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Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

tarahenley.substack.com

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Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#191

Post by shadowgovt »

coolso wrote: post #151
shadowgovt wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The crowd that replaced suits and ties with jeans and t-shirts are now nervous that someone is coming along to upend their status quo of culture and norms and they don't much like the idea.

Quoted post unavailable.

The people who fought against the changes in dress codes claimed jeans and t's had all manner of impact on the professional setting of the workplace.

Is it really an imposition, when your profession includes declaring what OS you're using so you can create usable bug reports, to declare your pronouns on some form somewhere?

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#192

Post by lazyasciiart »

coolso wrote: post #134
bastardoperator wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about everyone else but I've been using non-gendered pronouns my entire life. I was taught words like "they" and "them" in first or second grade. At this point I just assume anyone bothered by this is the actual narcissist.

Quoted post unavailable.

Are you saying that anyone nonbinary should get therapy to get over the idea of being nonbinary?

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#193

Post by CoastalCoder »

badRNG wrote: post #157
hcurtiss wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is totally wrong. At private law firms it's the tech clients more than any other hammering diversity quotas (literal quotas) in the racial composition of their outside counsel.

I guess this is why these discussions are unproductive, because folks on both sides of debates on diversity efforts have contradictory anecdotal experiences. I know many women software engineers who've felt deeply, uniquely uncomfortable in tech spaces. I have yet to have a woman software engineer friend who hasn't had one of these experiences, and the idea that the tech industry is uniquely hostile to diversity effo…

> I guess this is why these discussions are unproductive, because folks on both sides of debates on diversity efforts have contradictory anecdotal experiences.

Actually, to me this shows that these discussions are really productive. Because through them we realize that perhaps we're working from different assumptions / data. That's a great stepping stone to understanding each others' views.

(Apologies if I'm misunderstanding your point.)

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#194

Post by mananaysiempre »

badRNG wrote: post #138
finite_jest wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. To be frank, it really seems you are suggesting people who disagree with you should be marginalized to a few corners of the internet suffering from "the coven of the witches" problem. And for the record, Ruqqus was shut down [1], so it really doesn't even exist. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799199

There's a chicken or egg problem with the "coven of witches" conjecture. I also don't think Gab is all that marginal. It seems to exist largely to facilitate conversations around perceived excesses with diversity efforts. My greater point is that communities that facilitate these types of conversations typically have less inviting, more hostile cultures. There's a spectrum of course, but you can see glimmers of the t…

Cf. Scott Alexander’s “three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches” quip[1]. This bootstrap problem has very little to do with current affairs anywhere, I’d say, and I don’t think it has ever been solved except where the more liberal (in the original sense) means of communication additionally had some sort of technical superiority as well.

Except maybe the founding story of the US—I’m not an expert—but that was literally several waves of “witches” (many of them profoundly illiberal) taking their ball and going elsewhere, and their genetic memory of the necessity of free discourse seems to have died out by the middle of the 20th century (and was arguably missing the point as to which discourse needs to be free for decades before that). Not a bad record overall, but we’ve run out of unsettled land to go elsewhere to.

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#195

Post by hk__2 »

epivosism wrote: post #17

What clearly seems wrong is the requirement to fill out forms on the race and gender of people you interview, and to have quotas to control whose voice is heard based on those irrelevant traits (irrelevant relative to the individual person's life, ideas, experiences, ability to express themselves etc.) My policy is to refuse to give my gender or race. If everybody did this, high frequencies of "other" or "unknown" co…

> irrelevant relative to the individual person's life, ideas, experiences, ability to express themselves etc.

I’m not sure I get you here. Of course race and gender have a huge impact on a person’s life, and thus on their ideas, experiences and ability to express themselves. White men virtually never experience racism or sexism, whereas women and/or Black people are reminded about their identity every day. All women have been bothered by men in the street and all Black people have heard numerous racist comments through their life. They are so used to it they don’t even talk about it; it’s just normal. White men can’t even imagine to what extend this goes because they never experience it. People who never experience discriminations often don’t see the problem or diminish it because it’s unfamiliar to them.

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#196

Post by kbenson »

lovecg wrote: post #155
kbenson wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I understand the sentiment, I think to some degree putting a pronoun down is for the benefit of those conversing with you, so they don't have to wonder or get it wrong. In lieu of this, and because I don't really care what pronoun is used for me, I sometimes just put "any" if it's an option to denote that I don't care.

