Best Inclusion Practices

LGBT Diversity

M. Alonso

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781137033932
• eBook ISBN: 9781137033949
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Business Ethics
• Index: Social Sciences

Aims to increase awareness about the specific circumstances of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) diversity. Based on a wide array of literature this volume provides a global vision of this reality, explaining the evolution of homosexuality during history and reasons why it has been considered a sin, an illness and a crime.

Part I

LGBT Context: From Sin, Crime, and Sickness to Normalization

1

About a Different Identity

1.1 Rules of the game: Archetype, stereotype, and culture

When the Belgian surrealist artist Magritte (1898–1967) created his work ‘La Trahison des images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe)’,¹ he questioned the artistic-realist representation of objects. The painted pipe is a reference to something, but it is not the object itself. It is, rather, an idealized, somewhat basic, and incomplete image. The same question arises when a human being creates an image of himself or herself. It is obvious that this image will always be subjective and incomplete in relation to a global reality. It can serve as a practical reference, as a useful basis for ordering concepts. The problem is that we often forget that this concept is stereotyped and partially defined, and we accept it as a sole, objective reference, which implies that everything that does not fit precisely into this definition tends to remain outside with regard to that person’s idea.

As far as human beings are concerned, all those variations in their description and functions within a society are dealt with and defined under the umbrella of diversity. However, before entering into the different nuances that present when talking about this concept, we must clarify a series of questions that underline its definition. We will begin by referring to concepts such as ‘archetype’ and ‘stereotype’, and will also speak of culture and society.

Archetype is a term that has existed since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers like Heraclitus (535–484 BC) and Plato (428–347 BC). The latter, in his ‘Theory of Ideas’, distinguishes between two types of reality. The first type is intelligible, essential, and indestructible (the idea), and this implies the model or archetype for the second type of reality, which is sensitive, material, changeable, and corruptible.² The archetype is related to that which is intangible and ancestral. We perceive it as something essential but difficult to define insofar as it does not belong to something conscious, and moreover it adapts itself to its historical moment. The psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (Switzerland, 1875–1961)) delved deeply into the nature of what archetypes are, positioning them as the dynamic substrate from which the individual constructs his experience³:

The archetype is essentially an unconscious content that is altered by becoming conscious and by being perceived, and it takes its colour from the individual consciousness in which it happens to appear.

For Jung, the ‘collective unconscious’ is shaped by the social and cultural elements that make the individual act within a group in an innate, hereditary, and instinctive way.

The stereotype is a specific, defined, and unchanging concept that is shaped within a group of people. It is like a box in which we arrange an idea in order to come to terms with it more quickly and easily. But the set of pigeonholes where these ideas are amalgamated is very schematic, and therefore not everything that goes into each section is completely identifiable with the rest of what is found in it when we wish to investigate further. Sometimes the concepts by which an individual is classified are a stereotype, and do not even form the most notable aspects of their identity.

If archetypes rest on Jung’s collective unconscious as referential symbols for a community, it could be said that a culture responds to that idea of templates to regulate the behavior of a group.

So within a culture, the archetype is unconsciously taken as an essential reference model in a constant state of transformation and development. However, the stereotype closes off the path of a concept, labeling it as unchangeable. In any case, both serve to reinforce that idea of a group (culture) with a series of common characteristics and habits.

Do you know who my husband was? He was the strangest thing in the world: he was a man but not in the theatrical sense of a ‘romantic hero’. Nor could you say he was a champion boxer. His soul was manly, he was a man of thoughtful and consistent moods, restless, attentive and proactive.⁴

We humans tend to join ourselves to others to make up groups that increase in number; from our individuality, we spread out toward family and social units that have their own cultural references based on the chosen archetypes and the stereotypes created as benchmarks. Upon this base, societies rank different levels of value among their members from various parameters as a means of imposing order. One of these classifications is determined by financial considerations, although others also have an impact, such as belonging to a family or caste, and political power or level of culture. Other classifications are based on sex, men being superior to women. There are many other discriminatory factors generally linked among themselves that position a large number of individuals beneath others, such as race, ethnicity, and color. Generally, these conditions intermingle precisely in order to reinforce the level of control some people have in respect of the rest, all of which creates a class system.

