Tag Archives: work

The Stupidity of Workplace Discrimination

10 Sunday May 2015

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Blindfolded man with "prejudice" text on the blindfold
Image courtesy of Ackerson Law Offices

Recently one of the transgender Twitter accounts I follow pointed me to a post by NPR about the discrimination that trans folks face in the workplace.  The gist of the post (and associated NPR audio piece) is that it really helps, especially when transitioning (i.e., transitioning from one gender to another), to have allies at your workplace.  And there’s some information as well about the discrimination trans folks face on a regular basis.  (As well as some pretty scary statistics about suicide rates for trans folks—statistics that I believe should shut up any transgender-exclusionary radical feminists, that is radical feminists who believe that it’s okay to exclude trans men/women from men/women-only spaces, but I’m sure won’t.  But that’s a topic for another day.)

It got me thinking that while trans folks face a terrible burden, there are other discriminations in the workplace (some of which I’ve written about), all of which are blatantly and profoundly stupid.

See, here’s the thing:  In high tech, it’s hard to find the right people for the job.  Really hard, honestly.  Yes, there are plenty of good programmers out there, plenty of good QA people, marketing people, technical writers, etc.  Sure.  But it’s not just a matter of people having the right raw materials for the job; they also need to have the right level of experience—sometimes you want that person with 25 years of experience, and sometimes you want someone fresh out of college—the right set of skills, an ability to work in the types of groups you have at your company, a track record of accomplishments in the appropriate areas, etc. etc. etc.  Not to mention someone who can add to your group’s dynamic; for example, if you have a bunch of really shy people on your team, maybe you need someone more extroverted.  Or maybe you work at a company where everyone is expected to work very independently, and so that experience you’ve had as a manager is important.  Whatever.

(Yes, I acknowledge that this can lead you straight down that slippery slope of only hiring white folks because you only “feel comfortable” with your “type of people”.  That’s not where I’m going with this.  In fact, I’m going in the completely opposite direction.  I just want to note that there are other factors besides raw experience that come into the hiring mix.  And so no, I tell you three times and what I tell you three times is true:  It is NOT okay to use “they have to fit in with the group” to excuse bigotry.  Not okay, not okay, not okay!)

So in this situation, I am constantly puzzled by people discriminating against potential hires because they are transgender.  Or women.  Or Asian or of African descent or from South America.  Or who speak English with (to my ear) funny accents.  Or who are gay or lesbian or bi.  It’s hard enough to find good people; ruling people out just because they sleep with people of the same gender or hail from Kerala instead of Colorado strikes me as self-defeating.

And specifically when it comes to transgender folks who transition while they’re in the job, it makes even less sense.  This is a person you’ve worked with, established a relationship with, whose strengths and “areas for development” (corporate-speak for “weaknesses”) you’re familiar with;  why should you give a damn if you find out that, “oh my heavens, his father is actually a black guy!”?  What does it matter if they worship God on Saturday morning in Hebrew rather than Sunday morning in Latin or English?  Who cares if Adam sleeps with Steve, as long as Adam continues to deliver code?  Does it make a difference that Ashok is sometimes hard to understand (when my wife has trouble understanding my Aunt Maureen from Boston) when he’s completing projects like a madman?  Why should you give a crap that you report to Deanna instead of Douglas as long as Deanna is a good boss?  What the heck difference does it make if Mark transitions to Margaret so long as they continue to crank out work?  I find it insane.

I will say this in defense of high tech:  I’ve met many, many, many bigoted people over the years who suck it up and deal and get along just fine with folks they’re bigoted against, when those folks are delivering.  (When they don’t, yes, it can get ugly.)  I can’t relay to you how many times I’ve had conversations with people along these lines:

“Man, I get so tired of working with [minority group] sometimes.”
“But [name] is a [minority group].”
“Oh, [name] is cool; I’m talking about in general.”

Yes, we have to move to a place where this conversation doesn’t even happen because CoWorker realizes, like I state above, it doesn’t matter.

A couple of other points to consider when thinking about this stuff:  As the world grows more interconnected (especially in high tech), you’re going to find yourself working for people who are not native Americans, or not white, or not straight, or not Christian, or not cisgender, or not [enter minority here].  And when (not “if”!) you do, how well do you think your bigotry is going to fly with them, hm?

