In a workplace, it certainly should be. The purpose of a workplace is to produce something, not to provide a place for employees to socialize or make employees feel comfortable. A workplace might have some policies to make employees feel more comfortable or encourage socializing, but the ultimate goal of all of those policies is to increase productivity (or decrease turnover, which indirectly increases productivity by reducing the need for training and the like). In the case of a publicly traded company, the shareholders can sue the company if it adopts policies that interfere with making money for the company (usually by producing something).
You might almost have a point if being transgendered was illegal. But just almost.
Because it’s a JOB, you know, as in a workplace. If it’s your private social club you can make up your own rules and I’ll back you completely.
To take one of Tomndebb’s example, someone who is stricken with MS may have a dramatic change in stature, speech, motor control, etc. It can make you consider your own frailty and mortality, it can be uncomfortable to be around, people may treat them completely differently when they’re in a wheelchair. If they can continue to do their job, would you support firing that person? If not, please explain how you differ between that the transgendered person.
I’m really stuck with the impression that the entire argument amounts to the right not to be squicked out by certain things. You’ve drawn an arbitrary line with no way to qualitatively separate it from a dozen other things people are squicked out by, and as such, it’s a poor argument. To make this a valid policy, you need to be able to describe in some detail how you decide what’s in and what’s out. Without that, all you have is someone saying “We don’t like that, and that’s all there is to it.”
On the contrary, you seem to have them.
agreed.
agreed, though there would have to be a lot of safeguards to ensure that the meat actually is donated/sold.
Well, unless eating human meat is risky in a disease transmission sense. I could see a problem with it then, don’t want a cow-orker developing mad human disease.
wait, what?
If you work for the mob, maybe.
A really weird version of the mob…
I should point out that my agreeds here are in a theoretical “should be” sense, rather than what would happen in reality.
Tomndebb It’s not the ick factor at all. As I have pointed out repeatedly. The ick factor is an individual response that causes a chain reaction that affects the level of the organization. We’re not talking about people’s right not to be grossed out, but people’s right to be able to work in an environment where their being grossed out doesn’t impinge upon their ability to do their job. We aren’t talking about the right of the transgendered individual vs other individuals, we are talking about the right of the transgendered vs the collective. Telemark and yourself seem to have put the threshold pretty high in that you’d theoretically at least allow the Satyr to keep their job. When you say, ‘ick’ factor that sort of belittles the point. People have a psychological threshold of what they can handle. It’s why I don’t polymorph in public. 
As a dragon with the ability to polymorph, I have a responsibility not to melt the brains of my fellow members of society by causing them to accept or reject a whole new paradigm.
Now of course getting a sex-change is not as dramatic as a polymorphing dragon, but the question for me is: Where is the threshold? If you think that the only ethical response is to be tolerant of any of these behaviors, think of it as an etiquette issue. What are the limits upon my ability to dramatically alter myself and expect society to simply accept it? This is barring monetary issues of course. Your point about being rich enough to turn into a Satyr only goes so far. 50 years ago a sex-change operation was out of most people’s reach as well.
Basically for me the question is “What is human?”, yes I accept a transgendered individual as human, and I am even willing to go as far as accepting them as their chosen identity in terms of how I interact with them. However, the idea that science can make gender mutable opens up a whole gateway to further mutability. Where is the threshold?
kidchameleon I really could give a fuck if someone wants to lop their pecker off. I was playing Devil’s Advocate to see what people’s responses to things would be. I felt I would get more honest responses by playing the part than I would by saying I was only arguing that side hypothetically. I have a talent for arguing a point passionately even if I really don’t care.
No. We agreed that a person who was surgically or otherwise modified to appear to be a satyr should be able to keep a job. If the person so modified began to behave as a satyr, grabbing random women and attempting to ravish them, the person would be acting outside the bounds of propriety and would be subject to dismissal, (and lawsuits and criminal prosecution).
I have seen no evidence that there is any other point.
