By Maddie McGuire
I live and work in a western suburb of Chicago. I never came
out at work and it’s hard to say if my co-workers are aware that
I’m bisexual. Though I do have a feeling most of them know
I’m not straight. I work in a library in the Youth Department
where I mostly serve grades 6-12, but the department starts at
birth. When I started, I made a conscious effort to be outwardly
queer positive. I openly use the word queer without shame, I
started a program for queer youth, I wear a rainbow she/her
pin on my name tag, and I rallied to have a booklist for the
LGBTQIA+ books (I was met with no resistance). I do all of
these things because it’s important to me that teens are seeing
queer representation. Most of the other librarians I work with,
in the Youth Department, work hard to have representation in
the books we have in our collection and are outwardly supportive of the queer community. Overall, the library I work at is a
comfortable place to work for me as a bisexual person. Many
people sign their emails with their pronouns and a few people
in my department wear pronoun pins along with rainbows. In
my department no one else identifies as part of the LGBTQIA
community, as far as I know. But the Youth Department I work
in has always been supportive when I have implemented more
queer-based programing and booklists. They all seem to know
the importance of representation for youth and have always been
proactive about using and having queer representation.
Although everyone’s open and kind I’ve never felt the need to tell
my coworkers that I’m bisexual. I’m sure I’ve made comments
that allude to the fact that I am because I don’t censor my language to “act straight.” Sometimes I wear large rainbow earrings
and talk about the queer representation in books and how it
makes my heart warm. It’s not important that my co-workers
know I’m bisexual, and that’s generally how I feel about coming
out at this point in my life. My immediate family and my best
friends know how I identify because it felt important to me for
them to know my preferred label. I would say that, based on
my behaviors at work and what I show as my values, my team
knows I’m not straight. And if at some point I decide to tell
everyone, “I’m bisexual,” I’d like to think they’d be okay with
it. Maybe it’s because I’m only 24, maybe it’s because I’m single,
maybe it’s because I’m still getting comfortable being out and
proud. I’ve only been fully out with my family for a few years
now, and maybe as time goes on I’ll want to tell more people
I’m bisexual. But for now, I feel okay with being myself at work
without telling everyone that I’m bisexual.
Maddie McGuire is a 24-year-old graduate student living and going to school to get her master’s in Library Studies in the Chicagoland area.