Cultural Diversity and LGBTI Experiences

Running head: CULTURAL DIVERSITY
CULTURAL DIVERSITY
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

2CULTURAL DIVERSITY
I have interviewed a person who identifies his sexual orientations as gay. In other words
he is a person that gets attracted to the same sex. He belongs to the LGBTI group. He is a mid-
aged man around his mid-fifties. He has been living in Australia from his childhood. He says
how he has been subjected to many stereotypes right from his childhood. This has been a great
opportunity to conduct this interview. I have been able to identify so many similarities and
differences between my life and the life of the interviewee. This is because of the fact that I am a
man of the same age group and I live with my family. My family comprises of my wife and my
children. Since I identify my sexual orientation as a straight guy I have seen different life than in
comparison to the life that has been seen by this person that I interviewed.
I enquired him regarding his experiences about his childhood. He shared his experience
regarding the schooling years. He said that right from his teenage days he has not been able to
get any assurance regarding his sexual orientation. He did not know the right place or the right
people with who he could share his feelings. As he lived with his parents and was bought up in
an orthodox family he did not know if this would be well accepted by him. He was suffering
from this feeling that this friends and family might misunderstand him. Even after he shared this
feeling with his family he could not understand why he was being scolded by his parents. This
was really very unfortunate are for him. His parents were from the medium income group and
worked hard to make their both ends meet. They have been saving money for education for their
son. However after they heard from their son that he was not straight they were greatly
disheartened. Rather than lending their support to their son they started scolding him and asking
him to get rid of this feature. After hearing this I was greatly surprised. I could realize the hurdles
that were faced by him. I also realized how fortunate I was in order to have a very loving,
supporting and a very helpful family. I could always share my feelings of both happiness and

3CULTURAL DIVERSITY
sadness with my parents. They were always there to have my back and provide me the support
that is needed.
On asking him to share some life experiences he has been very emotional and sad.
However he has rendered his constant support in order to make this interview a great success. I
feel that the interview carried on very smoothly because there has been huge cooperation and
support that was rendered by him. He narrated that he has been the victim of bullying and abuses
at some of the other points of his life. Life has never been a cakewalk for him. He narrated the
incidence of double domination that he faced while he was doing his internship in one of the
company. While he was being recruited he did not keep any of his identity or his sexual
orientation. He realized that there were discriminations being done between him and his co-
workers. This can be considered as an example of direct discrimination because he was being
denied the same opportunities that were being granted to the rest of his co-workers just because
they were not gay. Once during a meeting he was not able to understand a certain file and so he
could not respond to the questions raised by his boss.
His boss was angry due to this and so he started scolding him. However this scolding
consisted of verbal abuses by condemning him with terms like "crazy", "abnormal", "she male "
and many others. As a result of this the test of the colleagues also started looking down upon him
from the next day. He was being stigmatized as a dead person. He added that he was denied the
chance of getting promotion and also suffered from the lack of unequal payment. He referred to
this as the concept of self and the other. He was always considered as the other or the
stereotype.

4CULTURAL DIVERSITY
I could connect this part of the interview with one news article that I read a few days
ago.As per the review came out in one of the famous Australian news magazines that are the
New York Times, the LGBTI people are often made the victims of stereotyping (Khullar, 2018).
The review consists of the opinion of the famous doctor Dhruv Khullar, M.D., who talks about
his experiences while dealing with gay patients. He shared about one of his patient who is a 20-
year-old guy, who attempted to commit suicide because he was abused very badly by his father
and banished from his home. He was pushed to such an extreme limit that he no longer could
bear this homophobic feeling and wanted to kill himself. He swallowed a packet of unmarked
pills because he wanted to die.
I also wanted to know something about his cultural needs.Culture also affects the lives I
these individuals in a different way. I knew that each and every individual have faced some or
other kinds of impacts due to their cultures. In the course of the interview he said that it always
seemed t him he belongs to a different cultural sect (Plummer, 2016). Even if he wanted to feel
that he belongs from a normal cultural background there were several incidents that took place
around him which made him believe different otherwise. This was because of the fact that he had
to come across much discrimination at different levels of society. It was known from the
interview that he has often been subjected to racial discrimination. He has given repeated
emphasis on the prejudiced opinions that he has come across in his life.
There is this prejudiced view that as he is a gay he is very deadly by nature, he
recollected that even in his college many of the guardians did not let their sons come close to him
or go out with him. There were many people who this prejudiced view had stored up in their
mind that as he is gay he must is of a deadly nature and is sexually attracted to the boys. Thus
there is harm for the straight boys if they are coming near to him. He also noticed that after he