Who mandates that?
> shielded from a lot of criticism
By whom? From where I stand, a lot of folks have stated calling me and mine “groomers,” which is pretty critical in my book. They seem free enough to criticize to me?
> while another subset is constantly being ridiculed, mocked and villified
Each side mocks the other; so it seems to be a moot point to me.
> Pride month would be fair if we also had, let's say, Fathers' month
> Or housewives' month
> But no, the media has decided that all these things are not important
The media certainly has not decided as much. This is still what we, as a society, glorify. What would you say shows that the media has decided these things are no longer important?
> one's sexual orientation, a very private thing that makes many people uncomfortable and has zero relation with actual business, needs to be broadcasted on every corner.
The world broadcasts heterosexuality on every corner. What’s the difference?
> So the whole idea of a politics-free workspace is that we keep these things to our private lives.
I would disagree. My experience has been that “politics-free” spaces in fact allow the dominant politics to be expressed, while silencing other groups.
> And giving one subset of people different rights from another one (even if it's non-monetary tokenism) makes a workplace toxic and increases tension.
You can’t say that one group is being given “different rights” and then in the next breath say that it’s actually “non-monetary tokenism.” Rhetorically, that’s nonsensical. It uses the gravitas of a “right” to make a point but then immediately admits that the point was false all along.
So let’s drop the nonsense about “special rights” - this is about acknowledgement, or “tokenism”.
That's a very specific thing. Children of certain ages would go great lengths to feel different from the previous generation, "cool", "hip". Decades of various subcultures from Punks to Emos is pretty solid evidence. Grooming is trying to use the need to feel different in order to convince them to do sex-related things before they have a solid intrinsic feeling for it. The motivation for groomers could be finding these children sexually attractive, trolling (deliberately convincing someone to do irreversible changes that will cause them long-term suffering), or compensating for the groomer's own childhood trauma by forcing others to relive it (the worst bullies are former bully victims). I think, this is a legitimate problem and it's important to distinguish it from initiatives that actually help children (e.g. preventing bullying based on looks).
>They seem free enough to criticize to me?
No mainstream media outlet ever covers this angle - it's a complete taboo. But there are plenty of examples where rather mild criticism is immediately branded homophobic/transphobic and actions are taken to prevent other people from considering this point of view.
>The world broadcasts heterosexuality on every corner.
I would be interested to hear some examples.
>You can’t say that one group is being given “different rights” and then in the next breath say that it’s actually “non-monetary tokenism.” Rhetorically, that’s nonsensical.
Respectfully disagree. People do have an intrinsic need for some amount of other's attention, and can feel it very well. Many social rituals are built around it: networking (periodically paying attention to each other), arts (having others pay attention to what you create), the concept of celebrities. The HR departments have figured out long ago that some amount of coworkers' attention can substitute a raise (in terms of lowering the % of resignations). Like the whole "employee of the month" posters. I call it non-monetary because it doesn't cost the employer nearly as much as a sizable pay raise. But it's something people subconsciously feel and track very well. You take a small amount of everyone's attention and you direct it towards a specific group or individual. People belonging to that group feel slightly rewarded, people outside it feel slightly demotivated. Like if your boss congratulated your coworker with their birthday, but didn't congratulate you.
It isn’t a taboo; it’s fallacious. That’s the reason mainstream media doesn’t cover it: there is no epidemic of LGBT people “grooming” children. It’s a made-up thing designed to whip up a frenzy of hatred towards LGBTQ people and justify rolling back civil rights.
I appreciate your lengthy discussion of what grooming is, and how you think it’s a real problem. However, in context it sounds like you are saying that my example of criticism isn’t legitimate because LGBTQ people are “groomers.” That isn’t what you meant, is it?
> Respectfully disagree.
Everything you say after this point is interesting, but utterly unrelated to what I said. I said it’s rhetorical nonsense to elevate “non-monetary tokenism” to a “right,” and I don’t see where you’ve engaged with that idea.
In a country of 300M+ people there will be always plenty of examples of both. And a civilized society would attempt to discern the 2 different behaviors and find a reasonable way to distinguish them formally. The media is not doing that - it artificially divides people into 2 polar opposite camps and forces you to take side based on identity, rather than discussing specific behaviors.
>However, in context it sounds like you are saying that my example of criticism isn’t legitimate because LGBTQ people are “groomers.”
