Gay Man Working In A Straight Setting

Gabr

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Hi, I don’t know if this is the right section, but anyway, do you work or do you know someone who works in a very straight setting? I mean like builders, soccer related settings or something like this. Is it harder or anything interesting has happened?
 
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OKCLane

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I work in an oilfield setting (comptroller of a supply company) which is hyper-masculine and very conservative, “republican” and often racist.
My coworkers know that I’m married to a man. In fact my husband was invited to my ten year anniversary lunch and is of course welcome at company events. No one has an issue that I know of, or they keep their mouth shut since I am the number 2 in the company.
Very few customers know anything about my personal life. The few who do are friendly and don’t seem bothered but I have no idea what’s said behind my back.
I do work and live in Oklahoma; a state where all 77 counties voted red. That said, my husband and I have rarely had any problems. Life is about relationships, not labels.
 

keenobserver

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Hi, I don’t know if this is the right section, but anyway, do you work or do you know someone who works in a very straight setting? I mean like builders, soccer related settings or something like this. Is it harder or anything interesting has happened?

I worked in several settings, one where it was important to be clearly passing for straight - I worked with incarcerated male offenders for a period of time, many of whom had been abused sexually. It was a requirement of that job that I do strip searches on these males when they had contact with others in specific circumstances. Being seen as gay, even though I followed all procedures to the letter when working with them would have put me at greater risk than the job itself. Even gay most gay offenders kept that information private for the same reason. Explaining the difference between gay and abusive would have been lost in that context.

I worked for a law enforcement agency after that job and being gay was not an issue. I was not a police officer in the 'gets to cuff people' or shoot them sense, but I worked closely with members of my own agency and other law enforcement agencies across the state and Federal government. Many of the officers I worked for were hyper masculine, almost in some ways stereotypically so, and I'm sure some had religious objections about LGBTQ people in general, but it was never a workplace issue, I did not hide who I was in the same sense I did at the previous job. I did hide who my b/f of 9 years was because he joined the agency as sworn officer. His issues stemmed from his family, not his co-workers, but he remains to this day closeted and compromised.

I never really felt tension in this environment , and it rarely came up that I am gay. Usually when it did people were surprised, but nothing changed in terms of my interaction with them. Two older co-workers talked to me privately about issues they were having with gay / lesbian children, but that was the sum of it. Now, everyone in my agency had to take diversity training as part of the hiring process and be retrained (or touched up as an old cop used to say about it) every year. And the annual updating was always current to things going on in the workplace - both ours and others. We were reasonably advanced compared to many others I encountered.