Want to support LGBTQ+ colleagues but worried about saying the wrong thing? Ahead of Wear It Purple Day on 28 August, inclusion advocate Jessica Bouyamourn explains why understanding starts with asking questions.

By Anna Lopata – ANZIIF senior writer

For many well-meaning people, LGBTQ+ inclusion can feel like navigating a language that keeps changing. What exactly does transgender mean? What is cisgender?

Is queer a sexuality, an umbrella term or both? Why does someone use “they” when talking about one person? And what happens if you simply get it wrong?

Former IAG employee and LGBTQ+ inclusion advocate Jess Bouyamourn, has a reassuring answer: you probably will.

“We will sometimes get this wrong,” she says. “Language evolves, as best practice evolves, as identities within society evolves, the language will change as time goes on.”

The important thing is to keep learning.

The impact of feeling unsafe

Ahead of Wear It Purple Day on 28 August, ANZIIF invited Bouyamourn to speak with staff about LGBTQ+ inclusion, gender, sexuality, pronouns and allyship.

For Bouyamourn, who describes herself as a pansexual lesbian and member of the LGBTQ+ community, advocacy is personal. But speaking up was not always easy.

Around 15 years ago, while attending an inclusion and unconscious bias workshop at a previous employer, she wanted to ask a question about LGBTQ+ inclusion.

Even writing it down was frightening.

“My hand was shaking,” she recalls. “I felt the adrenaline pumping. I could barely get the words onto paper in front of me.”

Years of learning and speaking up have changed that. Today, she says she advocates partly for people who feel as she did then: those who want to participate in the conversation but may not yet feel safe or know how.

“I want to stand up for those that were me 15 years ago, when you kind of have the intention, but you don’t know where to put it.”

What does LGBTQ+ actually mean?

One source of anxiety can simply be terminology.

Bouyamourn generally uses LGBTQ+ and recommends organisations decide which acronym they use and apply it consistently.

Broadly, L refers to lesbian, G to gay, B to bisexual, T to transgender and Q to queer. The + recognises the many other sexual orientations and gender identities that are not represented by those five letters.

“Queer” can function as an umbrella term, but Bouyamourn cautions against assuming every transgender person identifies as queer. Gender identity and sexual orientation are different things.

She gives the example of her friend, a transgender woman, who is attracted to men.

“She is a woman and she is attracted to men and she will be in a straight relationship,” Bouyamourn explains. “She is not a queer person. She is a trans woman who is in a straight relationship.”

The distinction becomes easier when sex, sexuality and gender are separated.

Sexuality concerns attraction. Gender identity is a person’s internal sense of their gender. Gender expression is how someone presents themselves externally; and the two should not be confused.

“You can’t tell someone’s gender by looking at them,” is one of Bouyamourn’s central messages.

Cisgender, transgender and gender identity

Cisgender describes someone whose gender identity aligns with the sex they were assigned at birth.

A person assigned female at birth who identifies and lives as a woman, for example, may describe herself as cisgender.

Transgender, or trans, describes people whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. That can include transgender men and women as well as some people whose gender sits outside the man-woman binary.

As Bouyamourn explained during her ANZIIF presentation, gender identity is “how you know yourself on the inside”. Gender expression, meanwhile, is how somebody presents to the world and can be influenced by culture, family, work and social expectations.

That distinction matters because appearance tells us very little about another person’s identity.

Understanding these concepts also means LGBTQ+ colleagues do not constantly have to educate everybody around them.

“People share who they are every day, often in small ways; through language, relationships, pronouns, assumptions and appearance,” Bouyamourn says.

Straight and cisgender people do this too, usually without having to think about it.

Why pronouns matter

Pronouns are perhaps where uncertainty becomes most visible.

For Bouyamourn, however, getting them right is one of the simplest ways to demonstrate respect.

“Pronouns are just such an easy win in showing respect to other people.”

And the objection that they cannot describe one person overlooks how English is already spoken.

Imagine somebody has left a jacket behind at a restaurant.

“They left their jacket there. I hope they remember to come back and get it.”

“We all already use they when we don’t know someone’s gender,” Bouyamourn points out.

Rather than assuming somebody is he or she because of their clothes, hairstyle, voice or mannerisms, people can use they until they know.

There has also been a shift away from asking about someone’s “preferred pronouns”.

“My name is Jessica. It’s not ‘what’s your preferred name?’ My name is Jessica,” Bouyamourn says. “And so it’s not my preferred pronouns to be she, her. My pronouns are she, her.”

And if you get someone’s pronouns wrong?

“Acknowledge, apologise, move on.”

Correct yourself, use the right language and continue the conversation. A lengthy apology can put the emotional burden back onto the person who was misgendered.

From purple lanyards to genuine inclusion

Wear It Purple Day was established to create safer, more inclusive environments for LGBTQ+ young people and to ensure they know they are seen, supported and not alone. This year’s theme, Colours of Courage, recognises that courage can mean speaking up and creating change, but also quieter acts such as living authentically, asking for help or standing beside somebody else.

For employers, the significance extends well beyond wearing purple for a day.

Bouyamourn says visibility matters because people from marginalised communities actively look for signals about whether an organisation is safe.

“If an organisation, a person, a TV channel, a media network, whatever, if they’re saying nothing, it means they don’t want to say something.”

Visible support can include participating in days of significance, communicating publicly about inclusion, displaying the Pride Progress flag, joining relevant organisations and ensuring LGBTQ+ employees can see senior leaders participating.

Leadership is particularly important.

When CEOs and other senior leaders learn the language, attend Pride events and speak openly about inclusion, Bouyamourn says it can remove some of the “emotional load” from employees who would otherwise have to drive the conversation themselves.

That can be especially important in insurance and financial services, industries she describes as traditionally conservative.

“All of that really signals: I feel safe in this space because people acknowledge my identity in a positive way.”

The next step is ensuring those signals are backed by workplace practices, policies and everyday behaviour.

Because the employee who needs to see that signal may not be someone you know is LGBTQ+.

They may be the colleague sitting beside you, deciding whether it is safe to mention their partner. The new employee wondering whether to share their pronouns. Or someone like Bouyamourn 15 years ago, sitting in a workplace inclusion session with a question they desperately want to ask; and a hand shaking too much to write it down.

Resources:

• How the Stonewall Riots Sparked a Movement | History
• Report on LGBTQ+ customer experiences with insurance Worth The Risk – InsurePride
• Genderbread person The Genderbread Person – ❤ It’s Pronounced Metrosexual
• Wear It Purple Day 2026 — WEAR IT PURPLE
• InsurePride – Australia’s Insurance Industry LGBTQ+ Network