You may have heard news that a very high-profile individual in a male-dominated profession has decided to come out of the closet. No, it’s not international strongman champion Rob Kearney. (Although “One of the World’s Strongest Men is Made Stronger by Loving Men” is just about the cutest headline ever.)
It’s Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, who finally put the anguished speculation and awkward media commentary to rest in a personal essay in Business Week. Granted, this was about the least surprising sexual orientation announcement since Sean Hayes unmasked his true self, but hey, everyone at their own pace.
The entire world knew already, but Cook still wrote, “I’ll admit this wasn’t an easy choice.” Why the hell not? (Did he actually fear personal or professional repercussions? I doubt it.) In his native Alabama, you can still be fired for being gay, there are no domestic partnership laws, and hospital visitation rights are discriminatory, yet openly LGBT people who don’t earn $74 million a year make their lives there just the same.
For an extremely wealthy and powerful public figure in an LGBT-positive state, who was already living in a glass closet, to cite his “personal privacy” as a reason to keep mum should raise an eyebrow. And when that public figure happens to lead a massive tech firm, it’s borderline ridiculous.
Tim Cook’s industry profits from the erosion of personal privacy. (To Apple’s credit, it’s recently leapfrogged past its peers on privacy issues. The Electronic Frontier Foundation awarded them one star out of six in 2013, and six stars this year.) By wearing that tattered fig leaf of privacy until it couldn’t handle even one more wash cycle, Cook demonstrates what a two-tiered society we really are. Powerful corporations learn everything about us, while the elite are accorded deference and applauded for their overdue, risk-free honesty.
Yes, the CEO of the world’s largest corporation is a gay man, but it’s not as though there haven’t been LGBT people at the top of corporate America. Only a few weeks ago, New York magazine’s cover story was devoted to Martine Rothblatt of United Therapeutics, who is both trans and the highest-paid female CEO in the US. Cook has to feel better about himself after this, and that’s good. But let’s not pretend this was an act of courage. He had less to lose than probably any gay person in history.
[Via Business Week; image via Getty Images]