People are upset about the policy because it gives cover to treat people’s identities (such as using they/them pronouns) as forbidden political speech.
I mean, it's a workplace, not a school. You don't get to choose how you call other people, period. Other people's pronouns and names don't really matter to your day to day job, just call them whatever they want and go on with your life.
Someone saying that name/pronoun choice is "shoving a lifestyle down their throats" is not being reasonable and is being an unreasonable asshole on purpose just to make a point. At this point you tell this person to shut the fuck up or get the fuck out.
Telling someone how you should be called is not unreasonable. You're still allowed to roll eyes in your head, but calling them anything else is behaving like a petulant schoolchildren. There's no place for that in a professional environment. Just accept and move on with your life.
Imagine that a coworker keeps misgendering you, and that commenter is your manager. Your workplace has a “no politics” rule. Who do you think will be told to stop being “political”?
I also don't think that someone politicising something makes the "other side" political automatically.
If Basecamp hired a retrograde sexist that called unmarried women "whores" in the hallway, the women would have all the right to complain, and it wouldn't be a political discussion. It would be just be (in a perfect world) HR vs Asshole.
EDIT: Also I'd like to say that I'm not condoning banning politics at work. We probably agree on most things. I'm just saying that co-workers, managers and the company being reasonable makes way more difference than politics/no politics. Unfortunately there's no perfect solution to the problem of people being unreasonable, other than those sociopaths ceasing to exist.
The retrograde sexist thing sounds obvious because public opinion there is so one-sided. But that's not true for all issues. It was legal to fire employees simply for being gay or trans less than a year ago.
I think we're mostly on the same page here. I agree that ultimately, assholes will find a way to be assholes regardless of the policies in place. But we should still be wary of policies that give them cover to do so.
What I am saying is that someone forcing an issue doesn't make "both sides" political by decree. A person being misgendered can still bring the issue with HR without it being political in a way that's against any kind of political conversation.
Or at least, there have always been those who think that their belief system is obviously basic human decency and those of their opponents pure evil outside the bounds of civic discourse. Then they can pat themselves on the back and have their liberal pluralist cake while eating it too. Usually these people exist on both sides of a given topic simultaneously!
Telling someone who you want to be called in terms of a name, is reasonable. But asking them to reconsider what gender you are, what pronouns to use, etcetera is asking them to participate in an ideology or religion. Rather than asking people to blindly obey pronouns but “roll eyes in your own head”, we could just as easily ask those demanding different pronouns to “keep it in your own head”. What makes one stance more legitimate than the other?
I believe trans people deserve safety and legal protections but I don’t see altering genders or pronouns as being the same as being guaranteed basic rights. I would say the neutral position for a workplace might be that someone can claim a different gender or pronoun for themselves, but others could choose whether to go along with it or not, per their own individual choice and ideology. Neither side should let that deter from their work responsibilities.
Gender is completely meaningless when it comes to do real work. This should be similar to filling a form with preferred title "Mr", "Ms", "Mrs", "Dr", whatever. It doesn't make a difference in the final output of my work.
It's the same as religion, for example. Someone wearing a Hijab or a Kippah, or a Dastar shouldn't and doesn't affect anyones capacity to work. And it doesn't. I don't need access to the hair of my co-workers.
Even if you dislike someone's life choices, you're not being asked of anything other than to behave as neutrally and as professional as possible. You don't need to love them or spread their gospel. You're just being asked for a bare minimum of respect.
Just because some people want to turn this into a political crusade doesn't mean that the trans people or religious people are. They are just living their own lives and those things we're discussing so far are completely harmless.
But having political discussions is also not a panacea, and I've seen it also being weaponised in the name of the same oppression. For instance a very publicly racist CTO I worked under was kept because the CEO claimed "we want diversity, even diversity of opinion". Of course it was bullshit and both of them were ousted by the board.
I guess I'm just trying to be pragmatic and say we should solve the pronouns issue in a more pragmatic and humane manner (HR) rather than let people weaponise it with alt-right politics (or by claiming that trans people are being political).
Honestly I just wish those people had other hobbies other than picking on others.
In the workplace, respect for others is an expected part of the role of each person. If a person asks to be identified by a particular name, or by the use of particular pronouns, then no other person in that workplace has the right to argue that they can't/won't because of their personal beliefs.
I find it hard to emphathise with someone making a big deal out of that.
I can sort of see how you’d like to be called differently if you are changing your gender, but at the same time I cannot really blame the person calling a boy a boy.
I’d try to, but probably find it exhausting to try and keep track of how people want to be called.
Do you keep track of people's names? Their partners' names? Their jobs?
Did you ever think someone was a different gender when you first saw them? What did you do after you realized?
I don’t. But generally, by the time someone is legally allowed to change their gender it’ll be fairly hard to call them anything else, so most of the issues come from the transitional phase.
> Do you keep track of people's names? Their partners' names? Their jobs?
Fair point, though the answer is somewhere in between. I suck at remembering names too :)
I don’t think I’ve ever had to deal with it, which is probably part of the reason I find it hard to imagine.
For what it’s worth, literally everyone I’ve ever met that requests specific pronouns is fine with occasional slip-ups as long as you make a good faith effort to get it right.
Again, the point is that banning "politics" creates space for the company to say "leave the pronouns at home; engage in social issues on your own time".
Consider if the conflict was over one employee insisting on using racial slurs instead, and the victim being moved rather than the aggressor disciplined.
To me a stance like that would make me quit as a matter of principle, and I'd also avoid doing business with a company if I was aware of such a policy.
Good point about a racial slur. But invert that. Should I be forced to call some by a racial slur because they are reclaiming the word if it makes me uncomfortable?
These are not easy issues. We are talking about the mutual rights of others and the ability to force people to act. A posture of good faith compromise is warranted.
If I was being transferred due to a transgression someone else did, I'd consider suing or leaving the company as a matter of principle. The outcome of a policy that involves transferring someone rather than dealing with abuse is you over time get left with those who are fine with maintaining an abusive workplace.
If someone is trying to force you to use a slur, they're being abusive. A pronoun is not a slur.
But again, being able to even have that discussion about what is and is not acceptable is a political discussion. That Basecamp has now banned.
I for one would never consider applying to Basecamp after this because they've made it clear employees can not safely discuss issues that may affect them at work.
More importantly, I'd consider a place that cared so little about victims of abusive behaviours a horrible place to work that'd be worth leaving regardless. I'd start thinking about leaving such a please even if I just observed it happen to others, because it says something about the lack of fundamental respect for employees.
2 is frankly a terrible solution. You're keeping a "missing stair" employee whom you need to carefully ensure doesn't interact with any coworkers they'd misgender. If someone can't respect a coworker, especially after being directly told to, they should be let go.
It isn’t necessary to fire every employee because a dispute is intractable. If an employee makes a good faith effort to adapt but makes innocent mistakes that are very poorly received they may not be at fault.
Why must it be me who gives up my beliefs to accommodate the other?
Why is mutual respect not the other person understanding this is my religion?