As a queer person, I enjoy spending time in queer venues. Not as much as as most of my LGB brothers & sisters, but certainly from time to time it's great. If that were my only option, I'd get very agitated or bored, but the feeling of "home" in those spaces is real and palpable. Especially as my circle of friends is basically straight, it's nice to get away, so to speak. As a bi guy, I also like spending time with other bi folks, although this is actually a very rare occasion. Maybe because of the rarity of it, it's exciting when there's more than just one bi guy in a room.

As a mixed-race Filipino/White guy, I love spending time with my Filipino relatives and co-workers and I'm delighted when I get to bond with other mestizos. I don't see a lot of Filipino culture in my day to day life, even here in SF where there is a ton.

Okay, all that said, I wonder what you (and anyone else) thinks about affinity spaces. My feelings are... mixed?

I convened a "POC work group" at my workplace in 2020, at the request of three of my POC staff. (I'm an executive at my agency and they thought it should be started by someone at my level.) So I did. It was an interesting but also irritating experience, for the 4 meetings I was allowed to be there - they asked me and the other two directors in the group to step back so that they could come up with recommendations for the agency and they didn't want their discussion compromised by their various bosses being in the room. I did end up liking their recommendations, surprisingly. The POC group basically faded away after coming up with those recommendations in 2022. Shortly after, some white colleagues started a white affinity space, which was a controversial idea and continues to be one, among both POC & white staff not involved with the group. That group still meets. I'm pretty curious, in sort of a sick way, about what they talk about in that group (Robin DiAngelo? LOL) but I've been told as a mixed-race person, I shouldn't be there. (Context: I identify as mixed-race, as Filipino, and as white.) Which was probably for the best because I can imagine myself being an asshole in that space because of what I imagine to be extremely woke conversations.

Recently there have been noises about creating a "BIPOC" group. I'm so conflicted about joining. I know people expect me to. As a leader of my agency, and as the person who is specifically in charge of "DEI" (one of my many hats, and my least favorite one). But ugh I don't want to. Are they planning on talking about "white supremacy" per Tema Okun and how "whiteness" shows up in our majority-POC agency (LOL)? I think a part of my mulishness is super petty - I actually hate the acronym BIPOC because it feels so unnecessarily othering & diminishing of Asians, Latinos, and people from the Middle East. What a dumb word.

Sorry for all the rambling! It's Sunday night and I'm about to step into this tomorrow, so definitely on my mind. This seemed like a good space to journal!