I don’t know how much attention you have been paying to the news about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (aka SVB, and don’t worry, you don’t need to know much about it for this essay) and I don’t know if you are a regular reader of the Wall Street Journal (I, myself, am not), but the context for what I am about to say today is that the Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and my colleague Brian Merchant helpfully tweeted out a section of it that was, well, a lot!
There are many points that we could make about this paragraph, and you should feel free to make them, but the one that I am stuck on is “1 LGBTQ+.” I get what is being communicated here — there was one person of some unspecified queer and/or trans persuasion on the SVB board — but the phrasing is just so bizarre. It reminds me of the time I interviewed a woman and she told me she was LGBTQ, like, okay… which are you? It’s not that it matters to me, not exactly, but also… LGBTQ+ is, you know, a group and not an individual. (I can make an exception for any bisexual genderfluid trans people who identify with both the gay and lesbian communities depending on their gender feels on any give day, though. If that is you I think you can reasonably argue that your identity is LGBTQ+.)
And I think it gets to this larger question, too, which is: what are we even talking about when we talk about “LGBTQ+” in this context (whether it’s 1 LGBTQ+ or more!)? It seems fairly clear to me that a white cis gay man sitting on the board of a prominent startup supporting bank is fairly different from a Black trans bi woman doing the same; and it leads me to wonder what exactly we’re even talking about when we talk about LGBTQ+ rep.
(Speaking of white cis gay men and Silicon Valley banks: apparently Peter Thiel is at least partially responsible for SVB’s collapse? That seems to be the word on the street?)
It’s kind of hard to talk about “diversity hires” since the well of that convo has been so badly poisoned, but hey, let’s try. There are couple of reasons to think about why it matters whether or not the SVB board, or any prominent institution, includes queer and trans people. The first one — the one I care most about — is that the absence of these groups is usually an indication of some kind of structural bias. If you assume (as I certainly do) that talent and ability are fairly evenly distributed among various identity groups, then if one group is dominating an industry, it usually suggests some kind of bias. If LGBTQ+ people aren’t getting work on bank boards, that means bank boards are probably refusing to hire and promote LGBTQ+ people, and that’s a problem. This feels very simple to me and like something that everyone should agree with? A lot of people don’t though for some reason!
The second, and much squishier, reason to advocate for LGBTQ+ rep is that diverse teams just work better. A lot of people will advocate for diversity programs, etc, by pointing to the fact that teams that include different viewpoints and perspectives tend to be more successful, business wise. This is very true! I think I just feel weird about it because it relies so intrinsically on a capitalist value system of productivity and profit that I just… eh. But it’s fine. Have diversity so that you make better projects, yes.
But if the goal is diversity of viewpoints, well — here we come back to the 1 LGBTQ+ problem. Because while it is absolutely true that no marginalized group is a monolith (to say that “women” are some discrete and unified category, is… I mean, lol), the LGBTQ+ group in particular is… really not a monolith. It’s not so much a unified cause as it is a bucket someone threw all the freaks into, you know? To be lesbian is not to be gay and while bisexuals have some overlap with the two we also have our own shit to say nothing of the fact that trans people are oppressed on an entirely different axis, I mean unless you consider all queerness to be a manifestation of gender fluidity, which people in other cultures and eras would certainly argue, and anyway it’s just — I mean that’s not even factoring in things like race and class and religion and all the other complexities that affect one’s relationship to being LGBTQ+ in the first place.
And to me, as a bisexual, this all matters in part because this 1 LGBTQ+ framing goes far beyond The Wall Street Journal or Silicon Valley Bank board, it’s kind of… it’s kind of how so many of us talk about queerness and queer representation. I am more actively advocating for bisexual representation these days, for the importance of having a bi voice, or really several bi voices (because “bi” as a group is of course its own umbrella category that is even more complicated than lesbian or gay, which are complicated enough on their own), for the recognition that lesbians and gays are not necessarily equipped to advocate for bisexual issues, that they inherently cannot have a bisexual viewpoint. You can’t just pluck a queer at random and expect them to be able to speak On Behalf Of All Queers™️, and you can’t leave bisexuals out of the room and expect bisexuals to be properly advocated for.
But anyway. I do think it would be cool to see more bisexual genderfluid trans people who identify with both the lesbian and gay communities in positions of power. They, out of all of us, seem the most qualified to provide broad and cohesive representation.