568136

research-article2015
WES0010.1177/0950017014568136Work, employment and societyEinarsdóttir et al.

Article: Identity work and identity at work

Work, employment and society

Fitting the bill? (Dis)embodied

2016, Vol. 30(3) 489­–505
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0950017014568136
in the workplace wes.sagepub.com

Anna Einarsdóttir
University of Hull, UK; University of York, UK

Helge Hoel
University of Manchester, UK

Duncan Lewis
University of Plymouth, UK

Abstract
The disclosure of lesbian, gay or bisexual identity is generally presented as a conscious act of leaving
heterosexuality. Such interpretation fails to take into account the dynamic processes involved
in constructing non-heterosexual identities and to what degree such identities are embodied
or disembodied. Supported by interview data among lesbian and gay employees in six British
workplaces, this article explores how non-heterosexual identities become known in organizational
settings by arguing that lesbians and gay men continue to collide with social expectations and
stereotypical ideas of how sexual identities should be ‘worn’ and performed. These expectations
and ideas both shape colleagues’ assumptions about their non-heterosexual identities and can
expose lesbians and gay men to negative behaviour at work in highly gendered ways.

Keywords
bullying, disclosure, disembodiment, embodiment, LGB identities, negative behaviour,
stereotyping

Introduction
Scholarly contributions on the work experiences of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB)
employees focus on two key areas. Firstly, on identity management and disclosure of

Corresponding author:
Anna Einarsdóttir, York Management School, University of York, Freboys Lane, Heslington, York
YO10 5GD, UK.
Email: anna.einarsdottir@york.ac.uk

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490 Work, employment and society 30(3)

sexuality (Browning and Brewis, 2009; Button, 2004; Clair et al., 2005; Colgan et al.,
2008; Croteau et al., 2008; Driscoll et al., 1996; King et al., 2008; Losert, 2008; Ragins,
2004; Rumens and Broomfield, 2012) and secondly, on the effects of disclosure, both in
relation to personal health (Croteau, 1996; MRes, 2008; Rumens, 2008a; Ward and
Winstanley, 2006) and exposure to bullying, discrimination or harassment (Colgan et al.,
2009; Ragins and Cornwell, 2001). As far as disclosure is concerned, most scholars have
abandoned the idea that this can be done as a singular event, instead viewing it as a reit-
erative process (Lidderdale et al., 2007). Nevertheless, a deep-seated assumption about
visibility and personal agency still lingers, with lesbian and gay identities typically pre-
sented as ‘invisible’/hidden (Clair et al., 2005; Ragins, 2004; Rumens and Broomfield,
2012; Shallenberger, 1994), which means revelation or concealment at will. Holding the
power to ‘tell’ implies that colleagues play a passive role in the disclosure process.
Against a backdrop of disclosure literature this article proposes that the ‘coming out’
(or disclosure) process cannot be reduced to ‘telling’ and ‘being told’. Thus, it questions
the degree of agency awarded to those who disclose and how planned and calculated the
disclosure process may be. Existing literature, it is argued, fails to account sufficiently
for the dynamic process between the discloser and the person disclosed and to fully
acknowledge that people often draw their own conclusions about sexuality indepen-
dently of disclosure (i.e. Button, 2004; Clair et al., 2005; Croteau et al., 2008; Ragins,
2004). It also fails to acknowledge organizational demands which shape working bodies
in (hetero)sexualized ways (Adkins, 2000; Adkins and Merchant, 1996; Riach and
Wilson, 2014; Witz et al., 2003; Wolkowitz, 2006). To develop the theme of agency and
structure, this article draws upon data from a large-scale study on the experiences of
lesbian, gay and bisexual employees regarding bullying, discrimination and harassment
at work in Britain. The article explains how lesbian and gay identities become known in
organizational contexts. Rather than using disclosure as a pretext, the article aims to
illustrate the dynamic processes at play when non-heterosexual identities are recognized
at work and explores how lesbians and gay men are punished in different ways for (dis)
embodying the lesbian or gay body.
The structure of the article commences with a brief review of appropriate literatures
on disclosure and the theme of embodiment, moving on to explain the study and its ana-
lytical framework. The article then illustrates the complex pathways by which non-het-
erosexual identities are brought to light in organizational settings through interaction or
by matching bodies to identities. Following this, the discussion centres on how (dis)
embodiment of lesbians and gay men shapes exposure to negative behaviour in different
ways, before some final conclusions are drawn.

