This week at work an interesting thing happened, one of the girls I work with fell out of the closet. The interesting thing was the reaction… most people in the office were angry with her, including me. We were angry because she had worked with us for two years and never said anything. In my department there are three other gay people and two bisexuals, there are countless in the business. As far as I am aware, there has never been a homophobic incident in my workplace. She told us she never said anything because she was embarrassed....but this just doesn’t wash. I for one, feel that she has a problem with gay people. It's as if she is saying we should have something to be ashamed about.
The situation was more or less resolved. People talked it through with her, pointed out that her attitude and some of the things she was saying were homophobic and moved on. I think it will take a while for her friendships to recover, but she is fine for now. However, I should point out that she is in her mid thirties and in my opinion, has had plenty of time to work through her homophobic feelings. I know for a fact that her friends and family would have no problem with her homosexuality. The only person with a problem with gay people seems to be her.
Looking back, this all seemed like quite an extreme reaction. Had she been a teenager I am sure the reaction would have been different...the feelings of deception and homophobic judgement would not have been there. It made me think of several recent press outings and how they had been handled in the press. There seems to be a big divide between the incidents of people being honest and people being found or suspected of being in the closet.
