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Last week...
Last week was out LGBTT awareness week in work. Which is why I've been kinda quiet: I've been working my ass off getting stuff ready for that. I had to do 'most everything in my own time, not because my manager wouldn't let me have time to do it (she's been very supportive, actually) but because I've had too damn much to do during working hours. My choices were stay late at work to do it, or go home and do it. Staying in work would have gotten me credit for the time, but honestly, I'd rather use my own PC where I won't run into the office firewall every time I try to access a lesbian site.
(The office firewall is homophobic. Seriously. You can get into gay activist websites like Stonewall, but not anything with "lesbian" in the keywords. Not even information sites. It stinks.)
Anyhow, we ended up with a nice, colourful display, with plenty of literature for people to read. The office Starbucks franchise did a special offer coffee for us on Thursday: with raspberry and almond syrup which turns the coffee pink. I know, it sounds disgusting. I meant to try one but I was so busy that day I just didn't have time. But it was a cool idea, and if nothing else it got people talking, which was the point.
Thursday I spent an hour or so handing out leaflets to folks as they walked into the building, and had my obligatory confrontation with a so-called Christian who just had to stick his oar in where it wasn't wanted. The jerk told me there's never any homosexuality in the animal kingdom, so I told him to go google "gay penguins" and then come back. When he refused to believe there was any such thing I told him not to waste his time talking about god to me and despite the pentegram around my neck he assumed I was an atheist. Son of a... I've got no time for jerks like that.
I'd also agreed to talk about my experiences at work as part of the open training that day. So, naturally, I spent most of the day, and Friday, battling a migraine. Stress, I suppose. But I got through it. I know some people went away thinking I was being over sensitive, but the way I see it if even one person left that room thinking about what I'd said, it was worth the headache.
In the second session, one of the attendees was...um, I probably shouldn't give his name. A guy I confronted a couple of years ago about a homophobic joke he told during a training session. He apologised (publicly) at the time, so I let it go, but I never felt he really understood why his joke was so damned offensive (because he'd implied that gay men are predators). Seeing him in that session I was really, really tempted to include that incident instead of the one I'd planned to talk about. But I didn't. I hope him being there means he does get it now, or at least that he's trying.
Anyhow, it was a successful, if stressful week.
(The office firewall is homophobic. Seriously. You can get into gay activist websites like Stonewall, but not anything with "lesbian" in the keywords. Not even information sites. It stinks.)
Anyhow, we ended up with a nice, colourful display, with plenty of literature for people to read. The office Starbucks franchise did a special offer coffee for us on Thursday: with raspberry and almond syrup which turns the coffee pink. I know, it sounds disgusting. I meant to try one but I was so busy that day I just didn't have time. But it was a cool idea, and if nothing else it got people talking, which was the point.
Thursday I spent an hour or so handing out leaflets to folks as they walked into the building, and had my obligatory confrontation with a so-called Christian who just had to stick his oar in where it wasn't wanted. The jerk told me there's never any homosexuality in the animal kingdom, so I told him to go google "gay penguins" and then come back. When he refused to believe there was any such thing I told him not to waste his time talking about god to me and despite the pentegram around my neck he assumed I was an atheist. Son of a... I've got no time for jerks like that.
I'd also agreed to talk about my experiences at work as part of the open training that day. So, naturally, I spent most of the day, and Friday, battling a migraine. Stress, I suppose. But I got through it. I know some people went away thinking I was being over sensitive, but the way I see it if even one person left that room thinking about what I'd said, it was worth the headache.
In the second session, one of the attendees was...um, I probably shouldn't give his name. A guy I confronted a couple of years ago about a homophobic joke he told during a training session. He apologised (publicly) at the time, so I let it go, but I never felt he really understood why his joke was so damned offensive (because he'd implied that gay men are predators). Seeing him in that session I was really, really tempted to include that incident instead of the one I'd planned to talk about. But I didn't. I hope him being there means he does get it now, or at least that he's trying.
Anyhow, it was a successful, if stressful week.
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