Bizarre delusions in the workplace
Here’s a puzzler.
I’m not sure what to think about this. We don’t want people being fired just because bosses dislike something about them, but at the same time, we don’t want to work with (much less under) people with bizarre delusions that govern their behavior. What if employees identify as lions and come to work in costume and try to gnaw on colleagues’ arms?
The thing is…”gender identity” isn’t just a quirk, and isn’t just a personal thing in the head – it’s a performance, and a lie, and a sign of narcissism and entitlement. There must be some – many? – trans people who aren’t like that, but the reality is that the ideology itself depends on narcissism and entitlement. It wouldn’t be an ideology otherwise – it wouldn’t be a thing, a movement, an activism, a controversy, a campaign. It’s not about just inward thoughts about the self: it’s been totally and dramatically externalized.
In short a trans employee signals trouble ahead. Being trans is a kind of open invitation to be a quarrelsome greedy entitled shithead to everyone else.
I suppose there’s the same issue with disability as a protected characteristic if it includes mental disorders as pcs? Some mental disorders prevent people from being tolerable colleagues and employees. What to do?
I don’t know. It’s a puzzler. There are problems either way.
I work in IT with a lot of Muslims, I think they believe a number of crazy things, and they probably think I am stupid and wrong for not believing in any god at all. We don’t really talk about it, for obvious reasons.
There is also a trans person at work who ‘fully transitioned’ (including surgery) before I joined the company 15 years ago. I quite like them, they are funny, and very competent at the job we both used to do. They are not obviously narcissists or attention seekers.They don’t push boundaries or seek to make people uncomfortable, as far as I am aware. They don’t dress like a caricature of what they imagine a woman is. I realise they are probably a special case, but I would work with them again in a heartbeat (I moved to IT from the regular business some years ago).
On the other hand, there is an ‘inclusion’ group formed at my company who sent me numerous emails containing trans dogma during Pride this year. They are completely insufferable. Every member of that group I have met is a 30-something heterosexual white woman, yet they spout radical gender and critical race stuff at us constantly, with the approval of the HR department.
10 times out of 10 I would choose the Muslims and the trans person to take the desk next to me over the incloosion lot. They are real people who I disagree with on some things, not smug scolds.
“People with bizarre delusions that govern their behavior”? Sorry, Ophelia, but that standard would be very easy to paint as a description of religion. Hell, to the religious, that would be a description of atheism. It’d also cover political affiliation in general, to anyone on the other side.
Trans ideology’s biggest flaw isn’t the ‘delusional’ aspect of it. I’m surrounded by people whose beliefs I consider delusional every day, and have many more I deal with as I work customer service. As CB@1’s post underlines, it’s the requirement that others share the delusion–that’s not something we offer to any other pc. If my personal invisible sky-daddy believes I should not eat meat on Fridays, I should be accommodated insofar as having a vegetarian option on Pizza Friday at work. I should not, however, be allowed to demand that there be no sausage or pepperoni pizzas set out for anyone else. If that were the line for the TRAs, then I doubt we’d be anywhere close to the level of current acrimony, because the extent of the debate would be about pronoun use and… that’s about it.
Well there’s no need to say “sorry” when I said upfront I don’t know what to think about this. It’s not as if I shouted that people with bizarre delusions should be sent to camps.
I do think Freemage does hit on the point I did not explicitly make, phrasing aside. That we will not always agree with people we work with. It’s the trying to coerce others into your own beliefs that is the problem. If the Muslims tried to ban pork and alcohol from company events I would look at them very differently. They do no such thing.
I certainly agree that a trans person who tries to force others to agree, and constantly asserts their indentity as a weapon, would be a horrible colleague, and their status should not go very far to protect them from normal HR processes.
Maya Forstater was protrayed as this exact kind of employee, though of course she was nothing of the kind.
But I have a trans colleague of 15 years who has literally never mentioned their identity to me, or anyone else who did not know them before they did it. That person should be protected at work. The coercive behaviour is the problem, not the identity per se.
If the Mohammedans thought they were holding the hammer they would do that sort of thing… That’s the problem, the gender goblins a) think they’re holding the hammer (true in some circles) and b) that they will always be the ones holding the hammer (impossible).
I’d question the description of the reason for those clients losing their jobs. If it was for a violation of a sex-specific dress code (or any sex-specific policy, really), ok fair enough. If it was for any variation of demanding other employees play along with a putative change of sex, different story. Your “right” to swing your arm around wildly ends when it hits my face, and your “right” to believe a delusion ends when your belief means a demand that I also believe.