Transcriber: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Mile Živković
Thank you.
(Applause)
Thank you so much.
I always laugh when I have to read my bio because, as you can imagine,
Tampa was my city a couple of weeks ago:
Hillary Clinton, ACLU, Human Rights Campaign...
So, I want to actually begin by telling you a story
that is a personal story, and I actually rarely do this.
But I'm 30, and 15 years ago,
I spoke a very basic truth about myself to my mother, my father and my sister.
Perhaps, you've already guessed, but I told them very simply that I'm gay,
And If anybody in this room has ever had to have that conversation
with a family member - you don't have to wave your hands now -
it doesn't always go over quite as smoothly as you might think it would.
I recommend doing it around Thanksgiving, maybe when some extended family is around.
(Laughter)
So, you know,
probably, the most prominet influence on my life and my hero is my mother.
And so, I certainly felt like I was on egg shells
watching her go through her process of understanding, you know,
what this really means for who she thought I was
and where I was going in life.
And, something else about my mother
that has always been a source of strength for her and for me
is her fundamental belief
that knowledge, logic and even data will set you free.
You know, we've all heard that truth shall set you free.
My mother believes in the principles of logic and data,
and she became an economist.
She is the only woman in her family to attend college,
as a first-generation American.
This was her path forward.
This is something that no one can take from you.
And so, when I was growing up, everything was a formula.
If I didn't get an A in a class, she came back and said,
"Everything is a formula. You just need to add more homework time
to the left-hand side of that equation."
So, a really normal childhood, as you can imagine.
(Laughter)
So, you know, within, I think, 24 or 48 hours of me telling them that I was gay,
I saw of course in her and my father's bedroom stacks of books;
"When Someone You Know Is Gay," this and that.
So, I sort of hung low, and one day I came to her bedroom,
and, I mean, literally, she just looked crestfallen.
I just thought, "Oh, gosh, what's the next conversation going to be?"
And I got closer,
and next to her was a stack of pages from the Washington Post.
Now, this was in the 90s.
So, it was pre Craigslist, pre Match.com.
There was a thing called "Classifieds."
My mother who, could not even utter the word "lesbian,"
her economist mind had been studying the frequency rates
of women-seeking-women ads
versus men seeking women and men seeking men.
And she just said, "Deena, the numbers are not on your side."
(Laughter)
"It is always the shortest column! Look at this!"
And she had weeks of data already assembled.
(Laughter)
So, I didn't really know how to react, but OK, you know.
I probably shouldn't share this.
It is a TED form, so I guess -
Actually, you know, it's fine because TED is free and therapy isn't.
So, I'll just say that she said -
And again, my mother is very prim and proper, and she said,
"They're all buxom women and they're not looking for LTRs!"
"LTR" is a "long-term relationship" -
(Laughter)
So, this was obviously difficult news for all of us,
but the truth that she was speaking,
that I find particularly relevant today and you heard from my bio,
is that whenever something is new to us,
we fundamentally crave, as part of this new story,
an understanding of how many,
"What are we talking about? What is the quantity here?"
And now, before my current position,
I worked a lot on gender issues in politics.
And what do we women always say?
"We hold up 50% of the world. We hold up 50% of the sky."
There's an immediate visceral understanding of what that 50% means.
The speaker before me had a slide that the 99%.
You know, we define ourselves and we define social movements by numbers.
Now, what do you do then, when there's no count of who you are?
So, actually, before I took my current job,
this was five years ago when I joined the Human Rights Campaign,
a national organization working on LGBT equality,
I swear my real sense of hesitance
was that I didn't know how to make a case for equality
without knowing how many of us there are.
You know, I'm just curious:
does anybody know what the estimates were the last time the US census was out?
Of how many lesbian, gay, bisexual -
Do you know why you don't know that? Because no one's ever asked.
There not a single all-encompassing federal survey of this population,
and yet, we're in a position to advocate for our rights.
The best we can do -
You know, I'm sure you've head One In Ten,
perhaps you saw the movie about Kinsey,
we certainly know celebrities,
but no one's been able to get their arms around how many people are like me,
are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
And so, I want to tell you the narrative of just how this movement,
the particular portion of the movement I work on,
was able to define itself without that data point
that is so critical to virtually every other social movement.
Ten years ago, in the United States, 2002,
states like Florida had bans on same sex couples adopting children.
There were no federal hate crimes protections.
This was, you know, after Matthew Shepard and countless other LGBT people
were murdered or faced violence for who they are.
Don't Ask Don't Tell was the law of the land.
A case known as Lawrence v. Texas had not been decided.
And so, certain "homosexual acts"
were actually rendered criminal in this country.
So, it was within this rather grim legal environment
that advocates that predate me -
I just happen to have the privilege of being on this stage -
launched an incredibly innovative strategy.