Disclosure and the ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ body

Griffin (1992) and Woods (1993) laid the foundations for studying identity management
within organizational settings. They demonstrated how hostile the work environment can
be to non-heterosexual employees and described how people deal with this by making
conscious efforts to conceal or reveal their sexual identities. Key to these types of argu-
ment was the understanding that identity management cannot be reduced to being ‘clos-
eted’ (not open about sexuality) or ‘out’ (open about sexuality), but rather, the degree of

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Einarsdóttir et al. 491

openness could best be represented on a continuum from not open at all, to fully open.
Guided by this principle, most scholars now accept that coming out is an on-going pro-
cess whereby changes in personal or professional environment require decisions in this
respect (Bowring and Brewis, 2009; Croteau et al., 2008; Losert, 2008; Shallenberger,
1994; Ward and Winstanley, 2006). The personal choice of strategy, however, involves a
cost/benefit analysis of coming out (Clair et al., 2005), broadly considering two factors:
the relationship with co-workers (Button, 2004; Griffith and Hebl, 2002) and how sup-
portive the organizational environment may be (Chrobot-Mason et al., 2001; Colgan et
al., 2008; Ragins, 2004; Ragins and Cornwell, 2001). Decision choices about disclosure
will also be affected by the degree of personal confidence (Chrobot-Mason et al., 2001;
Wright, 2008) and salience or centrality of sexual identity (Clair et al., 2005), finding the
right time for disclosure (Chrobot-Mason et al., 2001; Colgan et al., 2008; Croteau,
1996; King et al., 2008) as well as taking previous disclosure experiences into account
(Clair et al., 2005). While the discloser may use one or more strategies (i.e. passing as
heterosexual through to being explicitly out as LGB) depending on the person or the
environment, none of them are presumed to be mutually exclusive (Button, 2004) or
irreversible (Colgan et al., 2008).
Behind theories and models of this kind lies the assumption that non-heterosexual
identities are either hidden or invisible (Clair et al., 2005; Ragins, 2004; Rumens and
Broomfield, 2012; Shallenberger, 1994) and can be revealed at will. This is evident in
how the coming out process is frequently framed as a deliberate, but not necessarily
planned act (Colgan et al., 2008). Hence disclosure can be both direct and indirect (Clair
et al., 2005; Croteau, 1996), but it can also be more reactive, for example in response to
questions about family or partners (Bowring and Brewis, 2009). On the whole, the litera-
ture suggests that colleagues are assigned a passive role in the coming out process, but
there is some evidence to suggest that this role may be downplayed. For instance, Colgan
et al. (2008) argue that lesbians, gay men and bisexuals may have limited control over
what information is passed around once they have disclosed their sexuality. Moreover, in
some cases, disclosure seems beyond their control as they are ‘outed’ by having their
sexuality revealed by their colleagues (Ragins, 2004, 2008), whether directly or indi-
rectly, by implication. There are also signs that colleagues may arrive at their own inter-
pretations (Clair et al., 2005; Froyum, 2007; Rumens and Broomfield, 2012; Shallenberger,
1994), rightly or wrongly, following tips about non-heterosexuality (Shallenberger,
1994), gender non-conformativity (Froyum, 2007; Scharff, 2010), or because non-heter-
osexual identity is ‘visible’ (Rumens and Broomfield, 2012). What makes identities ‘vis-
ible’ and to whom is largely left unexplained. The strongest clues here seem to come
from LGBs who claim that their sexuality can be ‘obvious’ (Colgan et al., 2008; Losert,
2008), by virtue of their profession (e.g. lesbian prison officer) or being ‘butch’ (Colgan
et al., 2008), utilizing LGB symbols e.g. the rainbow flag, having conversations about
particular books or music (Clair et al., 2005), or by holding hands with someone of the
same sex (Losert, 2008). In spite of such ‘obvious’ cues, heterosexuals often fail to read
these correctly (Colgan et al., 2008; Losert, 2008), which raises questions about how
much interpretation takes place in work and on what grounds it is based.
Following the above leads and to engage with questions about the level of agency
LGBs have in disclosure and how (in)visible such identities may be, a different body of

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492 Work, employment and society 30(3)

literature is put forward, opening doors to explore how much of disclosure happens in
interaction – when bodies meet. As an academic field, sociology of the body developed
in response to social constructionists and their emphasis on discourse. Scholars such as
Turner (1997, 2008), Shilling (2003, 2008) and Crossley (2006) have argued the need for
bringing the body back into sociological conversation, instead of focusing exclusively on
the mind. While their work has been instrumental in theorizing the role of ‘body work’
(how we work on our bodies) in creating and maintaining identities, it has little to say
about paid employment (with the exception of a chapter in Shilling, 2005) and what part
organizational environment may play in generating and/or mitigating workers’ identities
(Wolkowitz, 2006). The theme of embodiment, however, has been picked up by scholars
who focus on the service industry. Of particular relevance to this study is how hetero-
sexuality is demanded of workers either to form a part of the service delivery (Adkins
and Merchant, 1996; Riach and Wilson, 2014; Witz et al., 2003) or to fit the corporate
image (Tebaldi and Elmslie, 2006). Such demands not only limit possibilities for non-
heterosexual bodies at work, but reduce the scope for non-heterosexual embodiment,
even fixing it to ‘performance of particular aesthetic styles’ (Adkins, 2000: 214) or
organizational roles (Witz et al., 2003). Taylor and Tyler’s (2000) study among flight
attendants supports this point, illustrating how gay male flight attendants were reduced
to the stereotype of ‘cabin crew queer’ whereas lesbian workers were constrained to a
heterosexualized organizational role. Together these studies signal the weight of organi-
zational power in creating and maintaining sexual bodies and identities. Even attempts to
create ‘alternative’ organizational cultures by encouraging people to ‘be yourself’ at
work have failed, leaving some workers with ‘feelings of being fake, lacking individual-
ity and a cynical division between “who they really are” and prescribed corporate self’
(Fleming and Sturdy, 2011: 193).
While the importance of identity management and disclosure in claiming lesbian, gay
or bisexual identities at work cannot be denied, assumptions will be made about the bod-
ies people are believed to embody and organizations continue to command (hetero)sexu-
alized workforce or service delivery. This, in turn, may have serious consequences for
lesbians and gay men and expose them to negative behaviour in highly gendered ways,
because they fail to deliver heterosexuality and/or demonstrate ‘authentic’ non-hetero-
sexual identities at work.

