Venture Ousted: Why we left our parent organization
By: Sofie Bedard, Co-Founder at Gradient Spaces
Once, in a club in Toronto’s village - someone tapped me on the shoulder while I was dancing to speak these words directly into my ear:
“What are you even doing here?”
Somehow, it didn’t hit me as a shock.
I was used to being one of very few femmes in the room. I was used to seeing different versions of those words on the faces around me.
For a baby queer who just moved to the city, my social life was characterized by this little voice in the back of my head saying: is this what community is supposed to feel like?
Queer community comes with a feeling of being within and without.
The moment we are able to acknowledge and articulate our queer selves, we are within the queer community. But most of us spend at least some amount of time feeling outside of it all. Being without that deep feeling of community and chosen family that we are promised through queer media.
The queer tech ecosystem is no exception.
My first queer in tech networking event in Toronto didn’t feel much different. When I walked into the room and saw a sea of masc-presenting people wearing suits — I wanted to tailspin out of there. I once again saw the “what are you even doing here?” look, or I was ignored all together. Not one person spoke to me the entire time.
“The moment we are able to acknowledge and articulate our queer selves, we are within the queer community. But most of us spend at least some amount of time feeling outside of it all.”
Because of this, I wasn’t expecting much when I walked into the room at a Venture Out event in 2019. So when, 5 minutes in I was swept with a “coming home” kind of feeling, I felt like I had stumbled upon the impossible.
People smiled at me. And without having to do the usual mental gymnastics of editing our queerness to be more "palatable" in a professional setting, we were able to meet each other in a much more meaty, meaningful place.
These spaces transcended Networking™. Together, we were building queer communities of care.
I discovered that there is a community of queer people who work in this space, who are truly invested in the personal and professional growth of other queer people. I don’t know what to call this. But to me, it was magic.
And I believe it was always something bigger than any brand could hold. It belonged to us. The queer communities that collided and held space for one another.
I would wind up joining the volunteer team. Spending a year of my life on nights and weekends working alongside a very dedicated team to measurably grow registrations, sponsors, and do the very challenging and very invisible work of community-building.
During our time at Venture Out, we took on difficult, unflinching conversations from the climate crisis to STI stigmatization to hidden homelessness. Our hope was to broaden the conversation beyond a singular, amorphous queer experience to a more nuanced look at our intersectionalities and how the facets of our identity lends a more accurate lens to the overall trends we see.
And yet, the thing we were working to address in our conference content lived in the executive ranks of our parent organization.
That same: What are you doing here?
“Queerness is itself an innovation. ‘Queer’ has always been future facing. It often requires a vision. One that imagines a better future outside of repressive histories and presents.”
That invisible question that gets applied to you when you don’t fit the model for a tech culture that centers the whiteness, cisness, masculinity, able-bodiedness, thinness, neurotypicality, and wealth that it expects.
Little did we all know, our diverse and intersectional team would soon be deemed underskilled, replaceable, and a risk by queer, white, cis members of our parent organization. I won’t get into the details about this dispute here, but if you are looking for more on this you can read the BetaKit article.
Interestingly, when queer narratives are picked up by corporations, the queer community is positioned as a utopia for acceptance and equality. And yet, this view in itself is also inherently dehumanizing.
Let’s Talk ERGs Event in 2020
Queer communities are human and therefore capable of failure. And, like all other communities, they are more prone to perpetuating oppression when they aren’t willing to have conversations about power and privilege.
We need a change in the queer in tech DEI space.
One that pays closer attention to the broader power dynamics in the room.
One that acknowledges the barriers to entry to our spaces. And, one that does so while framing the conversation around the ways that our stories and outcomes differ for each of us based on our lived experiences and the intersections of our identities across lines of race, class, gender identity, sexual identity, and disability. As COVID-19 widens the equity gaps across identity lines, these conversations become increasingly critical.
Tech is broken. Queer communities are broken. And, it’s all worth fighting for.
Queerness is itself an innovation. “Queer” has always been future facing. It often requires a vision. One that imagines a better future outside of repressive histories and presents.
We believe that queer innovators are unmatched in their suitability to solve for a more inclusive tech ecosystem. To build spaces and futures that, like a gradient, point in the direction of the most change. And we’re just getting started.
📚 Speaking of next chapters
This year, we’re launching Gradient Spaces — a new not for profit designed to build affirming, generative, and joyful spaces for 2SLGBTQIA+ people to grow and innovate together.
Gradient Spaces is a unique opportunity to create spaces that queer people can not only feel welcome in, but feel that they can build themselves.
If you are a queer innovator that has struggled to find space that meaningfully acknowledges and includes all aspects of your unique, intersectional identity, Gradient Spaces is a new foundation laid just for you.
Come and build Gradient Spaces with us.
