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clytemnestradidnothingwrong · 2 days ago

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I have some thoughts on this article (and DEI in general) I'd like to write out, but I'll put it under a cut so it doesn't clog up anyone's feed.

"It was to be an obituary for ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) a movement that ironically ended up serving as a cover for racism, homophobia, and sexism in the workplace, the media, and academics."

I usually keep my opinions on DEI to myself, because I know it's a controversial topic, and just by disagreeing with DEI concepts I get accused of being conservative, because none of y'all have working brain cells. But that right there sums up my issue with DEI. DEI, to me, is another case of good intentions gone bad.

"I was going to tell you about the time DEI was used to justify saying that turning up on time was the domain of white culture - no one else turns up on time, only white people, and expecting someone to be on time is racist."

It also led to math being deemed as racist, even though math was invented in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and fine tuned in the Middle East during the Islamic golden age (none of which are white or European). I even read somewhere that one American school district even made the case for not teaching Black students to speak English. I want someone who is pro-DEI to explain to me how that ISN'T racist.

"I was going to bring up Students vs. Harvard, the famous Supreme Court case that ended affirmative action in student admissions, after it was found that affirmative action was being used to racially discriminate on a systemic level against Asian Americans at elite universities."

DEI (and identity politics in general) have made Asians out to be like a subgroup of White people because their cultures strongly encourage academic prowess and achievement. I guess we forgot about the violent anti-Chinese sentiment in the late 19th/early 20th century and the Japanese concentration campus during WWII.

"I could have talked about the tech job fair for ‘women and non-binary people’ that was filled with men."

DEI and trans activism are interconnected, so I'm sorry, but all I can think of when I see or hear the words "diversity, equity, and inclusion" or "DEI" are the rights, language, spaces, and resources of women being given to men in shitty wigs.

"But everyone’s already said that. Underneath all the fancy verbiage of ‘DEI’, we had white women like Robin DeAngelo quite seriously arguing for segregated racial affinity groups and treating black people like aliens."

While I do think oppressed groups deserve to have their own spaces away from their oppressors, I've read horror stories of it being taken too far and essentially reinventing segregation. There's a difference between starting a school club for only Black students and putting Black students into a different class than their White peers.

"School districts in San Francisco argued that black children couldn’t do algebra, and that algebra was racist white supremacy, and therefore schools should be segregated."

Oh yeah, see, the "math is racist" thing I mentioned above.

"Gays and lesbians were either shoved back in the closet or fired if they objected to being told that sexuality was a spectrum and they could change to being heterosexual."

So this and the handing over women's everything to fetishistic men are why I hate DEI. I fucking hate it and this is why. DEI is misogyny and homophobia to me.

"Being racist towards Jews was now noble ‘anti-colonialism’, because a random synagogue in [insert country] caused the war in Gaza, so it deserved to be covered in swastikas."

What's going on over there is terrible. Both sides (the men) are committing horrific atrocities for no good reason. But the quick rise in antisemitism I've seen is concerning. How many times are we going to go through this before everyone learns their damn lesson? You want to pretend you're "progressive" and more enlightened than your parents/grandparents when antisemitism is almost as old as misogyny?

"It got used as a cover for straight white people to say the most ludicrously racist, sexist, and homophobic things imaginable and then be praised for being progressive for saying that black people are inherently less intelligent, the only way to fix racism is more racism, lesbians should suck dick, gay men should cut theirs off, women should put up with being raped in prison cells by male sex offenders and those evil money-grubbing Jews are secretly running the world. It turns out if you use the right canards from whoever your critical theory best boo is, it’s completely fine to be slightly to the right of Adolf Hitler."

I've always wanted DEI to be something that leveled the playing field for women and people of color. That gave us equal footing in the workforce and the government. We should be teaching women's, African, Latin American, and Asian history in schools. But instead, it turned into this.

"It meant that suddenly networks used by gays and lesbians to connect in the workplace were infiltrated by straight people."

I went to an online lesbian workshop where I saw the faces of over a dozen lesbians of all ages. We talked about our generational differences and what we can all do for each other. I kept my camera off because I was sobbing. I know one lesbian and she's my coworker, but she's a huge TRA, and I'm at the point where I can't stand to be around those type of people anymore. "Progressives" destroyed the gay and lesbian communities. They took our spaces, our resources, and even our words. They're the reason I'm all alone, that I'm too afraid to come out to anyone, that I've given up hope of ever meeting a woman. DEI is homophobia to me.

