Dr. Liz Powell: “I’m a psychologist about to start work in a healthcare setting. I want to build relationships with my new colleagues and I thought about what to look for in terms of signs that it will be safe to disclose that I am kinky. My pull to do is that I can be more authentic instead of making vague statements about what I enjoy in my personal time. But I also have a lot of reasons not to share that side of myself. What factors would you recommend I look out for as I think about my decision?”
Sander Jones: That’s a really good question.
My first thought is not what signs to look out for, but just to – my first thought is just to be cautious.
Dr. Liz Powell: Yeah, particularly depending on what state you are in and what your license is.
Sander Jones: Yeah.
When you belong to a marginalized group that doesn’t have legal protections, I also know from the Military, even if 95% of the people there are perfectly OK with you, it’s the 5% that are not that can ruin your career and make your life miserable because you don’t have legal protections.
So that’s my first thought is be cautious.
And there are obviously psychological and emotional benefits to being able to be out but Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, safety and security needs to come first before you build on that to other things.
Dr. Liz Powell: Yeah.
The thing that I would say is that a lot of this depends upon kind of the amount of privilege that you hold in a variety of different ways.
So like if you were to lose your job, would that be OK for you?
Is there something you could do?
Would you be able to recover from that?
If you were to lose your license, would you be able to recover from that?
If you were to be outed to friends and family because somebody decides to post about you on the internet, would you be OK with that?
So figure out like what are the worst case scenarios?
Are they things that you can handle?
If you cannot handle the risk of losing your job, you have to be very, very, very cautious about who you talk to about being kinky, about being nonmonogamous, a lot of times about being trans, because there are laws and rules and then there’s what real happens.
The thing is, it may be illegal to discriminate against someone for being trans in a lot of places, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
They just do it in backdoor shady ways.
With kink in particular, in a mental health setting, my experience of a lot of mental health providers has been that there is a whole lot of like sexual conservatism even among people who should know better.
Like I’ve been at the AASECT conference, which is the conference for sex therapists teaching a class about nonmonogamy and kink stuff and had people clutching their pearls about it at AASECT.
The sex therapists were clutching their pearls.
So just be careful.
I think that again, it depends upon where you’re at and what you are able and willing to risk.
My last year in the Army, last year and a half, I was stationed in Savannah, Georgia with the Third Cav.
I was the brigade’s psychologist.
And everybody above me loved me.
Brigade Commander loved me.
NCO loved me.
Everybody loved me.
So by the time I left, everyone knew I was the weird sex person.
If you have any patients coming in with weird sex things, you send them to Captain Powell because Captain Powell has seen and done it all.
It will be fine, which was a pro and a con for a variety of reasons but it’s not like I sat everybody down and had a meeting about like I’m a freak.
It’s that there were people that I trusted who I talked to about things and then folks came to them to consult about cases, they would say, “You know actually, Captain Powell might be a really good person for this.”
People will find things out in ways that are subtle.
When you talk about wanting to come out about being kinky, I also wonder like what that means because usually when we are asking folks at work what they do over the weekend, we kind of want to know but we don’t really want to know.
We’re not usually sitting down with the person we work with and being like, “Tell me all about the thing you did this weekend with your friend. What did you eat at your barbeque? What did you drink? How long were you at the barbeque? Whose house was that? What were the chairs like?”
We just want to know that you’re a person and we’re connecting with you as a person.
So like if you’re talking – if you just went to like a huge kink con last weekend and they are like, “What did you over the weekend?”
“Oh, I went to this conference for this thing I super nerd out about. It was a lot of fun. What did you do?”
You don’t have to give specifics to be honest.
And I think for kinksters, what specifics would you give that would feel appropriate in this workplace setting?
You could say like, “Oh, I went to this conference. It was about BDSM. It was really interesting.”
And if they ask more questions, you can answer but that’s not the same as saying like, “Oh, I’m a kinky person and I go to kink events every weekend,” which maybe something that they don’t necessarily want to know.
What do you think?
What are your thoughts?
Sander Jones: All of that.
Also when you were talking about being at that last year in the Military and all the people above you loved you, it certainly occurred to me that it sounded like you took time to develop those relationships.
