Paizo Paizo Leadership Team Update

[Jfdlsjfd]

Thank you all for your answers with regards to shared hotel rooms.

I guess it's more common than I thought... I had never heard of the practice, outside of voluntary choice of course (like, it would be silly to put a couple in separate rooms when they actively want to get one room together), so I was very surprised. It doesn't seem restricted to "penny pinching" business sector as well. Thanks!

 

[ReshiIRE]

For the sake of transparency and to give Paizo staff kudos:

They have made it clear transphobia is not tolerated on their forums and have started to suspend bigotted and troll posters, as they now have a mechanism for suspension that doesn't remove peoples' access to their digital downloads.

Unfortunately for a variety of reasons they do have to shut down some threads over the weekend as there are still some users... er... acting the bollocks, but otherwise it has made me a lot more confident that the staff within Paizo will properly deal with all the issues. It certainly has restored some confidence I had in Paizo themselves.

 

[Scribe]

There is a difference in my experience in shared rooms, and shared rooms with the opposite sex.

I've shared rooms on business but never with the opposite sex, and I've seen a LOT of HR stuff about the companies I've worked for covering themselves from anything even potentially touching a topic remotely CLOSE to sexual harassments. Like BIZARRE level's of keeping male/female employees at arm's length.

Based on @ReshiIRE timeline, I have to wonder if that was the issue.

 

[S'mon]

I've travelled many times for various healthcare organizations (and the military, come to think of it) and I've never had my own room.

The military is the only time I've had to share a room (since boarding school). Certainly never for work. I guess that's one way UK academia is apparently better than private sector. But I had no idea companies were making people share rooms. :-O

 

[ReshiIRE]

There is a difference in my experience in shared rooms, and shared rooms with the opposite sex.

I've shared rooms on business but never with the opposite sex, and I've seen a LOT of HR stuff about the companies I've worked for covering themselves from anything even potentially touching a topic remotely CLOSE to sexual harassments. Like BIZARRE level's of keeping male/female employees at arm's length.

Based on @ReshiIRE timeline, I have to wonder if that was the issue.

That would be pretty horrific; that would not be treating Crystal as a woman and also not respecting the fact both employees wanted to share a room, and were fine with the arrangement. That would also be fairly discriminary in a different manner.

(And without getting into it too much here or speculating on someone's private medical care, for trans and intersex people, and in deed for general biology, people's 'sex' is pretty complicated, especially once HRT and other treatments for gender dyshoria come into the mix, and outside of medical necessity, one's sex is unimportant in regards to their gender and presentation).

 

[Scribe]

one's sex is unimportant

In regards to old HR policy?

I can assure you, it is important.

 

[ReshiIRE]

In regards to old HR policy?

I can assure you, it is important.

You shouldn't cut off the last part of that sentance.

I am speaking generally about life rather than specifically about any HR policy.

Though if it did inform Paizo's HR policy then that would be awful, for the reasons I've listed before; if they honestly would treat two cis women wanting to share a room together differently than a cis and trans woman wanting to share a room together, then that's transphobic, as they pretty much have acknowledged.

 

[Scribe]

You shouldn't cut off the last part of that sentance.

I am speaking generally about life rather than specifically about any HR policy.

Though if it did inform Paizo's HR policy then that would be awful, for the reasons I've listed before; if they honestly would treat two cis women wanting to share a room together differently than a cis and trans woman wanting to share a room together, then that's transphobic, as they pretty much have acknowledged.

It is bizarre, but what I'm saying (as someone who has been in a large enough company to have HR, Legal, etc etc) that this was actually something that companies had in their policy regarding covering themselves from any kind of sexual harassment type issues.

"Oh yes, my company forced me to room with a man on a business trip." coming from a woman 10-15 years ago, or heck today, would absolutely get a company blasted.

You expanding the discussion is taking it off of what I was talking about.

Travel and shared rooms: Yeah that happens, but NOT with mixed sex occupants, thats never happened in my experience.

 

[ReshiIRE]

I think I understand your point; but policies like that should be either revised or be flexible enough to recognise that when you have employees who are trans, their 'sex' should be irrelvant. I'm not sure if we're speaking past each other or just talking about related but different things.

This does highlight that companies may not do that however or may be unfamiliar with with how best to well... treat their trans employees properly. Especially if they're smaller. I think my current company is fine but - as always, this is one of those things that can be quite invisible especially if you don't read up enough or partake in certain work within the company.

It's a tricky area, especially since for trans people, awareness has both positively and negatively increased vastly only in the last ten years.

 

[GungHo]

• the union wasn't informed of this statement beforehand

Why would they establish a union and then violate one of the core tenets of working with an employee union within a month?