1.2 Tokenism and stereotyping

Tokenism is a term defined in some dictionaries⁵ as the policy of offering opportunities that are really no more than symbolic gestures to enable a minority to fit in with everyone else. According to Martha Chamallas,⁶ a specialist in legal and workplace discrimination against women, the expression was first coined by Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement to exemplify the slowness of racial integration in the educational system. More colloquially, we could refer to this feeling in Michael Jackson’s words: ‘I’m not going to spend my life being a color.’⁷ In the 1970s, sociologists took it up again to describe the situation in which minority groups, especially women, frequently found themselves faced with a real lack of representation in respect of their social integration. According to the feminist Mary Daly (1928–2010), this phenomenon occurs in the patriarchal system that allows the success of women within specific levels of the social hierarchy to give an illusion of true equality.⁸ Through tokenism, the raisons d’être of a group diminish when it comes to putting their integration into practice.

With regard to the LGBT cause, through this mechanism of practical simplification, stereotypes have been developed that, over a considerable period of time, have reduced their identities to a series of basic typologies that have increased the level of ignorance regarding their true status. The situation has gone from being invisible to being one that is defined by the stereotyping of notable models of gays and lesbians with whom not everyone in the group identifies. The sociologist Ricardo Llamas and the philosopher Francisco Vidarte (1970–2008) speak of stigmatization as a phenomenon that reduces a person of different sexual orientation or gender identity to a sexual issue.⁹ Their reflection brands this classification system as unjust: ‘If you tell someone that you are gay, they identify you with Paco Clavel or Boris, but, if you’re straight, do they identify you with Concha Velasco or Victoria Abril? Heterosexuals are not worried about their identity, while we feel forced to be concerned about our own.’

The journalist Jennifer Quiles (1968–2005) also thinks along the same lines when she speaks of how homosexuality absorbs the identity of the other components of an individual’s personality or disciplines they have developed.¹⁰ She refers to the term ‘master status’,¹¹ used in sociology to highlight social position as a fundamental reference within the characteristics of an individual, and gives the example of how the identity of a writer can be reduced to that of being lesbian or gay when they are written about in a review; in so doing, many readers pigeonhole the book being reviewed, believing it to be on a subject that is of no interest to them, even though the content actually has nothing to do with that.

This subject has also been discussed by the writer and editor Lawrence Schimel, who referred to the problem of trying to reconcile his image as a writer of children’s books and of other subjects with his being a member of the LGBT community, without the influence of the latter prejudicing his professional success in the other areas. Similarly, when speaking of the playwright Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), he is identified by his homosexuality, which is projected upon the content of his work. This is an influence that also extends to his personal life; it is a little-known fact that he was the father of two children.

When a person ‘comes out of the closet’, those around them tend to restructure the image they had of them and reassign them with the stereotypes normally applied to homosexuals: according to this portrayal, gays are promiscuous, effeminate, materialist, handsome, sensitive, lovers of color and design, rich, and false. Lesbians are rude, ugly, untidy, perversely unsociable, and cold. These characteristics are so internalized in society, even though they are not true, that they often override the real experience people have of homosexuals.

1.3 Social and cultural diversity

For the most part (referring primarily to Western culture), these classification parameters or stereotypes belong to a common source: they have been developed by white males. It is easy to understand that while their judgment has prevailed, this has consciously or unconsciously disadvantaged the development of other points of view.

Some members of the ‘incongruous’ individual’s environment who did form part of the established template, whether they were leaders or merely close to that individual, tolerated their difference. This was a personal decision that could influence (or not) the rest of the group and therefore the evolutionary transformation of their culture to a greater or lesser degree. In any case, they were few in number. Historically, human beings are not characterized by concerning themselves, as a clear duty, with the wellbeing of the other people in their community, unless this prejudice against the individual affects the group. Minorities have not been positively considered unless they have affected the majority.

