17 November 2016, 6 pm
It is the launch of "IP Out". This is the support group for LGBTQAXYZ+ people in the IP professions. The LGBT bit stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. The other letters are there to confuse people. And this works very well, because even the LGBT folk don’t really know what the other letters mean any more, other than that if you have more letters, you are bound to get more people coming to your parties. There are certainly plenty at this party. There is also Prosecco and some dainty nibbly bits. And there are neon lights too. Wait, no, that’s Mr Smyth’s waistcoat. Darn! Resplendent in magentas and fuchsias and various rich shades of purple, with similarly vibrant matching accessories such as pocket handkerchiefs, lapel pins and even socks, Mr Smyth has quite clearly won the sartorial challenge hands down. Even in my rainbow-coloured frock with its Concealed Waistline, even when I don my pink feather boa half-way through my introductory speech, Mr Smyth’s waistcoat still manages to upstage me. As I say to the audience, that’s gays for you. I could not have said this in a room full of straight people. But the LGBTQAXYZ+ people laugh merrily. They have had plenty of Prosecco. IP Out stages a panel discussion about how “out” you can be in the workplace. Clearly the answer depends on your workplace. If there is an oak-panelled library in your workplace, and the senior partner arrives in a bowler hat and pin-stripes, takes a three-hour lunch at his club and returns, reeking of port and cigars, to ask his secretary to sit on his knee for a while, it is probably not wise to be “out”. But in most places, it is OK. Apparently it is not even illegal to be gay these days. Which makes it less exciting, but is clearly desirable if you’ve chosen to work in the law. Today’s homosexuals are pretty normal people. Our panellists all look normal too. You would never guess they were actually weird and unnatural deviants bent on polluting our children’s minds and undermining the noble institution of marriage. Not that the noble institution of marriage needs external forces to undermine it, being perfectly capable of undermining itself and in any case built on a dubious bedrock of possession and subjugation and therefore in many ways analogous to slavery. But I digress. The pretty normal panellists tell us their experiences about being “out” in the workplace, and we all agree that if a colleague or a client has a problem with you being “out” then they are not worthy of the time of day anyway, although you must be careful if they are the one signing off your Christmas bonus. We agree that it is better, in fact, to be as openly “out” as possible, so that no one needs to pussyfoot around pretending they don’t know, or pretending that you don’t know that they know, or indeed genuinely not knowing and then making some dreadful alcohol-fuelled faux pas. I would venture to suggest, however, that being as openly “out” as possible does not necessarily require you to wear a neon-pink waistcoat with matching socks wherever you go. This is more an expression of Mr Smyth’s personality than of his sexuality. Another expression of Mr Smyth’s personality is that he is handing out rainbow unicorn LGBTQAXYZ+ bath ducks. If you cannot picture a duck with a unicorn’s horn and a rainbow-coloured mane, you are just not trying hard enough. Or you have not had sufficient Prosecco.
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