[magduf]

>I think it's okay if it's a group of people who choose to opt-in for a discussion for 1 hour once a year. Then you're not "forcing" coworkers who don't want to be there to listen, or worry about sewing mistrust, as you have mentioned, which is a valid concern.

Yeah, but what happens when someone never shows up for things like this? Do people start getting suspicious that they're anti-LGBT? That's my worry whenever a workplace starts trying to bring non-work-related stuff into the workplace like this.

I have a hard enough time with companies that want to have "team lunches" or dinners. Even though they're really optional (or "optional"), if you never show up for them, it makes you look like you're "not part of the team". It's inevitable with any workplace social activities: if you're the one guy who never attends, it makes you stand out. What if your company/team likes to go to happy hours regularly, and you don't drink and hate bars? Again, it makes you look like a black sheep.

Honestly, I'd prefer it if employers stopped trying to act like my family and just stuck to getting work done, and letting me go home ASAP so I can do things I prefer and eat food I prefer. (With those team meals, they always pick restaurants I hate.)

[dudul]

One of my previous companies had "kids day" during which employees could bring their kids, there were random activities set up for them (craft, coloring books, etc) and everybody could volunteer to hang out with them.

I never attended, and after maybe half a dozen of sessions during which I kept doing, you know, work, my coworkers started assuming and asking me if I hated kids... And I have 2!

[magduf]

Wow, that's weird. How did they treat people who didn't have kids? Were they seen as kid-haters too if they didn't volunteer?

[JMTQp8lwXL]

> Yeah, but what happens when someone never shows up for things like this? Do people start getting suspicious that they're anti-LGBT?

There was no expectation for everyone to show up. The meeting space wouldn't even have facilitated it. It would be unreasonable for there to have been an expectation for that reason alone.

Nobody's going to think your anti-LGBT unless you make comments at work disparaging LGBT people. You don't have to be proactively pro-LGBT in the workplace to be not "against it".

[hnbroseph]

when you have a widely disseminated open invitation to particular social-issue oriented things, the lack of involvement or attendance is visible and the door is open for people to wonder about it.

if you combine a situation of "i feel this group is suffering and we need to pursue remedies asap" with "this person appears disinterested [from lack of attendance] in discussing the issues facing said group" you can get to places of suspicion and worse. that is, if you feel a group is suffering and it appears someone just doesn't [seem to] care, it's natural to wonder if they're not exactly on the nominally-friendly side of the issue.

this isn't weird or unusual, just ordinary social dynamics.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

That would imply that if 85% of the office didn't attend the meeting, 85% of the office is anti-LGBT. I'd find that incredibly hard to believe. When people are super opposed to things en masse, they don't hide it.

[hnbroseph]

we're not exactly talking about logical syllogisms. there is no specific implications; just an understanding of how people interact.

what if someone's whole team regularly attends these meetings, but that single someone never goes? even if they've never said anything, it doesn't seem unrealistic for at least some of the other teammates to wonder why.

how you get from wondering to suspicions really depends on a person's assumptions, philosophies, politics, etc.

[dudul]

Isn't it exactly what the author of the memo is saying though? People at his work had nothing to say about police brutality against black people, so of course they were racist and supporting it.

[dragonwriter]

> Isn't it exactly what the author of the memo is saying though?

No, it doesn't seem that way to me.

> People at his work had nothing to say about police brutality against black people, so of course they were racist and supporting it.

No, I think he's saying that them having something to say about every news item imaginable except the one that resonated with him in that way (well, other than their dismissal of the protest) was alienating and distancing independent of what motivated it.

[weberc2]

Maybe I misunderstood the article and the memo, but it felt very much like it was saying, “I have to deal with racists at work, like that time no one supported a political issue that I care a lot about”. Maybe it was more the article’s editorializing rather than the memo itself that gave this interpretation.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

Nobody talks about the Stonewall riots at work, or how gays couldn't marry nationwide until years ago, but I don't assume they're anti-LGBT for failure to discuss these things.

[will4274]

Sitting here in Seattle working for a tech company where we have a Stonewall riot poster in every kitchen...

[RichardCA]

Nothing new under the Sun. The viewpoint that any effort to be sociable with co-workers is a pretense is 100% valid and deserves to be respected.