「Straight Ally」の記事一覧

Last week, I knew the existence of “Straight Ally” for the first time. A straight ally was not LGBT, but supported LGBT’s rights and promoted equality. (pazzazzzz, 2016) When I was having lunch with some colleagues, one of them showed a sticker on her smartphone and declared to be a straight ally. Hearing the word, I didn’t know what it stood for, but the rainbow-colored sticker made me feel that it related to me. Searching it on the Internet, I found that my heart got warm. I was so thankful that some straight people showed their understandings over LGBT. Moreover, I hoped the awareness of straight ally would increase for straight people to understand LGBT more. The reason why I thought like that was because I could come out of the closet when I faced sexual harassment in the workplace. As an example, I could avoid the trouble in advance by telling that I was gay. As I have been a secret gay, I have suffered from many harassments so far, that really hurt me. In Japanese business settings, the idea of “Diversity” has not widely been accepted yet. It has been still believed that a man loves a woman and vice versa. I had a bad memory which I clearly remember about the harassment; I was almost forced to kiss a woman. While I joined the annual employees’ trip, the incident happened. After dinner, we dropped in a hostess bar near our hotel. My colleagues started a game. The game was called “King Game” and I hated it very much. First, a king is selected. Then, the king ordered other two people to do something sexual. Both the king and the two people was randomly selected by drawing. I made up mind to decline the order if I were told to kiss a woman. Moreover, I prepared myself for leaving our company if my attitude made other colleagues angry and caused a trouble. I just wanted to say that I couldn’t forgive the harassment like that. At the same time, I couldn’t stop the game because they didn’t know I was gay. After all, I was never selected by the drawing. It was surprisingly only me among 7 to 8 members. I thought how lucky I was and appreciated the God who helped me out…I can laugh it out now, but I got hurt then… I expect that the existence of straight ally will bridge the gap between LGBT and straight people. Even if LGBT insisted our thoughts, some thoughts might not be convincing for straight people as the situation was opposite. However, if straight ally shared our thoughts in a objective way instead of us, straight people might be able to understand us much better. Reference: pazzazzzz. (2016). Urban Dictionary. Retrieved June 2, 2019 from https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Straight%20Ally