"If you objected to this, you would find a chat to human resources about not being inclusive scheduled in your Outlook calendar."

If you're lucky.

"It’s finding out everything is suddenly under the banner of diversity, equity and inclusion, and that consequently you’re the wrong sort of diversity: a lesbian with boundaries and an opinion, which for these people, is the worst thing ever."

As a lesbian, in theory, I check some of the "diversity" boxes. In practice, I don't, because I'm the "wrong" type of lesbian (a.k.a I don't take dick, even if the dick haver calls himself Misty).

"When you’re faced with this, you have to grin and bear it if you want to stay employable."

I have to distance myself from my coworkers because I will lose everything if they find out my politics do not align with theirs. I have to go in there every day and pretend I like these fake performers who would destroy my life if they knew how I really felt.

"Let me tell you what ‘DEI’ in the workplace is like as a gay person. You have to go in the closet."

I've been able to make my closet space comfortable, at least. It's quiet with lots of pillows and blankets.

"You cannot ardently defend your rights outside of work, and if you use a pseudonym to do so, you had to understand how to protect it, or you were going to be doxxed and lose your job."

I use fake names and don't give out any personal information and I'm still extremely paranoid.

"You turn up to the ‘LGBTI+’ work networks, hoping to meet gay colleagues, but there are none, and now Bob from Accounting is calling himself Lilith and wants to connect with you as a fellow lesbian."

Or Hetty Betty the Admin starts calling herself "queer" even though she's dating a man and has never once expressed interest in women.

"You don’t want to be used as a validation vending machine, or a prop in some straight person’s fantasy about ‘living the queer lifestyle’. You feel like a zoo exhibit at every ‘networking meeting’ for the ‘LGBTQIA+’, as you’re the only real deal in a room full of pretenders, and you stop engaging. You find Bob in the bathroom, attempting to lower his hairline. He tries to talk to you about lesbian girl gossip. You just wanted to sneakily watch five minutes of the Packers game on the toilet in peace, but now there’s a man in your bathroom being a creepy fuck and you’re not allowed to complain about him being there."

I avoid all things "LGBT+" like the plague, because that's what they are. Plagues of homophobic, ugly, smelly straight people.

"You listen to some woman with a husband and three kids at home telling you about how she’s a queer authority, and therefore is righteously delivering you inclusivity training. She’s queer because she dyed her hair purple and bought some Birkenstocks, but she’s never seen another woman’s pussy in her whole damn life, and you keep your damn mouth shut because you don’t want to be fucking fired."

This is my work life and I FUCKING HATE IT!

"If you were butch, suddenly there was a gaggle of straight women assuming you were like them - a gay trans man. When you were fairly clear about your lesbianism, it started to turn hostile. See, your average butch lesbian woman can pass as a man on first inspection without much effort. Their masculinity comes naturally, and some of the attraction for many femme women is the inherent contradiction, the masculine female, somehow still completely masculine even when the adornments come off and reveal the female body underneath.

This provokes jealousy - you become an object of envy and hatred - to the woman pretending to be a man, you are doing what she wants to do - perform masculinity - not only effortlessly, but fully embracing your womanhood while doing so. To the man pretending to be a woman, you remind him of what he will never be, no matter how hard he tries, because you are living proof that womanhood has nothing to do with whatever kind of drag society pronounces as ‘feminine’. Living proof of the old gay maxim that you’re born naked, the rest is drag, you are a walking, talking argument against the veracity of trans ideology. Simply by existing, you undermine their arguments. Thus you must be bullied, if not into hating your own body, and into transition, you must be dehumanized, debanked, unemployed, a pariah, excluded, branded with scarlet letters, held aloft as a great evil. Diversity, equity, and inclusion does not apply for women like you, who really should just transition so we’d all stop being confused."

The medicalization of gender non-conformity is one of the worst aspects of DEI and "progressives" in general. The audacity of these monsters to sit there with fake smiles on their ugly faces as they act like they're morally superior and enlightened to everyone around them, only to go full on 1950s conservatives the second they see a woman with short hair.

"It does not matter if you kowtow or if you say the right words in order to stay employed. The jealousy, the envy, the simmering hatred of one who contradicts their entire belief system simply by existing, that’s something that knows no bounds. You are living wrongthink no matter how many times you respect the pronoun pin, and they will try their best to destroy you in any way they can."

