Experiencing Injustice

What some people do not understand is that there is a reason why I am not open about my sexuality at work to the participants and to my other coworkers. It is not something I have in my resume or staff file or in an introduction about myself. Not telling people I work with about my sexuality was a decision I made so people do not question my ability to do my job correctly and so they will not look at my every move. I normally tell people my sexuality when it happens to come up in casual conversation or there are situations where I do not even tell them and I just talk with my friends. I am giving this history because I feel it is necessary in order to understand this experience I had in the work place.

Two summer ago, summer of 2015, I worked at a summer camp with many different types of people. There was one staff member who was openly gay and told the participants about his sexuality. Throughout the summer he and I had to work together and closely with each other. When this started to happen, other staff members would come up to me and ask me about how him and I are doing. They are thinking that something intimate is going on, once I reassure them that everything is strictly work related, they kind of shrug it off. Fast forward to eight weeks into the summer camp season and him and I are with our group of teens at our water park. I am talking to a group of teens about something and he comes over and blatantly asks me out in front of them. I denied him multiple times since he kept asking me over and over again. This happened for the rest of the afternoon and even that next morning.

Once that next morning came I approached the section director, assistant camp director, and camp director about this. This is where I believe the injustice comes into play. Once I told them what has happened, they told me that what he did was inappropriate and they will have a private conversation with him about not doing this in the workplace. Doesn't seem like injustice, right? Well, a few days after I complained about this, another male staff member, who is straight, complained about this same staff member and the directors asked him if he wanted to file a complaint to HR and have him switched to a different section to stay away from that staff member.

My initial reaction to him asking me on a date in front of the teens and during work hours was that it was completely unprofessional and it was crossing the line between personal life and work. At the time I could not fully express my displeasure in what he was doing because of the setting we were in, but I was completely uncomfortable and I was shocked and at a loss of words. Once he did that, the teens started asking me questions about my sexuality. When I got hired back in 2012, I made a promise to myself that I will never release my sexuality to the participants because that is not something they need to know. The only way I would release my sexuality would be if a youth came to me about their own questioning sexuality (it hasn't happened).

At the time I did not think of it much and was pretty content with the outcome, but now that I am, it bothers me about how different the directors handled the situation. If this happened to me now I would have insisted that I get moved to a different section and I file a complaint with HR so the directors can see that I am very uncomfortable by what has happened. He does not work for the organization I do anymore, which is a good thing for myself and the other male workers, and he cannot ask me out anymore because he is blocked on all social media sites including his phone number.

Teachers Care for Students?

A few ways the teachers care for the students is "self and community" and "feeding the family." I chose these two because these were the two that I feel connected to through my youth work. I found "self and community" rather interesting because I love how open Sarah is about her queerness in the school setting and that she is opening herself up to her students to make them feel more welcome. I love "feeding the family" because I had the same mind set as Michelle once when I first started working with youth who are at a lower socioeconomic status.

Self and Community
Self and community is being demonstrated in my internship site because the staff demonstrates an open door policy and are encouraged to be themselves so that children have a positive role model to look up to. By having this open door policy, the staff sometimes get children going up them and having personal conversations about things that the children cannot normally talk about within their friend group or even with their family. What I have seen so far is that the staff member will start off with "what we talk about stays between us unless what we talk about is concerning and your family needs to know."

Feeding the Family
As I explained in a previous blog post, this recent summer the summer camp I work at went through a change where we brought in two other YMCA's to our campus. Along with bringing in 200+ more children, various amounts of cultures were suddenly mixed together. During the summer I learned that not all of the campers get full meals at home, sometimes no meals, and having that extra snack or two a day can change the rest of the day for them. They will be less grumpy, they will have a more positive attitude, and they will not be as hungry later on when they go home; if they go home to a food-less house.

My internship site could improve their open door policy and regulations on food/snack in a few different ways. For instance, we could have a curriculum that lightly touches on LGBTQ topics, as well as topics with other cultures. By doing this, more conversations with happen revolving around these topics that children are not typically exposed to. For the food/snack approach, having more options and quantities of food during the scheduled snack time would make a difference in their days because their stomachs will be full for a longer period of time as well as the youth getting the meal they might not get at home.