the early days, helping PWA's (People with AIDS), and so likely saw a number of friends die over the early years, like we did. And probably, we'll never discover how much more we might have had in common. It's just ironic, and tragic, how I was so busy, being shy of a stereotypically nuclear family, that I didn't stop to consider that Megan and her family felt like outsiders in the neighborhood initially, which we could have softened by being friendlier.

The other bookmark-as-memento that sat next to Megan's funeral-guestbook had an adult photo of Megan, smiling the smile I recognized, and the quote associated with it came from the poet, Rainer Maria Rilke: "This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess."

Lady Gaga & a Leadership Development Conference

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Re-posted from my IBM internal "Learning to Lead" Blog

I snapped this photo at the Galleria's Massimo Dutti store, by the Duomo; to me, they looked like a couple.

"Dio errori non ne fa." / "God makes no mistakes." This was among the only statements translated into English in Francesca Giuliani's article on p. 53 of the June 7th edition of Italy's newspaper, "la Repubblica;" it seemed to be a reference to Lady Gaga's new song, "Born This Way," and her planned appearance at yesterday's festival associated with Rome's Europride celebration for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people. How apt to read that statement as I flew from Newark to Milan to help facilitate the GLBT Leadership Development Conference that I co-designed for 30 IBM senior, but not yet executive, GLBT leaders from across Europe....

As a result of the conference, a delegate in a critical role pledged that he would not accept a lucrative offer that was on the table from [a competitor]; another decided that pursuing a promotion was worth the effort after all, though prior to the Conference, he had convinced himself not to try; another recruited six other delegates for half a year's worth of monthly programs in the podcast series he calls "Radio Eyrie," which is designed to be a collection of informal learning on what selected gay, lesbian, bi and trans IBM leaders know about their parts of the IBM business and can explain to any IBMer who wants to listen; hope they add a link from it to IBM's Informal Learning Exchange (ILX).

In addition to the delegates' commitments to further developing business, GLBT Community initiatives and themselves as leaders, I found the following moments of the conference to be among the most profound:

• Delegates' arrival; hadn't been a host of what felt like such a warm reception line since my Bat Mitzvah at 13; everyone seemed so pleased to be there, and I was, too
  
• Lucio Toninelli, HR VP, Italy, talking about how Italy as a country has some distance yet to go in becoming GLBT-friendly: "You don't change a culture of centuries overnight, but you don't give up"
  
• A delegate's:
  
  • Enthusiastic reaction to the cost-of-thinking-twice flowchart that openly-lesbian IBM Managing Director Claudia Woody adapted from IBM alumnus John Martin
    
  • Gratitude for being helped to expand his career vista simply by being asked in plenary, "Is a future IBM CEO in this room today?"
    
  • Self-reminder that she needs to shut down negative self-talk that says, I'll never fit in and so never will reach my potential
    
  • Plea for more decision-making power/empowerment as a manager in response to another delegate's experience that anything is possible...if one is willing to go through however many necessary checks and balances, i.e., so many checks and balances should be unnecessary, he felt, if we are serious about Our Value of Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships
    
  • Conclusion about external speaker, Andrea Notarnicola's, quote from author Martha Nussbaum's message, "...disgust is not an appropriate guide for decision-making;" the delegate realized that just as she hopes that non-GLBT leaders heed the message when they assess GLBT employees, she needs to heed it as well, regarding anyone with whom she is not natively comfortable
    
• Delegates' selected, early experiences of first recognizing themselves as leaders, including:
  
  • Being put into the officers' stream of the Royal Air Force and accepting the role (and then being discharged for homosexual activity)
    
  • After 5 or 6 months as a first-line manager, being introduced as "my boss" by one of his direct reports; he realized then that he needed to rise to the occasion and demonstrate real leadership
    
  • Becoming the Head Boy in a South African boarding school, after speaking no English just four years prior, and managing 15 Prefects, and then being a people manager for his entire career so far
    
  • Not seeing self as a leader, but:
    
    • Rather, as a thought leader, e.g., being asked for a rationale on why Database Marketing & Market Intelligence should merge, and this was 10 years prior to the industry doing the same
      
    • Having it thrust on him, since first serving as a Prefect at 16 and then always managing teams in his career.
      
  • Helping advance GLBT inclusion among:
    
    • The UK's Sea Cadets
      
    • A major, national Lutheran youth organization.
      
  • In the movie theater, where he worked at 15, suggesting to his management that he could do the best job as the manager and having his management listen and appoint him...and he *did*
    
  • When he was a kid, having all of the other kids always looking to him for what they would play every day and now, fast-forward to his volunteer-work, leading a national association for Gay and Lesbian people in Denmark.
    
• My reminder that IBMers have lived/worked/done business in many countries other than their own, and so even though everyone currently lived in Europe, a substantial number had lived/worked/done business everywhere from Indonesia, to Malaysia, to Mozambique, to Thailand, to the United States, to Zimbabwe and others
  
• External speaker, Andrea's, smart-phone metaphor about the 21st century and gay, lesbian, bi & transpeople's leadership opportunities: Our lives are in our hands....I agree!
  

The Journey from David's Bar Mitzvah to Lesbian [Role-]Modeling for IBM

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Reprinted from GLBT IBMers & Friends Community Blog Behind IBM's Firewall

How did I get from the dance-floor of Congregation Agudath Sholom's reception hall to becoming a lesbian "poster-child" for IBM? In response, I considered three photos from 1978, 2002 and 2010:

In the first, the girl towered over the Bar-Mitzvah boy; she was me at 13. The boy's younger sister, now married with kids, just like the boy is, shared the photo with me via Facebook last week. It arrived while I was participating in Out & Equal's Workplace Summit, where IBM won the Workplace Excellence Award. The boy was sweet, but the girl that his twin-brother danced with nearby was a classmate on whom I had a crush.

