> conservative politics in the UD make some people’s entire existence political, full stop
Funny, as a conservative minority in a straight white liberal company, my entire existence isn’t just political, it’s apparently a moral imperative that I be reminded on a daily basis that people like myself not only shouldn’t have a voice, we shouldn’t be allowed to exist in society at all. Full stop.
It’s made quite clear that my only means of survival are to keep my mouth shut and present myself as entirely apolitical.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but experience tells me you’re perfectly happy if my existence is kept silenced for the greater good of allowing your political side to thrive and speak freely, but you’re not ok with both sides being silenced, or at least “toned down”, for the sake of promoting fairness, inclusion, and productivity.
> Perhaps I’m wrong, but experience tells me you’re perfectly happy if my existence is kept silenced for the greater good of allowing your political side to thrive and speak freely
But this isn’t what I’m saying: I’m saying that plainly anodyne workplace chitchat that anecdotally confirms that I am a gay man is coded as political speech by many people.
I don’t know if you misread me or not, but if you didn’t then it actually proves my point: you’re ascribing a political “side” to my speech when I’m just trying to say “gays are gonna get told to stop mentioning their husbands like we used to”. And that’s entirely my point: you’re coding my existence and participation in banal chitchat as political, and these policies make that much more dangerous for me.
I don’t think I misread you, and I think I fully understand what you mean - to some, simply saying “my husband and I” triggers the feeling that you’re shoving an agenda in their face. I get it, and I don’t disagree at all.
But you immediately lept to “conservative politics” as the one opposition that might object to the very existence of somebody. Clearly, without any context, if ever a word were to be said about this hypothetical scenario, it would be inherently political, and you would already know from which side. So, clearly, you’ve also already ascribed politics to this anodyne chitchat.
But I also think it’s disingenuous to leap from “banning political discussions at work” to “the LGBTQ family has to pretend they don’t exist”. If culture is such that people discuss what they did with their significant other or family over the weekend, then setting an environment where everyone is welcome to discuss that freely falls on leadership.
Somebody finding fault with that is going to have to be dealt with by HR the same way you might deal with a person who constantly shames everyone else for eating sugary donuts every morning - an opinion they can keep to themselves, without attacking or threatening others.
I’m not saying the line is always easy to find, but it’s not nearly as complex as most make it out to be.
> But you immediately lept to “conservative politics” as the one opposition that might object to the very existence of somebody.
It’s not the only one, I suppose. But you’re painting it as if it’s not the primary one. It is far and away a position held by those who also profess conservative political values. I understand the hair you’re trying to split, but I don’t feel it’s worth splitting. The fact that a handful of non-conservative folks might also find my existence offensive doesn’t really change the fact that mostly, it’s “conservative” identified folks.
> It’s not the only one, I suppose. But you’re painting it as if it’s not the primary one. It is far and away a position held by those who also profess conservative political values. I understand the hair you’re trying to split, but I don’t feel it’s worth splitting.
Maybe in Afghanistan, but not in the US. The majority of Republicans support gay marriage. Out of those that don’t, few would find “the existence” of a gay person “offensive” even if they reject extending state sanction to gay marriage. For a long time many Americans opposed re-marriage for divorced people. That doesn’t mean they found the existence of divorced people offensive.
I don’t see the point in treating everything short of complete acceptance as equivalent to opposing someone’s “existence.” Some people in America don’t want, as a matter of government policy, immigrants like me coming to the US from Muslim countries. They’re not opposed to “my existence”—invariably they’ll leave me alone if I leave them alone.
Progress is also good, but it remains true that we aren’t exactly at “majority support” yet. And it’s not guaranteed to keep climbing either. I hope it does, obviously, because that’s a very good thing for me. We’re just not there yet.
I’m from a Muslim country, and among Muslim Americans same sex relationships are taboo. While Muslim support for same sex marriage crossed the 50% mark a couple of years ago, it’s completely rejected within the community itself. (Almost no Muslim Americans identity as LGBT, and virtually no mosques will perform same sex marriages: https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/28/us/lgbt-muslims-pride-progres....) But the many Muslim Americans who oppose same sex marriage don’t oppose the “existence” of gay people. They believe, consistent with their religion, that marriage is for procreation and government sanction should only be extended to heterosexual relationships. They are also probably ignorant on the issue of sexual orientation being an innate trait. My aunts don’t want to grant government sanction to same-sex relationships, but it’s unfair to say they’re a danger to the “existence” of gay people.
I want to commend you both for having a civilized conversation about something that can get very heated.