You do not polymorph in public because you are not actually able to change your shape into that of a mythological creature without substantial surgical changes. Smileys notwithstanding, your discussion began with a reference to the transgendered, then morphed into a discussion of radically altered appearances of humans.
Why should a transgendered person be subjected to any fewer civil rights protections than persons suffering Down Syndrome or Cerebral Palsy or third degree burns who actually have a different appearance than “regular folks”? Transgendered people do not even look different.
Once that obstacle has been overcome, you need to explain why a person who subjects themselves to some odd body crafting to change their appearance should be provided fewer civil rights than a person who has suffered disfigurement through trauma. Should people be fired for piercings? Tatoos? Liposuction? Where is your* line and how do you justify it?
PLEASE, posters, do not swamp the Mods’ inboxes with reports of trolling. If someone wants to open a thread in the Pit or ATMB regarding whether this sort of advocacy of discussions should be permitted, fine, but I have seen no evidence that mswas was acting for the sole purpose of enraging people and he seems to be treating the topic seriously (even if he came a it by a more than circuitous route).
[ /Moderating ]
People get fired or not hired for tattoos and piercings daily
You just ruined a good polymorphing joke…
Do people also get fired or not hired because they have tattoos removed or let piercings heal?
Well, in that case, c’mon down mswas.
If having tattoos and piercings is a problem for the job (and it can often be in public service jobs) then getting some or refusing to remove them are certainly grounds for dismissal.
If a man or woman can do the job, then someone transitioning from man to woman can do the job. There’s nothing about the transition that prevents someone from performing the job.
You keep saying that it’s not the ick factor, but you haven’t presented anything to say otherwise. People have a right to feel whatever they want. In general, people don’t have a right to act on those feelings in a way which discriminates. You haven’t come up with a single distinction between a transgendered person, someone with MS, someone who is gay, someone who was passing for white. It’s still the ick factor no matter how many times you say it’s not. Until you can give us some sort of reason by which can decide the threshold, it remains whatever the majority (or loudest) group decides is icky.
Gender has been mutable forever. Science didn’t suddenly support this idea, people have made gender mutable for 1000’s of years, it’s just that in the past 50 or so medicine has allowed it to go to a slightly different level. Acting like this is a new aspect of human nature is blinding yourself to history.
Telemark Ick factor is a false dichotomy. Ick factor is a part of the issue. You and Tomndebb keep painting it as though it’s the whole issue.
Arguing the issue of the ick factor between individuals is a matter of fairness. I am not talking about fairness, I am talking about utility within a group, as I said 7 pages ago, and repeated at least three times in every subsequent page.
I find it dubious that you two are incapable of understanding this. But maybe you are. -shrugs- It’s not about the ick factor, that doesn’t eliminate the relevance of the ick factor as part of the argument.
I’m tired of repeating myself.
Then what in blazes is the issue? I have pointed out that you have framed no other issue on at least a couple of occasions and nothing you have posted has shown what you are concerned over.
The only thing that you seem to be saying is a vague defense of a tyranny of the majority: We don’t like something about you, (that may be different than or equivalent to something else that we will accept), so we get to fall back on a claim of delicate sensibilities to exclude you.
That happens when you never get around to actually explaining a point instead of simply repeatedly declaring it.
And you haven’t yet explained what this means. Utility within a group is a meaningless phrase. Give me some details, how do I discuss this vague idea when compared against someone’s right to work at a job they can do? Give me something I can work with, put some meat on the bones. Until you do, it all boils down to the ick factor.
ETA: Darn those moderators and their time shifting powers!
I made it multiple times even in the post you are responding to currently.
1 ick factor = individual problem
multiple ick factor = breakdown of cohesion
take the extra step or why are you still talking to me?
telemark If an issue divides a group and breeds mistrust that issue is divisive regardless of some high notions of moral continuity. Past that my attention for this thread is at an end unless you have some insight into the issue that concerns me.