[vorpalhex]

Your life must be quite different from mine. My casual conversations with my friend group - who are 20s and 30s liberals, mixed gender - are not office appropriate. I would certainly not bring any of the regular political debates into work either.

The amount of sex related conversation in my friend group is, from my perspective, normal but entirely inappropriate for work. Even my female barber talks about her sex life during haircuts.

At work I keep my sarcasm set to near zero, avoid politics, religion, and sex, and generally keep a narrow focus. Work is an artificial environment, but my coworkers don't get to choose me. It is on me to behave in a way that is beyond reproach.

[deanCommie]

Remember the context: OP literally advocated for never being alone with a woman without a third party present.

Yes, I have conversation with friends that are not work-appropriate.

And I also have conversations with coworkers that are casual and work-appropriate. Yet they can be friendly and reference current events (which are inherently political), religion (e.g. acknowledging ramadan fasting), sexuality (gender of partner), or the existence of sex (parenting). OK that last one is a stretch.

But still, you can do all this without needing to firewall your entire personality.