No, I am saying that some people are groomers. And some people are LGBTQ. And the groomers (some percentage of them being LGBTQ) would yell "homophobia" and claim that their critics are trying to steal civil liberties (while some of the critics would actually be trying to do that and trying to use anti-groomer guise for cover up). So it's important to make a distinction between behaviors (e.g. allowing gay people to marry) and affiliation (like identity-based quotas and virtue signalling), because the former is rather hard to abuse, and the latter is an abuser magnet.
>Everything you say after this point is interesting, but utterly unrelated to what I said.
Oh, I would argue it is. Attention is a legitimate intangible asset. Pride month is taking a small "attention tax" from everyone, and redistributing it based on identity. Stop doing that and the tensions in the society will decrease. If you want activism, divert it towards actions (like bullying is bad, regardless of the victim's identity) and you will get people to actually agree rather than splinter.
This is a pretty odd statement.
In any case: if you want to try and split hairs about this, that’s your call. What I’ll say is this: nobody seemed to care much about a “grooming” epidemic until a few months ago, and since then it’s only been about LGBTQ people.
Nobody else is making the distinctions you’re trying to make here.
Not really. Mild and reasonable concerns have been raised on the right-wing websites for at least a year. The media swept it under the rug. Then the attention-seekers from the right side picked it up and started exaggerating the issue to get visibility to their personas. The media labeled them "far right extremists" and completely dismissed the point of their complaints. Now it's reaching the state where every meme-maker with an MS paint feels compelled to photoshop something about groomers, and that's where you can't ignore the problem anymore. Congratulations, you have suppressed the voices of reason and you will now have to deal with an angry mob.
>Nobody else is making the distinctions you’re trying to make here.
Some people are. Most people aren't. That's exactly why your country will splinter. In some states you will get a ticket for showing up in public with a same-sex partner. In others teaches will be financially incentivized to reach the quota of trans students, as it will be seen as helping people find their true identity. Both extremes are idiotic, but that's how tribalism works and that's how empires fall. You can safely ignore it for a single-digit number of years, but you will see it in your lifetime.
> Mild and reasonable concerns
The concerns are not reasonable, and not mild. This idealistic “all orientations have this problem” take is blind to the fact that this is criticism leveled at the LGBTQ community for decades.
The media “swept it under the rug” because the association with LGBTQ people isn’t necessary to address the societal issue of sexual abuse. They rightfully didn’t want to revive the tired slurs of the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
> In others teaches will be financially incentivized to reach the quota of trans students, as it will be seen as helping people find their true identity.
This is just nonsense. I’ve been trying to engage in good faith so far, but the idea of “trans quotas” is completely ridiculous.
There isn’t one. There is too much blatant heterosexuality in our culture.
> The media certainly has not decided as much. This is still what we, as a society, glorify. What would you say shows that the media has decided these things are no longer important?
That we don’t have a month celebrating abstinence and sexual propriety?
My statement was referring to the immediate parent, which bemoaned the lack of “Fathers appreciation month” and “housewives appreciation.”
How does the lack of an “abstinence celebration month” support the idea I was responding to - the idea that the media has decided that “fathers” and “housewives” are unimportant?
> There is too much blatant heterosexuality in our culture.
We certainly agree on that.
But for people who are LGBTQ, it is an expression not just of pride but also sheer survival and resilience, something that wasn't guaranteed even in recent history (and still isn't, in many places).
I think it's easier to think of something as "political" when it's different from one's own norms, because the status quo is often invisible. And most of these minority groups don't seek to convert the status quo, only to find space for them to be themselves. There's a difference between evangelism and asking for tolerance, between asking for respect and reversing the oppression.
> There are many things that "just exist", but one subset of them receives massive media attention, mandatory acknowledgments, and is shielded from a lot of criticism, while another subset is constantly being ridiculed, mocked and villified.
Isn't that just how culture works? It's not some baked-in static thing that we figure out once and then never have to discuss again.
As to why certain topics get more positive coverage than others, well, probably it's just cultural norms trying to change, but seeing friction when it meets the status quo. Change is hard on a lot of people, institutions, cultures, and religions -- and that conflict is therefore newsworthy (and inflammatory and gets all the hits on social media, sigh).
The things that are changing get more coverage because they are actually newsworthy -- they are novel. "How to raise your kids" is a very important topic, but it's not exactly newsworthy because it's not new. It's been around for hundreds of thousands of years. You're still welcome to raise your family in a heterosexual nuclear way if you'd like, but it's relatively new for LGBTQ couples to be able to openly adopt (or otherwise have children), or even to work and marry and walk around in the open. Likewise, "How to be a housewife" is also a very important topic (and a difficult job!). And frankly it would be great if we celebrated both kids and moms more, and gave kids enough schooling and shelter and care and love to be able to grow and thrive as kids, and paid the working class enough such that single-earner households become viable again. For what it's worth, all those same concerns apply to gay parents raising kids too, but it would be considered "ideological" or "political" to discuss that in some circles.
