My name's Bryan Hughes, find me online in all the places.

This is a talk I have been thinking about for a long time.

Actually, first came up with like the original kernel of an idea for this talk at this very

conference two years ago.

So, I think it's fitting that I'm able to actually give it here at JSConf EU.

Because this is a really special conference.

I think we've all felt that.

You know, it's great technical content, of course.

Some of the leading technical content.

But really, we're a community, more than that.

And so, like, as you can probably guess, especially if you have read my Twitter bio, I'm bisexual,

polyamorous, and you can read it there.

Some things that aren't in my bio.

I was born in Texas in the United States which is one of the most conservative parts of the

country.

I grew up there in the '80s and '90s.

A little older than I look.

Things were a little bit different back then.

I'm going to talk about queerness and tech and how these things intersect in all kinds

of different ways.

The truth is it's complicated.

There's no binary tech is good, tech is bad or any of that.

It's just all over the map.

I really want to dig into what these things are, really.

How tech helps, how tech hurts and how tech can be better.

I'm just one person.

We talk about the queer community a lot.

But it's not just one community.

Not just one type of person in it.

The queer community is a federation, really.

There are lots and lots of different communities with a lot of different people and a lot of

different experiences.

Of course, disclaimer, I speak for myself.

I did reach out to a number of queer folks that I know, friends of friends, things like

that, to try to get a lot of different perspectives.

You'll see quotes from other folks.

Hopefully not just speaking for myself.

Before we get into it, this talk comes with content warnings as I'm sure you can imagine.

So, if any of these parts of the talk are difficult or uncomfortable, take care of yourself.

Feel free to step outside, anything like that.

I want to start by setting the stage a little bit.

Go back in time a little bit.

Talk about one of the fathers of computer science, Alan Turing.

Made contributions to computer science as well as art official intelligence.

The renaissance in tech, artificial intelligence, the big new thing.

Alan Turing was talking about it in the first part of the 20th century.

And Alan Turing was also gay.

And he was persecuted for it.

It.

I think in a way it's fitting that we start by talking about tech and queer employees

given in the way that Alan Turing was the first queer tech employee.

At least that we know of.

When we talk about being a queer employee, tech is very complicated, you know?

I'm queer and I'm a tech employee.

I think a lot of folks in this audience here are.

And so, it's really complicated.

Like the first thing I want to talk about one of the best things is that tech offers

us stable employment.

And as queer folks, this is really important because a lot of queer folks are just not

financially stable.

Regardless of the family we come from, so many were, you know, kicked out of their homes

when they were young.

So, even if there was wealth in the family, that often didn't translate to the queer kids

themselves.

Having financial stability is important.

And in tech, compared to other professions that pay about the same and offer the stability,

tech tends to be one of the most accepting.

At least in that strata of professions.

As a queer tech worker, I have a job that is intellectually challenging and offers economic

stability.

I do my best to pay it forward and pass that money along to people who need it.

One of the first issues that we tend to run into, and this is kind of a meta one, is corporate

pride is rainbow capitalism.

All right.

Throughout I think about three different definitions to use to break this down a little bit.

First, the concept of pride in the queer community.

That's really, really important to us.

Because for centuries and millennia, we were told that who we are is something to be ashamed

of.

It's not.

And it's taken a lot of work for us to become proud of who we are.

And so, pride is very, very important us to.

And we're starting to see a lot of companies expressing queer pride in various different

ways.

So, this corporate pride is kind of it's a new thing, of course.

But we really look at it, though, it's what we call rainbow capitalism.

And so, rainbow capitalism is whenever companies, institutions, whoever, engages with the queer

community.

Not to help the queer community.

But in order to further their own interests.

Usually to sell more products, make more money.

And what we end up seeing is that corporate pride end up just being another reflection

and lens of rainbow capitalism.

The tech industry is engaging in a queer specific version of diversity theater by sponsoring

events like the pride parade.

They market to sell more products, and most are not doing anything to make the life better

for queer people.

Queer ERGs, employee resource groups, should be run by queer employees.

However, it's also important that you value the work people are putting into this.

I was the head of the queer employee resource group for a while.

And that work was seen as completely extracurricular and I missed out on a promotion as a result.

See, companies want to take the work they do in order to further their own interests

and they don't actually give back.

They don't support us in that.

They only take it from us.

And our other intersections are compounded.

You know, we talk about social justice.

We talk a lot about intersectionality.

And that absolutely applies to queerness as well.

And one of the things that I think is important to note about this is, you know, we tend to

think about diversity, inclusivity as like different axes.