Speaking from my own (ex-Christian) upbringing, I got only the vaguest references to people being gay as a child/teen except that they were all sinners. I certainly couldn't have held a rational conversation about it because, aside from references inside the church I didn't know any gay people (maybe I did, who could know).
It wasn't until I reached adulthood and left that community behind that I began to realize the way LGBTQ* people are and were demonized within certain christian circles.
The argument that marriage is solely for procreation, and/or the property of religions doesn't really hold water. Christians I have come across, seem to think they invented marriage, which is just not even close to historically accurate.
As to procreation only, this is fraught with the way laws treat things like next of kin, power of attorney and tax benefits. None of those things, have anything to do with procreation and yet they're a big part of marriage.
On the positive side @drewbug01, over the course of 15 years I have gone from incredibly uncomfortable with the whole thing (because of upbringing), to some of my best friends being from those communities. There is progress, and with any luck there will continue to be progress.
> On the positive side @drewbug01, over the course of 15 years I have gone from incredibly uncomfortable with the whole thing (because of upbringing), to some of my best friends being from those communities. There is progress, and with any luck there will continue to be progress.
I'm happy to hear that; it is actually good to hear. I really do think things are getting better, albeit perhaps too slowly.
My own background is similar to yours (ex-Christian, not knowing LGBT people growing up, etc). What you said resonates with me quite a bit.
> While Muslim support for same sex marriage crossed the 50% mark a couple of years ago, it’s completely rejected within the community itself.
Honestly, this is one of the reasons I don't like to reach for statistics in this kind of debate - because of what you've highlighted here. The numbers on the survey say one thing, but they paint a rosier picture than reality.
> My aunts don’t want to grant government sanction to same-sex relationships, but it’s unfair to say they’re a danger to the “existence” of gay people.
I consider my relationship with my husband to be a core part of my identity (certainly not the only part, of course). It's a major part of who I am and how I move about the world; how I exist within it and relate to it. And this is what straight people do, as well - and for them, it's considered absolutely normal (and society even encourages it in some ways).
What's unfair, to me, is to say that my "existence" is only relegated to physically living - life is about a lot more than that. We're not talking about killing the gays, here. We're talking about people who'd like to force the gays back into the closet so that they don't have to hear about relationships that they think are an affront to their religion.
Your Aunts aren't calling for the extermination of gay people, and that's good. But we shouldn't pretend that "they can live" is tolerant.
---
As an aside, we're pretty far into the weeds with this, although I think what we're talking about is still important to discuss. My original comment, last night, was about how the policy can harm people, and how it can be abused - not so much about what we're discussing now.
It's frustrating to see the goalposts in these discussions move from "most of us agree the state shouldn't do anything to penalize same-sex couples" to "we should litigate what's in the heart of Rayiner's aunt".
It's quite hard when people keep hearing "and now I want your Aunt to accept gay people, fully, in her heart" when all I keep saying is "some people might use this as cover to harass gay people, because that's historically what they've done."
I also find the goalpost moving extremely frustrating, but we should be clear about who is actually moving that: the people reading calls for "acceptance" into discussion of a shitty thing that happens to LGBT people at work.
I would have a personal problem relating to or associating with anyone who held anti-LGBT beliefs in their heart, the same way I'd never work with anyone who believed Black people were in any way inferior to other people.
But this litigation of what's inside people's heads, when what they're publicly advocating for and voting for is the position we're asking of them in the first place, just makes me think we're surveilling for people to be angry at, because it gives us a dopamine hit.
We're not being asked to associate with anyone's aunt here and I think we should try to keep to the topic at hand.
> But this litigation of what's inside people's heads
Nobody is advocating that here, why do you keep bringing it up? This seems like something you feel is happening but that’s not what we are talking about at all.
> We’re not being asked to associate with anyone’s aunt here and I think we should try to keep to the topic at hand.
...you and other commenters brought up the Aunt. I don’t know if you’re confused, or what; but I didn’t bring the Aunt up in the first place. It arose spontaneously as a straw man up-thread.
You said that “objection” “to the very existence” of gay people “is far and away a position held by those who also profess conservative political values.” I don’t think that fairly characterizes people with socially conservative values, such as my aunts. That’s not a straw man, that’s an example to address your core point.
> I consider my relationship with my husband to be a core part of my identity (certainly not the only part, of course). It's a major part of who I am and how I move about the world; how I exist within it and relate to it. And this is what straight people do, as well - and for them, it's considered absolutely normal (and society even encourages it in some ways).
> What's unfair, to me, is to say that my "existence" is only relegated to physically living - life is about a lot more than that. We're not talking about killing the gays, here. We're talking about people who'd like to force the gays back into the closet so that they don't have to hear about relationships that they think are an affront to their religion.
