This is my fourth year attending TEDActive — the smaller, more intimate (if a group of 700 can be intimate) simulcast of the TED conference. It’s a younger, less A-list crowd who attends the simulcast. (I qualify on the second part.)
But it’s probably safe to say that both the A-listers at the main conference and us lesser luminaries at the simulcast would all consider ourselves to be open-minded, progressive thinkers.
The conference radiates inclusiveness in its line-up of speakers and the subjects of their talks: the issues of emerging societies and economies in the developing world, the struggles of ethnic and racial minorities, the issues that women face, the experiences of the disabled, the mentally ill, of immigrants, of the enslaved.
Many of the speakers are members of those groups themselves, not just advocates for them. Frequently they have mentioned their hope that children and young people who are like them would be inspired by their visibility in their chosen endeavors or fields of work.
Inclusiveness and positive role-modeling; it’s part of TED. Except, that after my first two years, I was beginning to wonder if there were some subtle discomfort with gays and lesbians: no speaker had taken the stage to speak about gay issues.
References were made to such issues by some speakers, but the reference was not the main point of their talk. What was even more disturbing to me was that there were speakers who were obviously gay, at least to me as a gay person myself, talking about all sorts of things — education, science, technology, the arts — because, as one of our “slogans” proclaims, we are everywhere.
But none of them identified themselves as gay, nor did they say they wanted young gay people to know, by their example, that gay people can achieve great things and be prominent in our society.
I began fantasizing about the idea of doing a TED talk myself, in which I would walk out on stage wearing a T-Shirt that identified me as gay, and I would talk about the importance of visibility. I even came up with a branding device (it’s an occupational hazard) — GAY BTW. It rhymes when you say the words behind the acronym, and it makes the point that being gay may not be relevant to what’s being discussed, but it’s a gay person doing the discussing.
I stewed throughout my third TED as the pattern repeated. And then toward the end of the conference a nice-looking guy named Dan Pallotta gave a talk about how spending a greater percentage of their donations on marketing can actually help not-for-profits raise more money for their causes. As many TED speakers are certainly coached to do, he started his talk with a personal anecdote, putting up a picture of his two children. I may have actually groaned a little – the parade of heterosexuals was continuing, and then he said, “and because I happen to be gay…”
I don’t recall what followed “because I happen to be gay,” but my angst was over. Someone had actually outed himself as gay so everyone would know that he was, even though it had nothing to do with his talk. We’d broken through that barrier. And he did it with a phrase I liked even better than mine — “I happen to be gay.” Not because I “choose” to be, nor because I “prefer” to be, but because I “happen” to be. Because that’s the truth of who we are: we just happened this way. I wrote Dan an email, thanking him, which he kindly acknowledged.
I got a little squirmy this morning when an architect who was clearly gay to me, gave a talk about developments in his field. He even showed a project his firm had developed for The Pines in Fire Island – one of the two gay communities there – and every picture of it was of groups of men in campy poses in front of the building, and he still didn’t say he was gay, though we might have inferred it from his photos.
But he was followed by an African-American woman, Yoruba Richen, who identified herself as a lesbian and talked about the interconnectedness of civil rights for African-Americans and gay rights. Finally, I said to myself, pleasantly surprised. She closed her talk with a great quote from Nelson Mandela: “To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
But TED had even bigger surprises in store for us. Because what followed was an interview with an unannounced guest talking about our rights to an open government and to a private life, who was none other than Edward Snowden, beaming in from Russia to an onstage bot he could control from his laptop.
I was delighted to hear Snowden speak– so articulately, so thoughtfully, so intelligently. I believe we have much to fear from the Security-Technology complex — today’s version of the Military-Industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about — that operates without oversight in the U.S. I embed a video of the interview; I think it’s worth your while to listen to it.
Postcards from a Traveler 