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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35636 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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But being quite loud and public about that sort of thing does give me a strong impression of rampant, unchecked narcissism, narcissism-adjacency, or some other idiopathic impairment of personal judgment.

I think that it basically comes down to impulse control. If Jack likes to cross-dress and puppy-play in xer home dungeon, but when xe goes to work xe wears a business suit and uses "he/him" pronouns, then Jack can put a sock in it when necessary and I expect that if Jack ever gets a little "hmm, it'd be sort of easy for me to embezzle some of this money", that Jack can quash that impulse.

If Jack likes to cross-dress and puppy play in xer home dungeon, and when xe goes to work xe dresses up in (unflattering) red lipstick and heels and sends out an email to all xer colleagues about the particular pronouns they should use, oh and by the way there will be an interview on the local radio morning chat show where xe is discussing with the host xis involvement in the local kink scene, tune in at 10 a.m. tomorrow, then I am going to be more inclined to think that if Jack gets a little impulse towards "hmmm, it'd be sort of easy for me to take some of this money", xe has less rigorous safeguards around breaking stuffy old rules.

Is that unfair to Jack? Quite possibly, but on the other hand - 'the louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted the spoons'.

TBH, some of this behavior is simply inappropriate in the workplace. If I sent out a department wide email about doing an interview on my sexual preferences, I would quite rightly be in HR, likely to be fired.

Only if you're a straight white guy, though; otherwise, that would be homophobia and transphobia to single you on the basis of your sexual and gender identification. I think this is at the heart of what people are objecting about - "if I did this in my job, I could expect to be in serious trouble and likely even get fired. I couldn't expect a host of people to be standing up defending me about 'just some creative roleplaying' and the likes of it".

What's sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. Should Brinton get the presumption of innocence, just like everyone else, regardless of their weird lifestyle? Yes, they should. Should Brinton get protection from investigation and presumption of "this is persecution", because of their weird lifestyle? No, they should not.

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