> you uninvited certain people entirely
Can you elaborate on this? I What makes a person unable to work without bringing those political issues up?
I mentioned it elsewhere, but saying “my husband and I went to [insert benign weekend activity here]” is now a potentially political conversation because there are people in modern, 2021 workplaces who thing that being gay at all is a “political” issue.
So again - not that I can’t work, but I’m unwelcome at work. Even if the company would never enforce the policy that way: they could, and I have to worry about it. And not too long ago, companies did enforce it that way.
(Just to continue with one specific example, I don’t think the problem is contained only to this one example)
It’s not a hair-splitting thing, I’m explicitly asserting that there are people who will twist it this way; at least they have in the past and I don’t see how it’ll be different now.
Well fuck them. Mentioning your partner is not political, it's conversation. They are the ones that make it political, not you. This borders discrimination in my opinion.
Indeed. That’s why the policy is bad: it tilts the field in favor of someone acting like this. Because now we first must counter-claim “it’s not politics to mention my husband” and win that fight, and then move on to “and you’re harassing me by weaponizing the politics policy.”
If anti-gay views weren’t legitimately held up as political views by about half the country, this wouldn’t be nearly so bad.
If they are showing prejudice or treating you unfairly it is them that should be reported. It must be a pretty fucked up workplace for the opposite to happen?
But I also think that point can be generalized, to the boring but obvious conclusion that everything involving interaction between human beings is political, since those interactions occur within the context of a malleable political system. We could theoretically pass a constitutional amendment that makes being late for standup punishable by prison, couldn't we? Is it now political to be late for standup? You end up arguing over the degree to which something is political, which leads back to what everyone is complaining about: the enforcement of this policy cannot be anything but arbitrary.
Personally, I think that if the Basecamp folks want to ban a particular type of politics then they should grow a spine and say what they mean, instead of expecting everyone to read between the lines for them. If they did that then perhaps they could expect people to agree to disagree, but these guys clearly know what they want to say and the only reason they don't say it is because they know how bad it makes them look right now.
And as long as we continue assuming the worst in people that we disagree with, the problem of polarization will remain. Why not give them the benefit of the doubt and assume, until we have evidence to the contrary, that they just want to encourage a sane, low-stress work environment?