There's two senses of the word "existence" here - one is physically living and being present in the world (ie: not dead). The other sense is "projecting outward from yourself," as in interacting with others and having relationships with other people in your life, moving through and impacting the world somehow around you. The latter sense is what I'm talking about. It's philosophical, but important.
To move it out of the realm of your personal relationships and fully into mine, let's replace your Aunt with my Aunt. My Aunt has expressed to me that she doesn't want to ever hear about me being gay, to the point of asking me not to bring a significant other around her children, lest they know that I am not straight.
That's the kind of "opposed to my existence" that I'm talking about - they don't want to kill me, but they want me to be entirely muted and silent; present but not really participating as a human being. Preferably, they'd like me to pretend to be "straight" if at all possible, including therapy to change myself. It's not for my benefit, obviously.
That's what I'm trying to get at, and I still think it's fair to say that people professing conservative political values like my Aunt (maybe yours too, who knows) would very much like me to be "seen, and not heard" - back in the closet pretending the actual substance of my life doesn't exist because it's more convenient for their worldview, and changing myself to suit their narratives whenever possible. I very much see that still reflected in modern conservative politics - see the debates about whether or not cruelties like "conversion therapy" should be banned, whether or not trans people are allowed to live their lives openly, etc.
---
Please note: your Aunt only came up because you brought her up, but I'm not trying to bash on her repeatedly. We can talk about mine instead for a handy point of reference, or someone else entirely. Bringing family into this makes it a lot harder to talk about, and we can instead pick a different point of reference. Denigrating family members isn't what I'm trying to do here, and I hope that much is at least obvious.
Nothing about the policy seemed to suggest to me that gay people would have to conceal their sexuality at work or avoid mentioning it. I think you can read it as protecting conversations around gay people. Consider the following hypothetical:
You: "... my husband..."
Me: "You know, I don't think gay people should be married. Marriage is blah blah blah"
------------------------
By my reading of the OP "my" comment there would be prohibited. Now, I'm bringing politics (or religion - which I also feel is and should be banned at work) into things to talk about why I condemn you or oppose your marriage.
In other words, rather than explain exactly what political positions and discussions are permitted we should just not have political discussions at work. If you mention your husband, I shouldn't tell you my thoughts about marriage or homosexuality. Conversely, if I mention I attend a Mormon Temple, you shouldn't tell me your thoughts regarding Mormonism. Details (within reason) about oneself are fine, but political discussion based on those details are not.
Of course, it's possible I've misread the document, and if they do intend to silence homosexuals from letting slip any details about their life, or whatever, then I oppose their changes. I think all people should be equally free at work to talk about themselves and their lives where it is appropriate. This document is just setting the guideline that political discussions are not appropriate.
Bob: "... my husband..."
Fred: "oh"
Bob: "What?"
Fred: "nothing"
Bob: "Okay..."
Fred: "....i think i'll go finish my lunch at my desk"
Bob: "hey don't forget to finish that code review for me later"
Fred: <acts different in subtle and plausibly deniable way with Bob from now on"
Bob: "Hey, do you have a problem with me being gay?"
Fred: "DON'T MAKE THIS POLITICAL" etc.
It could, but how would a corporate policy that permits discussing politics help anything? If Fred is anti-gay and going to subtly be a jerk to Bob from now on, do you think that in the alternate reality where discussion of politics were permitted that things would be better? In this alternate reality do you expect Bob to have a quick workplace chat with Fred that convinces him to be cool with gay people?
That's the same argument people use against legalizing gay marriage or creating laws forbidding private businesses from discriminating against gay people. "You're not going to make anyone not homophobic this way!"
No, not immediately. But if you ban politics in this context then you are tacitly encouraging homophobic behaviour.
Bob: "Boss, Fred is being homophobic"
Boss: "What happened?"
Bob: <retells above story>
Boss: "Look, don't ask don't tell. He didn't force you to make it a thing. He didn't say anything. What exactly did he do wrong? He's right, you're the one that made it political, and we banned that at the office."
It's an exit valve out of difficult conversations.
> Nothing about the policy seemed to suggest to me that gay people would have to conceal their sexuality at work or avoid mentioning it.
You fundamentally misunderstand what I’m trying to say, though: it’s not that the new policy explicitly says “gays must hide again”. It’s that a large number of people think “being gay” is political; any mention that you are gay is inherently “throwing it in their face,” and so a policy banning “political discussion” gives significant cover to those who’d like to pretend gay people don’t exist. They can claim, legitimately in many people’s minds, that hearing about someone’s “sexual preferences” is political speech.
