"Covering"

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Today's New York Times online has an article about "covering". That means "Pretending to be Normal" while admitting you aren't. The author is gay and makes the point that being out of the closet is fine; acting "too gay" will get one in trouble. Being female is OK in the workplace; being too femmy will bring down discrimination. He uses other examples, such as the rabbi who was not allowed to wear a yarmulke indoors while in the military.

The author calls downplaying ones differences while admitting to them "covering" and doesn't like it. On being told repeatedly that straight middle-class white men are also covering - for depression, etc - he apparently wants to do away with all social masks.

I think this article, which is long, would be valuable reading for everyone here, even though the issue in *my* workplace (now a freedwoman ... I mean, retired) was being unable to cover well enough!

Funny thing about covering: nobody really must cover. Of course people object, "But I'll lose my job/friends/status/respect if I don't cover!"

My candid reply is always, "So what?"

"But that would be terrible! I'd be an outcast!"

Eventually, it comes out that they're really saying nobody could ever truly like the real person behind the mask.

People who want to throw away the social masks seem to miss the obvious point that the only one standing in the way is each one of us who lack the courage, not society at large. Deep down, they are afraid to take a step on their own. What they really want is society's permission to throw away their masks, and that will never, ever happen.

Hmm. Yes and no. I can see where he's coming from, and also Groovy Druid's perspective.

But we have this thing called civilisation. It comes from the latin for city, hence also a city dweller, citizen. And civilisation, living in cities, requires behaviour modification from our natural independent (wild or free) selves. It's a negotiated exchange for considered benefit, though it isn't nowadays often formally stated. We have to give up the right/duty of personal vengence, for example, and generally show some degree of accommodation to the group, in order to obtain the benefits of being in a group.

Fair enough, some go completely the other way, and fear to do anything other than conform. I probably don't do enough "joining in" acting to make myself popular, but that's the position I've chosen, not an inability to do anything different.

There's the classic one of the car bumper sticker which read: "If it feels good, do it."
I suspect the owner of the car would not appreciate someone writing "It felt good" on a brick and throwing that through his windscreen.

I suffer from depression. Does that give me the right to dump that on everyone I meet, on the grounds of honesty? If so, I can't complain if they dump their anger, or fear or...

I would like to be "myself" and not "cover", but I have a family to support and therefore must do whatever is necessary to maintain employment. My employer has announced a new project to improve communication between the main 2 departments, operations and engineering. We are doing individual interviews next week with a team building consultant. My guess is I'm about to be graded on my non-verbal communication skills. Yeah, I'm covering big time. Off to Groovy Druid's articles.

let us know how that goes o6xrs

Good luck on that.

I will tell you that at some places I have been able to sometimes fake off those who place too much value on irrelevant social topics, however this is hard to do and you will get real annoyed trying to do that forever! Anytime I cover to fit in with the so-called normal people, they cause me grief.

I have had better luck in the past when I have began eliminating communication problems up front by subtly dropping cues to excessive office gabbers (i.e. drawing a line without their flack)

Example: I would love to here about the cute whatever but I’m responsible for part of the new whatever and need to check on someone that may need my help - I'll catch ya later.. [walk fast]

Do that a few times and any potential gabbers are less likely to have expectations of you to participate in silly chatter sessions. They are then less of a bother to deal with and when done just right, nobody sacrifices essential business related communication

In the long run, this can help by lessening the waste of time that goes with their chatter. Plant the seed that you are helpful “VERY busy” but “very professional”. This may serve to avoid them causing you grief later.

These thin-skinned people tend to actually be the underlying cause of so called “communication problems” in business because they eat up time and frustrate you to the point that you don’t want to be around them.