I’m really enjoying clerkships so far. Besides the long hours, I can’t really complain. I have, however, been a little annoyed with the off-handed homophobic remarks made by certain people. In all other aspects, they seem like really great people, but I don’t think they realize how much respect I lose for them when they make some little snide gay joke to a colleague.

It’s never anything blatantly offensive, always just little things. Asking a straight male colleague if he’s dating anyone, and then saying, “Oh, did he break your heart?” for example. It reeks of the old boys club mentality, and hell, we’re 30 minutes outside of San Francisco. I can’t imagine what it’s like anywhere else. I’m always curious why this is socially acceptable, but if any person were to make a similarly snide racial or gender comment, they’d get disgusted looks from their team.

It’s really easy for me to type out here that I should challenge these remarks. I should try to change people’s thinking. That if I’m not part of the solution, I’m part of the problem, and that if no one ever stood up against this kind of thing, we’d be much more regressive in our thinking and behavior than we are now. But man, even if I was the most confident guy in the world (which I’m not, I just fake it), it’s hard to decide when to say something and how to say it, especially when it’s your superior, and they probably have some part in your evaluation.

2 Comments »