Of course it all feels contrived and silly, because popular opinion is legitimately (yet slowly) moving toward the position of “gay people existing is not political.” But we are far, far from that position today. The things I’m describing are not a fever dream, but things that actually still happen to LGBT people in the workplace.
I find about 50% of my coworkers offensive in one way or another. Doesn't mean I make it an issue or throw it in their face or try to sabotage their work or anything like that. A lot of people who would never be friends in their private lives work together in tolerance and cooperation at the office. Expecting everyone to approve of every aspect of how you live is unrealistic.
> Expecting everyone to approve of every aspect of how you live is unrealistic.
Who asked for that, though? This is precisely my point: my existence is being conflated with “approving every aspect of how you live.”
That’s the entire problem, right there. People can and will and do cause problems for LGBT people in the workplace just for existing, for saying boring things like “my husband and I went to the movies.”
Thank you for being less incendiary, I appreciate it!
Yes, the Republican Party has been more staunchly traditional with its views of things like gay marriage, but the premise of Republicans being “THE party of homophobia and hate” is disingenuous from MANY angles.
Fact is, this 2016 platform is barely distinguishable from the policies that the left enacted in the 90s under people like Clinton, and continued as late as Obama’s stance early in his presidency.
The left has evolved just as the right has on these issues. The parties have been a handful of years apart in this regard at most, but the left is allowed, with the help of the media, to freely shed its past with flimsy justification at best, while the crudest voices of the right are amplified and made to appear as representative of the entire party.
Even the linked NPR article admits that Trump is more moderate on these issues, and judging from the makeup of the most recent CPAC, the direction of the party towards social libertarianism with limited government involvement couldn’t be more clear.
But the media tries to prevent that progress from happening in the party, both by deceiving its readers into believing Trump is Hitler, by cherry-picking voices on the right that clearly differ from how the party has evolved, while also gaslighting its readers on the left’s own troubled past.
Secondly, the notion that every LGBTQ or other minority status must be a single issue voter hyper focused on their supposed minority identity is itself a bit offensive, yet pushed by the left.
If you face homelessness as a kid as a result of government policies, suddenly you don’t have the luxury of caring about whether you can legally marry.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually very grateful for the cultural acceptance that the left has helped push towards LGBTQ causes, amongst others.
But for all of the cultural acceptance they’ve helped achieve, they have their share of policies that I feel continue to harm.
For example, I have no interest in forcing a bakery to bake me a cake. My only interest is that I also be legally allowed to open my own bakery that openly supports everyone. But I’ve been co-opted into this fight, whether I like it or not.
Which leads me to my final point, which is the notion that every issue is so black and white that everyone neatly fits into the “good” box or the “evil” box.
Both sides have perpetrated this division for their own needs, but I refuse to play into it.
For as much as the left has helped the culture change to accept me, they have equally helped push the notion that I can’t have nuanced views of marriage, of a bakery’s choice of service, and of government assistance policies.
We’re all either marching in the parade, or we’re nazis.
This leads to the very statement you initially made - a clear, binary choice, with one side advocating for the elimination of my entire existence, and the other, a utopia of acceptance and love.
Which in turn leads to the kind of dehumanizing, violent rhetoric I hear regularly at work from the supposed side of tolerance, who remind me that it might be ok if I “came out” as LGBTQ at work, but make it abundantly clear that my job, and likely my own safety, would be at risk if I ever “came
out” as a Trump supporter.
If I take their “jokes” about re-education camps and forced sterlizarion and physical beatings seriously, that is.
Sorry, long winded response, but I have few outlets and I very much appreciate your efforts towards a conversation!
Why are you connecting "banning political discussions at work" to "being conservative"? Either here, or in general.
Any conservative who expressed any views like that at a company where political discussion was banned would certainly be violating the political discussion policy, at the least, and potentially also violating harassment policies.
I think we are in this mess because we are mixing up state and religion.
Marriage was a religious thing.
There is no reason any part of the state should mess with it.
But, for a while it so happened that it was useful for the state to rely on marriage to mean "two people living together" for whatever that should mean in tax codes etc. With that came the rules that followed the mainstream religion at the time.
Today that isn't the case any longer and it should be split.
Call the new thing what you want: around here it is something like "civil marriage" as opposed to "(implicit: religious) marriage".
The point should be to separate those two things:
- can you get the same tax benefits? Yes.
- can you throw a party to celebrate it? Yes.
- are people allowed to ask someone about it before hiring them or avoid hiring someone if they find out about it in another way? No.