Perhaps in the 20th century a change of awareness in this regard began to take place. In 1948, with the knowledge of the injustices committed against unprotected groups of people by certain types of discrimination, people who until then were dependent on the whims of their environment when it came to protecting them, the countries making up the General Assembly of the United Nations (1945) issued the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Its intention was to regulate so-called human rights. In it, the rights of all individuals were equal, and it avoided as much as possible, speaking from a theoretical point of view, an unjust system of classes. This tendency was reinforced in the member nations with the insertion into their respective constitutions of precepts of integration and equality of groups that had been socially helpless until then.

If we focus on the defense of the cultural aspects of minority groups, we can refer to the work of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In October 2005, working on the previous Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity of 2001, the link of cultural diversity to the Declaration of Human Rights was made and was considered necessary for the sustainable development of communities. Likewise, a commitment was made to the protection and promotion of its expression, establishing an international fund for its promotion and a convention for the development of actions to follow. Although it focused primarily on international cooperation for the liberalization of trade with cultural content, it also fought for the defense of the existence of different cultural identities.

The wellbeing of all humans seems to be constantly acquiring more space, even if only from an ethical point of view, in the conscience of society. Many other organizations, whether independent or linked to the official arena, have gone on to work in a specific way in the defense of some aspect of diversity on an international level and/or within a specific cultural group. The groups that currently tend to be considered as defending diversity are those that belong to some variant of the established norms in their respective cultures with regard to sex, race, ethnicity, social origin, political affiliation, religion, age, disability, and sexual orientation.

It would be desirable for the defense of diversity to advance well at all levels. However, insofar as some of these groups are minorities, it is usually more difficult to achieve goals of equality. Today we face a multitude of violent conflicts derived from cultural differences based on religions, ways of life of different ethnic groups, or extremely radical coercive political ideologies. It would probably be easier to resolve the problems if there were a greater awareness of the right for difference to exist and if people learned to respect this difference. It is obvious that we all gain a lot from it. Without considering extreme circumstances, there is still much ground to cover on the road to equality, even in those groups defending diversity that have already achieved advances within the cultural frameworks of greater stability, generally more developed in democratic countries. In particular, we have spoken about cultural differences in order to understand that a concept of diversity is more or less recognized with regard to its rights in terms of the cultural contexts where it is developed.

The fight for gender equality is a good example. In the Western world there are many organizations dedicated to fighting against the inequality suffered by women in various fields. Thanks to the formula of positive discrimination, in the 1960s an important march toward equality in this field began in the USA¹² and later in Europe and other countries. Currently, the difference between women’s way of thinking and that of men is considered necessary for the construction of more complete progress frameworks in many cultures within their respective political, legislative, and educational tiers. In the workplace, there have been enormous advances with regard to the place women occupy.

Nonetheless, while the goals to be achieved in the Western framework focus on aspects such as resolving the problem of the ‘glass ceiling’¹³ or the balancing of work and family life, women in other not too distant cultures are still fighting for equality of rights as citizens with regard to men. This is a sufficiently basic aspect to begin to distinguish the role of feminine thought in the influence of archetypal and stereotypical concepts that form part of the structure of that culture. In any case, the advances in the consideration of women’s equality with respect to men are becoming a successful reference model that can be adapted to the specific needs of other groups when working toward their social and work inclusion. All the more so when it has been seen that the entry of women into the marketplace produces benefits for the system itself, and it has been proven that women’s points of view enrich and complement those of men.

With regard to the elimination of discrimination based on race, important advances have also been made in relation to the obvious need for having alternative groups to simply white ones in social participation and development. A non-Aryan president now exists not only in countries with populations that are primarily of other races or countries with little international influence. This means an evolution not just in the creation of role models, something important to encourage the desire of those who still have a difficult road ahead of them to grow, but for the evident improvement that racial minorities experience through governors sensitive to their difference due to personal experience, even if it is ancestral. Undoubtedly, a new contribution ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: LGBT Context: From Sin, Crime, and Sickness to Normalization
• Part II: LGBTs in Social Environments and at Work
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index