Pride Month reminder: LGBTQ+ employees aren’t the same

LGBTQ+ employees – A workplace encounter—where a coworker assumed the narrator would share her interests as a gay man—shows how “well-meaning” stereotypes can still flatten people at work. Data on LGBTQ workplace discrimination and being less out, paired with expert perspectives

When Maggie walked by the narrator’s desk every morning, it started as small talk—gossip, dating stories, show recommendations. It was only when she learned the narrator was gay, about six months into working together, that her curiosity turned into certainty.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were gay!” Maggie exclaimed. then talked about how much she loved drag shows. shopping. and watching Bravo with “her gays.” She demanded to know the narrator’s favorite Real Housewives franchise and seemed genuinely surprised there wasn’t one. Where their earlier collaborations had been productive. the daily detours became harder to tolerate: Maggie began stopping by more often. pushing stories and recommendations from “her gay friends. ” assuming the narrator wanted the same things.

The narrator tried to explain politely that while plenty of gay men love drag and Bravo. those weren’t interests that mattered to him. The point wasn’t that Maggie intended harm. After all. the narrator says the office had even joked about Maggie—Slack messages from an office-mate urging. “Quick Pat. Maggie’s coming up. get on your mesh tank top. stat!”—but the assumptions still landed like a kind of erasure.

It’s not a Pride Month detail people always want to hear. Pride is often framed as visibility. But the narrator’s experience. backed by broader workplace data. fits a more uncomfortable reality: discrimination and stereotyping at work don’t always come from textbook cruelty. Sometimes they come from colleagues who mean well—and from the human impulse to treat shared identity as shared experience.

A study from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. published in 2024. found that nearly half of LGBTQ+ employees have experienced discrimination. harassment. or stereotyping at work. It also found that nearly half aren’t out to supervisors at work. and that this percentage has increased in the past year.

Other evidence points to worsening conditions. More data from the Human Rights Campaign suggests that trend may be intensifying: 47% of LGBTQ+ respondents report they are less out in at least one area of their lives than they were the year before.

The narrator is careful about the personal boundary here. He is not describing Maggie as harassing or discriminating against him. “Stereotype. absolutely. ” he writes—“but there wasn’t malice.” Still. the situation illustrates something that gets lost when the conversation narrows to “LGBTQ workplace experience” as a single bucket.

In the United States, roughly 31 million adults identify as something other than straight, including more than 5 million gay Americans. The narrator points out that his own identity sits in a specific generational moment. and that another person’s experience can diverge sharply—even if the label looks similar on paper. At a later job. he worked closely with another gay colleague. but the colleague’s experience as a Gen Z gay man—and his relationship to sexuality and the world—was different from the narrator’s millennial one.

That generational difference matters, the narrator adds: when he was his colleague’s age, “gay” was still a widely accepted pejorative, while today nearly a quarter of adults under 30 identify as something other than straight.

Sociologist Dr. Travis Speice. who studies sexuality and gender. frames the mechanism behind the stereotype: “Our brains are wired to take shortcuts. or what sociologists call schemas. These are mental frameworks that help us process and recall complex information more efficiently. The problem is that when we apply those shortcuts to entire groups of people, we stop seeing individuals. We flatten them into caricatures.”.

That flattening doesn’t just happen to people who aren’t paying attention. It can show up in how people speak about groups, how content creators structure messages online, and how organizations try to be inclusive.

Licensed marriage and family therapist Chris Tompkins puts it in direct terms. “Shared identity doesn’t mean shared experience. A cisgender lesbian and a transgender woman might have little in common beyond being members of the LGBTQ+ community. Treating them as interchangeable. even with good intentions. sends a subtle message that they’re seen as a group rather than as individuals.”.

Tompkins’ article, How Stereotypes Inform the Way Gay Men See Themselves, references Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie’s The Danger of a Single Story TED Talk, which examines what happens when one narrative gets treated as the whole truth.

