The context of workplaces could be defined as heteronormative, from a structural, discursive and practical point of view. Sexual orientation is still an underresearched area of diversity in work organizations (Ward & Winstanley, 2005) because of the difficulties in accessing information around themes connected to sexuality. As a result, the framework provided by the present study produces a significant contribution to our understanding of minority sexual identity at work. Through the conceptual framework of performativity, this article's aim is to give voice to every individual who doesn't recognise her/himself in a heterosexual definition of her/his orientation, desires, behaviours, emotions, and identities. I propose to adopt Greimas's semiotic square (1970) in order to define a heuristic device relating to the "disclosure" and "silence" possibilities in workplaces. The empirical material in this article is based on 34 in-depth interviews conducted with nonheterosexual members of private and public Italian organizations.

Through an intersectional perspective, the author analyzes what it means to perform a bisexual and polyamorous identity in the Italian familistic welfare regime. Considering the intersections of polyamory and bisexuality, the author employs the Greimas semiotic square to read the process of coming out experienced by people who shared their experiences on polyamory: two interviewees define themselves as bisexual ciswomen, and one self-defines as a transsexual gay man in a primary relationship with a self-defined bisexual cisman. Afterwards, the author explores how they live their intimate lives through compulsory invisibility, coming out, and staying invisible. Finally, the author focuses on how the existence of non-normative communities opens up the possibility of meeting other bisexual people in a context where there are no bisexual communitie, and argues that this process allows people to self-identify as bisexual and polyamorous in the public sphere.

This article stems from three years of fieldwork (2015-2017) in the context of a five-year-long, European-Research-Councilfunded research project called INTIMATE-Citizenship, Care and Choice: The Micropolitics of Intimacy in Southern Europe, a comparative qualitative study that involves three countries (Italy, Portugal, and Spain) and studies intimate citizenship and the micropolitics of daily life of LGBTQ people. The article focuses specifically on the Italian case and shows how non-heterosexual women deal with the scarce legislative protection Italy grants. Our aim is to reflect upon the reciprocal influence of different axes from public and private spaces and on how they impact the micropolitics and the daily choices of our lesbian, bisexual, and pansexual participants. More specifically, considering the lack of legal and social recognition of lesbian experiences in Italy, we will focus on the different strategies of reaction, assimilation, and resistance employed by participants in their private and public life. The three-year-long fieldwork covered the period between the proposal of the bill on same-sex civil unions and the first year after Act 76/2016 came into force. This allows us to sketch a brief diachronic analysis of its functioning, in particular from the perspective of the very subjects it impacts.

Making a contribution to the sociology of intimacy, this article aims to present how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and queer people live their ethical non-monogamous relationships in Italy. Giving great space to the concept of consent through the literature on the ethics of care, I will refer to different conceptualizations of critical consent given by feminist and BDSM communities, spaces in which ethics is based on unveiling power structures through the focus on consent. In fact, the centrality of the collective dimension in embracing ethical non-monogamies appears fundamental, challenging the self-help – and neoliberal – literature according to which polyamory is just a personal choice. Afterwards, I will deepen the concept of care, developing it through its means of communication, attentiveness, responsibility, and responsiveness within relationships. Presented this way, care recognizes us all as interdependent: at the same time, care-givers and care-receivers. I suggest that this interdependency is symbolized by the kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with a mix of golden powder, a representation of the manifold matrix of care, composed of care-giving, care-receiving, and care for oneself.

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