Severn Questions with Elle Wylie - Happy Pride!

As we find ourselves moving through Pride month, a month dedicated to celebrating and supporting LGBTQ+ communities all around the world, we've talking to our colleagues about their experiences with Pride and how their experiences have shaped them both in and out of work.

Elle Wylie, MSc on our Marketing and Communications team has volunteered to talk about her experience, one that she's found has differed from the general understanding of what it means to be a part of a queer space, the support she's had from her family and her friends, and what she wants anyone celebrating this month to know is important to her and to others within the LGBTQ+ community.

Can you start by telling us about yourself and how you identify?

Hi! I’m Elle, I work in the Marketing & Communications team within Severn Trent Services. I'm a big fan of tabletop board games, fantasy films, and horror books, and as anyone who has spoken to me once will know, I’m a fierce Taylor Swift enthusiast. I also have two cats, Squirrel and Hugo. ?

If we’re being specific, I identify as an asexual, biromantic woman. I generally prefer to outwardly use the broader term queer though, as I find that this allows for a more liberal expression of an identity that I am still very much in the process of working through.

And what do these terms mean to you, specifically?

To me, the word ‘asexual’ is a term that applies to anyone who does not experience, or experiences very minimal, sexual attraction towards others. To be biromantic is to experience romantic attraction towards people of any gender identity. As a biromantic asexual, I typically seek out majority romantic relationships with no particular preference for people who identify as men, women, or as neither or both. There’s definitely a spectrum, one which I’m still placing myself on, and I’ve included a diagram that I've always found simple and helpful below to help explain.

How was your experience of coming out to friends and family members?

I’m very lucky to be surrounded by friends and family who’ve only ever wanted the best for me, and who are understanding of the time I’ve taken to work out who I am, so coming out was a generally positive experience for me. I’ve taken my time trying out different labels as a means of helping myself to understand what feels right and wrong, and having support to do this has been vital to my ability to remain confident in myself. I have to stress that unfortunately my experience isn’t representative of everyone, but I also think it’s really important to highlight the fact that not everyone goes through outward discrimination. ?

Many people lose connection with friends and family, or face discrimination for being their authentic self. I’m in the incredibly privileged position of being able to say that I’ve never faced any extreme discrimination because of my sexual identity, but I’ve definitely been met with microaggressions and goading comments like “that doesn’t sound real, it’s probably just a mental health issue” or “I don’t get it, that’s a bit weird” when I have talked about my attraction to both men, women, and other gender identities. This is often coupled with the assumption that I don’t know what I mean, that there is not a big enough difference between romantic and sexual attraction for it to matter. ?

I completely understand that for a lot of people this may not be something they really think about enough for it to make sense. After all, when we talk about LGBTQ+ people we’re not often focused on the ‘absence of’ in comparison to the ‘attraction to,’ and that’s a big part of being on the asexual spectrum. Asexuality isn’t just a different sort of sexual attraction, it’s the lack of, which can be harder to understand. There is a lot of confusion and misinformation out there because it essentially goes against everything we’re taught about sexuality from a young age.

Only about 0.06% of the UK population openly identify as being on the asexual spectrum, although D&I scholars believe that the real figure is somewhere around the 1.4% mark when you consider the people who may not have the resources or the support to think about how it may apply to them. ?

When I was younger, I went through a phase where I subconsciously began acting differently and spoke about myself as if I didn’t feel these things to the point where I began to believe it, and I made my identity a joke in order to avoid having serious conversations. However, I am very happy to say that since I’ve become more comfortable with my identity and have become able to have more articulate conversations about it, I’ve found that most people I speak to are just happy that I’m happy!

Have you always been out at work? If not, why?

I have always tried to view my identity as something that shouldn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, and as a result for a long time I didn’t really discuss my sexuality with the people I worked with. Partly because it was just another thing to me, and partly because I knew I didn’t want to have a whole conversation around what it meant. Now that I’ve become more comfortable in myself, that’s become a lot easier to feel comfortable with too.

I’ve been faced more times than I can count with being told that it simply isn’t real, with silly jokes and comments that retrospectively weren’t very nice to hear, but never at work, and for that I’m very thankful. In all the jobs I’ve had with Severn Trent, I’ve consistently been surrounded by very open-minded, supportive teams.

I’ve come to realise that as with my friends and family, most of the time the people around me at work are just interested in knowing about the things that matter to me, and that in a lot of positive ways it really doesn’t matter to them any more than my favourite colour or whether I prefer tea or coffee. It’s just another something about me, and I like it that way.?

What would your advice be to other individuals who might be struggling to come to terms with their identity and how that might affect them in the workplace? ?

I think my number one piece of advice would be that, though it isn’t easy, it’s important to recognise that this is your own journey of discovery. What matters the most is that you are healthy and happy in yourself, no matter how you choose to identify or what other people might think or say. Also, as much as we see and hear a lot of negative things about people expressing their place within the LGBTQ+ community, I think it's important to remember that some people have very positive experiences, and some (like me!) have experiences that are pretty uneventful! There are dark skies, silver linings, and plain old white clouds.

We are all complicated people with complicated emotions and thoughts, and one person’s normal might be the next person’s out of this world. We can’t expect everybody to immediately understand the way we feel, but what we can expect is respect as a bare minimum, and I’d never want anyone to think that they aren’t worth that.

What support is available at Severn Trent for anyone who may need it?

From time to time, we all need a little bit of support, and there is help and advice available at Severn Trent, ranging from informal chats to documented avenues of support depending on what you may need at any given time.

If anyone is reading this who feels like they may need support, my inbox is always open for resources, sign posting, or just a cup of tea and a chat. I can’t promise I’ll have all the answers, but I’m also very aware that often all we really need is for someone to listen.

All line managers and HR staff within Seven Trent receive diversity and inclusion training which includes mental health support, and we work with Thrive Mental Wellbeing to provide all staff with a means of getting the support they need 24/7. Internally, we also have our Employee Assistance Programme, and a staff-led internal support platform called Chat2Me.

A key part of Severn Trent’s Diversity and Inclusion mission also takes the form of our advisory groups, and each advisory group is employee led.

These are groups made up of subject matter experts, often through lived experience who can advise, challenge our ways of working, engage, educate, and support our colleagues and decision makers on specific areas of diversity and inclusion. All of us work in tandem with each other to make Severn Trent a place that everyone can be themselves without fear of judgement and are available to raise and solve the more systemic problems that may be faced in the workplace.