Methodology
In response to the above, 50 LGBs1 were interviewed in six public, private and third sec-
tor organizations, comprising the Royal Navy, a high security prison, a large NHS trust,
an international retailer, a national charity and an established financial services organiza-
tion. The rationale for involving six organizations was based on substantive and practical
considerations. First, this research design had the potential to offer a more nuanced pic-
ture of LGB experiences in different work environments. Second, recruiting large num-
bers of LGB employees from a single organization is almost impossible (this point will
be further discussed later), further placing individual and organizational anonymity at
risk. In addition, the study included a nationally representative survey which will not be
reported here (Hoel et al., 2014).

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Einarsdóttir et al. 493

The six organizations were based in England, Scotland and Wales and each employed
at least 1000 members of staff. Apart from the NHS trust and the prison, all the organiza-
tions had different bases across the UK. For all organizations, an attempt was made to
limit the study to one operational area, but this proved unworkable. Despite organiza-
tional support, it was a struggle to recruit sufficient numbers of LGB interviewees. Such
difficulties are commonly reported in research among sexual minorities and are often
resolved by relying on snowballing or LGBT networks for participants (Atkinson and
Flint, 2001; Browne, 2005; Heaphy et al., 1998; Rumens and Broomfield, 2012; Yip,
2008). To counterbalance this and to create a more inclusive recruitment strategy, efforts
were made to reach the entire staff population in all six organizations. A general call for
interviewees was made through HR services using internal communication media (web
posting, email circulations and printed posters) under the title: ‘The ups and downs of
being lesbian, gay or bisexual at work’, followed by calls via LGBT networks when the
first preferred approach was exhausted and by further calls for women or men only to
ensure a balanced representation. As a last resource, snowballing techniques were applied
(Patton, 1990) through people who had already been interviewed.
In total, 25 women and 25 men between the ages of 22 and 56 were interviewed. Their
job position varied from shop assistant (retailer), prison officer (prison), administrative
officer (NHS), leading hand (Royal Navy), project officer (charity) and client relation
manager (financial services organization) to executive resourcing manager (retailer),
health provision coordinator (prison), clinics manager (NHS), signal engineer (Royal
Navy), information resources manager (charity) and communication partner (financial
services organization). Overall, men were more likely to hold managerial responsibilities
(15 men, 10 women), whereas women were more likely to supervise (six women, two
men) or hold no accountability for other members of staff (nine women, eight men). The
majority (44) were open about their sexuality at work, but two individuals had never
disclosed their sexuality at their current workplace and a further four individuals had
been forced to hide their sexual identity because of negative experiences at work.
The interviews were semi-structured, focusing on interviewees’ experiences at work.
A particular interest was placed on exploring how their sexuality became known to their
colleagues (if at all) and what their experience had been like at work. To support the
interview process an interview guide was developed, consisting of a framework of top-
ics, which gave considerable room for the interviewer to shape the interview by follow-
ing up leads and ideas as they were revealed. From the outset, the research team was
explicit about the sexual identities of its members (stated in the information flyer). This
approach was both informed by existing research experience within the team of estab-
lishing ‘common grounds’ with the interviewees (Einarsdóttir, 2012, 2013; Heaphy and
Einarsdóttir, 2013; Heaphy et al., 2013) and other studies, which have signalled the
rewards of claiming insider status both in terms of the level of sharing and trust building
(Kombo, 2009; Sanders, 2006; Thapar-Björkert and Henry, 2004). On average the inter-
views lasted 75 minutes (ranging from 60 to 110 minutes). They were all audio-recorded
and transcribed verbatim.
Thematic analysis was applied (Boyatzis, 1998; Grbich, 2007), assisted by NVivo
software. By adopting an inductive cross-sectional approach (Mason, 2002) it was pos-
sible to explore and compare themes between the organizations. An open coding strategy

