#*discrimination

Even aside from my experience as a bisexual woman in a long-term hetero relationship (what does 'out' even look like for me?), I have so much empathy for Shane's position having experienced this judgement about not being open about my relationship along another axis.

My partner and I are from different ethnic, religious and national backgrounds. We have been together for over two decades and he has never told his family (who live in his country of origin) about me. We will never visit his country of origin together and have to be careful to not advertise our relationship when travelling to certain other countries as well.

The number of people who have implied (or outright stated) that him not telling his family about me is red flag for him and a black mark against our relationship is astonishing. People make these judgements with no knowledge of the cultural, social and familial dynamics he is working under. They assume he must be ashamed of me or doesn't love me enough and that I must be secretly miserable about it. He made an informed decision that protects both of us and that I support.

I deflect by joking about how nice it is not to have to deal with in-laws, but a lot of people just don't understand. Total openness and honesty is not always the best or safest option.

I think this is a really valuable viewpoint that doesn’t get talked about enough.

We live in a kind of shitty world. Sometimes you have to make hard choices for the sake of safety, and I don’t think there’s enough compassion for that. There’s such an emphasis on Living Your Truth that we sort of forget that some people still Die Because of Their Truth. Like. We do not have a safe enough or accepting enough world to act like the only solution is for every marginalized person to be Out and Loud and Open. Sometimes you need to just decide to be safe.

It is terrible that in this day and age this is still a problem, but workplaces are still allowed to ask potential employees about their parents and childhood in interviews. This has no bearing on their abilities as a worker, and so should not be brought up in interview. There are no specific equality laws to prevent workplaces for refusing to employ muggleborns - only a code of conduct which suggests that if they do not they will have a lowered reputation. Considering the war, however, this reputation seems to be less of an issue to some employers, which leads to muggleborns being unfairly discriminated against, and rejected from jobs even where they are the best candidate.

Disliking those with no sexual attraction to others

A (somewhat old) article pointing to evidence that asexuals do experience discrimination based on their sexuality. Or at least that heterosexuals (and probably others) have discriminatory feelings towards the idea of asexuality, even if they cannot easily identify it in people.