From: kazandar@rio.com
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 00:38:50 -0700


I recently posted this to soc.bi, alt.angst, and soc.motss on the usenet.  I 
thought it may be of interest to you.  If you decide to load it onto your site, 
you have my permission so long as you drop me a line informing me of the fact.

Kaz
kazandar@rio.com
kazandar@ix.netcom.com

==========================

(This has been posted, but not cross-posted, to soc.bi, alt.angst, and 
soc.motss.  I thought it was appropriate for all three groups.  However, if a 
thread spins off this, I'll probably only follow the one on soc.bi.  It makes a 
little more sense if you know prior to reading it that I'm bisexual.)

Really, please do.  Color me clueless, I mean.  The only excuse I have is that 
the victims were just as clueless as I was.

I work for a supposedly liberal city government.  The city council is fairly 
liberal, but management is boomer-style liberal; they pay lip service to 
liberalism and practice conservatism.  Hypocritical liberalism, you could call 
it.

Management in government is littered with scum.  Government attracts the vipers 
and rodents because standards in government are so low.  Whereas many of these 
people couldn't actually hold down a job in the real world, they fit right in 
with their cohorts in government.

But I'm starting to rant, so onwards.

(BTW, this is far less true among the line' workers.  Many of these folks 
actually work their asses off.)

When managers in government take a personal dislike to you, they often fabricate 
all sorts of incidents to blemish your record.  After enough of these incidents 
are in your file, they can fire you without being nailed for the fact that they 
started the whole thing simply because they found you personally distasteful.  
Government managers tend to be good at this; government unions are strong, so 
management has to be sneaky in getting people they don't like fired.

This is even more true with boomer-style liberals.  They have a liberal image to 
maintain, after all.  God forbid that anyone should peg them for being 
malicious, or a bigot.  When they go after someone, the plot they cook up is 
sometimes so convoluted that even they get confused by it.

You getting the picture?  Life in government is very, very twisted.

About a year and a half ago, a man in my work section, John, was railroaded out 
of his job.  John was gay and quite obviously so; his boyfriend often came in to 
work to pick him up (cute guy, too).  John was disliked by many members of 
management; however, it was assumed that it wasn't because he was gay but 
because he had this annoying habit of speaking what he thought - no matter how 
unflattering it might be to management.  And indeed, much of it was extremely 
unflattering.

John pissed off the people he didn't like, and most of these were in management. 
 So management decided to get rid of his ass.  They spent a very long time doing 
it, and finally hit upon the idea of cutting his job down to a part-time 
position and then refusing him a transfer.  John couldn't live on part-time 
wages and had to leave the city.  Of course, immediately after he quit they 
reinstated the position to full-time.

I miss John.  He was one of the funniest people I'd ever met.  He could flay 
someone alive with his acid wit in 30 seconds.  Things are a heck of a lot 
duller without him around.

But even John didn't think he was getting the shaft primarily because he was 
gay.  There was too much other shit going on to concentrate on that aspect as a 
major cause of management dislike.

But on to another story.

The job I now hold was once in the hands of a very bright, outspoken young woman 
named Jenny.  Jenny had held the position for quite some time as a temporary 
worker, proving herself to be more than capable and extremely innovative.  Jenny 
was a lesbian, and like John, obvious in her inclinations.

Eventually management realized that it would have to hire someone into the 
position as a full city worker, or the union would start getting annoyed.  
Rather than give the job to Jenny, who was already well-trained and had done 
much to update the office, they threw it open to everyone.  I applied for it, 
fresh out of college and upon the recommendation of someone I knew, and I got 
it.

Jenny was out of luck.

I was told that I was picked for the job because I had computer skills which far 
exceeded those of Jenny.  This is true.  I'm quite good with computers when I 
want to be, when I'm interested (or getting paid for it).  I'm certainly much 
more talented in this area than Jenny was.

But I always wondered....

You see, while a good set of computer skills were, in fact, valuable in 
converting the office to an electronic format, they never needed someone of my 
talent to fill the position. In fact, Jenny, being the bright woman that she 
was, could easily have learned what was needed to do what I have done.

Even more suspicious, we have an entire department whose job it is to do 
computer work.  In fact, after a couple of years of being exploited I openly 
refused to do any programming for the city unless they pay me commensurate 
wages, and our computer department has picked up the slack.

So Jenny was quite capable of doing the job.  I wasn't needed.  And she was 
already trained in the position.  I sure as hell wasn't.

Still, no one made the connection.  Not even Jenny, I think.

Last December my old coworker was transferred into a harmless position on her 
way out the door.  I thanked the gods for this; the woman was a merciless, 
back-stabbing, ass-kissing, bitch from hell.  Never have I worked with someone 
so unpleasant, someone who so openly hated me, in my life.  Not to mention 
utterly incompetent.  This coworker wasn't gay, but she managed to publicly 
embarrass management through her own stupidity on several occasions, prompting 
the attempt to remove her before she could do any more damage.

