Being Out at Work

Oct 15th, 2009 | 3 responsesPosted by OIA Staff in Health & Lifestyle by Pace Smith

For many of us GLBT folks, work is the last bastion of The Closet. We’re out at home and we’re out when we’re out, but we “tone it down” when we’re at work. We don’t let our freak flags fly. We aren’t fully ourselves. We squish ourselves into poorly-fitting boxes of “what’s normal” and “what’s acceptable” out of fear.

That’s a damn shame, because being out at work can change the world. Here’s how. It has to do with monkey brains, and I’m not even kidding.

Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist, found that the size of primates’ brains (the neocortex in particular) is directly related to the size of their social groups. Humans, on another branch of the primate family tree, have brains that allow us to maintain stable social relationships with about 150 people. This social circle is called our “monkeysphere.”

Even though you might meet thousands of people over the course of your life, your brain is hard-wired to truly connect with only 150 of them at a time. Those 150 are the people inside your monkeysphere. Anyone outside of your monkeysphere is an abstract concept, not a real live human your brain is capable of empathizing with on a day-to-day basis.

Most people are not sociopaths. Most people are not psychopaths. Most people are not any kind of paths at all. So why is there so much prejudice against us, your friendly GLBT neighbors? The answer is that we’re just not in their monkeyspheres.

We’re just not in their monkeyspheres.

It takes a special kind of malicious, messed-up person to hurt someone they know and empathize with. But it’s much easier for the average Joe or Jane on the street to hurt people they don’t know and don’t empathize with. It’s easier to hurt people outside of their monkeyspheres, “people” who are more abstract concepts than living, breathing human beings.

Outside the monkeysphere, it’s concept versus concept. Concepts like “sin”, “what’s natural”, “defending marriage”, or “family values”. Inside the monkeysphere, it’s about connection. It’s “but that would mean my brother and his partner couldn’t adopt”, or “I don’t want my friend Hannah to be treated like a second-class citizen.”

When you connect with and care about someone, you don’t need laws to tell you to be nice to them. You don’t need laws to tell you to treat them kindly and fairly.

This is why the best thing we can do, for ourselves and for our GLBT brethren and sistren, is to diversify our monkeyspheres.

And what better place to do that than at work? In social settings, we gravitate toward people with similar worldviews and interests. At work, it’s more of a melting pot. You being out at work is more likely to flip someone from “that’s just wrong” to “but that would hurt my co-worker.”

Being inside others’ monkeyspheres can change hearts and minds. And that can change the world.

Pace Smith is the co-author (with her wife Kyeli) of the Freak Revolution Manifesto, a free e-book about why people on the fringes of society will change the world, and how we can actually do it.

Tags: abstract concepts, monkey brains, monkeysphere, out, Relationships, social relationships, Work