But that’s a problem for like 1% of people who’re free to do so. Absolutely no one will confuse my bearded, balding, fat self for a “she”. Seems unnecessary to require this as a matter of policy.

I mean, not everyone interacts with people in person at work. I would go so far as to say that most these profile settings are used for textual communication, where it's not always obvious, but where some people still get upset over the wrong pronoun being used (possibly because for then it's such a contentious topic in their lives it's hard to disambiguate honest mistakes from passive agressive purposeful behavior).

Like you, I also wish that pronouns weren't a big thing, but the truth is that right now society has shifted a bit to the point that it is, so rather than upset people over something I really don't care about, I just try to address people how they prefer to be addressed, while noting I have no preference and don't care if you get it wrong.

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#197

Post by pessimizer »

kennywinker wrote: post #67
epivosism wrote: post #17

What clearly seems wrong is the requirement to fill out forms on the race and gender of people you interview, and to have quotas to control whose voice is heard based on those irrelevant traits (irrelevant relative to the individual person's life, ideas, experiences, ability to express themselves etc.) My policy is to refuse to give my gender or race. If everybody did this, high frequencies of "other" or "unknown" co…

I mean it sounds bad, right? But if all the people they talk to for stories are white - and they’re attempting to fix that, and track their progress in fixing that - how exactly should they go about doing that?

This won't be a problem, because the people complaining about the woke wave now will suddenly become advocates of the Efficient Pundit Market Hypothesis. I mean, you can't blame the media if white people are the only ones worth talking too, right?

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#198

Post by inglor_cz »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #94
wussboy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you’re right. My personal solution to this problem, having once run a left-leaning organization that was taken over by all the things you mention, is to learn more towards the centre. I’m curious if you’ve considered the same, especially because you describe yourself as “the left-most person in the room”?

In the United States the Overton Window is so far right even the Democratic Party is center-right. In a Scandinavian Country I'd be a fairly moderate, conservative social democrat. Here, if people knew my thoughts, I'd be seen as a Wild-Eyed Radical. But given the politics in my country, I've given up compromise and actually moved further Left. And more militant, less quiet. Luckily, the organization I'm currently in…

On social stuff, California is well left of Europe including Scandinavia. What you say could apply in Arkansas.

For example, Danish or Norwegian immigration rules would be a perfect fit for any R president, perhaps even too strict.

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#199

Post by john_moscow »

ketzo wrote: post #127
john_moscow wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that the article highlights the biggest problem of the West. It used to be a society of strong independent and happy individuals, capitalizing on their strengths and trading with each other in search of prosperity. We traded it in for a steady paycheck in exchange for mindlessly fulfilling standardized corporate jobs, and are now surprised that the human ambition got redirected from finding ways to crea…

So, to be clear: "end of barter system" -> "steady paychecks" -> "death of innovation in the West" -> "bitter people seek to create division" That is an absolutely wild series of logical leaps and generalizations, each sorely needing any kind of evidence or even intuitive explanation.

Nope, "low interest rate policies + lack of antitrust enforcement" -> "mergers, buyouts, fewer small businesses" -> "fewer economic roles involving decision making" -> "fewer social ladders through hard work" -> "fewer push for education + general unhappiness" -> "bitter people looking for scapegoats"

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#200

Post by VictorPath »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #62
badRNG wrote: post #22

I'm not sure these sorts of articles provide much value on HN. By "these sorts of articles", I mean the ones that have claimed that "diversity efforts have gone too far this time ." Regardless of your support or opposition to diversity, I think one would agree that these rapidly turn into unproductive, highly divisive comment sections that are out of place with the rest of HN.

I 99% agree with you. One small counterpoint: Employers enjoy a bully pulpit on these issues. Employees with legitimate concerns about their employers' stances / policies sometimes can't even discuss them without the risk of losing their livelihood. This can create a situation where individuals perceive that "the whole world" is telling them they're wrong, and are bad people for being wrong in this way. HN's anonymou…

Wow, you'd almost think wage slavery might be a problem along with racism.

Oh - you mean the problem is white wage slaves might have less power to exclude and discriminate against non-white wage slaves.

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