We are knee-deep in mandatory trainings, and, God, are they ever stupid.
Take, for example, the homophobia index test. You are supposed to agree or disagree with the following statement:
“I enjoy the company of gay people.”
I definitely enjoy the company of some gay people. And definitely don’t that of many others. My enjoyment has nothing to do with their sex lives because I’m not a creep. So how am I supposed to answer it?
More importantly, how is N supposed to answer it? He doesn’t really enjoy anybody’s company except mine and our daughter’s. So in a literal sense, no, he doesn’t enjoy the company of gay people. How would he even find out if anybody is gay? Why would he retain that information?
Or this one:
“Gay people deserve what they get.”
This really depends on what they get. Promotions? I don’t know, are they good workers? Terminal illnesses? Then no, I don’t think anybody “deserves” it. It sounds like something is absent from all these questions, and that absent but turns them to mush.
Then there’s this:
“When I meet someone I try to find out if he/she is gay.”
No, it would never occur to me to do that. It will probably not occur to me to find anything out about that individual. Wouldn’t a gay person who’s looking to date be the most likely participant to be interested in finding out?
I have a question for gay people, though. Do you really want your co-workers to be interrogated about their feelings regarding gayness in this way? If somebody made a test like this about, say, Ukrainians, I’d lobby as loudly as I can to make the horror stop. I absolutely promise I never felt anything negative towards gay people in my life. Since I first found out they exist, I had nothing but good, positive feelings. This homophobia quiz, though, I gotta tell you. I started kind of realizing how one could develop negative feelings.