And believe me, she had to commit gross errors over and over again before they 
would even transfer her.  I was amazed each time that they didn't even give her 
an official warning, much less fire her on the spot.  They did it to other 
people, after all.

My new coworker, Maggie, is the exact opposite of my old one.  Extremely nice, 
very bright, diplomatic, with a strong sense of ethics.  A blessing.  Maggie is 
gay, but you'd never guess that she was.  At least I never did, and I don't 
think anyone else stumbled upon a clue when she was being interviewed.

Lately, though, my immediate boss, the one responsible for getting rid of John 
and Jenny, has taken a dislike to Maggie.  It's obvious in the way that he 
treats her.  He has no reason for doing so; she does her job well and never 
opposes him in a confrontational manner.  Even so, he took the unprecedented 
step of extending her probational period three months (I've *never* seen this 
done before) and warning her that she'd be out the door if he wasn't pleased 
with her by the end of that time.  I was mystified by his sudden about-face (he 
hired her, after all) until Maggie told me she was gay.

Then all the pieces started falling into place....

You might think me a bit on the slow side.  I admit, when it comes to devious 
and slimy thinking, I've a difficult time seeing things like this.  Again, my 
only defense is that no one else I know connected the dots - I was the first to 
do it.  Even the victims were unsure.

I guess I don't have to explain what's going on here.

And I think that the only reason I haven't received the same kind of treatment, 
despite the fact that I've challenged management openly and semi-judicially (and 
for the first time in the history of the organization actually *won* on the 
thing I was fighting), is because the sons of bitches think I'm straight.  Oh, 
and I'm a man, too; straight men have an easier time in my city government than 
straight women (anyone wanna see a glass ceiling?).

Why do they think I'm straight?  For much the same reason they never clued in on 
the fact that Maggie was gay (until recently):  we don't stand out.  I'd also 
guess that the fact that I lived with a woman, and that she often came by to 
pick me up or take me to lunch, just reinforced the opinion.  I haven't been 
with a man during the time I've worked for the city.

I wonder now if Maggie will make it through her probationary period.  I've 
started to work on making it more difficult for them to let her go (I've got my 
ways...), but with homophobia as the root cause it may not make much of a 
difference.  The city is powerful, and more than capable of running over an 
individual even if they take a few lumps in the process.

I'm not a person who tells strangers, which includes most of my coworkers, who 
it is I'm attracted to (this would've been rather crude, as well, since I was 
living with someone until recently). But then, I generally don't tell people 
that I'm an atheist, or an anarchist, either.  My political interests are 
wide-ranging, so though I've argued for equal protections for gays I've also 
argued against the firing of our one and only (maybe first and last) Hispanic 
manager, hiring practices which exclude minorities, management attempts to 
squash First Amendment rights, the failure to promote women to high positions, 
and a host of other things.  My shtick is injustice in general, not focusing 
exclusively on one topic.

Management just thinks I'm a royal pain in the ass, not a *bisexual* pain in the 
ass.  They wish I'd shut up not because I think some guys are cute (certainly 
none of them, the twits), but because they don't want to hear about the 
goddamned Constitution', or ethical conduct, or human rights.  These things get 
in the way of climbing the managerial ladder.

Now, however, I contemplate doing something that normally wouldn't occur to me, 
something which I'd most likely consider irrelevant when the overriding 
imperative is right conduct': making it painfully clear to the phobes that I'm 
not one of them' in an attempt to draw fire.  I am, after all, a vested 
employee with a proven track record of being able to fight back and win.  
Screwing with me is Not a Good Thing.

(The coffee cup on my desk says: "Piss me off, pay the consequences.")

The question I have to answer is: would this accomplish anything?  Would it 
divert attention from my coworker, or would it simply concentrate it?  My hope 
is that they'd be so intent on the revelation that I was right here, under their 
noses, the whole time, that they'd forget about her until the probationary 
period had passed, putting her under union protection.  But it could very well 
backfire, getting her canned to cut our numbers down'.

There's less than a month to go.  I have to decide fast.  Will it work, or will 
I contribute to the demise of Maggie's career?  Damn, how do these fucked-up, 
twisted, hate-filled assholes think?  Will they lash out at everyone, or just 
me?  I can take care of myself; I've proven it before.  But Maggie's hanging by 
a thread; if I screw up, she's history without a chance of saving herself.

I'm actually not looking for a response to this post.  I just thought I'd put it 
here as an interesting piece on current oppression that I happen to be a 
participant in.  The bitterness of the whole thing just begged to be shared.

Kaz