Ellen Pao: Our world is LGBTQIA. Your workplace should be too | Hacker News Reader

Ellen Pao: Our world is LGBTQIA. Your workplace should be too

range.co

17 pointsmlboykin35 comments

There is a lot of hate from TERFs and religious groups towards the non-straight/non-cis community.

I think the corporatization of pride parades (like this article advocates for) is both harmful and helpful, insofar as its a positive for those of us in the Overton window (eg: gay people like myself) but it drowns out those that society still violently rejects (Trans, enby, pan, poly, etc) with corporate advertising rather than forcing society to improve.

> but it drowns out those that society still violently rejects

The big joke is that society is always going to be violently rejecting some outgroups; it's just a human universal to want to make scapegoats out of thin air. Labeling does not oppose this process; on the contrary, it facilitates and encourages it. There is value in explicitly promoting tolerance, inclusiveness and openness as real virtues; but to assume that meaningless quips like "your workplace should be LGBTQIA..." help this message is simply delusional. Your workplace should not be LGBTQIAetc.etc., and the less it gets involved with that sort of thing, the more LGBTQIA folks will be able to trust it to do the right thing in the long run.

That abbreviation seems to grow by about two characters per year

If you are having trouble, you can use GSM for Gender and Sexual Minorities.

Why conflate gender and sexuality, though? They're two different things.

Gender identity absolutely must be accommodated in the workplace.

But sexuality is on another orthogonal axis. What you do in the bedroom is irrelevant to what you do in the boardroom.

Shouldn't both be irrelevant to what you do in the boardroom? What you're saying makes it sound like it's not okay to marginalize women in the workplace, but is ok to marginalize gay women.

Why should a workplace embody properties of the greater community, as opposed to being a place where a person’s identity is only defined by their work and professional interactions?

How can you embody properties of the “greater community,” if not all of the “greater community” is present?

I’m asking why should it be considered good for people in a workplace to express (while at work) properties of a community that exists outside of the workplace? Why should cultures (of any kind) be actively celebrated at work for example?

Workplaces are comprised of people who possess cultural attributes. Why is it common to believe this matters in some way that necessitates acknowledgement, discussion or celebration of those attributes while specifically being in the workplace?

An example from my own life is parenthood. I’m a parent, yet I feel a strong moral and ethical duty to keep my parenthood culture out of my professional workplace. None of my coworkers owe me any sort of acknowledgement of my identity as a parent. In fact, apart from non-work conversations in which others opt in to participating, my coworkers ostensibly should not even know if I am a parent or not — it is simply not relevant and needs no accounting.

I don’t see why this wouldn’t apply to any type of cultural attribute.

Because the vast majority of people have personal biases that they cannot completely just put away at the workplace.

I don’t understand why this detail would be relevant to my original question. Can you say more?

Please don't take HN on generic flamewar tangents. Nothing good comes of them, and in the end it amounts to trolling.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I _very_ sincerely do not understand how it’s a flame war tangent or in any way not explicitly on-topic and valuable as a discussion in response to the article.

I'm making a guess that you're as familiar with internet flamewars on these predictable, generic, and inflammatory topics as the rest of us are. If so, then your innocent-seeming question was concern trolling. If not, I'm sorry for the mistaken assumption. Moderation is guesswork.

That sounds like an extreme false dichotomy to me. The only two possible options are that I’m either being disingenuous and coy about trope flame war topics or else I’m too disconnected to know that my comment can only be perceived that way?

No, sorry. I understand moderation is not easy and I appreciate the work you do to facilitate this site, but that’s just not going to cut it.

Posting a philosophical question about the foundational assumptions that go into a topic like workplace culture norms is absolutely sincere and on-topic here.

As I said, it's guesswork, but my guess is that you're far too experienced an internet commenter not to know what concern trolling is. When I see someone seemingly-innocently try to relitigate workplace diversity in a thread about an article by Ellen Pao, of all authors, I ask myself what the odds are that they don't know what effect that is likely to have.

So what does the “IA” stand for?

Intersex/Asexual usually.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT#Intersex_inclusion

LGBTTQQIAAP

LGBTTIQQ2SA

I suspect you've been downvoted because you've put out these long acronyms without (much) explaination and they may suspect, as I mistakenly did, that it was said in mockery.

From the wiki page:

The initialism LGBTTQQIAAP (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, ally, pansexual)

I'm so sorry to be a white male programmer around 40! I'm so much in the crowd...

"Around 4.5 percent of the US population is LGBT, [...] the LGBT population is young, [...] under 34 years of age—and growing." ... ok, it's a typical marketing bullshit: look all the money that you could earn selling to these people!!! Actually, she doesn't give a shit about the people, only about a "new" market.

Moreover, she failed to understand the difference between "being LGBT" and "showing to be LGBT". I don't think that there are MORE LGBT (nor less either)... only that they need less to hide (which is not good or bad: your work shouldn't be where you live your life, only where you earn money anyway).

What does you being white or male or around 40 have to do this article?

The article says that employees are least likely to answer questions about gender or sexual orientation. Project Include's case studies[1] suggest that the surveys include questions about religion, marriage, children, disabled family members, and other things people could also hide. Why don't they?

[1] https://projectinclude.org/case_studies/

> The article says that employees are least likely to answer questions about gender or sexual orientation

In France (where I live), that kind of question would be illegal. There's quite a clear separation between personal life and professional life: whatever you do outside work is your only business, and nobody will matter (and shouldn't, as it would be illegal).

In a way, in France, the accepted policy is like the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy that was (still is?) the US Army policy if I remember.

Of course it might be only a cultural difference

This comment breaks the site guidelines in a bunch of ways. This is particularly awful:

> Actually, she doesn't give a shit about the people

Personal attacks will get you banned here. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended?

OK, it wasn't meant to be a "personal" attack. Only to suggest that it looked to me more than a marketing intro than anything else.

I will shut up from now on, and only use HN as a reader.

That's certainly not necessary. If you'd like to post thoughtful, substantive comments, you're as welcome to do so as anyone else is. We're just trying as a community to get out of the shallower, angrier habits of internet commenting.

You might also find these links helpful for getting the intention of this site:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html

I completely agree with Ellen Pao about being aware and pro-active when it comes to workplace discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

It's too bad that Ellen Pao doesn't think that fit people, people who believe the most responsible behavior is to not eat more food than you need, have a place in the workforce or in discussions.

Please don't start trolling HN with this topic again, or we will end up having to ban not only this account but your main account as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com