The 20-something insurance executive had already reached an out-of-court settlement with his employer
FILE PHOTO © Getty Images / Michael H
A Japanese man who developed a mental illness after he was outed as gay by his boss at an insurance company has become eligible for workers’ compensation in what is believed to be the first such case in the country, the unnamed man’s support group revealed in a news conference on Monday.
The labor standards office determined last year that the young man’s psychiatric illness was caused by “outing as a form of power harassment,” validating his workers’ compensation claim, which the support group suggested was the first time an illness caused by outing was recognized as employment-related in Japan.
The insurer had already reached an out-of-court settlement with its former employee in 2020, admitting to the outing, acknowledging responsibility for his mental illness, and promising to educate its employees to prevent the situation from arising again.
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The man nevertheless opted to pursue a workers’ comp claim, stating on Monday that if he had stayed silent, he would have been tolerating human rights abuse. He applauded the labor standards board’s decision and urged other victims of outing to seek help from authorities.
Just one month after joining an insurance agency in Tokyo in 2019, the man told his employer he was living with a male romantic partner, stressing that the information should remain private so that he could tell his colleagues when he felt comfortable doing so.
Several months later, a female part-time co-worker began avoiding him. She subsequently quit, and he discovered during her farewell party that she had learned he was gay – from his boss, who claimed to have spilled the beans on his employee’s behalf.
The boss laughed it off when confronted by his underling, explaining he “thought there was no problem telling that to just one person.”
However, the man lost trust in his boss and was later diagnosed with a mental illness that was not identified in news reports on the case. He took a leave of absence and ultimately quit the job after two years.
Tokyo’s Toshima Ward, where the insurance company is located, passed a law prohibiting disclosing people’s sexual orientation and gender identity without their consent in 2019, following in the footsteps of Kunitachi City, which banned outing the previous year after a graduate student at Hitotsubashi University fell to his death from a school building in an apparent suicide after the man he was pursuing romantically told his peers the student was gay.
Some 25% of LGBTQ Japanese people have faced outing, according to a survey cited by Kyodo News.