> And giving one subset of people different rights from another one (even if it's non-monetary tokenism) makes a workplace toxic and increases tension.
So... like giving health benefits to one's heterosexual spouse, before gay marriage was legal?
Or... having people take free, undocumented PTO for a personal errand, but only if they have kids to pick up?
Or... paying and promoting white hetero men more?
Or... having reproductive health covered by your health plan?
Or... having Christmas as a mandatory paid holiday and refusing to cover other religious days?
There is so much in the workplace that is already discriminatory to many people. The difference is that the status quo has the power to just invisibly normalize these things and so we don't really have to think about it day to day, but the underdogs have to use "political" messaging or advocacy just to try to reach parity with the status quo majority.
Is something only toxic and tension-causing if it's different from the status quo? What if the status quo IS the problem for some? The "non-monetary tokenism" usually applies to some historically oppressed group for whom "leave politics out of _______" has resulted in actual harm, monetary or worse, upon their lives.
> We don't argue which subcategory deserves a month of acknowledgement, and who can get by with half-a-Friday
That is only the case when your workplace is either homogenous enough (which works well), or else invisibly oppressive (which doesn't work well), or else is diverse but also well paid enough that people choose to look the other way (which also works well, but is rare). In practice the second is the most common, I think, where you don't really talk about it but there's this permanent underclass who's just otherized and neglected. The cultural movements we're seeing now are because many of them have had enough and feel the need to speak up rather than to continue being marginalized. And frankly that goes both ways: all across the ideological spectrum, people are culturally dissatisfied with the status quo, each other, their employer, their government, etc. Our companies are ultimately just reflections of the individuals who own and staff them, and they don't exist in some cultureless vacuum...
If your workplace really hasn't had any discussions about any of this stuff, um... maybe it should? It's an inevitability that it's going to affect the employees/customers/stakeholders in one way or another. And if you don't address it, it's just going to blow up on its own when the pressure builds enough. I think cultural schisms are like earthquakes: you can have many small ones that are easy to address as they come up, or you can let the pressure build and build and build until it explodes catastrophically.
> We instead focus on actual work. Like have a month of refactoring, or a month of unit tests.
People are part of the work too. Whether it's taking a new hire out to lunch, or celebrating someone's baby shower, or not offending someone with a gift of the wrong religion, or letting a dad pick up his kids from school, or treating someone's same-sex partner with the same respect you would anyone else at a +1 event. How could you expect to work well with people if you can't even show them basic human dignity and respect? "Shut up and go refactor that test" is pretty awful, no matter their sexual orientation or political ideology. IMO we're people first and employees second, and if your workplace can't even acknowledge that basic tenet of the relationship... eh... :shrug:
I personally only see the downsides of the current approach:
1. It attracts people that enjoying making others uncomfortable, and all kids of trolls/attention seekers.
2. The former group keeps pushing the limits, demanding more and more unrealistic things, slowly pushing the public opinion against the minority in question.
3. This is used as an excuse for more restrictions of freedom (like the hate speech laws), that are further abused, igniting more and more tensions between people of opposing views.
[0] https://www.atlassian.com/blog/productivity/how-to-write-sma...
There are many things that "just exist", but one subset of them receives massive media attention, mandatory acknowledgments, and is shielded from a lot of criticism, while another subset is constantly being ridiculed, mocked and villified.
Pride month would be fair if we also had, let's say, Fathers' month, emphasizing the importance of teaching your boys self-reliance, emotional control, delayed gratification. Or housewives' month, praising women that sacrifice careers and spend countless time teaching their kids important skills that will help them achieve independence and success in life.
But no, the media has decided that all these things are not important, but one's sexual orientation, a very private thing that makes many people uncomfortable and has zero relation with actual business, needs to be broadcasted on every corner.
So the whole idea of a politics-free workspace is that we keep these things to our private lives. We don't argue which subcategory deserves a month of acknowledgement, and who can get by with half-a-Friday, we instead focus on actual work. Like have a month of refactoring, or a month of unit tests. Because, you know, having common goals brings people together. And giving one subset of people different rights from another one (even if it's non-monetary tokenism) makes a workplace toxic and increases tension.