The fake narrative of "WOKEISM" in the Workplace
The fake narrative of "WOKEISM" in the Workplace
Inclusive policies are good for business
I'm going to tell you a story about Sharon1, a former co-worker of mine.
Sharon is in her late 50's. She lives in a small rural town that butts up against the Mississippi River. A quiet, sleepy town that is stereotypically southern. Sharon attends church every Sunday. She has an "I'm Proud of My US Marine Corps Son" sticker on her motorcycle. After announcing her intention to retire from a medium-sized company she had worked at for 20 years, Sharon bought herself a bright pink Smith & Wesson pistol.
The Republican party is terrified of Sharon.
For the first 51 years of her life, everyone knew Sharon as just "Steven." Everyone saw Steven as a regular, blue-collar white man. Steven was good with a wrench and loved his2 job at a small chemical blending facility. He had "manly" tattoos on his muscular arms and hated dressing up for anything. He was always more comfortable in an oil-stained set of coveralls than in any sort of formal attire.
From a young age, Steven never felt at home in his body. Now, going by “Sharon,” she reluctantly came out as Transgender to a small group of friends and family in the early 2010s. In 2015, she announced to her employer and co-workers that she wanted to be addressed by her new name and gender identity.
At the time, her privately held company of under 1,000 employees had a non-discriminatory policy covering all LGBTQ identities. But there was no healthcare coverage for gender-supportive care under the company's healthcare plan. Once HR contacted him about the company's first openly transgender employee, the CEO quickly and decisively decided that the company would cover all her healthcare until they could renegotiate a new group policy. Management held an all-hands meeting with the more than two dozen employees who worked at Sharon's facility, making it abundantly clear there would be a zero-tolerance policy for bigotry in the workplace.
There were a handful of snickers and the occasional off-hand comment in the breakroom. But, this closely-knit workforce in an insulated and very conservative community got over it quickly. Sharon was still the same person they had known for years. Gregarious, with a quick wit and a maddening disdain for completely filling out inspection checklists. "Why do I have to sign off that I checked for signs of freezing on lines and hoses? We live in a place that's swampier than Satan's asshole!" she told me once.
Everyone referred to Sharon as just "Sharon" from day one. There were slip-ups now and again, of course, but her transformation didn't distract employees. Not the primarily female office staff. Nor the male-dominated operators. Her public transformation didn't create a "walking on eggshells" situation. As a general and universal rule, employees love to gripe. When someone complained about something Sharon did, be it in a meeting with management or joking around on lunch break, it was for the same reasons they did so when everyone knew her as "Steven," not because of her identity.
Inclusive “Woke” Policies are just good business
In researching this story, I reached out to Emma, a former colleague of mine. She's currently the Director of Human Resources for a decently sized E&P Oil and Gas company with significant investments from Saudi Aramco and Chinese Private capital. "Having pro-LGBTQ policies in the workplace is the easiest and least expensive way to improve employee morale, and it's not even close," she told me. "Recent graduates, even in fields like Petroleum Engineering, respond positively to these policies." She says so-called Rainbow Recruiting doesn't seem to negatively affect application volumes from prospective socially conservative employees either.
This shouldn't be a surprise. Petrochemical giants such as Exxon Mobile have had openly pro-LGBTQ policies and benefits for nearly a decade. Whatever other problems they may have in the ESG space (and, believe me, there are plenty), this particular "societal" policy provides clear economic benefit to corporations who want to maximize their access to the entire labor pool.
Dow Chemical, as an example, has been encouraging all employees to participate in "LGBTQ Day of Awareness" anti-bullying campaigns since 2015:
This doesn't excuse years of inaction and obfuscation on the dioxin they released into watersheds throughout the USA, of course. But in a vacuum, this is a good thing.
Exxon, likewise, has celebrated Pride for years.
This year, things took a dark turn. The rise of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric has been troubling to watch, first with activism about the "integrity of women's sports." Fist clenching about trans women competing in sports is hardly a new thing. Still, the topic became a coordinated line of attack, this time with GOP adjacent pundits and networks like Fox news sticking to consistent talking points. Media airtime on the topic of women's sport, too, blew up.
Exxon, who once proudly boasted their commitment to Pride Month, kept mostly quiet this year. Their social media pages added rainbows to headers and logos but things were markedly different on the inside. In April, the company announced that flags associated with any activist movement would no longer be flown on company property. This "neutral" declaration was correctly interpreted as "no Pride flags this year," after years of flying the rainbow flag being a regular, uncontroversial thing.
Hate Goes Viral
Though hardly a lone actor in the affair, the now notorious "Libs of TikTok" media brand, operated by a single activist and funded by Christian "Comedy" Website The Babylon Bee has been at the center of spreading anti-LGBTQ hate speech. The account went from posting "cringe" videos of teenagers sourced from Instagram and TikTok to directing online troll accounts to harass transgender people. Chaya Raichik, the account operator, popularized the labeling of all LGBTQ teachers as pedophilic "groomers" of children. The “Groomer” terminology was incorporated into online discourse before finding its way to real-world harassment and propagation by elected officials.
