To all my LGBT+ friends, peers, and fellow members of the Kubernetes and Cloud Native communities: you do belong here. No matter what others think or say; privately or publicly; you played (and are still playing) a major role in the success of this community. Many of you, through your code, your docs, your talks, your workshops, your pull requests, your comments thereon, your presence on social media and even in the world in general, have positively influenced and helped me in so many ways that I wouldn’t be able to list them all.
Why does this need to be said? Because in 2022, a member of the Kubernetes Steering Committee publicly came under the spotlight for expressing openly homophobic and transphobic views. Phrases like “God created each person male or female” or “God’s bounds for sexuality are one man and one woman, in marriage”. As a cis man, most oftentimes, when someone says something like that, I just roll my eyes and put them in the “nutjob” bucket. I’ve also been lucky enough to never have to deal with that kind of bigotry first-hand growing up and then working for various companies and organizations. However, for folks who are transgender or gay, these phrases can be pretty hurtful, for at least a few reasons:
- if they live in a conservative environment (family, country), they will hear them regularly;
- if these words are said by a community leader, manager, or otherwise authority figure, they will carry more weight;
- even if the person who says these sentences doesn’t actually do anything to cause material harm, they will once in a while influence someone enough to take action. (Just look at the rates of crime against gay and trans folks; or don’t, if you don’t want to ruin a good day.)
“Words of affirmation” isn’t my favorite language of love, which means that it can be difficult or awkward for me to express gratitude with a public statement. But I’m trying anyway. (In parallel, I’m also exploring other ways to act and reduce the harm caused by bigotry and intolerance in the spaces in which I participate.)
This is not an exhaustive list, just the first examples that came to mind. I’m not going to name anyone but I sure hope that some of you will recognize yourself there.
- When I delivered a training that featured kubebuilder content, the most relevant and useful resources that I found were written by trans and non-binary folks.
- When I brushed up my Golang skills for that same training, I reviewed a lot of content/talks written by gay folks.
- When I worked at Docker, some of the kindest, empathetic, and skilled folks I worked with were trans - some closeted, some out.
- When I was trying to learn/understand stuff like Nomad; cert-manager; KinD; Cluster API… guess what, it’s trans folks all the way down again.
- When KubeCon went virtual and speakers had to record their talks, there was one talk in particular that truly took advantage of the opportunity and shipped a video production (instead of just recording themselves in Zoom), and I hate to break it to you but it wasn’t presented by cis dudes.
- The most skilled experts in Kubernetes security (and perhaps security in general) that I know personally are trans. (I’m not claiming that they’re the best in the world; but they’re folks with whom I had the privilege to share an omakase, a bowl of ramen, or some coffee at multiple conferences; I can’t say that much about e.g. Bruce Schneier, although I’m sure he’s a Great Dude!)
The list could go on and on.
I’m not saying that you are required to demonstrate exceptional levels of expertise as listed above to successfully engage with the Kubernetes and Cloud Native ecosystems. You are welcome and you belong regardless of your skills and involvement.
I’m also not saying that cis/straight folks aren’t doing shit in the community. But I’m saying that if the queer (at the broadest interpretation of that term) folks leave, it’s going to be fucking noticeable. So I would love you to stay, and to keep being awesome and bring your world-class skills to this community. And if there is anything else that you’d like me to do on your behalf, let me know.
Thank you.