
Ellen Pao: Our world is LGBTQIA. Your workplace should be too - mlboykin
https://www.range.co/blog/our-world-is-lgbtqia-your-workplace-should-be-too
======
metildaa
There is a lot of hate from TERFs and religious groups towards the non-
straight/non-cis community.

I think the corporatization of pride parades (like this article advocates for)
is both harmful and helpful, insofar as its a positive for those of us in the
Overton window (eg: gay people like myself) but it drowns out those that
society still violently rejects (Trans, enby, pan, poly, etc) with corporate
advertising rather than forcing society to improve.

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0815test
> but it drowns out those that society still violently rejects

The big joke is that society is _always_ going to be violently rejecting
_some_ outgroups; it's just a human universal to want to make scapegoats out
of thin air. Labeling does _not_ oppose this process; on the contrary, it
facilitates and encourages it. There is value in explicitly promoting
_tolerance, inclusiveness_ and _openness_ as real virtues; but to assume that
meaningless quips like "your workplace should be LGBTQIA..." help this message
is simply delusional. Your workplace should _not_ be LGBTQIAetc.etc., and the
_less_ it gets involved with that sort of thing, the _more_ LGBTQIA folks will
be able to trust it to do the right thing in the long run.

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Havoc
That abbreviation seems to grow by about two characters per year

~~~
Pfhreak
If you are having trouble, you can use GSM for Gender and Sexual Minorities.

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dingaling
Why conflate gender and sexuality, though? They're two different things.

Gender identity absolutely must be accommodated in the workplace.

But sexuality is on another orthogonal axis. What you do in the bedroom is
irrelevant to what you do in the boardroom.

~~~
defertoreptar
Shouldn't both be irrelevant to what you do in the boardroom? What you're
saying makes it sound like it's not okay to marginalize women in the
workplace, but is ok to marginalize gay women.

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mlthoughts2018
Why should a workplace embody properties of the greater community, as opposed
to being a place where a person’s identity is only defined by their work and
professional interactions?

~~~
dang
Please don't take HN on generic flamewar tangents. Nothing good comes of them,
and in the end it amounts to trolling.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
mlthoughts2018
I _very_ sincerely do not understand how it’s a flame war tangent or in any
way not explicitly on-topic and valuable as a discussion in response to the
article.

~~~
dang
I'm making a guess that you're as familiar with internet flamewars on these
predictable, generic, and inflammatory topics as the rest of us are. If so,
then your innocent-seeming question was concern trolling. If not, I'm sorry
for the mistaken assumption. Moderation is guesswork.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
That sounds like an extreme false dichotomy to me. The only two possible
options are that I’m either being disingenuous and coy about trope flame war
topics or else I’m too disconnected to know that my comment can only be
perceived that way?

No, sorry. I understand moderation is not easy and I appreciate the work you
do to facilitate this site, but that’s just not going to cut it.

Posting a philosophical question about the foundational assumptions that go
into a topic like workplace culture norms is absolutely sincere and on-topic
here.

~~~
dang
As I said, it's guesswork, but my guess is that you're far too experienced an
internet commenter not to know what concern trolling is. When I see someone
seemingly-innocently try to relitigate workplace diversity in a thread about
an article by Ellen Pao, of all authors, I ask myself what the odds are that
they don't know what effect that is likely to have.

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madengr
So what does the “IA” stand for?

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Sojuwa
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT#Intersex_inclusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT#Intersex_inclusion)

LGBTTQQIAAP

LGBTTIQQ2SA

~~~
kjeetgill
I suspect you've been downvoted because you've put out these long acronyms
without (much) explaination and they may suspect, as I mistakenly did, that it
was said in mockery.

From the wiki page:

The initialism LGBTTQQIAAP (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual,
queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, ally, pansexual)

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olivierduval
I'm so sorry to be a white male programmer around 40! I'm so much in the
crowd...

"Around 4.5 percent of the US population is LGBT, [...] the LGBT population is
young, [...] under 34 years of age—and growing." ... ok, it's a typical
marketing bullshit: look all the money that you could earn selling to these
people!!! Actually, she doesn't give a shit about the people, only about a
"new" market.

Moreover, she failed to understand the difference between "being LGBT" and
"showing to be LGBT". I don't think that there are MORE LGBT (nor less
either)... only that they need less to hide (which is not good or bad: your
work shouldn't be where you live your life, only where you earn money anyway).

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dang
This comment breaks the site guidelines in a bunch of ways. This is
particularly awful:

> Actually, she doesn't give a shit about the people

Personal attacks will get you banned here. Would you please review
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and use HN as intended?

~~~
olivierduval
OK, it wasn't meant to be a "personal" attack. Only to suggest that it looked
to me more than a marketing intro than anything else.

I will shut up from now on, and only use HN as a reader.

~~~
dang
That's certainly not necessary. If you'd like to post thoughtful, substantive
comments, you're as welcome to do so as anyone else is. We're just trying as a
community to get out of the shallower, angrier habits of internet commenting.

You might also find these links helpful for getting the intention of this
site:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html)

[http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html)

[http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html)

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fortran77
I completely agree with Ellen Pao about being aware and pro-active when it
comes to workplace discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of
sexual orientation.

It's too bad that Ellen Pao doesn't think that fit people, people who believe
the most responsible behavior is to not eat more food than you need, have a
place in the workforce or in discussions.

~~~
dang
Please don't start trolling HN with this topic again, or we will end up having
to ban not only this account but your main account as well.