This past June, in a letter to my younger self, I described how it felt to be attending a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school while being consciously aware of my lesbianism from age 11 onward. Paradoxically, I think that my years at that school were what motivated me to help represent IBM's GLBT Community so visibly; at our 8th grade graduation ceremony, I recall our principal, giving each of us a copy of *Pirkei Avoth* (*Ethics of the Fathers*) and telling us that he knew we would be among the leaders of our communities -- he was referring to Jewish communities, but I think I must have subconsciously taken it as a call to community leadership altogether.

Ten years after realizing my lesbian identity, I came out explicitly to my family and gained community leadership skills while living in Chicago; I volunteered as a GLBTQ youth group advisor and also co-anchored "The 10% Show," which was produced by the Chicago bureau of the Gay Cable Network (which no longer exists, unfortunately). These experiences were tremendously confidence-building, and profound; the youth group enabled me to help youth feel better along the way about who they were, and to speed through some of the same angst I had had, growing up, and the cable TV show taught me that I was part of a rich culture. Till then, I'd really only been taught to see the richness of Jewish culture. It was my gay community experience in Chicago that sewed the seeds for the work I would do at IBM.

Fast-forward to 2002, when Joseph Bertolotti and I (center of the photo) were leading GLBT Business Development, the coolest startup I've been part of so far, and which I'm proud is more global and more successful than ever through Yvette Burton's, Andreas Citak's and Tony Tenicela's leadership today. This 2002 ad was U.S.-centric by design, as it ran only in U.S.-based GLBT magazines, e.g., "OUT" and "The Advocate." My rabbi, openly lesbian herself, and leading the world's largest congregation of GLBT Jews and our friends, held up a copy of the ad from the pulpit when it first came out and celebrated that it featured one of her congregants. This was the same period when I was trying to conceive a child through IUI and an anonymous donor; unfortunately, I did not succeed. The other Sarah, in the foreground, gave birth to a girl some months later -- she's visibly pregnant in the photo -- and Rahel, between the Sarah's, gave birth to twin-girls. Ultimately, Rahel left IBM because she was part of GBS and did not want to travel so much with young children; she took a job at a financial services client, with no travel. And Marcelo on the far-left retired, so time did march on.

By 2004, I had moved from the GLBT business development role to what would become IBM's Center for Learning and Development, and was facilitating leadership development programs for our first-line leaders and emerging leaders, and then for new execs and our leader of India/South Asia and his direct reports. Six years later, I look at myself and see someone, who is as spirited as my 13-year-old self, who's happily paired with a Jewish woman for the past 18+ years, and who's dedicated to mentoring colleagues in their leadership development; I see someone who should make my principal proud.

Finally, by 2010, we launched a new campaign and when Andreas invited people from the New York area (which is where our ad agency is) to be photographed for the ad, I made sure to participate. I was talking with some new friends at Out & Equal, being self-effacing about my choice to model again for a GLBT-specific campaign; "Oh, it's only because I live in the NY-area, and maybe I like attention and..." but one of the friends challenged my vanity-explanation. She made me admit aloud that no, it's not only attention-seeking that drives me to pose for our ads; it really is a wish to raise our community's visibility. And I guess my rabbi, if not my principal in his Orthodoxy, recognized the act as a form of community leadership.

NYC Pride Parade

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Near 14th Street in the Village, I saw a woman sobbing as she looked at our synagogue's parade banner and the huge contingent of us, marching along with the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC). She was shaking and tears streamed down her face. Her mascara was getting wrecked.

She was in her early-20s and pretty, with long, wavy, sandy-blond hair. There was a taller, attractive woman, standing behind her, holding her. If I had passed her in, say, the Short Hills Mall, I wouldn't have picked her as a member of the LGBT community, though probably wouldn't have been surprised that she was Jewish. She reminded me of a late-adolescent version of my niece's female classmates.

Excusing myself from my fellow-marchers, including Pat, I walked back over to her. Not yet knowing what I would say to comfort her, I just held out my hand to shake hers.

My sunglasses shaded my eyes and I wished I had removed them, so that we would have made full eye-contact. Still, I found something to say: "I went to a [Modern Orthodox Jewish] day school [and I imagine you must have done so, too]."

"I *teach* at a day school," she said.

Oy, no wonder she was in pain. She was at the parade with her girlfriend, but likely was not able to be herself in all her humanity at the day school because perhaps she feared losing her job if she were.

I held her hand for long enough to feel that mine was warmer from the heat of marching, and that she was glad to have the contact from someone who was openly lesbian and openly Jewish at once.

It's my hope that my face had a compassionate expression when I shook her hand further and said, "Be well. Zay gezunt (Be healthy)."

It would be wonderful if she were moved to say the Shehecheyanu prayer in honor of today, and ultimately could feel peace.

One of the terrific songs that both of our choruses sang together as we marched down Fifth Avenue was, "Od yavo shalom aleinu...v'al kulam (Peace will yet come to us...and to everyone)."

This year, we marched together with MCC, as our rabbi and MCC's reverend both were chosen to be grand marshalls of the parade. The crowd loved our unity. My ears still hear their cheering.

How have you reconciled, or how are you reconciling, elements of your complex identity?