They hide this monstrous face behind buzzwords and fake smiles. Once you see past the facade these self-proclaimed "progressives" have built, you can never look at them the same. I count my lucky stars every day that, for the most part, nobody has shoved their politics too much down my throat, and mostly accept that I don't talk about anything political at work. How much longer this will last, though, I do not know.

"Now anyone who was counted as ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ faces the accusation that they were only hired based on their identity characteristic and are by default assumed to be incompetent."

This is where the authoress and I may disagree, because I haven't seen much evidence of the so-called "DEI hires". I don't believe this is DEI's biggest problem. In all the search committees I've been on, I've seen this happen once, and it certainly wasn't for a woman or a person of color. It was for a veteran. Some states require you to interview veterans if they apply, regardless of their qualifications. I once had to interview an extremely unqualified veteran for a position in my department. Where's the uproar for that?

"It says it’s ‘LGBTQI+ inclusive’, but all the gay characters ring hollow - then you realize that if you were playing as the opposite sex, they’d all be heterosexual. That’s not really representation, you think. It means there are no actual gay characters in this video game. A playersexual character is not a homosexual character."

Gay and lesbian representation in media is so bad that I don't want it anymore, and I have progressives - not conservatives - to thank for that.

"You try playing something else. All the options to make your character look like you are gated behind calling your character a male, even if they have a ‘body type 2’. You need to select the correct pronouns to wear the leather jacket and if you choose to do so, the game offers to give your avatar ‘top surgery scars’."

Not even that sometimes. One of my favorite video games has all the characters refer to you as "they", regardless of the sex your character is, but you can still tell they intended for the PC to be male, even when trying to be "inclusive" (though in my opinion, it was more the laziness of not wanting to pay voice actors to say a line twice then a desire to be "woke").

"If you say something, suddenly you’re a right-wing chud, not a lesbian who wants genuine representation that was written by an actual lesbian, not a straight man in a dress playing pretend. You think, maybe it’s a corporate thing, these DEI games. You go looking for indie games, but searching ‘lesbian’ on Itch.io brings up two pages of autogynephilic fetish porn games about being a ‘gay mess’. Every time you hear about a ‘lesbian creator’ on social media, you look them up only to find a man staring back at you."

I despise "lesbian" media. DESPISE IT. I know liberals are stupid, so they can't comprehend that it's not right-wing to want genuine representation. And it's either a creepy man with the autogynesmile or a straight woman LARPing as "sapphic" (another term I fucking HATE).

"You try finding other people who are equally incensed about this, but it turns out the most prominent critics are the actual right-wing chuds."

That's my situation. The only ones willing to hear me out and not ostracize and punish me are right wingers. We live in the Twilight Zone now.

"The real problem with all of this, according to them, is that there’s actually women, black people, and homosexuals in media to start with. That’s all woke nonsense, and we need to return to only having straight white men in all forms of media, the workplace, and everything else, before all this woke nonsense took hold and ruined everything with ‘DEI pandering’."

And that's usually where my conversations with them end. It's nice to be able to vent about trans bullshit, but their reasons for hating it are usually so different then mine, so I end up still feeling alone, unheard, and depressed.

"That straight white men, regardless of what they call themselves, are implementing all of this 'forced diversity' or benefiting the most from the hallowed DEI status of 'transgender' is beside the point. Women and minority gamers didn’t ask for ‘body type 2’, they asked for the opportunity to play protagonists that were like them. That’s not ‘DEI pandering’. That’s asking for the same opportunities that their white male counterparts have."

It's true. It's male-driven. Even the annoying as hell diehard female DEI supporters are only this way because they've been told it's the "kind" and "progressive" thing to do.

"It’s now at the point that you know that anything that openly advertises how safe it is for ‘LGBTQI+’, or how inclusive it is, is by default something that will be actively homophobic. Whether it’s a workplace, a retail store, a political party, a film, a video game, a book, a bar."

Yup. I see that ugly "Progress Flag", I know the place is crawling with homophobes. I see any version of that stupid fucking acronym, I steer clear, because it's not for me, it's for straight people.

"You know the more they preach how inclusive they are, the more sexist, homophobic and racist they are in reality. This disease has made itself present in every single cultural aspect of modern life."

Yes, holy shit! It's something I've observed over and over again. I've noticed so many times that the ones who go on and on about being kind are usually the worst people you'll ever have the misfortune of meeting. To quote the Suffragists, "deeds, not words". Those who are actually kind and inclusive don't feel the need to talk about how kind and inclusive they are.

