Why is my 22-year-old apprentice colleague so helpful to me when he clearly dislikes people like me?

[AmusedTaupePlayer]

Hi Mumsnet,
I’ve just started a new job and I’m a disabled, non-white queer woman. One of my colleagues—a 22-year-old male apprentice—has taken to going out of his way to help me with tasks and paperwork. On the face of it, that seems kind, but he’s also been openly very vocal about his support for Trump, Reform UK, Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate. He’s told me he “doesn’t care” about refugees, women, disabled people or queers.
I’m baffled. Why would someone who clearly holds such contemptuous views towards my identity go out of their way to support me at work? Is he genuinely separating his personal beliefs from his professional conduct? Is this a sign that he actually respects me more than I think, or is he just playing a strange game?
Has anyone else experienced this kind of behaviour? Any ideas what might be going on in his head, or how I should handle this relationship? Thanks in advance.

Are a third thing; you’re abused simple because you’re gay. You’re kind of making being offended by the word queer all about yourself. When it’s the actual queer people who are the ones that are receiving abuse daily, one event doesn’t override a lifetime of hate. It’s still illegal to be queer in many countries. Hetro people will never have the fear that queer people have that they can be arrested or even killed because of their sexuality. If queer people want to use the word let them, they shouldn’t be judged if they use it, especially by a hetro person.

I don’t believe for one minute that a 22 year old with a maths degree, on an apprenticeship is openly saying that he dislikes women, queers and disabled people in the workplace.

This sounds like the same thread as “why does my right wing colleague have people that like him?”

I think you’re a bit obsessed with your co worker.

I'd much rather people just brought their work selves to work.😂

He also like football and drinking and lives in a rural northern town.

Oh no!!!! How on earth do you cope with him?

those two types of understanding are very different

I quite like when this sort of thing happens. It makes you question all those ‘bad horrible right wing’ people but actually they are rather pleasant.
I’m sure you, OP, as a leftie have a list of people you despise and this guy happens to be one of them, but you can’t bring yourself to, because he’s respectful to you. You don’t have to hate everyone.

Did you miss when I said that of course people should call themselves what they want to be called and that I will call them what they want me to call them? I was explaining why I PERSONALLY will not use the word queer outside those circumstances.

Did you miss the part where I previously said that queer people don’t care if hetro people have an issue or are offended by the word.

I don't think the maths degree means that he's smart generally. Hopefully his beliefs coming up against hard reality will make him rethink.

I know I missed the part where you'd been appointed representative of all same-sex-attracted people and bisexual people.

I wonder how it would go down with my friend if I called her 'queer' and told her a woman on MN said it was okay. Oh wait, I don't need to wonder, because I know she'd tell me that you don't have the right to consent to derogatory language on her behalf. Gay men and women are all individuals, and they don't share a hive mind.

I dislike the idea of identities - you are male or female, gay lesbian or straight, you are disabled or able bodied, you are white black or Asian, you don't identify as those things because if you did, you could decide to not identify as them and avoid discrimination.

I am left wing and gender critical. I work well and get on with a colleague who calls herself she/they. I think it's massively sexist and she needs to realise everyone will still think she's a woman, she can dress how she likes and it won't change her sex.

But I get on with her, work well with her, I hope I'm considerate, we have some of the same aims.

I imagine he's able to think about people en masse and people as individuals, like most of us.

It's good for people to be exposed to different viewpoints. That includes you.

It’s part of the LQBTQ community so yes it’s part of the gay community and widely recognised. Rather ridiculous to argue with a queer person that you find it offensive. Seems like it’s a hetro problem not a queer problem.

I'm not Indian but I am old enough to remember my friends getting spat at and being called the P word.
Can you not see that people who remember it as a a word shouted along with physical violence to their friends might not like you using that word?

Again with the "community", remember that the community that you are promoting is the one that has kicked lesbians out for not sharing your values that they should want to sleep with men

And that gay men and lesbians that don't want to have sex with someone of the opposites sex are not only transphobes but "sexual Nazis" and "genital fetishists", whilst at the same time ignoring just how homophobic this community that you are promoting is.

Of course a discussion about queerness gets turned around into transphobia 👏🏼 The post was about queerness not trans people. How on earth have you conflated the two?

And yet you are unable to give a direct answer to the post.

But I am talking about this "community" that you keep bringing yet are unable to defend.

Maybe you are both discovering that 'identities' aren't the same thing as personalities.

No I didn’t miss that. Thankfully, the non-hetero (to use your language) people I know do actually care about the life experiences and feelings of their friends. So that’s all right.😘

If this dreadfully mis-opinionated unclean-minded colleague even exists at all, I'd have to say that the person displaying greater intolerance is the OP who has started at least 3 threads about him and thinks they're being cunning by name-changing. Each one turning up the feigned outrage dial further, as though trying to incite a mob of public disapproval against this person who (even by OP's admission) has done nothing wrong in the workplace, apart from the Greatest Sin of Bad Beliefs.

I wonder if he even knows your identities - your skin colour and sex are of course visible but your sexual orientation isn’t and your disability might not be, so unless you’ve chosen to share he might not realise.

I seem to have missed the bit where you mentioned the awful, offensive things he’s said to you. You said he told you he “doesn’t care” about various things but has he said or done anything to actually give offence?

@AmusedTaupePlayer why do you repeatedly post about this? Surely you have your answer by now?

I'd that's grounds for not understanding.

Maybe he's just trying to do a good job and get ahead!

Probably an abstract concept (very mathematical!) and now meeting & working with a living breathing embodiment of these things who strangely he finds likeable. Next time he spouts ask him why.

Exactly. If I took my whole self to work*, there would be a few colleagues raising their eyebrows.

And no doubt the other way round too.

*for example, I would keep very quiet about thinking female sport is for female people (though perhaps that is not quite as controversial as it was), and about the fact I am not a dog person.

Keep a nice professional distance and everyone rubs along nicely.

The OP's colleague needs to learn not to discuss politics at work.

I can like somebody on a personal level and still know that it isn't possible to change biological sex.

I have a sports team friend who is a trans man, of whom I'm very fond: I use their chosen name and pronouns etc, but I don't think they are actually male.