Great Speccie article on bringing your whole self to work

If I brought my whole self to work, it would have to include declarations of my mum being from Ukraine. Russian being her first language would complicate the whole self presentation even further.

I don't share much political space with Douglas Murray. My whole self might deploy a term to describe him that caused offence. However, that doesn't mean that everything he says is disagreeable to me.

At a time when Ukraine is being invaded, yes it does seem like respect rather than self-righteousness to use the name they have officially said is the right one. There are just not two different equally acceptable versions of the name.

That bloke at NSPCC (I think) brought his whole self to work didn't he? Took pics too.

Only my professional self needs to be at work and I don't need to know about others' whole selves at work either. It's bad enough already hearing people talking endlessly about their children/grand children, how rat arsed they got over the weekend , their hobbies etc without talking about their kinks and fetishes because that's where we would end up with this.

I am alarmed at the push for 'professional' to include 'identity' when that includes sexuality, kinks, god knows what else.

Inclusion has gone too far.

When I hear 'bringing your whole self to work' I think of that terrible advert (is it for LinkedIn?) where the woman says ‘ I want to bring ALL my identities to work', and then they show a bloke in a catsuit and platform shoes squatting self-importantly on a table.

No. Just no. Come to work, do your job properly, be polite, go home. That’s all you need to do.

I get it, but at the same time, there is no equivalent of the word "the" in Russian, so I don't quite understand where that bit of reasoning came from.

Of course "bring your whole self to work" is worse for women than for men.

A man gets married and it's relatively unremarkable, a woman gets married and her seniors start wondering when she's going to be off on maternity leave.

A man with kids is a provider, a woman with kids is expected to be unreliable etc etc.

I don't want to know anything about my colleagues unless they are specific friends of mine, I'm not interested and I don't care.
I have a "naice" work persona and a wild out of work persona and never shall the two meet.

But you know, crack on.

Ha! You persist in your righteous indignation 😁

I'm sure The Ukraine is very glad to have you gallantly defending it at this time.

And the proclamations on here of the 'unacceptability of 'a gay' vs gay and 'The' Ukraine vs Ukraine are just glorious examples of the absurd spiralling looking for offence, he pillories in his writing.
'gay' I CBA talking about any more. I've made my view clear.
But Ukraine itself made clear (some years ago) why it wants to be called that. Doing otherwise, or saying that it's just looking for offence, is just ill-informed. Or wilfully ignorant.

I think he's brilliant.
Intellectually and also courageous.

He is not prepared to dilute what he sees as dangerous or absurd the spare anyone's feelings.

And that is needed.

If we were at a point in our culture where feelings were always disregarded in pursuit of truth we'd probably need some one else commenting to rebalance that.

But we're not, so we need Murray.

And the proclamations on here of the 'unacceptability of 'a gay' vs gay and 'The' Ukraine vs Ukraine are just glorious examples of the absurd spiralling looking for offence, he pillories in his writing.

I wonder if being a grumpy menopausal woman who regularly has little sleep, has breakout bleeding to mimic post birth, is irritated by mediocre middle aged mid management he-himmers and frequently gets the rage by the women hating bull that the wokesters promote?

Yes? Is that 'self' welcome at the Team Meeting?

Anyway, I've derailed enough from the actual thread topic.

And I loved his ‘YouTuber Owen Jones’ story.

I always enjoy Douglas Murray’s writing even though I don’t agree with everything he says. I think he is surprisingly empathetic at times despite the scorn he aims at those he finds irritating. I like hearing from someone who is a critical thinker and has a different way of looking at the world.

But still, I think it's fairly widely understood that 'a gay' is not a great phrase to use.

But why not? He's doing it very thoughtfully. There's a gap in the language - "a lesbian" is in common use, but "a gay" isn't. Making "gay" as a noun acceptable increases expressiveness. Nouns are useful.

Having read his book, he's clearly on a "simplifying English" thing throughout, with a side order of "let's play the Woke language warriors at their own game".

At least he's not telling people off for not saying "a gay", he's just leading by example.

(And at least it means something, unlike the accursed "queer".)

Douglas IS gay. Or "a gay".

Over the years it’s been pretty important that I don’t bring my whole self to work. My job requires me to be different things to different people. I say all sorts of things to my colleagues I would never say to my patients (largely swearing and a dark sense of humour). I have to leave some of me at the door in order to treat people regardless of whether they are a paedophile who’s daughter has recently reported years of sexual abuse at her fathers hands; the rude and obnoxious middle aged man who thought my junior colleague was my boss because he was male; the abusive alcoholic who is tormenting his ex partner; the young man who tells me he’s really a woman and wants hormones and breasts; the woman whose extended family lived over the road from me causing misery to their neighbours and the whole street.
I leave my whole self behind because without doing so I couldn’t treat any of these people as they should be treated- the same as everyone else.

He sounds like he's probably a horrible person tbh. But I don't disagree with him on this topic.

Having said that... I'm a teacher. Many people seem to be of the opinion that teachers need to be above reproach when not at work - should not be allowed to have normal social lives, drink alcohol in public, or have social media accounts etc, let alone express political or religious views in school.

So maybe I should embrace the idea of being encouraged to bring my whole sepf to work by airing my GC, atheist, republican and anti-Tory views at over a bottle of wine in the staffroom, or indeed the clasroom.

@NecessaryScene

He doesn't use quote marks.

Well, he wouldn't would he? I was quoting him. He's not quoting himself.

I think he honestly thinks it's OK/correct to say 'a gay'. And that it's OK/correct to say 'the Ukraine'

I admit that as a grammar pedant, I'm somewhat against it. Adjectives being used as nouns or adverbs is always rather jarring.

But in this case it's at least justified, in that there isn't an already-perfectly-good noun. And it's short and easily understood. What noun would you have him use?

Personally, I like his writing style, as it's marvellously direct and to the point while still being erudite. He's not someone who needs to obfuscate things to make himself look clever (cf Butler).

It's anti-intellectual and views universities and learning as suspect.

Seriously? Some universities, and some learning, sure. But generally? Are you saying nothing at universities is suspect? Did he forget to put "NAUALT" in?

He thinks that racism, sexism and homophobia were 'settled' and no longer issues, until new critical theories in e.g. gender and race studies (as developed and studied at universities) brought them back up.

That feels like a rather bad faith paraphrase. But given that you apparently have a specific quote in mind (from the quote marks), I'm interested to see that use of "settled" in context.

It implies a disregard for the country's sovereignty.

Because? Do I need to go back to calling the Netherlands Holland?

I no longer have a copy of the book, so can't dig out any quotes.

Didn't quite mean to derail this thread so much, for which I apologise.