"There is no venue for liberal criticism of any of this, let alone gay criticism. You’re either totally on board with DEI or a drag queen on TV is a harbinger of the pedophile apocalypse."

I hate the binary thinking so much. Your made up "genders" can be "nuanced" or "complex", but political beliefs can't?

"You face the Sophie’s Choice between insidious homophobia, or outright homophobia."

Honestly, I'll take "ok that you're gay just don't talk about it" homophobic from conservatives over "unlearn your genital fetish you gross TERF" homophobia from liberals any day.

"Your cultural world gets smaller, because mass culture has decided it doesn’t want people like you in it, because if you’re a homosexual with boundaries, you’re a bigot. You spend your working life walking on eggshells around Bob from Accounting, especially when he turns up to work dressed like a hooker."

And Hetty Betty from Admin who preaches tolerance while being completely intolerant of anyone who doesn't think like her.

"and paint women and racial minorities as inherently under qualified and incompetent compared to their straight white male colleagues who, in their minds, only got where they were on pure merit."

Talk about a lack of self-awareness (the White men, not the authoress).

"No woman or black person or gay person or someone who’s all three ever got to a high position based on their own merit, instead they got there because of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’. They were quota hires. ‘DEI hires’. They’re not real people, real workers, who worked hard to get where they are. It was just handed to them based on their identity. No one wants to be tarred with that brush, but that’s the brush the modern shitlib has successfully tarred every minority group under the sun with. Fuck you."

I hate hearing conservatives yap on about "DEI hires". Quotas are actually an effective way to get women and racial minorities hired. And even if the woman or person of color isn't 100% qualified, so what? Most things can be taught, and so many unqualified white men get hired all the damn time. Everyone's priorities are so fucked.

"In the end, a bunch of privileged and rich straight white people ruined culture, destroyed the gay community, ruined people’s lives, and completely destroyed affirmative action as a concept, all to make themselves feel better. The only thing that’s been achieved is reinforcing old bigotries and setting women and minorities back twenty years. That is the lasting legacy of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’."

And that, to those of you who actually decided to read my ramblings, is my problem with the Left and with their initiatives like DEI. They don't actually care about anyone but themselves. They only say they want to help the marginalized to make themselves look good. Women, people of color, gays, the poor - we are nothing but props to them. Pawns to use in their games against the right. I realized this a few years ago, and my god, I can still feel the knife in my back. It makes me want to lose all hope. I can see it in every "caring" action my "woke" coworkers take.

I sit there and listen to them try so hard to make themselves out to be so humble and selfless in their desire to help others, all the while patting themselves and each other on the backs to an insufferable degree, acting like they've saved the world. It comes off as so insincere. I don't even speak at these meetings anymore, because I want my actions to speak for me. Why don't they?

"Let me know when this is all over, and I can go back to being a lesbian at work, and I can play video games as a woman instead of a Body Type 2, and lesbian conversion movies stop being ‘great queer representation.’"

We were there once. It was for a short time, but we were there. We could bring it back again, if we really tried. Maybe someday I'll be proud to be a lesbian again.

Now that DEI has been sent off to DIE, an obituary to ten years of closeted hell.

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mohntilyet · 2 months ago

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not to mention the entire antaam fleet like 😭 that was the PERFECT moment to show off what the lords could do!!! The antaam fucked over rivain, theyve been a thorn in the whole nations side for a long time now, they would not pass up a chance for payback via full scale naval warfare so that the veilguard can do what they need to!! Sure dreadnoughts are dangerous but at this point they probably have tricks up their sleeve, thats one of the few things they have!

also wouldn't it be personal because does solas not try to blow up kont-aar because he's trying to 5d chess tevinter and the qunari into destroying each other. like. i know technically this would not be incredible widespread news because the attack was stopped, but i don't think the wonderful citizens of kont-aar would have missed the tsunami that nearly hit them and the shockwave that actually hit them. rumors go around. and i assume irian/vadis tell varric. who i think would tell isabela. who would tell the group she leads. who would care because ofc, they LIVE IN RIVAIN, and now know that solas and his followers thinks they can trade rivaini lives* to further his plans.