Something else to consider is the extension of the workspace from “everyone come into the office” (which I’ll post about soon) to “distributed teams”, i.e. teams where people are spread out all over the country, or the world.  On such a team, are you going to discriminate against Yung just because she’s in Taiwan, or Ivanov because he’s in Ukraine?  Not only would that be self-defeating, it’s genuinely silly.

In movies (and sometimes real life), people say, “It’s only business”.  Now I personally don’t like this saying; too often it’s used by someone who just has, is about to, royally screw someone (or groups of someones) over.  (“Yes, we’re laying you all off, but it’s only business.”  Yeah, tell that to my mortgage company, you jerkweed.)  This is the corollary; if it’s only business, then the only thing that matters is what happens on the clock for the company, and if they’re getting the job done who cares if someone was hired wearing slacks and T-shirts and is now coming to work in heels and a skirt-and-blouse combo?

So stop discriminating, people; you’re not just hurting other folks, you’re hurting yourself and your business.  Knock it off!

 

Support Sex Workers on Sex Worker Rights Day (repost from Facebook)

05 Thursday Mar 2015

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sex-workers-rights
Photo courtesy of Julia Laite at notchesblog

First posted on my Facebook feed.

I know this will be controversial with some folks who follow me, but: Today is Sex Worker Rights day. This is NOT about the approx. 22% of all human trafficking victims who are trafficked for sex work. (The majority of trafficking victims are for the agriculture, garment, and construction industries.) No. This is about people–men, women, and trans folks–who for whatever reason choose sex work in which to make money. By choice. I just want to be clear.

I absolutely, unequivocally support sex worker’s rights, their right to have their work treated as work rather than stigma; their right to have their industry decriminalized; their right to be safe in their work; their rights in general. Sex workers–particularly those who are people of color or transgender (or both)–deserve respect and safety, rather than being subjected to harassment, assault, and stings by police whose primary motivation is (this is true, I promise) money.

Look: I’m not stupid. I know we live in a fairly Puritan/Napoleonic Code-based social framework, which looks askance (to put it mildly) at anything of a sexual nature. But I ask you to look beyond that and realize that sex workers (for the most part) are just doing a job. “How can you do a job so demeaning?” 1) It doesn’t have to be demeaning just because it’s sexual, and 2) There are plenty of other jobs that are plenty demeaning that aren’t sex work. I have laid sod and landscaped hillsides during a heatwave; worked graveyard shift as a security guard; cleaned restaurant toilets and floors as a janitor after hours; and plenty others. These were demeaning.

And I’d like you to consider the positive aspects of sex work you might not have thought of, or dismissed as silly or absurd. What if you are a man with some kind of mental disability who has never had sex before because your disability makes you unattractive to potential partners? What if you are physically disabled and your partner can’t deal and needs help? What if your partner simply lose interest in sex but you don’t? What if what excites you changes completely over time but doesn’t for your partner? These and many other areas are places where sex workers help, not only individuals but entire relationships.

Sex work is work. They deserve respect. Please give it to them.

Equal-responsibility Dadhood

15 Friday Aug 2014

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What to expectJoey
Image courtesy of Ruddy Bits

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about motherhood, dadhood, co-parenting, and the work/home/family ratio that we all struggle with.  (And why is “motherhood” a word, but “dadhood” isn’t?  Seriously?)  I just changed positions here at work, and in my new slot I have to go into the office, well, pretty much all the time.  Now, in this regard I’m no different from the huge majority of the rest of the planet, but I had been blessed over the last 13-14 years or so to be able to spend a lot of my work time in my home office, so this is a huge change for me and my family.  So I’ve been thinking about it.

Then at the urging of Rebecca Traister after I sent her a few thoughts on her column in the New Republic on this very topic, I thought I might share some of my observations from the point of view of a man who has been, largely, a stay-at-home or work-at-home dad for most of my kids’ lives.  (My daughter is now 19; my son 16.)

