If someone comes to me and reports anyone (of any gender) for using that sentence and claiming that it was political, they'll be first invited to repeat themself because I must have heard them incorrectly and then if that doesn't clue them in, I'll continue along the conversation until they realize that I don't believe that's the least bit political of a statement and if they continue to think that it is, they are only welcome to do that thinking at work with their mouth shut and away from their keyboard.
Yes, of course. I've seen that number decrease over the decades, but it's obviously not zero (and probably never will be).
It's not clear that the presence of those people on the earth requires official work channels to be a political discussion free-for-all. I spend time on a fairly small number of discussion sites. Invariably, the ones with the highest signal-to-noise ratio are the ones which ban gratuitous political discussion (including this one [Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. ]).
Political discussion (like religious discussion) tends to generate more heat than light and I don't begrudge a company wanting to focus official work channels on, well, work.
I agree that political discussion generates more heat than light, and I agree that the company should be able to prohibit specific topics. At the same time, Basecamp’s definition of “political” is extremely broad (“every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant”) and I don’t blame people for worrying that anodyne statements would fall under its umbrella.
To take a few hot-button issues from today: what if you’re Black, and a police officer racially profiles you on your way to work? What if your trans child is taking puberty blockers, or playing sports? Forget taking specific stances — is it acceptable to even let on to your coworkers that these things are happening in your life?
I think they are. I also don’t think they are appropriate in #official, #work, or during the meat of a work meeting, which is what it seems like Basecamp is saying.
I think they are, too. But I also think Basecamp’s wording (especially before they changed it [1]) leaves a ton of room for interpretation. And I’m not confident that many of them people who jumped in to defend this would be on the same page as us.
These are things that you might bring up in personal conversation with friends at work. Airing your personal list of daily grievances, trials and tribulations on chat channels might get you some murmers of sympathy but most people will be rolling their eyes behind your back.