*while i also think there's probably a divide between kont-aar and the rest of the nation, it's one that the rivaini love to jump across and back over. an interesting comparison to be made here with most of rivain having similar sentiments towards dairsmuid and the chantry. like this is the country specifically mentioned to have a lot of citizens who follow the qun/are non-andrastian + it being MUCH more multicultural and accepting than other nations. any attack on rivain, even if it's a qunari settlement, would fan a lot of flames that solas cannot put out so the idea of trying to him taking multiple steps back because he didn't realise how intensely the qun/rivaini/lords would react is very fun for me. it would have been soo interesting for rivain to be a hub for efforts against solas because of how it's not influenced by andrastianism, how he (or his agents) specifically fucked them over, and (maddeningly for solas) also part of this resistance has spirits who willingly guide them against him. this could have even been a plot device where the door goes both ways and solas finds out rook's plans because he manages to eavesdrop through a seer or something.

and on the spirits. all the stuff where the mourn watch regularly communicates with spirits could have been done with rivain as well, and with different takes on being 'friendly' with spirits. iirc there's a spirit in the hall of valor which is so interesting but it's literally just there for flavour text. THERE'S A SPIRIT IN THE HALL OF VALOR THAT DOES NOTHING BESIDES LIKE. SAY HI. ??? bioware i would have liked to see more spirits and seers and the matriarchal pantheists you have talked about please. and also the idea of the peaceful qunari settlement being pushed to protect the country they are part of and what that means for them as qunari vs. rivaini. taash's storyline could have contributed to this . so A LOT less about choosing a side, more about how kont-aar has developed, changed, how rivain has influenced it and what it means to be qunari. not the qunari agents and fighters that we have seen, but their 'civillian' way of life in kont-aar.

complete waste not seeing any of established lore reflected in the lords of fortune or rivain because i stupidly actually thought we were going to see some kind of settlement and be introduced to a very different cultural norms.. in my beautiful mind i like to think taash is a little taken aback by how badly mages/elves/etc are treated. like they understood it was different outside of rivain (they would have been young when the dairsmuid circle annulment happened right? so they don't 'remember' it themself, they likely heard others talking about it when they're old enough to understand) but until they actually saw what was happening first hand, they had a weird dissonance about it. but what we got was a deserted beach, ties to another faction (wardens are fine!! they are great !!!! the fourth blight is interesting!!!! yet they are not the faction with a lack of info about them!!!!!) and also the hall of valor that exists as flavor text with nothing meaningful behind it besides a pub used in a few cutscenes and a minigame.

#it's just hard to discuss the qunari in general when it is so obviously written to be quote unquote bad #and theyre like. in veilguard. really just reduced to being an invading force. which they were before. but there's literally nothing else #not a single character that explains more about the qun or how it operates + the game presenting choices about taash #that obviously lean towards favoring rivain. god knows why. its not like we know enough about it to choose it #even a quick peek into a rivaini lifestyle would have been helpful. all we know are from lorebooks !!!!#its actually like. 'qun would have made taash into a weapon/they are actively invading treviso/theyre working w ghil+el/shathaan' etc #and then on rivain's side the points are just 'umm. well the lords are super nice. and love freedom... and its also NOT qunari!'#there ARE reasons to pick rivain just none of them are in the fuck ass game. no one who doesnt read the books would know this shit #does anyone know why the antaam are acting outside of their orders. i dont rmb if this was explained or if its supposed to be like #a very severe response to solas and defying orders to 'deal' with a threat?#but god. kont-aar as it exists is so interesting. maybe elements of like .#'the main qun ignore the changes in kont-aar/rivain because it's such an important part of their trade' situation. idk #i just cant see a lot of the extremely rigid qun followings actually meshing with this extremely 'accepting' culture that is in rivain #eg. rivaini seers allowing possessions vs. sareebas #but its said that the rivaini pantheists actually have lots in common with the teachings of the qun (?)#and again. its peaceful. most of the issues that are mentioned in games/etc are to do with the ORLESIAN chantry causing issues in rivain #so it just. makes me think. maybe things have changed and there's a blind eye to whatever happens in kont-aar #or if there are more hostilities or issues caused by their differing beliefs then it would be good to fucking like. hear about it #plus the qun in general is just. worldbuilding standpoint is like. what. im not a guy who knows too much about this part of da lore so #i had to fact check a few things while writing this response and some of the answers were like #just so unbelievable that im choosing to do whatever i want #anyways. sorry. got out of hand. let me know if anything i said isnt true #its entirely possible. my knowledge of rivain is patchwork but this is probably to do with the fact there's not a lot. yeah #god. i have to stop talking now. thank u anon for agreeing w me. sorry u asked me about the lords and i took it as an excuse #to air out my issues w rivain. because tyche was partially built up around that and then none of it even mattered #veilguard spoilers #answered #rivain

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