Let's say Lynn were a rust developer and felt as though the the tone of the community and the discussion of her work made her feel unwelcome. Let's say Lynn spoke out against that. Would you entertain that conversation? I imagine that is not too far from what happened at IBM when Lynn was fired. When is it "allowed" to be political in your mind?
Intentionally addressing the ability of marginalized people to be a part of a community, in my mind, is precisely apolitical. If it's clear that anyone is welcome then you don't really need to talk about politics, do you.
Presumably that kind of talk was about transgender issues and not some technical topic about rust which would make her uncomfortable.
So, in that circumstance, it seems only fair that if a person can express their political opinion, so can another person.
But,maybe the leader of the project should have shutdown whatever was making Hypothetical Lynn uncomfortable before she was forced to mount a response to it?
EDIT: unfortunately I can’t reply to the comments as I have been banned
EDIT 2: I have been banned to reply to the commenter, dang told me
You can talk about films and critically analyze them without doing a deep dive into how props are made. It’s OK to have separate contexts.
It isn’t a “gotcha” that “everything is political” - it just doesn’t matter when trying to do most things. It’s distracting and pointless; it’s a null statement.
You can talk about anything without having to include politics the same way you can discuss literature without examining types of paper.
Your account is rate-limited though. We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments and/or get involved in flamewars. That's probably what I told you.
Even saying "no politics!" will be seen by some people a political stance — as an approval of the status quo (which may be unfavorable to some groups of people), or even as a denial that certain social problems exist, and a red flag that you won't help them if someone discriminates against them.
Even in a "no politics" environment the you will end up having to decide what is "political" and what isn't, and that is a political stance! Someone will have a Bible quote in their email signature — is that neutral or political? Then is Quran okay too, or rainbow emoji? And when you tell people to stop this circus, the "no politics" policy itself will be questioned as a political stance against free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of association, etc.
There's this saying some people have, "there's three things you don't talk about at work: sex, politics and religion". (I think an older version had "money" instead of "sex"–from the days when sex wasn't talked about so much that we didn't even talk about the fact that we didn't talk about it.)
And it isn't necessarily bad advice. Do we really want heated workplace arguments about Israel-and-Palestine, Biden-vs-Trump, etc? We have to work with people who have completely different views from us on big picture political issues. Sometimes it is better we just agree to disagree and focus on what we have in common – airing those disagreements in detail can just produce negative feelings and disruption.
But of course, every office, every open source project has politics. But that's the thing, people traditionally draw a distinction between "micropolitics" (the politics of our workplace) and "macropolitics" (national politics, geopolitics). You cannot escape micropolitics, it is everywhere, it is inevitable. But macropolitics, yes, we should avoid it at work whenever possible.
Of course, people will then bring up "the personal is the political", and it is true. Transgender issues, for example: a big political controversy, but obviously for transgender people a very personal one.
However, even there, I think there is a useful distinction. A transgender employee isn't breaking the "no macropolitics at work" rule by being transgender, or talking about their personal experiences, or so on. But, consider Lynn Conway's public campaigns against the psychologist J. Michael Bailey and the sexologist Ray Blanchard – even though that was obviously very personal for her, it wouldn't have been appropriate for her to carry it on at work. Well, she actually did use her UMich web page for those campaigns, but the norms about this are different in academia than in your average workplace.
And politics is personal for all kinds of people: I remember back in 2010 when the Israeli military intercepted the "Gaza Freedom Flotilla", the team I was in at the time had some very heated discussion over it. Afterwards, a Jewish team member talked to me privately, and I could tell the whole discussion had made him feel rather uncomfortable, because it felt personal to him. And one of the other participants in the conversation was Palestinian, so it was obviously personal to him too. But still, in hindsight I wish the whole discussion had never happened, and I regret my own (rather peripheral) role in it. We broke the "no politics at work" rule, and it did pointless harm to our cohesion as a team.
If I live in Germany in 1930 and a coworker believes that he has a moral duty to gas as many Jews as possible, I should rightfully refuse to work with him, not pretend I don't know he thinks that, or pretend it's just a minor disagreement or irrelevant. And there are some disagreements today which are of the same level of importance.
He would be wise not to let me know he believes that. But I would have no qualms saying that I'd refuse to work with people who believe that. "No politics in the workplace" is itself political.
this is the kind of hyperbole I dont want my coworkers hyperventilating about. the problem in nazi germany was brownshirts cracking heads and smashing windows in streets. not off-color water cooler chitchat
asserting everything is political is a mindset i want to avoid. you imagine people with good ideas are confronting people with bad ideas. but really its just hyperengaged people haranguing the uninterested.
That simply is not true. Apolitical topics do exist, and it is incredibly annoying when people try to force politics into an apolitical topic (looking at you, Rust community).