[Bigi] Re: coming out process

[Joe Decker]

At 04:48 PM 11/17/00 -0800, Thadd Liszkowski wrote:
>I've always been more or less non-sexual at work, because I believe that
>given our puritanical and capitalistic society (protestant work ethic),
>it's always the safest course regardless of one's identification. Recently,
>I've been even more careful, since I took a job as a teacher.

Hi Thadd!

I don't actually believe that people are allowed to be asexual
at work, at least most of the places I've worked.  It's not that I'm
hit on or am hitting on people, but people expect a certain amount
of socializing about what we do on weekends, etc.  Maybe they don't
need to know about the mind-blowing sex party I was at, but it feels
uncomfortable to me if I don't acknowledge a man in my life as simply
and directly as if it were a woman, and that is what I do.

I'm not trying to dis you here, I hope you can hear that,
our situations are different, I'm not a teacher, and
I do sense how much teaching and working with children means to
you.   I'm a computer geek, and queer/poly folk are common and often
visible.

I hope this isn't prying, but I wonder also if you see one type of
sex discrimination, in particular because, IME, people perceive an
adult talking to a child vastly differently if the adult is a man than
if it was a woman.  I had a really great conversation at a recent party
with a woman whose done research into gender roles and transfolk, and
apparently this difference--that men are not allowed to talk to children
by themselves, but women aren't, "because only men are molesters," [1]
is apparently very  commonly the most surprising costs of being male for
FTM transsexuals.

--Joe

[1]  Yes, yes, I know how false this statement is, but it is
widely believed in the gestalt, if not in words, in my experience.