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494 Work, employment and society 30(3)

was used at first (Bogdan and Biklen, 1992; Lofland and Lofland, 1995) by creating a
number of tree nodes (broad themes) and writing memos with general comment relating
to every transcript. The next step involved a more focused examination of these nodes in
search of patterns (themes). The search for such patterns across interviews was driven by
analytical questions, connected to the research aims (Braun and Clarke, 2006).
From this point forward, the data take centre stage. They engage with the themes of
disclosure, agency and embodiment which all form important components of the disclo-
sure puzzle, but stretch the thinking beyond a model that assumes that logic of disclosure
equals visibility. By engaging with less explored territories of embodiment, independent
of disclosure, attention is drawn to visibility and personal agency and how these interact
to create the lesbian and gay body in the shadows of prevailing stereotypes whereby
people are either rewarded or punished for ‘fitting the bill’ or not.

Coming out (of heterosexuality)

In contrast to the existing literature on disclosure, the coming out process at work seemed
less planned and often beyond individual control and revealed that colleagues played a
significant part in the coming out process, primarily by initiating it, but also by reaching
their own conclusions about sexual identities. This suggests that LGB identities are not
processed in isolation, but constructed in interaction between LGB members of staff and
their colleagues and among colleagues alone.
Some coming out experiences mirrored classic disclosure models. The risk of coming
out was assessed before disclosure (Clair et al., 2005) and identities were managed
according to how safe it felt to be open about non-heterosexuality (Griffin, 1992; Woods,
1993). Yet, finding the right time or a ‘reason’ to come out at work could be a challenge.
Frequently such occasions involved casual conversations with colleagues about partners,
‘last weekend’ or holiday plans, but only when a comfortable rapport had been estab-
lished and LGBs were ready to disclose. While occasions like these could be engineered
by LGBs, non-heterosexual identities were largely constructed in interaction with col-
leagues. Such interactions, however, were regularly beyond LGBs’ control and involved
the ‘standard’ or ‘classic’ question about partners who were assumed to be of the oppo-
site sex, which could provoke disclosure. Similarly, disclosure could also be triggered by
unwanted sexual attention, homophobic remarks or a personal crisis interfering with
work performances. The following three examples illustrate this.

One of the female staff sort of was [coming on to me] – don’t ask me why, they fancied me
[laughs] and I thought, ‘Oh, this is getting out of hand now’. So we were all in the staff room
one day and I said, ‘Oh, I don’t take this [across to] my partner today’, and they sort of looked
at me [and] said, ‘Oh, what does she do?’ I said, ‘Not she, you know, it’s Damien’. (Ralph,2
NHS)

He [a colleague] basically declared that Angela [another colleague] was gay. I knew that she
was gay, but he shared that information with everyone, a little bit like gossip … I was thinking,
‘This is not going in the right direction and he’s going to make himself a fool if he continues
with this conversation’. So … before he was about to say something, possibly not quite nice

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Einarsdóttir et al. 495

about Angela being gay and blah, blah … I just interrupted and I said, ‘Well, by the way, I’m
gay as well’. (Careen, Financial Services Organization)

I split up from a 10-year relationship in September … since that I suppose everybody’s known
coz they’re aware that I’ve not been coping with it. (Zoe, Financial Services Organization)

While these accounts testify to the importance of the relationship between LGBs and
their colleagues (Button, 2004; Griffith and Hebl, 2002) and the role of partners
(Bowring and Brewis, 2009) in the coming out process, they also demonstrate that col-
leagues could both aid or indeed inflict exposure by making homophobic remarks or
wrongly assuming LGBs’ sexuality. The common thread here is assumed heterosexual-
ity by colleagues and the belief that non-heterosexuality is undetectable by others, pro-
posing that some LGBs need to disclose their sexuality to break away from
heterosexuality. Other LGBs had a different story to tell, signalling that their sexuality
was not necessarily invisible to others.
Suspicions about non-heterosexuality could rise because of age and civil status, par-
ticularly if the person in question had reached his or her forties and remained unmarried
(Rumens, 2008b). Clues could also be offered by what LGBs ‘failed’ to talk about: other
men or women, boyfriends or girlfriends and generally for being ‘private’ at work.
Although Ragins (2004, 2008) tends not to deal with this directly, she accepts that dis-
closure may not always be a choice by underlining the possibility of being ‘outed’ by
heterosexual colleagues. However, she overlooks the critical point that outing is often a
form of guessing and involves assumptions about sexual identities. Several of the inter-
viewees experienced such initial exposure. They had been seen with someone of the
same sex, either on a social network such as Facebook or spotted when out dining. This
was seemingly enough to raise suspicions about their sexuality despite the absence of
any real ‘proof’. In some cases being associated with other LGBs was enough to trigger
suspicion. One employee got an unexpected present from Secret Santa at work (Secret
Santa is a process of anonymized colleague gift-giving at Christmas). She explained:

It was a box of chocolates all in the shape of women’s breasts with nipples on. And I was like,
‘No, I’m not impressed by that’. Someone might have found that funny, but that isn’t funny.
Because what you’ve effectively done there, to me, is (a) a bit derogatory, (b) you’re taking the
mick, potentially in a nice way, on something that I haven’t disclosed to any of you and now
you’ve just outed me to everybody. (Iris, Royal Navy)

Contrasting previous research (Colgan et al., 2009; Ragins, 2004, 2008), the risk of
being outed was not limited to heterosexual colleagues. One employee stated that she
had ‘overstepped a boundary’. Her closest colleague (a gay man) accused her of outing
him during a training event. Penny explained:

There was this one woman [a trainee] who was really getting at us. She was calling us ‘an old
married [couple]’ … but it wasn’t just one comment; it was constant … It just rolled off my
tongue really: I just said, ‘We’re not each other’s type’ … and he [her colleague] pulled me up
for that later on. He said, ‘You just outed me in front of them’. (Penny, National Charity)

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496 Work, employment and society 30(3)

Despite its ambiguity, the comment ‘We’re not each other’s type’ was considered a
strong clue of non-heterosexuality. This suggests that assumptions can work two ways:
colleagues assuming non-heterosexuality (as seen with the Secret Santa present or by
association with other LGBs), or as in the case above, LGBs expecting colleagues to
make similar connections. Some lesbians and gay men, for instance, assumed that their
colleagues knew about their sexuality because of their employment history with LGBT
organizations or their work for LGBT causes. The data have also demonstrated how
some LGBs were wrongly assumed heterosexual, which suggests that some heterosexuals
may also be wrongly assumed non-heterosexual. It was in these cases alone that people
disclosed by telling. Yet when LGBs claimed that their non-heterosexuality was unmis-
takable because they were ‘obviously gay’ or looked like a ‘typical lesbian’, as some
interviewees stated, there was something else at play. It is to such accounts and their
implications that the article now turns.

Non-heterosexual bodies
Many of the interviewees had very clear ideas about what it meant to be lesbian or gay
and, indeed, how lesbians and gay men might look. Interestingly, many lesbians and
gay men described each other in remarkably similar ways. While both men and
women accepted that these ideas were based on stereotypes of lesbians and gay men,
they were not only used as a benchmark identity among the interviewees, but also
used as a fall-back position to identify other lesbians and gay men at work. Lesbians
were typically described as ‘not feminine’, ‘quite plain’ and ‘not beautiful’ by the
interviewees. They also ‘don’t really use makeup’ and their ‘bad’ dress sense seems
to be limited to ‘check shirts’ and ‘comfortable shoes’. The following description of
lesbians was typical:

They’re quite big … short haircut, just butch in their body language really, do you know what
I mean? I’d say I’m like feminine but then I’m not as well, do you know what I mean, that’s it
really. You can just tell can’t you, it’s obviously like, like you get the ‘gaydar’ don’t you, do you
know what I mean?

You just tell, just the way the person is can’t you and – just how they act. Yeah, just like the way
they’re sat, the way they speak about things.

The interviewer was also assumed to be equipped with the infamous ‘gaydar’, the
ability to recognize other LGBs, as the repeated affirmations ‘you can just tell can’t you’
signalled. Assigning a different body to lesbians than the so-called ‘normal’ woman has
been well documented (see for instance Creed, 2005; Gordon, 2006; Scharff, 2010),
making the lesbian body instantly recognizable as ‘butch’ (Creed, 2005) or ‘abject fig-
ure’ which is typically associated with feminism and un-femininity in public discourse
(Scharff, 2010).
By contrast, gay men were described in much more aesthetically pleasing ways, but
at the same time described as ‘loud’. Allegedly they are ‘up to date with fashion’, ‘well
turned out’, ‘fit’ and inclined to wear ‘cling tight T-shirts’. At the same time they were

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Einarsdóttir et al. 497

often portrayed as ‘effeminate’, ‘flamboyant’ or ‘camp as knickers’. Moreover, there is

something about the ‘way they walk’ and they tend to ‘slack everything’. These descrip-
tions echo what Fleming (2007) together with Froyum (2007) and Gross (2001) have all
reported on stereotyping of gay men, highlighting effeminate traits (Guasch, 2011;
Rofes, 2000; Rumens and Broomfield, 2012) and attention to body language or tone of
voice (Froyum, 2007). As a whole, these excerpts illustrate that lesbians and gay men
derive discriminatory views of themselves and others rooted in public discourse of non-
heterosexual identities.
According to many of the interviewees, their colleagues were equally attuned to these
ideas. Like lesbians and gay men, they assigned the ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ body to their LGB
colleagues and made their own assumptions about who was lesbian and who was gay. Yet
many lesbians and gay men had hoped that wearing a uniform at work would mask any
differences.

