Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

tarahenley.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 441 posts

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

#71

Post by coolso »

mikepurvis wrote: post #36
newsclues wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never fill out the preferred pronoun section that have suddenly made their way into forms.

Isn't preferred pronouns kind of orthogonal to the rest of the stuff? It has nothing to do with attempting to ensure representation and is instead about addressing a person in the manner of their choosing, akin to asking a woman if she prefers Ms, Miss, Mme, Mrs, etc. I expect it's probably way more appropriate in most contexts to directly ask a person what their preferred pronouns are than to ask what their gender i…

Pronouns are merely virtue signaling acts of control. By specifying pronouns if they are obvious (99% of the time) you are signaling you are part of a non-bigoted, non-hateful club. Surely you don’t hate people right? So why don’t you have your pronouns visible, fellow citizen?

It’s also a form of control in redefining the obvious. You want to just live your life? Nope, sorry, you need to consciously be aware of my preferred pronouns at all times. It’s a very narcissistic and attention seeking thing too.

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

#73

Post by Spooky23 »

_zzaw wrote: post #5
dane-pgp wrote: post #3

> It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change. I've heard people say something similar, about how they were left-wing wh…

I’ll admit that I’m one of the people who’s increasingly convinced that what she’s describing is the true form of left-wing politics, at least right now, and I’m saying this as a leftist. I think at its core, true workable leftism is about compassionate pragmatism: trying to make the world better for as many people as possible. What disturbs me most about the ultra-woke brand of leftism is that it isn’t pragmatic at…

It’s easy to be high minded when you don’t have power. Hell, even Rush Limbaugh sounded intelligent in the early 90s. His successors have devolved to “fuck you” as a political slogan.

High minded ideals fall to power. It’s easy to see at the local level, when black and LGBT voting blocs put the Mayor in power, the political spoils get divvied up. As time goes on you get conflict between the various stakeholders, and everyone forgets about the ideals and focuses on the street fighting. That’s why you need competitive elections.

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

#74

Post by notreallyserio »

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'm just waiting to see a novel comment on the topic. It's only been discussed N times where N is the number of drops of water in the ocean.

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

#75

Post by rdtsc »

> To see billionaires amass extraordinary wealth and bureaucrats amass enormous power — with little scrutiny.

Not an accident, I believe. Occupy Wall Street made the billionaires and Wall Street take notice. As a consequence, they probably decided people need to be busy with something else, just in case, so they don't get any more funny ideas. Identity politics is a great one to divide people, fan anger, get more clicks and views, and at the same time get them uninterested what the billionaires and Wall Street firms are doing.

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

#76

Post by CoastalCoder »

badRNG wrote: post #64
teg4n_ wrote: post #24

This is incredibly tedious. I can't fathom how this has anything to do with "Hacker News" but I guess it's appeal to a certain subset of the audience here overrides that.

The strong opposition to diversity efforts has been a pretty common trait associated with the tech community/silicon valley. It seems reasonable that a subset of the culture that produced the work environment at Blizzard [1] or has historically rallied behind alt-right thought leaders would also be here on HN. Talk to any woman software engineer, I 100% guarantee they have multiple stories about dealing with a...spec…

> The strong opposition to diversity efforts has been a pretty common trait associated with the tech community/silicon valley.

I'm surprised to hear that. My impression was that D&I initiatives are far more prevalent in tech/SV companies than elsewhere. I probably got that from personal experience + news about Google (Damore), Facebook, etc.

But maybe in reality D&I has become commonplace in many U.S. companies, and I just started working with tech/SV companies as that happened.

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

#77

Post by wussboy »

The primary arts centre in one of Canada’s largest cities spent most of last summer running a series of events where transgender artists presented children’s songs and stories. I can’t help but think that for the vast majority of casual viewers (pedestrians and casual passers by) it was confusing at best and “another example of how we waste money on the arts” at worst.

I love and respect the arts. It’s goals are worthy. It needs to do better than this.

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

#78

Post by badRNG »

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…

>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.

There are endless platforms that are better suited for these discussions: Gab, 4chan, and Ruqqus to name a few. "HN's anonymous-yet-respectful forum" is best preserved by not hosting these types of deeply hostile, alienating discussions.

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

#79

Post by notreallyserio »

coolso wrote: post #71
mikepurvis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't preferred pronouns kind of orthogonal to the rest of the stuff? It has nothing to do with attempting to ensure representation and is instead about addressing a person in the manner of their choosing, akin to asking a woman if she prefers Ms, Miss, Mme, Mrs, etc. I expect it's probably way more appropriate in most contexts to directly ask a person what their preferred pronouns are than to ask what their gender i…

Pronouns are merely virtue signaling acts of control. By specifying pronouns if they are obvious (99% of the time) you are signaling you are part of a non-bigoted, non-hateful club. Surely you don’t hate people right? So why don’t you have your pronouns visible, fellow citizen? It’s also a form of control in redefining the obvious. You want to just live your life? Nope, sorry, you need to consciously be aware of my p…

It's just an extension of using someone's name. Is that virtue signaling, too? Or is the problem really that it's new and scary?

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

#80

Post by john_moscow »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #41
beebmam wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a strict egalitarian and have been doing exactly this, and always encourage others to do exactly this. I refuse to state my gender, race, class, health status, sexuality, or any other qualifier that could categorize me into being discriminated against or in favor of. Let my actions speak to the quality of my character. edit: Not sure why this thread has gone deep into a discussion about pronouns. I don't identify…

At a previous job HR directly contacted me and told me to put my pronouns on my profile. I said sure and proceeded to ignore it. Fuck that shit

When someone asks me about preferred pronouns, my answer is "I prefer a raise over pronouns and thank you letters". I wish more people would do the same.
Post reply on HN