[ajross]

> Kind of sucks for the transgendered applicants, but understandable I suppose, given the circumstances these days.

Yikes. That's true in exactly the same way that segregation kinda sucked for the black kids, but was understandable given the circumstances of the postbellum south.

Discrimination against a minority solely for the social conveniences of the majority is a terrible sin. Haven't we had this fight a thousand times already? Why do it again?

[cogman10]

Yup. Catering to bigots makes you a bigot. The fact that "they won't ever admit to it" is the problem with bigotry.

[tonymillion]

Thank you for this comment, I was just about to rage and you eloquently expressed a great reply!

In addition I was about to add:

How about the manager not use their internal prejudices to influence their decision and hide behind a thin veil of “what about my employees” and actually let their employees LEARN how to correctly interact with transgendered, queer, ethnically diverse co-workers and possibly come out of their cotton-wool lined shells.

It would be better for all of us, right?

[DannyBee]

I mean, this kind of "fight" is basically what society is about, and it is unfortunately always hard earned to get anywhere, but i'm also honestly not sure there is a way around this.

The principle you give is essentially limitless - your "social convenience" part is doing all the work here - but you can't just define away the things you like but the majority doesn't currently accept [1] as "social convenience" whether the causes happen to be "good" or not.

Because everyone who is part of a group that is discriminated against thinks they are in the right and that the majority doesn't accept them for, essentially, social convenience reasons.

And people in the majority don't see it as social convenience reasons.

If the two "sides" didn't have this disagreement, the minority wouldn't be discriminated against in the first place!

You are essentially arguing that the right things should just take hold immediately, without any work, and people shouldn't fight about it, but they would if people agreed they were the right things in the first place.

You can't just pre-define people as wrong and then say "why are they fighting about things when they are so wrong, and are always so wrong about these things"?

Humans as a group are slow to accept, and fairly wary of acceptance of new social things - it's incredibly rare for significant social change to take less than a generation to take hold overall, or to gain acceptance across all living generations simultaneously.

There are lots of reasons for this, most (AFAIK) to do with our survival over the long term. That sucks, for sure, in the short term. But i'm not sure what the better answer is.

I certainly wish there was a way to ensure society reaches a reasonable fixpoint on good ideas faster, if for no other reason than the obvious pain to people living it, but if there is, we haven't found it so far, and attempts to reach faster fixpoints have not .. always led to good paths, and attempts to legislate away resistance has never worked ...

[1] I honestly don't know if being inclusive of transgender folks falls into the category of what the majority of folks accept or not, i'm just presuming it doesn't based on your statement. The surveys i see seem .. complex and varying IE https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/06/28/america...

[ajross]

> You are essentially arguing that the right things should just take hold immediately

I... don't think that's at all what I'm saying. Upthread commenter was saying that refusing to hire trans people "kind of sucks for them, but is understandable" in a pretty clear oh-well-what-you-gonna-do-about-it frame.

I think that's bad. And the reason it's bad is it's the same logic deployed to serve horrific goals.

I don't think you're saying that it's OK to refuse to hire trans people either. Are you?

Basically: sure, you and your reactionary gender normative compatriots are more than welcome to "fight about it". That's what you're doing right now. Just don't take it to the point where you're trying to exclude people from your workplaces. Because that's fucking awful.

[DannyBee]

"I don't think you're saying that it's OK to refuse to hire trans people either. Are you?"

No, of course not. But there is a difference between whether it is "okay" in some moral sense, and whether society deems it "okay", and whether it's normal/possible/desirable/etc for that to take time to change.

Replace "trans people" with something you hate in your arguments, and you can see that they apply equally well.

"sure, you and your reactionary gender normative compatriots"

Please don't assume you know anything about my view. I was careful not to express a view, but here you label me with one, in a fairly pejorative way.

That is not okay, in any way, shape, or form. If you want to know my view, then ask. You'd apparently be surprised to learn that i have spent lots of time and energy trying to help trans folks.

You really do keep missing the point, and appear very focused on how you feel about this particular thing. Other people feel equally powerful but opposite. You do simply define them as wrong. They do the same thing to you!