I think the uniform makes us all the same. And I think it’s that feeling of similarity, that feeling
of togetherness that matters. You are not judged for your sexuality, you’re not judged for being
short or fat or female. We’re all wearing the same uniform so that esprit de corps binds you
together. (Tracey, Prison)

The above account promised a culture of indifference to physical appearance, gender

and sexuality, but in most cases it failed to deliver precisely that, within this organization.
Apparently Tracey ‘looks gay’. While ‘looking gay’ was not a problem per se for her, it
could be a problem for some, particularly men within the prison. In the following section
these gendered differences are considered by examining non-heterosexual agency against
organizational structure, showing how men and women were punished in different ways
for embodying or disembodying the gay or lesbian body.

Gendered adversity of (dis)embodiment

The stereotypes discussed earlier could cause problems at work, largely because people
were measured against them, with some gay men being punished for being ‘too gay’ and
some lesbians for failing to be ‘real’ lesbians. While men who matched the gay stereo-
type seemed to provoke masculinity, women who challenged the lesbian stereotype
evoked it. How this transpired is now explored, revealing why stereotypes can be so
damaging. For clarity, men and women are discussed separately to identify problem
areas and why embodiment (for men) and disembodiment (for women) seems to cause
offence.
Some gay men seemed to wear their sexuality on their sleeves, having a ‘big neon
sign’ on their forehead. This could turn against them in the context of work. Embodying
the gay body, fully or partly, carries expectations about looks, interests and skill sets,
which could limit choices at work and shape interaction with colleagues. One retail
employee was accused of being ‘too gay for the store’ and colleagues made several com-
plaints against him. Yet this was only revealed to him when he was called to his manag-
er’s office to discuss a counter grievance from a colleague who continued to give him
‘filthy looks’. According to the employee in question, his manager stated:

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498 Work, employment and society 30(3)

‘We’ve never had problems like this with anybody else. You’re a drama queen and an attention
seeker. You’re too loud and you’re too gay for this store’. (Terry, Retail)

Apparently it was his ‘mannerisms’, the way he talked to colleagues and customers
and the fact that he kept ‘rushing around like a whirling dervish’ that was the problem.
His ‘attitude’ was also an issue. Consider this:

They said that I was rude, even though I was being professional. Literally the management
there pampered them [colleagues]. So they felt as though they could get away with anything.
And all the other gay members of staff had just conformed, you know, just for an easy life
really. (Terry, Retail)

He was asked to ‘watch’ his behaviour and ‘stop being so gay’, ‘flamboyant’, ‘extro-
vert’ and ‘verbose’. Since then, Terry has transferred to another store, but believes he has
a permanent ‘black mark’ on his personnel file. The key to this story is how ‘irritating’
behaviour was framed as a fundamental part of being gay, which is not only problematic
but also potentially damaging for gay men. Furthermore, the comment about ‘conform-
ing’ gay members of staff is interesting as Terry positions himself against them. He also
places gay members of staff in opposition to other colleagues, suggesting that non-hetero-
sexual agency is compromised by management who ‘pamper’ and possibly demand
heterosexuality, as Adkins and Merchant (1996), Riach and Wilson (2014) and Witz et al.
(2003) have pointed out.
In other cases, the consequences of embodying the gay body were less extreme, but
could limit the tasks or roles being allocated to those which were considered appropriate
for gay men. These men were not necessarily up against organizational insistence on het-
erosexuality, but demands were still made upon their non-heterosexual identity. One
Royal Navy interviewee explained that he was not the ‘obvious choice’ to ‘keep an eye
out for those lads’ on the mess, questioning his (own) manhood, as Kimmel (2001)
suggests, on the basis of not being an ‘alpha male, rugby playing, Nuts [lads’ magazine]
reading kind of lad’. Instead he was asked to ‘look after the girls’ mess’. The same officer
also appeared to be a good shoulder to cry on. In explaining why, some competing ideas
about what he expected of himself and what others may have expected of him were exposed.

Maybe that’s my own stereotypes coming into play that I – that may be inappropriate … I had
people from that mess, straight lads who would come and cry in my cabin and then go again,
because they could come to me, offload, and it was almost like, ‘but he’s gay so it’s fine to
offload in front of a gay guy’ and I saw that a lot and that kind of openness [I] wouldn’t have
necessarily been expecting. (James, Royal Navy)

This example shows how uneasy people feel about stereotypes and potentially how
problematic it can be for gay men to fit them. The account also draws attention to two
critical issues for gay men who embody the gay body. First, the apparent absence of
masculinity (Connell, 2005; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005; Kimmel, 2001); and sec-
ond, not knowing who is responsible for the stereotyping. Kimmel (2001) argues that gay
men not only ‘fail’ to demonstrate manhood; they also threaten to emasculate other men

