Which is kind of amusing, seeing as how work barely involves any movement, let alone having to change for strenuous activity.
My high school was very liberal (64-32 Kerry in 2004), but most of the sysadmins in the CS lab were conservative. (I swear, half of the actual office for the student admins was a shrine to Ronald Reagan, and to a much lesser extent, Sarkozy after his election.)
I have often wondered why so many professions lack gay people. I’ve only known 2 gay doctors and 1 gay lawyer for example. I should by chance know a lot more.
The thing is, I found as a gay person, so many gay people don’t use their degrees. I know off the mark 10 people I could name with master degrees that manage bars. Why? They want to meet people.
My personal belief is that gay relationships are not the most stable as straight ones, so gay males spend a lot of time looking for it and this tends to change their focus from a career.
I know I’ll get slammed for saying it but as a gay person I found it to be the truth and no evidence to the contrary. When I say stuff, everyone says it’s not so, but I when I push them to produce evidence otherwise they can’t do it.
That said, there are gay software engineers, there are gay doctors but gay people do not choose careers that lead them to these ends, or if they do they wind up going into more gay friendly environs so they can meet people or not be harrassed.
One thing about gay people, and even straight people I found is there is a huge unrecognized discrimination factor. And even those who don’t care, DO care when they have to be aroiund it. It’s like my parents don’t mind that I’m gay, but they have a real problem when they realize I’m gay AND DOING something about it.
(Kind of like a kid finding out his parents had sex, you know everyone has sex but to think your parents to it, well that’s wrong…LOL)
I’ve met one, and he worked… wait for it… for a hardcore gay fetish site. 
100% of the (3) transsexuals I’ve known were sofware engineers. That said, I can’t think of any other gays I’ve worked with in software, except for one who was so discreet about his lifestyle that we found out that he was gay at his funeral, having died of AIDS. However, there’ s no law dictating that gays (or heteros) have to make themselves known in situations where it really doesn’t have any bearing. So I could be working with 10% or 80% gay cow-orkers for all I know.
Weird thing. I only know one John Inman, and he’s a software guy, and has somewhere in the range of 20 or 30 children (okay, 6), but that seems like a lot to me. Is there some celebrity with the same name who’s gay?
John Inman was uninterested in Mrs. Slocombe’s pussy.
Microsoft has a gay employee club with over 700 members. Using the 2004 numbers I found for employment, that’s only about 1.3% of the employees, but remember also that this is just the ones who are in the club. I worked there and knew gay folks who were not in GLEAM.
I’ve never experienced a ‘locker room’ mentality anywhere I’ve worked. In fact, I can count on the fingers of one stump the number of times I’ve heard comments that would make a gay person uncomfortable (or at least I haven’t noticed or picked up on any). In common with many almost exclusively male environments the conversation can get a bit dull though - in my last job if you didn’t speak fluent football (soccer) (which I don’t) then the opportunities for chat were limited.
So - some people work with lots of gays, some with none, and some are in the middle. It would be interesting to see if there are any official figures. I know the UK government at least collects data on ethnicity to protect against racial discrimination in the workplace, but I’ve never been asked about my sexuality in a job interview or census so I’m not sure if there’s a reliable source of information.
I never meant “locker room” in the sense that it is either homophobic or athletic.
It’s a little loud, probably a lot loud for a professional office. There’s a lot of braggadocio. Arguments arise over EVERYTHING. There’s tons of ball busting when someone is proven wrong, or his team loses. We’re in fantasy leagues together, and ball-bust over that.
And we talk about our wives and girlfriends a lot, and sometimes bust each other’s ball over that.
I’m just saying. . .I don’t think it’s a place where a gay guy is going to pipe up, “yeah, my boyfriend does the same thing”.
It’s still towel-snapping, just of a different variety.
Oddly, our software company isn’t much like that at all. Simply because we’re too busy to do that stuff. All us software engineers have so much work piled on top of us we can hardly have time to have lunch, or so it seems. So our non-work conversation is practically never more than one or two sentences over the course of a day.
Ed
Yes a very interesting question,personally I’ve always wondered why there does’nt appear to be many Black,Jewish,Lesbian alcoholics with Dyslexia involved with studies about the effects of juggling in the culture of disenfranchised Bushmen.
I put it down to institutionalised bigotry myself .
Trunk writes:
> It’s WAY less than the number of gay people I knew when I worked in a library.
I wonder if the proportion of male librarians who are gay is larger than the general male population. I worked in a university library once. It seemed to be that half the men working there were gay.