This is not necessarily wrong, but they are not independent.

And this is something we have to remember.

When people have more than one marginalization they're dealing, this is not an additive,

it's a multiplicative one.

They inform each other and makes things more complicated.

When my disability became ongoing, it was hard to tell if I was put on small projects

because of my disability, gender, or actual job performance.

I'm definitely more marginalized for my Judaism and ADHD, but that's only because I have been

working in queer friendly cities.

I'm marginalized for both my queerness and my race.

Queer rights isn't an equal playing field.

Race always had something to do with it.

Our pain is ignored and dismissed.

Just after the Pulse nightclub shootings, I mentioned to a co worker that I was going

hold a moment of silence at an upcoming all hands.

My co worker said, I don't think tech companies should take a stance on that kind of thing.

I like the idea of being neutral.

What the fuck?

I didn't say anything because I didn't feel safe to speak up to this person that thinks

companies shouldn't condemn gun violence against queer people of color.

Tech is never neutral.

And the only way you can think that tech is neutral is if you love in a place of extreme

privilege.

Tech is a part of this world.

It always has been.

[ Applause ] And it shape this is world in a way that no

industry does in this day and age.

And, you know, actually, I should say something else on this.

I actually have my own story with Pulse as well.

I had been working at Microsoft for three, four months.

I was working on a product team before I got into my current role now.

And Pulse nightclub shooting happened on a weekend.

And I think every queer person remembers that weekend pretty clearly.

At least if you were connected to the queer community at that time.

I was working on a remote team, something I was grateful for in retrospect.

And we had a stand up Monday morning.

I'm devastated.

Every queer person I know and talked to was a complete and utter wreck.

I hop on the call, a virtual call, thankfully no video.

I'm barely able to speak, and all the people on the team, all cis straight men, they were

asking about weekends, laughing and joking as if nothing had happened.

And like I'm struggling so much already.

And that made me feel so much more alone in that moment.

Because it was a reminder that, you know, most people aren't queer.

Most people don't have to deal with that.

And most people don't care.

So, what can tech employers do?

First, let's talk about hiring.

And this is just a few things.

Like we could spend an entire talk on this alone.

I'll just give you a couple of things.

First of all is ignore social media.

Like, if you're higher, just don't even look at a person's social media account.

Because the truth is, if we're going to talk about our daily lives, that means talking

about some things that people find controversial.

If we're not going to talk about our daily lives like privileged, straight, cis white

folks do, we get punished in ways they don't or we have to hide it, which is effectively

going back in the closet.

If we talk about other marginalizations on top of it, it's even worse.

On my bio on Twitter, I mention that I'm bi and poly.

I try to be out about that.

But you know what with?

If a bi queer woman, especially of color said the same thing, that would probably disqualify

them from being hired, but not me.

The other thing is to understand variances in employment history.

This is especially true for trans folks.

Because the truth of the matter is queer folks in general have a tougher time finding employment.

There are more issues we have to deal with.

And the more marginalized intersections it is, the more difficult.

People are in bad situations at work and are discriminated and have to leave.

Especially the more marginalized followings tend to hop jobs.

It's not the fault of the queer folks, but it's the companies.

And in hiring, the queer person is punished all the time.

We need to stop looking at that.

And talk about HR once in the company.

Implicit bias training.

This is kind of an obvious one.

And there are a lot of problems with current implicit bias trainings.

But this is still important.

We all have biases.

This is the nature of the human condition.

Every single person has some biases.

We can't understand everyone's viewpoint in the world.

We didn't simultaneously grow up in every single country to simultaneously being born

to dozens of different types of parents.

We cannot understand everyone's position innately.

We don't have the experiences.

And the best way to get through that is through education.

And also, we need to improve implicit bias training.

And also, we need to take sexual harassment claims seriously.

This is especially true for clear women.

Because this is an issue in the industry for all women.

But again, intersectionality.

This comes into play.

Queer women face even more issues.

There was I remember a study came out a while ago that showed bi women actually face more

discrimination than lesbian or straight women as it turns out.

There's a whole complicated host of reasons for that.

But it's true.

And so, taking these claims seriously benefits queer people especially.

And people of color and other intersections as well.

Inclusion.

You know, gender neutral language and bedrooms.

We have gender neutral bedrooms here at the conference.

It's actually part of the venue.

They didn't do that last minute switch that a lot of conferences did.

You can do it at a concert venue, you can do it at work.

And the same thing with language.

Don't use he, him in documentation language.