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Einarsdóttir et al. 499

or to take advantage of them as Bowring and Brewis (2009) suggest. The problem with
this argument is that men not only ‘become gay’ by shattering hegemonic masculinity
(Connell, 2005), they are also made gay. Therefore, embodying the gay body alone
appears to be sufficient to threaten heterosexual masculinity.
Yet, embodying the ‘gay body’ was not solely reduced to ‘looks’ or gestures and what
jobs were suitable for gay men, as the previous accounts suggest. Thus, for some indi-
viduals the embodiment concerned tone of voice. In those situations, face-to-face inter-
action was not needed. One interviewee explained:

I was on the phone with a customer and I have quite a camp accent sometimes. And they picked
up on that and basically started saying homophobia down the phone … He asked me if I was
gay, um, and I said, ‘I’m gonna have to terminate the call’, and he said, ‘You are a frigging
poof’, and ‘you fucker’ or something like that. And then he called me ‘a dirty little shit’ and
then I hung up the call. (Warren, Financial Services Organization)

This demonstrates that knowledge about sexual identities cannot be reduced to

(self-)disclosure alone as suggested elsewhere (Clair et al., 2005; Colgan et al., 2008;
Croteau, 1996; Ragins, 2004). Instead, it is maintained that people make their own
assumptions about sexuality, which are primarily based on appearances, gestures and
mannerisms, including how people move, but can also involve tone of voice. This list
could also include age (unmarried 40-year-old must be gay), cultural interest and life-
style choice like the interviewees suggested earlier. Put together these come to symbol-
ize the gay body. It is noteworthy that many gay men share the above view of what
constitutes the gay body. Gay men also engage in constant dialogue about expecta-
tions, theirs and others’, which troubles their sense of authenticity and how they live
up to those expectations.
The situation was different for women. When there seemed to be a mismatch (disem-
bodiment) of stereotypical assumptions, problems could arise. Many women had one
issue in common; they had been assumed heterosexual. Not necessarily because they had
children as some academics have suggested (Colgan et al., 2008; Losert, 2008), but
because of how they looked. Most of them described themselves in very particular ways,
by underlining their ‘feminine’ dress sense, their attention to detail and the fact that they
used make-up. On the whole, they had received considerable attention from their male
colleagues, but unlike gay men, as Bowring and Brewis (2009) have suggested, sexual
attention did not cease once they came out to their colleagues.
Without exception the initial response from male colleagues was surprise. This was
soon replaced by doubts and questions about their sexuality. In one case, this involved
passing a picture of a lesbian member of staff (with her partner) and posing the question
among colleagues, ‘Is she really lesbian?’ Questioning her identity in this way corre-
sponds with Gill’s (2008, 2009) and Jackson and Gilbertson’s (2009) analysis of media
representations of lesbians, maintaining that the feminine or ‘hot lesbian’ is positioned as
‘unreal’ performance, rather than a genuine lesbian identity. Some male colleagues
seemed intrigued by the news and wondered why these women had decided to turn their
backs on men. One of the women explained:

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500 Work, employment and society 30(3)

They [the lads]’ll say things like, ‘Oh, it’s because you’ve never had a real man’ … one asked
me … ‘How can you call it real sex?’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean, how can you call it
real sex?’ And he was like, ‘Well, like, what do you do?’ (Morgan, Prison)

She had also received sexual offers from her colleagues.

‘Oh, I have seen a picture of you and your girlfriend on Facebook. She’s fit as well. Do you
fancy a threesome?’ (Morgan, Prison)

Fitting the image of the ‘hot lesbian’, voyeurism was not unheard of either. One
colleague presented the idea of fitting a caravan, used for staff holidays, with a camera
to secretly film a lesbian member of staff with her girlfriend. The woman in question
explained that this was presented as a joke in front of colleagues. She believed that her
male colleagues ‘don’t mind gay women working there’ as they were of ‘no threat’ to
their wives. However, while lesbian presence may have been used to ‘calm wives down’,
the men still seemed to ‘have a sort of fantasy about it anyway’, evident in attempts to
pair them up for heterosexual male consumption (i.e. offer of threesome and secretly
filming a lesbian couple).
In cases when women had been in relationships with men in the past, their newly
claimed lesbian identity caused problems to their male colleagues. Some of them
responded with hostility and accused them of being a ‘dirty lesbian’. While these women
had failed to live up to heterosexual expectations, the label was also testament to how
‘hot lesbians’ are accused of manipulating and punishing men with titivation, leading to
sexual rejection (Gill, 2008; Jackson and Gilbertson, 2009). Overall, the examples dis-
cussed seem to substantiate Bowring and Brewis’s (2009) observation that lesbians who
dressed more ‘butch’ faced fewer problems at work than those who dressed in a more
feminine way. However, it is further argued that disembodying the ‘lesbian body’ goes
beyond a feminine dress sense as it equally involves body language, appearances and
even personal interests.