- is it "religious marriage" so we can force every church to accept it? No.
Does this help?
FTR: I'm a practicing conservative Christian. I think a lot of stuff others do is wrong, and if asked directly I will have to keep silent or answer truthfully.
I do however appreciate my liberty to live my life as I want without neither the state nor anyone else interfering (coming from a non mainstream church this definitely hasn't always been the case, look up Hans Nielsen Hauge for easy access to examples of what I mean) and I want to extend that freedom to others:
If people aren't Christians I might think what they do is wrong, I don't want them to preach in my church etc but I leave them alone and hope for the favour to be returned.
Do you have sources to back that up? I'm genuinely curious. My understanding was that marriage was always a social contract, but that society and religion used to be more intertwined thus 'religious marriage'.
I don't disagree with the idea of separating the religious and civil/cultural aspects of marriage. But I think you'll find non religious folk resistant to calling civil/cultural partnerships something other than marriage. It's a deeply embedded cultural concept not just a religious concept.
> Call the new thing what you want: around here it is something like "civil marriage" as opposed to "(implicit: religious) marriage".
I think the major problem here is that most conservative Christians who propose it still want “religious marriage” to count as a “civil marriage.” Fundamentally separating the two isn’t actually a bad idea in my opinion, but in practice it seems like most people who suggested it (from the conservative side of things) didn’t actually want that. They wanted “separate but equal” in a sense, and they also didn’t particularly care if it actually happened or not - it was a delaying tactic here in the US.
There's usually no problem with a religious marriage counting as a civil marriage, except for edge cases like religions who accepts polygamy etc since all the rules that are needed for civil marriage (and more) are typically also required by mainstream religions.
And religions mostly have no problem with civil marriage as long as nobody forces them to bless it. Exceptions: I guess WBC and a few others.
I mean, for starters it’s a little insulting for people to say “Oh no, you can’t have marriage. Let’s go create a new kind of marriage and that’ll be the same thing.” To know that not only do they not want to bless it, they want to not even have it called the same name is just really a slap in the face, as far as bargaining chips go. Why settle for an insult?
But it’s not even just that - if the US religious right had honestly been fine with that, then why didn’t that come to pass? That would have been a much easier thing to do than to fight marriage equality tooth and nail at every turn. The fact that they didn’t really support this obvious easy way out is very telling.
Why are we pretending like the ones asking for the rights didn’t take some obvious logical, alternate path? LGBT folks largely supported “civil unions” which were explicitly unequal, doesn’t it stand to reason they would have supported something far more equal? The answer is that LGBT people weren’t the ones refusing to take some higher road here.
I’m pretty sure mainstream republicans are pretty onboard with accepting homosexuality, it’s the trans movement that is currently under scrutiny. Obviously we can find examples of members of the GOP that are against gay marriage, but the last four or five years has seen that toned down a bunch.
People change, conservatives pride themselves on changing slower, but it does happen.
> Obviously we can find examples of members of the GOP that are against gay marriage
The party platform is the official stance of the Republican party and it is against same sex marriage. It won't change until 2024. Republicans who support it are extreme outliers, not the other way around.
If I was in a same sex marriage I would feel very, very uncomfortable working at a company that "bans politics" when a large number of my peers thinks my spouse is "unnatural".
>If I was in a same sex marriage I would feel very, very uncomfortable working at a company that "bans politics" when a large number of my peers thinks my spouse is "unnatural".
What's especially important to remember though, is if a company were to limit political discussions, by your same statements/logic, that would also include opinions shared _against_ same sex marriage though, no?
Wouldn't that create a safer environment where 1) people are mostly insulated from people sharing their views against it, and 2) if someone were to share something about their same sex spouse, any publicly expressed opposition against it at the workplace would be considered breaking that workplace norm.
In the most theoretical sense, perhaps it could. But that’s not how it tends to play out in reality, and it hasn’t played out that way in the past.
I think a lot of people want to treat this as an experiment - “couldn’t it work?” - but a lot of people with lived experience are saying “this policy doesn’t work, because this used to be how workplace policies were, and they had really bad side-effects.”
I just think most of us are unwilling to run the experiment again just because it should work. In practice, it does not.
28% in 2014 to 49% today. Sorry I missed the majority by 2%. This is a huge change in a short period of time. Sure it’s slower than liberal acceptance, but it’s happening.
This is exactly why I don’t want these conversations in my company’s chat channels. I am not advocating against gay marriage, but I get downvoted because I say something to the effect of “hey maybe you might have an outdated view of many of your conservative voting peers”. This despite the fact that my personal views are probably more in line with yours than you’d expect. I’m just not willing to toss half the country under a bus before I even have a conversation with them.
