The Embassy of the United States of America and IEOut Club had the privilege to organize an event focused on the best inclusion practices for LGBTIQ diversity. Professor Timothy V. Kane gave us his inspiring and committed insights about the topic. He made the conversation very participative, and he focused on the three main targets to create a safe place to work… or to study.
Advancing LGBTIQ Diversity & Inclusion
The conversation covered social norms, policies, procedures, laws and funding. We discussed sometimes very easy to implement and even inexpensive measures, such as controlling communications: words and images in internal and external messages, affinity groups (like IEOut Club) or neutral bathrooms, which is still an issue in Spain, but not outside our borders:
Beyond binaries
The world is not black or white anymore, man or woman, gay or straight, diversity is diverse when we talk about sexual and gender identities. Kane explained the audience the differences between biological sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual behavior and sexual orientation. If you think it is complex, imagine the three variable combinations of each of them!
Giving voice to all values
Later on in the conference we discussed the challenges and rewards of going out of the closet and the power of allies.
We played a game in which we had to choose the more powerful LGBTIQ ally from:
• President Obama
• Sasha and Malia Obama
• Madonna
• You
Watch this video before making your guess! You can find the answer from the minute 4:10:
Professor Kane also left us some very powerful resources:
• www.hrc.org
• www.thetaskforce.org
• www.givingvoicetoallvaluesthebook.com (a book by Mary Gentile)