Speice adds a further twist: “The idea of a singular ‘LGBTQ+ community’ isn’t necessarily rooted in shared culture; it’s rooted in shared oppression. The LGBTQ+ rights movement was born in resistance to that kind of oppression.”

The narrator says he noticed a similar flattening in digital spaces, including LGBTQ+ content creators. He describes what he sees when scrolling the internet: videos explaining “why gay men do X. ” “things all lesbians understand. ” or “why LGBTQ+ people are leaving Pride.” Algorithms reward certainty and broad claims. the narrator argues—“Some gay men” doesn’t perform like “gay men are. ” and audiences hungry for simple explanations end up consuming narrow stories as if they’re universal.

It’s not just creators, either. The narrator says organizations can fall into the same pattern when they decide they’ve learned enough about a group to recognize it—then end up erasing the individuality inside it. “People become categories, which become assumptions,” Tompkins told him.

Even experts agree the instinct is deeply human. Tompkins points to how people sort: “We’re wired to look for patterns and to sort people into categories with labels. because organizing the world is easier and more regulating than holding its complexity.” Adichie’s TED Talk delivers the warning in a line the narrator quotes: “The single story creates stereotypes. and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue. but they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”.

Single stories don’t have to be entirely false to do damage. The narrator notes that plenty of gay men do love Housewives and drag. The harm starts when a group becomes a type and individuals become easier to dismiss. False narratives spread faster once people are reduced to digestible soundbites.

History. he writes. is full of examples where a few actions or beliefs are applied to entire populations—especially in LGBTQ+ contexts—fueling discrimination and hate. Those stereotypes include claims that gay men are promiscuous (and therefore disease-spreading). that transgender people are dangerous. or that “we’re all trying to groom your kids.”.

The narrator’s key point is that the stakes don’t always look the same on the surface. A colleague assuming every gay man wants to give her dating advice might feel small compared with a politician weaponizing a stereotype. But the instinct is the same: reducing people to a story that fits in one sentence.

That’s where the personal becomes policy. Dr. Stefanie K. Johnson. a professor of Organizational Leadership at the University of Colorado. Boulder. says research suggests inclusion requires both belonging and uniqueness: “Belonging means feeling accepted and valued by the group. Uniqueness means feeling that your distinct perspectives, experiences, and contributions are recognized.”.

Johnson adds a blunt consequence for workplaces that only deliver one side of the promise: “When someone experiences belonging without uniqueness. they may feel welcomed. but also stereotyped. They become ‘the gay employee’—rather than a talented engineer, manager, teacher, or colleague, who also happens to be gay.”.

The narrator recognizes himself in that description because of how Maggie’s assumptions rewired his identity at work. The issue, he says, wasn’t that her stereotypes were wholly wrong—it was that they weren’t his. They turned him from “her coworker Pat” into “her gay coworker Pat.” And in an office. he writes. that shift changes how people see you. Once you’re treated as a category first and a colleague second, assumptions don’t just sit there—they multiply.

Johnson offers a workplace remedy that sounds simple. but it demands real effort: “The most inclusive environments allow people to bring important aspects of their identity to work without being defined by any single one. Instead of assuming what matters to someone because of their background. ask open-ended questions. listen. and pay attention to the interests. strengths. goals. and experiences they choose to share.”.

She also says inclusive leaders recognize both parts of the equation: “The most inclusive leaders recognize that identity matters and that individuality matters. They create environments where people can be proud of who they are without feeling boxed in by it.”

Pride Month, the narrator concludes, deserves its place as a celebration of LGBTQ+ visibility. But visibility only goes so far when the people being seen are reduced to a single story. The goal isn’t to treat LGBTQ+ employees the same. It’s to recognize, in the everyday moments—at desks, in meetings, in casual conversations—that they’re not.

Pride Month LGBTQ+ workplace stereotyping inclusion discrimination Human Rights Campaign Williams Institute UCLA School of Law visibility individuality