>But this isn’t what I’m saying: I’m saying that plainly anodyne workplace chitchat that anecdotally confirms that I am a gay man is coded as political speech by many people.
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Basecamp is not at all saying people should not reveal, let alone actively hide, their sexual orientation, gender identity, or anything like that.
I think anyone else at the company who considered such a thing political and tried to tell that person or the chat that what they're doing is political would be the only individual who's violating the "no politics at work" policy (perhaps in addition to other policies, too).
I understand your concern in general, here, but I don't see any reason why "gays are gonna get told to stop mentioning their husbands like we used to" is a thing that would start happening as a result of this policy change at Basecamp. I very strongly share your opinion that a conservative person who would do such a thing is deeply in the wrong, but I don't really think I see how it would apply to this particular situation.
I don't think "banning political discussion" at all carries the implications you're concerned about at most companies, and I think if it did happen at such a company it would be the thing that's violating the policy.
> I think anyone else at the company who considered such a thing political and tried to tell that person or the chat that what they're doing is political would be the only individual who's violating the "no politics at work" policy (perhaps in addition to other policies, too).
You'd think, wouldn't you? :)
This is the problem though: it all depends on who hears the complaint, and what biases they hold. There's nothing in the policy that's definitively banning this kind of harassment-labeled-as-politics, and so it could easily still happen.
And I'm so adamant about the possibility because I've seen this happen! It's not a hypothetical to me. It's really gross, but it still plays out this way today. The US has made a lot of progress in this particular area, but it's still not a given that your management will support you or that you're going to end up in a workplace where bias is the exception, and not the norm.
> Funny, as a conservative minority in a straight white liberal company, my entire existence isn’t just political, it’s apparently a moral imperative that I be reminded on a daily basis that people like myself not only shouldn’t have a voice, we shouldn’t be allowed to exist in society at all. Full stop.
As someone on the opposite side of the political spectrum from you, I want to say - I respect your opinions, I can see some of the arguments for them, I'm willing to listen, and I would have absolutely no problem working with you, employing you, or hanging out. I'm really sorry it's come to this, and it is definitely my side of the political spectrum that is more to blame.
I never really get chance to say that to anyone, so there it is FWIW.
I agree here. I miss having loud good faith arguments with conservative coworkers (and ones more liberal than me) at lunch time and strongly disagreeing on some issues, and then just getting back to work talking about how much we hated Oracle databases. Mind you these were coworkers from all backgrounds.
I just miss high quality political debate. What we have how is just name calling and tribalism.
While I wish my work environment allowed me to express my views as everyone else does, I do genuinely appreciate hearing other side, and I’ve certainly gained valuable perspective on some issues this way.
As the other reply from atonse mentioned, I would love an environment where ideas can be discussed (and even disagreed with) but with mutual respect for each other as people with differing life experiences.
I think we mostly have more in common than most of us think, and I think we would all have a lot less hate, a lot more shared understanding, and ultimately better outcomes at work and at home.
I don't know your lived experience. I'm going to try not to doubt it. Maybe your coworkers are toxic and you are trying to talk to them about why low taxes are good because they encourage innovation, and that government-run agencies are not as efficient as private enterprises, and they are screaming the Communist Manifesto back at you.
But in my experience, that's not the kinds of opinions that I see the modern discourse have no tolerance for. Happy to be hear some stories otherwise and have my own mind be opened about the kind of discrimination you're talking about.
The kind of toxicity I’m talking about doesn’t even involve a conversation.
As an example, a couple months ago at the start of a dev meeting, my boss made a joke about a protest organized by business owners in the area urging our governor to open up businesses. It was covered as a largely conservative group.
Here’s roughly how that went:
Boss: “Doesn’t seem like a chance of this lockdown ending with all of those morons protesting this week”
Coworker A: “Yeah, it’s scary how many of them think the virus doesn’t exist”
Coworker B (imitating conservatives): “I’ll just shoot at the virus with my gun”
Everyone laughs
Coworker A: “The problem is they’re just not educated. If only we could steal their kids away and take them to some private education camp”
Boss grunts with agreement.
Coworker B: “Or they should just be prevented from having kids at all”
Coworker A: “Maybe it’s for the best that they’re the ones that will die off. Natural selection at work.”
Everyone laughs. Then the meeting starts.
It escalates so quickly, in an awkward “half joking” way, that at no point to I feel able to jump in and provide perspective that many of them feel their livelihoods are threatened. That maybe we’re lucky that we haven’t missed a paycheck. That maybe they’re protesting not out of ignorance, but rather perspective we don’t have.
