It’s not political to say as a general principle we support the customs of other cultures even if we don’t agree”. If I go to China I don’t tell them their names are in the wrong order because their family name comes first and given name comes second, I act according to custom and respect. If a Chinese person visits me in the US same principle. Why not treat all coworkers the same.

No I don't.

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.

I agree with you, but you have to realize that you’re describing a sociopolitical stance that is far from universal. See for example this comment elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27002001

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”?

Sure, but if a workplace is unreasonable then all bets are off... I don't think any kind of political discussion is going to have any effect in a workplace that accepts a manager purposefully misgendering a co-worker.

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.

I think it's too reductive to say "if a workplace is unreasonable", as if it's a binary condition. At any workplace, there are going to be all sorts of people, with all sorts of opinions, many of which may not become apparent until the issue is forced. Some of those people will be in charge of others. So it's entirely plausible to have an office full of mostly-reasonable people and still find a manager who asks their report to relax about being misgendered.

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.

I'm not implying it's a binary condition. There's many degrees of "being reasonable", and we're still have a lot of progress to make.

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.

It's not really a political issue if you are a "he" and people call you a "she", within reason. That is pretty typical HR stuff.

You’re kidding yourself if you think basic human decency hasn’t become a political position in the U.S.

"Basic human decency" has always been a political position, in most countries that have a messy democracy (eg not small and very homogenous).

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!

I disagree. Forcing made-up pronoun "choices" and the notion of changeable, additional, or even infinite genders is the same as forcing others to go along with an ideology that is invented by a small but loud segment of activists. It is disconnected both from biological realities and language standards. When others are forced to go along with it, they are being forced into supporting harms like women’s spaces being lost (for example women’s sports), impressionable children being exposed to gender identity ideology in school, and so on.

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.

I go to work to get things done.

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.

I know we’re basically in agreement, but I’m just curious whether the multiple comments asserting that misgendering people is the “neutral” position have affected your opinion on how politics bans can be weaponized.

Oh, I don't disagree with that. I still think political discussion bans are dangerous and the wrong way to go, and it could definitely be used as a tool for oppression.

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.