Dr. Liz Powell: Oh, yeah!
Sander Jones: And to feel them out.
And so, it may be hard to like identify the specifics of what are the signs you look for when you’re getting to know a person and deepening that relationship that it might be safe to talk about something and maybe talk about kink in general before you start saying it’s about you or that you have experience with something.
Dr. Liz Powell: Yeah.
Talk about kink in general.
What kind of jokes do they tell?
Are they the kind of people who already tell jokes that are a little bit like edgier that someone who might be more receptive versus someone who is like very clear professional standards, Professionalism with a capital P?
And we all know that’s rooted in Kerryn Gamble [1:00:26] [Phonetic] shit.
But like some people are very in the culture of professionalism.
I think too, figure out who the people are who hold power in your workplace, and that may not be the same thing as the people who are in like technical positions of power.
A thing I learned when I was in the Military is that race is very meaningful.
The hierarchy is very meaningful.
And the most important people are the specialists.
Those E-4s run the fucking Military.
If you get into the E-4 mafia, you’re good to go.
One of the posts I was at on my deployment, we needed a gas can so we can fill up our generator more easily and we talked to one of the E-4s.
He was like, “Don’t ask any more questions. We will get you one by end of the day.”
Sure enough, gas cans showed up.
I asked zero questions because it’s not my job to know how it happened.
I got what I needed.
They took care of it.
Right?
Those E-4s do not have a lot of institutional power.
They are not the ones writing people’s evaluations.
They are not in charge of anything.
But they have a ton of power.
And if you piss them off, they will make your life miserable.
So like if you’re working in a healthcare setting, the person who does booking and who answers the phone, the person who sits at the desk, that is a person you want to be on their good side.
Always.
They may be the lowest on the totem pole in terms of technical power, but they can make your life miserable if you piss them off.
Sander Jones: Or wonderful if you make them happy.
Dr. Liz Powell: Yeah.
And so like take some time when you go into new setting to really feel out what are the power dynamics.
Who holds power?
How did they hold that power?
Are these people who are holding power in a way that feels ethical and kind?
Are these people who are petty?
Don’t tell petty people your bullshit.
The thing is, even if they are on your side when you tell them, the day will come where they’re not.
Don’t tell the petty people.
That’s not helpful for you.
Who has power?
How did they hold that power?
Who is that power in relationship to?
Make those relationships.
Make those connections.
Figure out where you stand and that will give you a lot more information about who you can take risks with, what those risks mean.
Sander Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Liz Powell: It sounds a bit – it sounds a little like Machiavellian of understand the system.
It’s better to be loved than feared.
But like to some extent, you have to understand these systems.
These systems because we live under capitalism have the power to make your life really, really, really hard.
In a lot of states, you as a practicing therapist can lose your license for being kinky.
You can lose your license for being nonmonogamous.
There are people to whom that has happened.
If you are in custody dispute, you can lose your kids for being kinky.
These things happen.
And so you have to be careful.
If you are in a state that’s like a nicer, more leftist, liberal state, you might have more freedom around these things than if you are in a state like we are in where like Atlanta is not bad, but Georgia as a whole, I would take very few risks around that kind of thing.
Sander Jones: And Georgia is better than some of the other states around like Florida and Alabama and South Carolina.
Dr. Liz Powell: Absolutely.
They’re so bad.
Sander Jones: Yeah.
Yeah.
Dr. Liz Powell: So bad.
Sander Jones: But being conscious of power, I mean it happens in all relationship.
So being cautious of it, using it ethically, and recognizing when other people are not using it ethically or when you yourself are not using it ethically.
But it’s all very important whether it’s the workplace or your personal relationships.
Dr. Liz Powell: Yeah.
And I think that like building that skill of being attuned to how power is flowing through systems will serve you well in your life in a ton of ways because it helps you see when there’s a problem.
It will help you see like in this roommate situation, this person is concentrating a whole lot of power in a way that doesn’t seem to be working for anybody else.
Why is that happening?
In this healthcare setting, there is this very toxic person who somehow has accumulated a bunch of power.
Is there anything we can do about that?
Having this attunement and this visibility of how power is functioning within a system I think is an important skill for everybody.
Sander Jones: Absolutely true.