Conclusions
Until now, theories on disclosure of non-heterosexuality have been based on the assump-
tion that LGBs are an oppressed, largely invisible social group whose sexuality needs to
be actively disclosed to be recognized (Button, 2004; Clair et al., 2005; Colgan et al.,
2008; Croteau et al., 2008; Driscoll et al., 1996; King et al., 2008; Losert, 2008; Ragins,
2004; Rumens and Broomfield, 2012; Shallenberger, 1994). It is not to deny that this
might often be the case but this study has verified that disclosure may not always be
necessary. The study has further testified that lesbian and gay identities are neither
entirely invisible nor constructed in isolation. Equally, colleagues seem to play a vital
part in the coming out process by instigating or hindering disclosure (Button, 2004;
Griffith and Hebl, 2002); and at times they may also reach their own conclusions about
sexual identities.
The level of agency in embodying lesbian and gay identities at work is arguably both
defined by organizational demand for heterosexuality (Adkins and Merchant, 1996;

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Einarsdóttir et al. 501

Riach and Wilson, 2014; Witz et al., 2003) and by a set of expectations about non-heter-
osexual identities (Adkins, 2000) derived from stereotypical images of lesbians and gay
men recognized across people of different sexualities. Such demands and expectations
were noted in all the organizations studied and experienced among people in different
ranks. On the strength of the evidence presented, it is hard to believe that previous con-
tributions to the literature were unaware of the existence of such imageries and percep-
tions. The insistence of invisibility and unwillingness to engage with ideas about
embodiment of non-heterosexual identities may stem from a fear of reinforcing already
established stereotypes of LGBs so strongly associated with and based upon prejudice.
This study clearly demonstrates the need to understand and engage with processes of
stereotyping and how lesbian and gay identities are embodied. Being able to read some-
one is not a problem at work, as such, but problems can arise when these images are
either confirmed or refuted. For men, embodying the gay body can make them more
vulnerable to negative behaviour and bullying at work, while for women, disembodying
the lesbian body can have the same effect. However, this is not to suggest that ‘straight
acting’ gay men and ‘typical’ lesbians do not face negative behaviour at work. Rather
that feminization of gay men and lesbians may be more likely to cause offence in an
organizational context which demands heterosexuality (Adkins and Merchant, 1996;
Riach and Wilson, 2014; Witz et al., 2003). In the case of gay men, heterosexual mascu-
linity seems to be undermined by the ‘effeminate’ gay body but not by those who disem-
body the gay body. By contrast, for women it was a different story. Those who
disembodied the lesbian body seemed to face different challenges, usually of a sexual
nature. In their case, heterosexual masculinity was evoked in the sense that lesbian
women were no longer available to them, yet positioned as objects of male desire.
Moreover, their sexuality was not seen as authentic.
Individually, LGBs become gay to themselves and to others, but as a group, LGBs
can also make each other gay in the same way that colleagues do by matching bodies
to stereotypes. This poses particular problems for LGB staff networks as they may
sustain rather than challenge stereotypical imageries of LGBs by ‘playing up’ to what
is (or may be) expected of them. The power of prevailing stereotypical images of les-
bians and gay men is not limited to this. It affects interaction between colleagues and
shapes how non-heterosexual identities are performed, understood and responded to
within organizational settings. Denying the existence of stereotypes undermines the
opportunity to successfully challenge precisely those prejudices, which portray lesbi-
ans as ugly and physically undesirable and gay men as unserious and shallow. It also
exposes some lesbians and gay men to negative behaviour at work and compromises
their capability of uncensored self-expression. Perhaps we have arrived at a moment in
time where LGB employees are accepted in the workplace as long as they do not col-
lide with what their colleagues see as ‘“normal” gendered and sexual practices’ (Buijs
et al., 2011: 647). Fitting the bill (or not) appears to be highly gendered and has conse-
quences that cannot be ignored.

Funding
This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (RES-062-23-2412).

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502 Work, employment and society 30(3)

Notes
1. Only one bisexual woman came forward to take part in the study.
2. All names have been replaced with pseudonyms.

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Anna Einarsdóttir is Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour, Theory and Technology at York
Management School, University of York. Her research interests include gender, identity and
embodiment; personal and professional relationships; career choices and development; equality,
diversity and inclusion; (a)sexualized work and workspaces; social movements; and researching
sensitive topics such as incivility; bullying, harassment and discrimination.
Helge Hoel is Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Manchester Business School and Director
of the University of Manchester Fairness at Work Research Centre (FairWRC). As a long-standing
researcher of bullying, harassment and violence in the workplace, he has written and contributed
to a number of books, articles and reports in this area, including commissioned works for the
International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the European Foundation for the Improvement of
Living and Working Conditions. He was the Principal Investigator for an ESRC-funded project on
LGBs’ workplace experiences, of which the current article is one outcome.
Duncan Lewis is Professor of Management at the Graduate School of Management at Plymouth
University. His research interests are workplace bullying and harassment, discrimination, labour
markets and precarious work, emotional labour and emotion work.

Date submitted April 2013

Date accepted December 2014

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