Exactly. Those kids will eventually reach a company, look around and see it’s 95% cisgender/heterosexual people, and they don’t feel welcome because that’s not the world they grew up in.
The whole “trans agenda” is really about letting kids know that they are not weird, and they are not morally bound to the “default” gender they were given. Turns out when you do that young, a lot of people don’t pick the default without at least exploring the other options. This blows many adults’ minds, and it’s going to be a huge shift in the corporate world. You think #MeToo is a problem? Wait till gender discrimination has a whole lot more variables.
Point is, culture is important. The culture that got you here is not the culture you’re going to need tomorrow. Google’s culture is pretty close to what a lot of this generation aspires to though; and doing work to enable state sponsored surveillance is likely personally threatening to their LGBT staff given the current president’s agenda.
> Google’s culture is pretty close to what a lot of this generation aspires to though; and doing work to enable state sponsored surveillance is likely personally threatening to their LGBT staff given the current president’s agenda
That brings up a good point about ideology (pro-LGBT) versus politics (Trump hate). Almost every country on the receiving end of the US military under Trump can be characterized as a terrible place to be LGBT. The same can be said about Obama, but I suspect most Google employees would not bad an eye if this were happening under Obama.
It’s not just pro-LGBT; it’s a whole liberal ideology that values people of all kinds, and looks to transform the culture to include all that diversity.
Trump is very much against this ideology... but he’s also reminded the country after 8 years of Obama that the government is not your friend. I think the combination of those two things is what caused the backlash at Google; and you’re right, I don’t think it would have happened under Obama.
Edit: despite all the crap, the US is still one of the best countries to be transgender. At least the medical system here doesn’t prevent anyone who wants care and can afford it from getting it.
Okay now I've figured out my objection. I strongly doubt that the slow liberal ratchet is going to suddenly force companies to become accountable for their actions in the same way Google has made itself. Google employees were more than capable of ignoring certain aspects of Google's business in order to work at Google.
My argument is that Google's professed ethos of "Don't be evil" has directly led to this sequence of events. You can be LGBTQBBQ-friendly and pay lip service to the whole host of liberal society acceptance tropes and still be evil, so long as you don't actually claim that you'll never be evil. Once you claim that, and make it a core part of the company mythos, then you're opening yourself up to exactly this sort of thing.
I love the accountability that's being forced onto Google right now, but I feel it's a rare bird at best.
I think companies that don’t have some statement of corporate ethics are going to find themselves starved for talent while the ones who do eat their lunch. I’m seeing it happen across the professional services industry; the big 4 are consistently outperformed by smaller shops that bring a more diverse team.
The “don’t be evil” pledges are a big part of why people feel safe at those companies. Millennials and especially the generation after them need to be involved with institutions that reflect their values. They are more than willing to go create them if they don’t exist.
The whole “trans agenda” is really about letting kids know that they are not weird, and they are not morally bound to the “default” gender they were given. Turns out when you do that young, a lot of people don’t pick the default without at least exploring the other options. This blows many adults’ minds, and it’s going to be a huge shift in the corporate world. You think #MeToo is a problem? Wait till gender discrimination has a whole lot more variables.
Point is, culture is important. The culture that got you here is not the culture you’re going to need tomorrow. Google’s culture is pretty close to what a lot of this generation aspires to though; and doing work to enable state sponsored surveillance is likely personally threatening to their LGBT staff given the current president’s agenda.