A “To Let” sign hangs outside an unremarkable office building in Covent Garden in central London.
Already ensconced inside this four-story building are a solicitor, a graphic marketing consultancy, a designer, a press and a gymnasium. So why is the British national press so interested in this office building?
Because the words on the sign outside advertise more than just office space. They advertise office space with a sexual preference.
This is the building the tabloid newspaper the Sun christened “Britain’s first gay office block.”
Until now, the much heralded boom in the “pink economy” has increased the number of gay places that lesbians and gays can spend their money, but with the opening of these offices some of them will be able to earn that money in a gay environment as well.
To some observers, however, the “To Let” sign appears also to point towards separatism, to a future where gays are not only socializing but working apart from heterosexuals as well.
One gay office building doesn’t make a ghetto, but it’s a start. As a dedicated same-sexer in London, you can now work for a gay company in a gay office building, unwind after work in a gay cafe or health club, dance the night away in a gay club and take a gay taxi back to your house, which has been recently renovated by gay builders and decorators and is maintained by gay cleaners.
In theory, you need never come into contact with straights at all.
But why would gays be so keen to avoid straights, now that they’re all so cool about gays? Because, according to recent statistics from the Stonewall Group, the lesbian and gay equality organization, they aren’t.
Not only is it still legal in Britain for employers to dismiss lesbians and gays for having the “wrong” sexual orientation (as the Ministry of Defense does as a matter of policy, for example), but too often they’re victimized by colleagues and workmates as well as intolerant bosses.
Nearly half the respondents to a Stonewall survey in Britain said they had been harassed at work because of their sexuality. Hardly surprising, then, that two-thirds of the respondents said they concealed their sexuality from people they worked with.
It’s a sorry story and one which provokes anger and resentment among lesbians and gays.
“Since heterosexual society refuses to create workplaces where queers can feel safe from harassment, it’s understandable that many may want to work in an all-gay office block,” says Peter Tatchell of the direct action gay rights group, OutRage.
“What some people disparage as a `gay ghetto,’ others value as a safe space where queers don’t have to worry about what straights think of their lifestyles and haircuts. It’s not separatism-it’s common sense.”
Jeremy Norman, 47, the gay entrepreneur behind the office building project and the man who founded London’s legendary gay nightclub Heaven in the ’70s, claims this is not a step in the direction of separatism.
“What makes a building gay?” he asks. “All we’re saying is that the building has a certain tone, and that we will take steps to remove any tenant who makes anti-gay remarks.”
Norman maintains that it isn’t simply an exclusionary policy.
“We’re a different kind of landlord looking for relaxed and modern kind of people. Initially, I faced the same problem with Heaven. How do you make a club gay? We were fiercely criticized for our policy of making it all male. But this wasn’t because we didn’t like women; it was just that where women go straight men tend to follow.”
As well as pointing up the age-old dilemma of integrationism versus separatism, the gay office building symbolizes the paradox of lesbians and gays today: on the one hand, apparently increasingly confident and powerful with more visibility than ever before, and many with more spending power; and on the other, a vulnerability reflected in the need for places to run to escape oppression.
Norman claims to be against “ghettoization” but thinks that a need for familiarity operates everywhere.
“I think it’s natural for large minorities, like Indians in Southall or Jews in Hampstead, to stick together,” he says.
“However integrated society might be, people will want to be around like-minded people.”
A spokesman for Manpower, one of Britain’s largest office staff agencies, admits they don’t have a policy on lesbian and gay staff.
“We have a general non-discrimination policy-we don’t discriminate on the basis of age, race, religious belief or sexual orientation. We’re only interested in their ability to do their job.”
But might not their ability to do their job be impaired by being put in an environment which abuses them? “We have no information on discrimination which may occur in the workplace.”
OK. Let’s put it another way: What if a business in the gay office building were to approach Manpower and ask for staff?
“We would treat it as we do any other business. We would find out what the nature of the business is, their financial status, what skills they require.”
And if they stipulated that they required gay or gay-friendly staff? That homophobes were not welcome?
“We would have to say that just as we don’t discriminate against homosexuals, we don’t discriminate against people who are homophobic; we don’t discriminate, full stop.”
