The 20 km of Empowerment

Being en employee at Syensqo is not only about work. It's also about belonging to a community of explorers that are empowered to show their whole and best selves at work... and beyond!

At the 20km of Brussels, 60 of us did show our whole and best selves! And for my part, I had the chance to run all the way alongside my fiancé Mariano Suppa. Who would have guessed the frail and sickly young gay child I was would one day be a runner?

When I was a schoolboy, I had a bad habit of "forgetting" my gym bag at home. Or on the bus. Or pretending to have a sprain. My determination to get out of gym class was so strong that one day, during yet another fake injury, I ended up wearing a brace after the school insisted I get an X-ray at the clinic. The ruse worked flawlessly.

School sports classes, the playground, or playing fields were arenas of violence and toxic masculinity for anyone who didn't fit the dominant codes of competition, strength, looks, or virile camaraderie. In this environment, the frail, gay child I was had to develop avoidance tactics. Self-exclusion as a shield against exclusion. And when I couldn't manage it, my big brother played the protector, conforming to those institutionalized codes at school.

During football and basketball games that monopolized gym and recess time and space, I lingered on the sidelines, played jump rope with the girls, wandered the halls, or arranged to be deprived of recess. Faced with insults, shoving, and all forms of exclusion—like the humiliating team selection process by two captains hesitant to pick the "non-conformists"—I preferred detention and punishments, like copying conjugation tables a hundred times or cleaning benches with ethanol. As a result, I'm far more skilled in grammar and household chores than in dribbling or lay-ups.

Just a few years earlier, Kathrine Switzer had become the first woman to run the Boston Marathon. Until then, some sports were simply off-limits to women. Throughout that already insane race, men tried to uphold the status quo by spitting at, insulting, and physically assaulting her to prevent her from disrupting the social hierarchy.

Today, coming out in professional sports remains rare, as if sports are still bound by the rules of hegemonic masculinity. In response, sports federations for LGBTQIA+ individuals have emerged—not to create a new space of exclusion, but to ensure a safe space where sports, including for those with disabilities, become arenas of empowerment, support, and camaraderie.

In my personal journey, I had to go through a transitional phase before joining these emancipatory collectives. I was so ashamed of my internalized incapacity to move a muscle in a sports context that I waited until I was 28 to take my first steps into running. I took advantage of a business trip to make those first strides in a deserted hotel gym in San Francisco. I passed by the gym several times to make sure no one would witness my initial steps. The fear of being watched and judged, as if the childhood traumas were still lurking in adulthood.

My discovery of sports outside the competitive and performance-driven spirit came late. It remains an unconsidered option for many of my peers on the margins of the playground. If school isn't meant to raise Nobel Prize winners in physics, literature, and chemistry but to teach basic knowledge, why not give it the same mission to awaken and introduce sports culture, respecting differences and physical abilities, in a spirit of inclusion and emancipation rather than selection and performance?

To this date, I have participated in two marathons and a dozen semi-marathons. And that Sunday, with my Syensqo colleagues and my fiancé, I am sure there were other LGBTQIA+ individuals who, like me, had faced far longer trials than the marathon. There were also people with disabilities, blind runners guided by someone holding their hand for 20 kilometers, describing the wonders of the eternal city, or in wheelchairs, independently or accompanied by their guardian angel—just like my big brother was for me in my childhood.

This need for self-overcoming, this necessity to find spaces of emancipation within specific sports federations, isn't about revenge—"against whom, anyway?" wonders Xavier Le Clerc in his magnificent novel Un homme sans titre—but about empowerment. A need to act on one's capability, reclaim the freedom of movement and expression to "become oneself," reclaim space, and step out of the margins.

To you, the children whom captains reluctantly included in their teams with sighs and eye-rolls, don't lose hope: one day, you will find your place, without permission, in the fields of emancipation you choose, shielded from judgment or through the strength of solidarity groups. Hang in there! The best is yet to come.

Greg Renders

Syensqo DEI Director

June 13, 2024

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