Yesterday I participated in a (mandatory) Harassment and Sensitivity Training Seminar. These seminars aren’t what they sound like. I have been participating in sessions like this for about 50 years; I have conducted some.
This one was pretty typical. The one thing that was unusual was during the Q&A afterwards a question was asked (by the CEO) about pronouns. That’s a first, at least for me.
I asked a follow-up question: are there any relevant statutes or case law? The woman conducting the seminar sort of grimaced and said “No statutes but there was a case in the 9th Circuit…”. I interrupted—”So it’s not binding precedent here?”
I think that people are kind of getting ahead of themselves.
“Yesterday I participated in a (mandatory) Harassment and Sensitivity Training Seminar.â€
I assume your employer paid you. So I was wondering, if I did nothing useful yesterday could I demand to be paid? You know, equal pay for equal work……. 😈
“pronouns”
The number of genders may be infinite.
https://quillette.com/2019/09/17/i-basically-just-made-it-up-confessions-of-a-social-constructionist/
As the presenter droned on I estimated the cost (excluding the presenter’s fee which I assume was substantial–she was an attorney) of the seminar. At least $100,000 given the size of the company and the number of people participating both in person and remotely.
I genuinely believe in treating all people with consideration and respect and do my best to follow through with that. And, as I mentioned above, I have actually conducted sensitivity training seminars. I suspect there aren’t that many people who have taught martial arts and conducted sensitivity training seminars.
I guess the seminar was useful but I don’t think that management appreciates the cultural issues involved. As I looked around there were representatives of at least four different cultures attending that seminar. I would presume that much of it was practically incomprehensible to some.
I don’t actually have the problem with the use of they/them in place of “he/him or she/her” that some do. That’s been in common usage for a long time. I do have a problem with the neologisms. And trying to translate American social mores into Spanish (“Latinx”).
This stuff maybe debatable here, but actually go to Africa or rural Mexico, or Russia, for that matter and try to foist it on them.
This train of thought is like a genetically modified animal, or seed, release it in the wild, and POOF! It can’t handle reality.
On the other hand; some cultures have no problem at all.
In Spoken Chinese – he or she or it translates to the word “taâ€. It is only distinguished in the written form — and that was due to the need to translate western literature into Chinese.
Never understood why the written form had different characters for “ta†until today.
A dispatch from the pronoun wars:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UDvC_Mfbv8&t=61s
Hindi pronouns are few, and just translate to “this one” and “that one,” I’m told.
I do not speak Hindi or any other Indian language but I do know that many are highly inflected and gendered. That’s one of the complications of dealing with people from the Indian subcontinent. There are hundreds of languages and Hindi and English are the languages they have in common.