A key point that Rebecca touched on, and that my experience validates, is that even for your new-aged, fully-evolved, committed-to-co-parenting, sensitive, post-Feminist-era guy, our society is so overtly geared toward motherhood rather than dadhood or (much preferably) parenting that a guy practically has to be rapped in the teeth before he “gets it”, before he understands at a visceral level (that many women seem to understand without any coaching on the delivery table, if not sooner) the huge commitment involved in parenting.  For Rebecca, it happened right away:

A very similar thing happened to my husband and me. After a C-section, and in the midst of the rigors of breastfeeding, we made an unspoken agreement: My job was producing milk. His job was everything else: diapers, clothing, bathing, figuring out the naps and soothing and pacifier and bottles for the pumped milk. When I emerged from my post-partum cave a few weeks after the birth of our daughter, my husband, a criminal defense attorney, had to teach me how to change a diaper; he had to show me how the little flaps on the sleeves of the onesies kept our daughter from scratching herself. He was the expert; I was the novice. But because every social and cultural script pushed me, swiftly, toward equal expertise in these matters, we wound up co-parents. Had it worked in reverse, the chances that he would have felt pressure, guilt, or incentive to dive into the nitty-gritty of wipes and burping would have been extremely low.

For me, it took longer.  I was determined to be a “co-parent”, and am pretty damn stubborn.  I was very much brought up in the Ms. Magazine, “women are equal”, “No means no!”, “Our bodies, our selves”, “Free to be you and me” 70s liberated mom environment, and I was not going to be one of those typical dads.  (Quite aside from the fact that, while I can set up a home network, configure a router, keep all the house gadgetry working, etc., I’m incompetent when it comes to, say, fixing a leaky faucet.)

But that being said, it still was very difficult for me to get myself in the mindset of being a full participant.  My job urged me to come back to work immediately, half-time for six months rather than take 3 months of no-pay family leave.  And because I did, while I was definitely a full participant for the time I was at home—changing diapers, dealing with the diaper service, sterilizing milk bottles, feeding the new baby, splitting the midnight-six shift as much as possible, the fact was I wasn’t a full participant.  And I certainly didn’t get it at a visceral level.

But then we adopted my son, and because my partner made more money than me, and had a better stock option plan, we decided that I would quit my job and stay home with our new son.  I was the primary care-giver for him and my daughter—driving them to and from preschool and kindergarten, doctor’s appointments, Gymboree, etc.; shopping and making dinner; doing the laundry; dealing with the home upkeep; and everything else so that Sami could simply work and not have to worry about anything.  After that year, I worked at home for the next 8 years.  As far as Joseph was concerned, Dad never went to the office until he was 11.  At which point, some health issues on my partner’s part forced her to stop working and I had to take whatever job I could to keep us afloat, forcing me to actually commute to California from Austin on a regular basis.

Now I’m pretty sure my partner would agree I (and this is how she puts it, not me) do “more than my fair share”.  Laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, bill paying, kid shuttling, etc.  This is not to brag, but just to say that I am a very full participant.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it?  Any time a guy says, “Hey, I’m a full participant!” he’s either not believed, or treated as a braggart.  But the truth is in my job in high tech, it’s damn hard to juggle the work responsibilities against the family ones.  And it’s even harder, given that our two kids have special needs.

And unfortunately, work is not structured to encourage and support parents who want to work at home, even in jobs (I am a technical writer, so working at home–as I’ve demonstrated off and on for nearly 15 years now–is absolutely a workable option) where it is doable.  Editing, for example.  Coding.  Many phone support positions.  There are lots of them.  But the business world, and management, simply is not comfortable with this.  (Look at Marissa Mayer of Yahoo–a high tech company that deals in virtual products!–who decided she wanted everyone on site, for example.)

The other part of the problem is society and social norms.  The unspoken (and in some cases, like mine after my daughter was born) overt pressure for the man to leave parenting to the mom–particularly in the very early stages–in huge.  There’s pressure on women, too, no question, not to mention discrimination both subtle and overt–a reluctance to hire child-bearing-age women because you might “lose them” to motherhood after training them, pressure on new moms to be back at work as quickly as possible and not take the full legal guaranteed family leave time off, the unspoken criticism by co-workers when a woman disappears for 3 months because she had a child (companies usually try to “absorb” the extra work using the existing team rather than, say, hire temporary contractors to cover the absence–saves money, you see), and on and on.

Our society wants you to work at the expense of the family, but the guy in the relationship is expected to not be as interested, not be as involved, not be as engaged, and believe me, you feel it.  And even if you’re determined to not let it effect you, as I was, too often you have to be rapped in the teeth with a hard fact before you change your perspective.

I’m writing about this because, like Rebecca says, the more guys who speak out, the more chance we have to change the situation.  I can’t change reality so that only guys get pregnant–wouldn’t that cause a rapid change to family-related work issues!–but I can speak out.  So I am.  Now it’s your turn, other guys.