No politics, you come to work to work, as long as you treat your colleagues with respect.
Companies shouldn't be changing the political landscape anyway, that would be a scary world.
I'm C-Level, so I can hopefully instil this as culture.
I'm curious as to how you think lobbying works in the present day and the past four decades or so.
BTW: I'm a big fan of your work. :)
Sweden has not yet decided what to make illegal, but lobbyists are avoiding doing anything that violates rule 0: http://www.aalep.eu/lobbying-landscape-sweden
Rule 0 is "Don't act in a way that makes me create more rules", in most old online communities.
I love that!
Basically, where it is illegal, they don't call it lobbying.
Wow, I guess I need to move to Sweden. That sounds extremely nice. And in that context, I _absolutely_ agree with your statement that corporations shouldn't try to shift the political conversation.
> BTW: I'm a big fan of your work. :)
Aww, thanks!
Does respect include calling them what they prefer to be called? No matter how you answer this question, a large portion of the population will say you're being political.
I personally don't know any right-wingers that wouldn't call you by the name/gender that you request them to. These people probably exist but it is a very small group.
Theres a difference between disagreeing with the concept at a societal level vs disrespecting someone on a personal level. Far fewer people do that.
I've never been faced with this problem personally, but what I can say that is that if you've known someone for any length of time say "Bill" and then one day "Bill" wants to be called "Jill" there is an ask that extends far beyond what is ordinarily reasonable.
That's why I think "deadnaming" is totally stupid. That name isn't dead. You just don't like/prefer it. But it was there and people know that name. They know you—and you just changed your mind. That's not their problem—that's yours.
Is your opinion the same?
Marriage is a union where two people make a lifelong commitment to each other: their identity is now united. This is a normal and good thing.
Someone wants a nick-name? Sure. No problem.
Someone who was a guy/gal and now claims to be something else? Especially if he/she is actively known in a space as something before and _then_ changes? That's a HUGE demand that honestly shouldn't be something anyone is comfortable asking others to do.
Edit: Guess I should put a /s. Is there a tag for highly passive aggresive /s?
Even to cis people.
Doesn't happen all the time or everywhere, but I've seen people brag about doing this.
I find it personally helpful to get points of data like this.
Living in Switzerland, the cultural standards are sometimes astonishingly different between countries (e.g. I still regularly see job application forms that require both a headshot of the candidate and a date of birth).
The answers generally are:
- "We've always done it this way" - Well sorry to hear that, but that's not a reason
- "Everybody does it this way" - Well, I'm a candidate and I can tell you that no, only 10% of companies are doing it this way
- "We want to get a first impression of the person before we invest time to look at them closer" - The first step in your application process is a 15min call with an HR person. Do you really need a step before that to reject someone based on age or ethnicity or gender?
So far, no one has reacted with any kind of understanding.
While I'll readily admit I don't like a lot of the political environment here, there are also a _lot_ of amazing people and places.
That's... a new one for me. Ah, they're all over Etsy—if anyone else was thrown by that, they're exactly what your first guess would be based on the name: a big round pin with your preferred pronouns printed on it. Interesting.
Well, yes, obviously? They have a pronoun pin. That's not a matter of disrespecting that person (as you note, we do it to everyone); it's a matter of disrespecting pronoun pins on principle.
"Well, pronoun pins are dumb"
Pick one.
Pardon me, but what? You expect the persons wearing the pin to not feel disrespected? Or that the pin will be emotionally damaged by the disrespect?
Whatever your employment contract says is what goes into the employee directory, and should be consistent with the tax office.
If you’re referring to pronouns then I don’t have a good answer honestly. I have a personal opinion that pronouns are not important. If you want to call me mister or miss or Mzzz then that’s not going to cause pain, unless you do it with malicious intent.
The point of respect is that your personal opinions are not important; the opinions of the person on the other end of your communications are.
That we’ve managed to conduct our society so far without using alternative pronouns such as “xi/xir” is a strong indication that it’s a neo-political construct and, while I might be sympathetic to the person who prefers to be called by those terms, I will not go out of my way to force everyone in the company to - they’re also usually referential (without the person present) and I will get them wrong myself too.
At the end of the day, I wouldn't want someone making what is probably a tough situation more difficult and hassling me about a name change if I were in that position. I have a really long name, and I'd be annoyed after a while if someone kept addressing me by that name, rather than the shorter name I choose to go by as an adult.
None of this is political, it's just being a polite southerner. You treat folks how you want to be treated.
For example, I might say that calling me by my preferred pronouns isn't political, it's a matter of basic respect. Other people might think this is an act of political coercion, and report me to HR for violating the "no politics" policy. Resolving that dispute is a political act.
Moreover companies are political entities granted a charter by the state, and don't hesitate to have positions on political issues that directly affect their business.
So "no politics" doesn't mean "no politics" at all, it means (charitably) no discussion of politics beyond things the prevailing political consensus deems as apolitical, or (uncharitably) no discussion of anything that makes the dominant group uncomfortable.
So, while I appreciate greatly the attempt to politicise the world and make this topic greyer than it needs to be: it’s a little at odds with reality unless you’ve entirely internalised the notion that everything is political always.
This is the same argument as “silence is violence” but even that movement acknowledges the reason they consider it violence is because it supports the status quo.
The status quo should not be considered political. In order to be apolitical one must live within the status quo; only excluding the inherently political things like protesting or denouncing/promoting politicians or parties.
Similar to how theism doesn’t preclude denouncing other faiths or supporting any: whatever the current climate is with regards to the dominant theism; is what is usually understood to be normal by atheists wherever they are based- with the obvious exclusion of inherently religious things like going to a place of worship or praying.
No, not everything is political, but many things are, especially when we're talking about how to govern corporations, which are political entities with a charter from the state and often have a great deal of power over their employees and the communities in which they operate.
> The status quo should not be considered political. In order to be apolitical one must live within the status quo; only excluding the inherently political things like protesting or denouncing/promoting politicians or parties.
And who defines what is "within the status quo"? Doing so is a political act.
Politics is simply the way people in groups come up with decisions. How you and your friends decide where to go for dinner? Politics, whether it's voting or someone's birthday preference, or because your one friend Ayn really has to be the one to decide or else she throws a fit.
The status quo? Well, yeah, it's not political, in roughly the same way that a paper mill is not political. But like you say yourself, it becomes political when someone wants to change something. If someone wants to build a paper mill in the middle of your neighborhood, you'd best get your political hat on and start doing the political boogie because you don't want to live near the smell and chemicals. If someone wants to change the status quo, say because they think the current treatment of Xs by Ys is unacceptable, then you can bet that both supporting and opposing the status quo will become political.
it's unethical, then, to allow them to make policy as they're considerably more powerful than the individual, much less empathetic and optimise for extremely self-serving behaviours.