Sometimes it’s simpler - my boss jokes that a neighbor put up a Trump sign and he “always thought they seemed like inbreds”, or a coworker questions why his friends daughter is dating a conservative who “hates women”.
Is that my cue to explain “actually, I’m a conservative but believe strongly in women’s equality” or “hey, just because I have strong feelings about the 2nd amendment precisely as a means for women and minorities to protect themselves doesn’t mean I’m a bigot or an inbred?”
To be fair, I have not outed myself as either a conservative or LGBTQ. Maybe they would think twice about what they say if I do. Maybe these are perfectly innocent jokes using a form of hyperbole that I’m just not getting.
But I’ve also had plenty of conversations with friends and family along the “I wish gay people would keep it to themselves” and “kids need a mom and dad”. In those cases I’ve always felt able to have a discussion advocating against their ideas without feeling like my tires would be slashed in the parking lot.
You're getting downvoted, but I upvoted you. That sounds pretty shitty, I'm sorry.
What you're describing is not acceptable, and frankly reeks of classism. Lack of education for large parts of the US is not a matter of choice, but a complete lack of access.
Eugenics was super popular amongst the liberal elite in the first half of the 20th century until Hitler took things too far.
I'm not going to pretend that I haven't done something similar amongst like-minded left-leaning friends. The conservative response to the pandemic has been absolutely horrifying. The anti-intellectualism and science denialism cannot be excused by the fear of livelihood loss. There are plenty of liberal small business owners too, and they're wearing masks.
But that's shooting the shit with close friends in a private space. This should not happen in a professional setting.
And, in the context of what we're talking about on this thread, it cannot be justified as discussion of politics. This is bullying behaviour.
I presume the downvote is from someone who similarly sees this as just a group of like-minded people making jokes.
But this same kind of talk would be considered unacceptable if made about anyone other than a political orientation.
And while you've had a very measured and respectful response, even your response is accompanied with labels of "anti-intellectualism" and "science denialism". I'm sure you don't mean this as a personal attack on me, and I in no way equate it to what my colleagues were saying in my provided example.
But if I have what I believe to be well-reasoned justification and context for my opinion that isn't being represented, being labeled as "anti-intellectual" before I even have my say doesn't feel too good.
The protest my colleagues were joking about, at the time, was about businesses being allowed to open at all, not about mask wearing or distancing. My boss, just weeks after this incident, in a moment of Zoom frustration, lamented that at some point "we just need to accept the risk and open up". His opinion is afforded nuance by his peers, but the "other side" is not.
I could just as well point to polling that showed that liberals significantly overestimate the likelihood of dying from COVID as science denialism. A NY Times article on this subject classified it as such.
I could point to people physically attacking a woman in a sparse park for not wearing a mask while jogging alone as anti-intellectualism.
Or to the woman who went to great expense to set up properly spaced outdoor dining who was prevented from opening her restaurant while a film crew across the street was allowed to host a jam-packed gathering inside tents as a perfectly justified reason for joining such a protest.
How does all this relate?
Because whether my colleagues use bullying language, or more reserved language like "anti-intellectualism", the result is the same - one group is marginalized as lesser and put into a position where attempting to come forward and join the discussion immediately puts them into a box that is seen not as just a difference of opinion with proper reasoning to support it, but instead as something that intrinsically makes them inferior and less abled.
Even though, I suspect, if an actual discussion were allowed to happen, and we could remove many of these labels, we would find ourselves largely to be in agreement on most issues, and could empathize with each other even where we disagree. I highly doubt you condone the crazier examples of the left, and I can assure you I don't agree with many of the fringe ideas on the right.
This leads back to the issue at hand - if political discussion is allowed, in the current climate, then it will quickly lead to bullying and marginalization of whichever group is in the minority. Dressing it up with nicer words doesn't really help - if one side is quickly painted as intellectually inferior without respect for their own life experiences and reasoning, then it will not lead to a productive or respectful work environment.
I'm still not sure banning all political discussion is the answer, but there is clearly something wrong with the way we see each other and talk about each other that has to change before political discussion can return to being as benign in the workplace as it probably should be.
I definitely didn't mean to accuse you of anti-intellectualism or science denialism, you've given me no reason to think either of those traits.
But I do have to paint "conservatives" for lack of a better word with that brush based on specifically mask and COVID vaccination responses.
I don't ascribe all anti-intellectualism to the right. Essential Oils, Vaccinations causing Autism, Healing Crystals, and Chakras are all anti-intellectualist science-denialism with a profoundly leftist tint.
