From isolation to allyship: My journey with Pride & the LGBTQ+ Community

Andreea Ouatu, Artwork Planner at Kellanova, tells myGwork her personal story of how she learnt the meaning of Pride. Andreea also talks about the importance of Pride and being active in supporting Pride in the workplace.

Hey there! My name is Andreea Ouatu, and I am an Artwork Planner at Kellanova (former Kellogg’s). I joined the company in March 2022 and have been an active member of our Pride ERG group.

I am originally from Romania and moved to the UK to attend Lancaster University in 2016. For a bit of background, Romanian society, like most Eastern European countries, has been heavily influenced by its former communist rule and overall presence and belief in Christianity. As a result, the culture and general viewpoint have been ingrained with traditional and conservative values. Although it has been legal to have a different sexual orientation since 2001, same-sex relationships are still not recognized, and there has been general discrimination and negative attitudes toward anyone who is part of the LGBTQ+ community. Things have been slowly changing over the past few years, and there’s some clear progress toward acceptance and recognition, especially in larger cities and among younger generations. Still, this was not the case when I grew up in the early 2000s.

Image supplied by author

Foreign media was probably the way I first learned about different sexual orientations. I remember listening to ‘All the Things She Said’ by t.A.T.u for the first time and seeing the music video on MTV, not understanding the lyrics as I didn’t learn English yet, but as a 5-year-old, I was fascinated. I asked my mom about it, and the general gist of what she said was that the singers were struggling lesbians, facing public criticism as what they were doing was frowned upon (now it’s known years later that it was a case of queer baiting). She didn’t go into it further, but from that day, I understood that not being straight is not socially acceptable, as well as living a painful, sad life. It was viewed as something to pity. Something that was ‘frowned upon.’ It didn’t help that once I started to go to school, ‘gay’ was a term for boys to bully each other or give something a negative meaning.

On the other end of the spectrum, ‘I Kissed a Girl’ by Katy Perry was out, and suddenly, kissing another girl sounded like a fun, must-have experience. It was meaningless fun that didn’t count, something to incite the boys and tick off your bucket list. But that was pretty much it. Everything else was off the table, and you had to stick to your gender norms.

Things changed drastically when I moved to the UK to study at a university. I didn’t necessarily have a negative opinion about the queer community. Still, I felt very isolated and far from it, ‘the gays’ were in San Francisco, and that was pretty much it. What happened very early on was that during my first month as a student, I met my best friend. We were both members of society, and one evening, as we got to know each other, I casually asked her if there was any guy in her life, and to my surprise, she said there was a girl. This shocked me as not only was this the first queer person I ever talked to (to my knowledge), but she was also from Romania. As we’ve built a strong friendship across the years, ending up being housemates for two of them, I started to learn about her experiences and the LGBTQ+ community.

Listening to her and seeing how she wasn’t comfortable disclosing her romantic relationship to her family within our country’s context stayed with me. It was amazing to grow with her over those university years and see what an accepting and inclusive environment can do to a person. She could openly talk about her sexual orientation and, more than that, publicly celebrate it during Pride Month. This experience created a strong allyship within me and fueled me to stand up and support those in the community in any way I can.

I am grateful that I can act on my beliefs through my work, and being part of our pride group at Kellanova has meant a lot to me. For the past year and a half, I have been focusing on creating and distributing internal communication materials to celebrate and educate on different significant days in the LGTBQ+ community and bring awareness and engagement to various organized events. I thoroughly enjoy being an active member and pushing for the company to be more inclusive and informed each year.

For me, Pride means a time to celebrate people in the community and make their voices heard about their needs, experiences, and struggles. It is a time of love, care, and compassion, and as a proud Ally, I ask everyone to be a bit kinder and use their privilege to move forward to a more inclusive society. This Pride Month, I encourage you all to take a step forward- whether educating yourself about the LGBTQ+ community, participating in Pride Month activities, or supporting LGBTQ+ rights in your way. Every action counts towards creating a more inclusive and accepting world. Like Lady Gaga said, we’re on the right track, baby, we were born this way.