Your logic is actually the logic deployed to serve horrific ends, and i'm really not sure why you don't see it.

You claim you are not defining others as wrong, but you are in fact doing it, right here:

"Just don't take it to the point where you're trying to exclude people from your workplaces. Because that's fucking awful."

See here you've defined people who exclude trans people as wrong (again, i happen to agree if you really must know). I presume it is fairly fundamental to your beliefs, based on how hard you argue here.

But take people who believe the complete opposite of you - militantly (i don't care whether it's about trans people or anything else). That logic you just use applies equally well to that horrific end. Do you think these militantly opposite people should be excluded from their workplace? Do they get to think that you should be excluded because they think you are fucking awful? If not, why?

Because your logic applies equally well there - because, as i said, it is the logic you are using that leads to a horrific end.

Most people i talk with about excluding militantly transphobic people say "yes, i'm okay with"

Which I agree with, but not simply because i define the other side as wrong.

Now, as for what will happen, in practice, society will, over time, likely decide it's okay to not hire people who are transphobic, the same way society is okay not hiring all sorts of people that society does not agree with. Because that's what society is - a community and grouping, and a society always defines the acceptability bounds for the group. But changing those bounds takes time, and always takes time.

In the meantime, society is not sure where it stands, and will be okay with lots of things it will not be okay with in the future. That is, again, normal, and IMHO, hard to avoid. Even if it is pretty horrific for those involved. As mentioned, it doesn't seem like we've ever been able to successfully avoid it.

[ajross]

> That is not okay, in any way, shape, or form. If you want to know my view, then ask. You'd apparently be surprised to learn that i have spent lots of time and energy trying to help trans folks.

It was a turn of phrase, and I apologize. The point was to poke fun at the rhetoric.

And now I've read that through about three times... and I genuinely can't see what your point is? You say you don't want trans people fired or excluded, but you're going to the mattresses to point out that someone who feels like like you do is... wrong? No, you don't say I'm wrong.

You're just making a meta point that I should recognize that my personal moral compass isn't the only one in the world? Like I don't already know that? How would you suggest I argue this point? Upthread, you're straight up celebrating society being able to "fight about" these issues. But only in defense of the other side?

Coming back: I still can't understand how you're deploying the abstractions above in defense of refusing to hire someone because they're trans. I mean... OK! You're right. Morality is complicated. But... is this really what you want to be defending? There are times where we need to pick sides, right?

[tptacek]

It read to me like he was just commenting on your frustration that the law and all our norms don't instantaneously proscribe all possible forms of discrimination, that there isn't a plausible generalizable principle of "just don't discriminate", even if it's easy to anticipate that we shouldn't allow discrimination against e.g. trans people.

[ajross]

> there isn't a plausible generalizable principle of "just don't discriminate"

You'd at least agree that there ought to be an extremely high bar for "do not hire" exclusions like this, no?

It seems like both of you are interpreting what I wrote above in a senselessly absolutist way, which seems deeply uncharitable. I'm all for debating moral ethics in the abstract. I'm just a little horrified to see two major thought leaders on this site engaging in this particular direction.

[pcthrowaway]

> Now, as for what will happen, in practice, society will, over time, likely decide it's okay to not hire people who are transphobic, the same way society is okay not hiring all sorts of people that society does not agree with

I hope you're right, but I also worry you're giving "society" too much credit. In many countries, trans people are executed. There are very few where they have the same protections and status that they do in, say, Canada, and there is still a ton of transphobia in Canada (the U.S. is certainly quite far behind Canada in policy)

While it's nice the tech is more progressive with regards to inclusivity than many other male-dominated industries, this thread is living proof that even in a community which has been shaped by the zeitgeist of Silicon Valley (and the accompanying progressive lean of its historically LGBTQ-heavy constituency), there is still tons of transphobia.

[throw491]

> reactionary gender normative compatriots

Conceptually, this isn't really an accurate depiction. Many who are critical of the belief system of gender identity are also very much against the imposition of gender norms, and will argue against transgenderism on that basis.