While part of this movement would be lobbying on Capitol Hill for our rights,
would be coming out and telling our stories,
a quiet and deliberate movement to engage with corporate America began,
because, in corporate America, you don't have to make a business case
that what you're proposing is going to affect
hundreds of thousands of people.
In fact, you get to make the case like,
"What do you gain by allowing discrimination in your workplace?
Do you want the next brilliant idea,
that could come from someone who also happens to be LGBT,
to be lost to harassment, or to discrimination, or to bias
of a hiring manager?"
And so, quietly and methodically,
this movement was able to engage with the private sector.
And I should state why this is also so important.
Even today, the state of Florida where we are
joins 28 other states in which it's perfectly legal
to deny me, or fire me, or otherwise make a job determination,
simply based on the fact that you know I'm gay.
And that's because we don't have federal workplace protections for this community.
And so, you'll hear us say - "us" meaning those in the movement -
that you can be denied a job, fired, simply for being who you are,
in 29 states.
And so, what's the hope?
I'm guessing some of you, just statistically,
may in fact be LGBT of have someone in you family, someone you care about.
You know, what has cut across this map of states in which this is allowable
has actually been the very rapid gains made within the private sector.
And so, the conversations that took place
were first based, I think, on the talent case,
"You would never want to lose this talent."
And then, the second profile that emerged was that of the LGBT consumer.
And so, again, quietly and methodically,
the brilliant minds in marketing
were able to determine, with sub-samples of this population,
just how much are they estimated to have in terms of their buying power.
And the most recent estimate from Witeck Communications,
a premier firm, is upwards of $790 billion.
So, this is a cosumer market that's loyal to companies that do right by them,
they're savvy, they investigate,
and they do it largely actually through the types of reports
that we put out at HRC.
So, one thing that I think is pretty astounding in this work
is, as I said, you don't always have to make the case
that thousands or millions of people will be impacted by this,
but what you can do is quantify what inequality means.
And what do I mean by that?
On average, in the United States,
roughly a fifth of your total compensation from you job, from your employer,
comes in the form of benefits.
And so, if you've got lesbian Deena
and straight Deena working in the same office,
and I don't have access to domestic partner benefits
and an equal compensation,
that means someone who's exactly the same as me, but happens to be straight,
is walking out with five-fifths or a whole paycheck
and I'm walking out with four-fifths.
And that flies in the face of the fundamental sense
of fairness we all have around equal pay for equal work.
So, something else that I think is very important to know about this community
is that, with the law of the land being the Defensive Marriage Act -
Are you all familiar with what that is?
I see some nods.
So, this is the law that prevents the federal government
from recognizing same sex marriages and same sex partnerships.
And I say both because I'm from the district of Columbia,
and if I were to marry a woman there, where it is legal,
or marry a woman in the state of Massachusetts,
that has absolutely no bearing on hundreds of federal benefits;
and again, someone who's exactly the same as me
and just happens to marry a man.
Most notably, every April, during tax season,
same sex couples often owe the government
about $1,200 or $1,300 more than their straight peers,
and the reason for that is, as critical as healthcare benefits are,
when a woman like myself enrolls a domestic partner in her benefits plan,
the fair market value of those benefits is added to my W-2 as taxable income.
And so, again, same two workers:
one ends up with a tax liability
paying the government about $1,200 more than someone who's straight.
So, it's this ability to quantify impact over sheer size of a population
that has moved corporate America forward.
You know, in the last 18 months,
we've seen companies from Google to Time-Warner,
to financial service and law firms,
actually add to the total compensation
of those who have to pay this tax,
so that both are walking out with the same net income.
It's called "truing up" or "grossing up" of income,
but the jargon is not quite as important as the principle.
Corporate America is given a floor, if you will,
below which they can't go in terms of federal mandates,
but they're not given a ceiling.
You know, they can go well ahead
of what lagging lawmakers are asking them to do.
I have a sibling, I have friends, I have family who care about me
and feel a personal investment in these issues,
and what we are seeing across this youngest generation of people
is that even those who are not LGBT care so much about these issues
that they do make their decisions as far as who they want to work for
and where they want to spend money,
based on these principles and values that a corporation can demonstrate.
And so, probably in a weekly basis, a hiring manager will tell me,
"I was interviewing somebody, and they're not even gay,
and they're asking us why we have this score
on your annual scorecard of our corporate LGBT practices, and not this one."
So, the extent to which a company is forward-looking
certainly translates to their ability to recruit and retain top talent.
Any other questions, Nathan?
(Laughter)
Nathan: Deena's actually doing us a big favor
because I hear some tummies rumbling - Deena Fidas: Yeah!
Nathan: And I think if you'd like to -
you can pass your time on to the next speaker.
Is that right? DF: Yes.
Nathan: We've got about 3,5 minutes that we'll pass on, if that's OK with you.
DF: Absolutely. Thank you.
Nathan: Deena Fidas. Thank you, that was fantastic.
DF: Thanks.
(Applause) (Cheers)