10-10-2024, 05:58 PM
From bionic at the old place
Quote:Quote from: lokiduck, post: 100898410, member: 55351
I was at working trying to get stuff done when my coworkers started talking about Harry Potter. One of my bosses actually threw her baby a Harry Potter Birthday party and everyone thought it was just so fucking darling and cute, and all started gushing about how much they love HP and have reread the books recently and i was basically shut down unable to work emotionally, because I'm honestly getting to the point where even mentioning words from the series infuriates me.
ANYWAYS, I realized part of why they could have such a positive conversation was probably because they were unaware of what Rowling has been doing as they aren't active on twitter and social media sites like that. I didn't want to go butting into their super happy positive conversation about their love of HP to tell them the truth, but I'm on the equity team at my job and part of my job is teaching people about social justice and equity issues in a civil and educational way.
I'm thinking of talking with my other boss about it in our private meeting tomorrow to see if there's a way i can use this moment as an educational moment to teach my coworkers about Rowling is doing and let them form their own opinions from there. I think if she's involved I can make sure it's done in a professional and civil way instead of just angrily calling Rowling a terf and horrible person like I do in online circles LOL.
I guess the main thing will be finding the best sources I can use that work in a work based setting, but I really want to do it, just to use this moment to teach things and hopefully give myself some peace of mind at work lol
Quote from: lokiduck, post: 100937761, member: 55351
Thanks everyone for your well wishes and concerns. I had concerns of my own, which is why I wanted to talk about it with my boss first. The meeting itself went very well, and she agreed that something needs to be done just because she wants the office to be a safe place for everyone. She just wasn't sure how to go about it, so she suggested reaching out to the rest of our Equity team and seeing what they suggest since some are more experienced at having hard conversations over micro-aggression. I sent an email summing up everything, and one member is already being supportive so I have some hope but still am wary anything will happen.
My entire goal with this is to educate and hope that my coworkers understand where I'm coming from. The hard part is unlike the internet, I have to see these people every day, but again if I can find a way of presenting it in a professional and civil way, maybe there's a chance. Anyways, we shall see.
Today:
Quote from: lokiduck, post: 101626864, member: 55351
Update on the situation at work. I had the meeting. Due to scheduling conflicts it almost got pushed to another month from now, but but was pretty gun ho about making it happen so we had it yesterday with just a few people. Over all the meeting itself went well but there was some discussion about it, as it happens one of my coworkers who is queer is very pro HP still and while hating Rowling with every fiber of her being still supports the series. We talked for a while about how to present the information to the office in the best way, and some debate of "do we want to get in the way of people's joy came up." A hypothetical was even put forth about "what if a trans friend of yours still finds joy in the series but doesn't know about Rowling, do you tell them?" At which point I said yes to both.
People should know what's going on, so they can be informed and decide on their own whether they want to still engage with a series.
Anyways, the conclusion was to write a email explaining the situation and once it gets approved send it to my office. That way people can choose to read and engage with the email on their own time and privately debate how they will handle it. I felt this was the best way of doing it because people who were going to ignore the topic can continue to do so, and there should be less push back on "why are we taking time away from the meeting to talk about this?" from the assholes in my office lol.
I wrote the email draft and sent it off to the team for review, so we'll see how that goes.
Additionally, my boss sat down with me to discuss it and made it clear that I am 100% valid in my opinion and stance on things, but I also can't be critical of others and need to let people do what they want. She approves of me informing others, but doesn't want any issues in the office because people disagree with each other. I also have to accept that people will probably still talk about the series in the office, and I can't tell them not to talk about it.
So basically my conclusion is that this whole thing has been a failure LOL. While I'm being told my feelings are valid and I'm allowed to educate people, I'm also told to respect "whether people continue to enjoy this series or not" but honestly this is what I should have expected.
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Margs
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