IGNORING TIM COOK’S SEXUALITY

Outing has once again hit the headlines, with media outlets agonizing over the new chief executive officer of Apple, Inc.

BY MARK ARIEL

In March 1990, journalist and gay activist Michelangelo Signorile wrote a cover story for the now-defunct OutWeek magazine, titled “The Secret Gay Life of Malcolm Forbes,” within weeks of the multimillionaire’s death.
The focus of Signorile’s article was how the media had colluded in maintaining the “secret” of the late media mogul Malcolm Forbes’ gay life. But the larger purpose was to initiate a debate over a media double standard in which virtually all aspects of public figures’ private lives were open for scrutiny – except homosexually.
People argued over outing’s historic, strategic, and ethical aspects; its implications for privacy; and its impact on those outed. To some, it seemed cruel; to others, a revolutionary redefinition of homosexual identity. It was a rare moment when the gay and straight worlds were fully engaged in the same discussion.
Many considered the debate’s unofficial end to be in 1995, when a mainstream publication, The Wall Street Journal, revealed that another media mogul, Jann Wenner, had left his wife for his boyfriend. That revelation was precisely what Signorile had advocated: that the media report the truth about public figures when that truth is relevant.
Now outing has once again hit the headlines, with media outlets agonizing over Tim Cook’s (the new chief executive officer of Apple Inc) sexuality.

For the most part, there has been journalistic silence on Cook’s sexuality, save for a few speculative pieces that have massively stirred the pot. At the top of the list is Ryan Tate’s “Meet Apple’s New Boss, The Most Powerful Gay Man in Silicon Valley,” which appeared at Gawker in January. Predictably, the “outing” based on anonymous sources outraged many.

Felix Salmon, a blogging editor for Reuters, on the other hand, says the media has a duty to report on the sexuality of so-called powerful “glass-closeted” gay people.

“Surely this is something we can and should be celebrating, if only in the name of diversity – that a company which by some measures the largest and most important in the world is now being run by a gay man,” writes Salmon. “Certainly when it comes to gay role models, Cook is great: he’s the boring systems-and-processes guy, not the flashy design guru, and as such he cuts sharply against stereotype.”

“Tim Cook is, after all, not just one of the most powerful gay men in the world; he’s one of the most powerful people in the world, period.”

“One of the issues here,” states Salmon, “is that most news outlets cover Cook as part of their Apple story, and Cook’s sexuality is irrelevant to his role at Apple. And so the other story – the fact that the ranks of big-company CEOs have just become significantly more diverse – is being overlooked and ignored. And that’s bad for the gay and lesbian community.”
CLOSETS OF FEAR
“The institution of the closet is one of fear,”  says Salmon, “one where people would rather be ignored than noticed, because they fear the negative repercussions of being known to be gay. It’s an institution, which Cook, like any gay man born in 1960, knows at first hand. But now the risk of being ignored is bigger in the other direction: if the world can’t see gay men and women in all their true diversity, if the only homosexuals they know of are the … ones they see on TV, then that only serves to perpetuate stereotypes.”
Tim Cook is, after all, not just one of the most powerful gay men in the world; he’s one of the most powerful people in the world, period. The first instinct of many journalists writing about Cook will be to ignore the issue of his sexuality. It’s not germane to his job, they’re only writing about him because of the job he holds, and therefore they shouldn’t write about it.

On top of that, Cook is not exactly open about his sexuality, and Apple has never said anything about it. Cook’s formative years, professionally speaking, were the 12 years he spent at IBM between 1982 and 1994 – and at that company, in those days, coming out was contraindicated from a career-development perspective. Mike Fuller, a gay VP at IBM, told the Advocate in 2001 that he knew “IBM employees who worked for the company in the 1980s who told me they left IBM because they weren’t comfortable coming out at work”; this comes as little surprise. After all, the years that Cook spent at straight-laced IBM coincided with the height of the AIDS panic, when people were worried about sharing toilet seats with homosexuals. It would be hard to come out at any company in that kind of atmosphere.
“But thankfully,” opines Salmon, “we’ve moved a very long way from those days. Homosexuality is no longer something shameful, to be coy or secretive about – especially not when you’ve risen to the very top of your profession. In fact, it’s incumbent upon a public-company CEO not to be in the closet.”
INVASION OF PRIVACY

Is this an invasion of privacy? To a certain extent, yes. More people know more things about Tim Cook now than they did a few weeks ago. That’s what happens when you become the CEO of Apple.
In any public corporation, says Salmon, there’s a small number of people whose jobs are outward-facing, and at the top of the list is always the CEO. He’s the public face of the company; if you see a corporate profile on the cover of a glossy magazine, chances are it will be illustrated with a big picture of the CEO. If you don’t want your face splashed across the world’s media, then you shouldn’t be CEO of a massively valuable company that touches millions of people. Sometimes, as in the case of Mark Zuckerberg, entire movies – and not particularly accurate ones, either – are made about you and your personal life. Reporting that Tim Cook is gay is absolutely nothing, in the invasion-of-privacy stakes, compared to the movie “The Social Network.” But CEOs, especially CEOs of public companies, are public figures. Their salaries are a matter of public knowledge. “When you’re a public figure, you lose a certain amount of privacy,” says Salmon. “And the higher your profile rises, the more privacy you lose. Tim Cook knows that; he knows that it’s silly to expect to be the CEO of Apple without the world knowing that he’s gay. So let’s stop pretending that we’re not talking about this subject for his sake.”
“Keeping his sexuality a secret is no longer an option,” says Salmon. “And so the press shouldn’t treat it as though it’s something to be avoided at all costs. There’s no ethical dilemma when it comes to reporting on Cook’s sexuality: rather, the ethical dilemma comes in not reporting it, thereby perpetuating the idea that there’s some kind of stigma associated with being gay. Yes, the stigma does still exist in much of society. But it’s not the job of the press to perpetuate it. Quite the opposite.”