The hate, at first directed specifically towards trans folk, has become a broad anti-LGBTQ hate movement, with no group spared the label of "groomer." The supposed mission of "protecting the children" is now a pretext to harass anyone outside of the cisgender, heteronormative core of the conservative base. Libs Of TikTok has turned her attention towards pointing her 1.2 million followers at specific Pride, trans, and drag queen events.
And her followers listen. Gay clubs in Texas, Libraries in California, and Pride events in Idaho have become targets for real-world harassment and violence by Neo Nazi and QAnon organizations after being featured on Libs Of TikTok. Ms. Raichik wipes her hands of involvement, pointing out that she herself has nothing to do with the violence. As if her megaphone isn't a straightforward guide for who gets directed harassment next.
The escalation of anti-LGBTQ hate speech is no accident, nor is it a grassroots movement. It's fascism in action.
The Summary by Parker Molloy is a must-read:
I think back to Sharon. Her mostly conservative co-workers quickly accepted her for who she was. Those who held deep mistrust of her coming out as Transgender still managed to keep their interactions with her civil and aboveboard. Sharon's mere existence crippled the ability of others to use transphobic panic as a pretext for political power.
The stereotype of trans people as an exclusive phenomenon of young, purple-haired teenagers in liberal cities in blue states is shattered by the existence of people like Sharon. Trans and other gender non-conforming people have existed since, well... forever. The more Sharons who come out and ask for society to accept them for who they are, the harder it is to otherize them. Television shows in the early aughts like Will & Grace and Queer Eye For The Straight Guy provided an alternative view to Americans about what it means to be gay. The community became seen not as an other, but as humans with the same fears, hopes, hangups, values, and flaws as the rest of us.
Obergfell v Hodges, the landmark 2015 supreme court case that guaranteed equal marriage rights to any two consenting adults, institutionalized the social change that was already taking place. Trans acceptance is already taking root. 54 percent of Americans under the age of 29 already fully support Trans rights, with only 21 percent opposing.
The renewed propaganda campaign targeting trans people is a battle against this social development. There's a reason that schools are where the most substantial fights are being waged. The reactionary, fascist right opposes acknowledging the mere existence of LGBTQ people to children in school. This is a disservice to children because even if reactionary parents manage to keep their own children from learning about the existence of LGBTQ people, someday, those kids will grow up. They will have LGBTQ co-workers, professors, bosses, and customers.
That's why the bigots have no stopping point. Today it's to "protect children," but their end goal is to eliminate any and all protection or acknowledgment of people outside of the cisgender, heterosexual "norm."
It should surprise no one that the people spearheading the Trans Panic of 2022, from Babylon Bee owner Seth Dillon, propagandist Christopher Rufo, and self-proclaimed "Theocratic Fascist" Matt Walsh, are all Young Earth Creationists. The same people who believe that the earth is 6,000 years old because they added all the ages up from people written about in the Books of Genesis and Exodus are the ones loudly declaring that gender and sex are "settled science."
At this point, I guess I should answer the elephant in the room. Why am I, a cis, straight white guy who primarily writes about greenwashing, tackling this complicated and sensitive issue?
I almost didn't write this piece. After all, it's not my identity, and I cannot speak to the lived experience of a trans or gay person. Several of my readers are probably uncomfortable with the entire topic.
It dawned on me that the reason the LGBTQ demographic, and trans people specifically, are such ripe targets is because they are a minority, and many still live in the closet. Otherizing a minority group is how fascists gain power. The Nazis targeted Trans and Gay people in the 1930s before almost any other group for a reason. If I'm not brave enough to speak out, on the blog I write as a hobby, what kind of person am I?
I don't understand being trans. And that's the whole point. My opinion and my feelings don't matter. As a member of a free and open society, it is my responsibility to listen to people and respect their right to exist. And, most importantly, it is my obligation to treat everyone with respect for their right to live. That means not only in how I personally interact with LGBTQ people. I have a duty to speak up when I see hate or discrimination, both in the real world and online when I see it.
I would argue that we all have that responsibility, and I challenge you, dear reader, to let go of your biases and fears and doubts. Let people be who they want. I can't speak for you, but I have enough about myself so work on to bother trying to worry about how someone else lives their life.
Also, lest we forget, being inclusive is good for business.
Happy Pride!
Name and identifying details changed
For clarity, Sharon talks about her past self as he/him. Deadnaming is a sensitive topic but Sharon approved of this language when I spoke with her about it.
Thanks, this is a great article.
Really great article. I worked with a half dozen or so Trans people at Amazon. They were all great to work with and no one really cared about their gender. The people who made jokes were generally aholes, who no one wanted to team up with.