But you have to admit that the people downplaying COVID, effectiveness of masks, and saying they are unlikely to take a vaccine are generally conservatives. And when this is the most prevalent subject of news in the world today, it ends up influencing people's perspectives.
> Funny, as a conservative minority in a straight white liberal company,
What is a "straight white" liberal company? Are you saying you've asked all your coworkers their sexual orientation, or are you making assumptions based on heteronormativity. Dating people of the opposite gender doesn't necessarily make one straight.
As a not-entirely-straight man in tech, I have never discussed my degree of "straightness" at work, but I would be a bit taken aback by someone assuming this.
This sort of over-reaction to throwaway comments is a big part of the problem. Take the most generous interpretation - maybe they just mean "a company where I am in the minority politically", that's all you need to take to follow the point.
Stop being the language police or we'll never make any progress. Tolerance, generosity, always assume the best of someone.
>That's because most conservative politics is fundamentally opposed to the rights of any given minority group, pretty much via definition.
This is a common misconception of conservative views toward minority groups. I find it much more common that conservatives are totally down with the rights, but annoyed or put off by strong activism among minority groups; the preachy nature of advertising, comedy, and other entertainment; and the retaliation against differing views, whether that be job losses, deplatforming, or any other far-reaching (read: disproportionate) social ramifications.
What conservatives and those who want to have a nuanced discussion around identity are finding difficult is the idea that the previously harsh nature of church life with regards to "sin" and rejection by a religious body have now been championed by identity activists who are now doing the same thing, only in a secular fashion -- going as far as calling otherwise benign expressions and statements of differing views "hateful" when they really aren't, and calling for the social/career equivalent of burning the witch at the stake -- alongside it being widely popular and mainstream to criticize speech that barely comes close to offending anyone with an ever-changing standard driving acceptable speech.
Hence the common narrative in conservative circles being: "powerful people are telling you how to feel on behalf of minority groups with little to no consent or representation of the minority groups themselves", true or not.
Example: an all-white leadership at Nextdoor adds racism warnings before users post content, not considering that a Person of Color could be posting "all lives matter" and imposing that they should be offended by what they themselves post (fact: Black conservatives exist in DROVES and strongly oppose BLM):
Source -- https://notthebee.com/article/neighborhood-social-media-app-...
There are radical pockets of people in almost every subculture, but it is difficult to believe that minority groups are facing as many challenges as non-minorities say there are (that's key!) when each minority group is enthusiastically supported by the very most powerful government and private institutions. This is especially true, now that it has become commonplace, popular, and acceptable in public (government) settings and entertainment to be Anti-White, which is patently racist.
With that much support from the most powerful among us, what else is left? Some on the Left actively call for education camps and even genocide against conservatives. This cannot be proven differently.
> I find it much more common that conservatives are totally down with the rights, but annoyed or put off by strong activism among minority groups
Then why are we still debating, in the US, whether or not different groups should have equal rights? Why are conservative legislatures throughout the country still trying to roll equal rights back ?
This point can't possibly be true, in light of what conservative groups are actually doing. The actions highlight the truth.
Or, to put it Biblically, "ye shall know them by their fruits."
Funny, I feel like there is a healthy conservative movement in the US and you are literally surrounded by conservatives all the time. In fact I think 74 million of them voted in the last election. So please explain how being a white male makes you some kind of victimized under-class.
Kinda depends on what you do and say as a conservative I guess. I agree that in liberal circles there is a bias against conservatives, but that's also because many conservative views are intolerant.
Expressing "I'm a conservative" should be fine, but saying "I think homosexuality is gross. Oh by the way I'm conservative" is not. Unfortunately, the "conservatives" are often associated with the latter.
I also think it's ok to be intolerant of intolerance, and not all views should be equally freely expressed. Taking a more extreme example (and definitely not saying OP or all conservatives are like this), but I'm ok with a klan member feeling his only means of survival at a work place is to keep his mouth shut about his beliefs.
Funny, as a conservative minority in a straight white liberal company, my entire existence isn’t just political, it’s apparently a moral imperative that I be reminded on a daily basis that people like myself not only shouldn’t have a voice, we shouldn’t be allowed to exist in society at all. Full stop.
It’s made quite clear that my only means of survival are to keep my mouth shut and present myself as entirely apolitical.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but experience tells me you’re perfectly happy if my existence is kept silenced for the greater good of allowing your political side to thrive and speak freely, but you’re not ok with both sides being silenced, or at least “toned down”, for the sake of promoting fairness, inclusion, and productivity.