Managing Nuclear Weapons at Work - a Course

If you look far and not too wide, you'll find a course called "Managing Gender Differences in the Workplace." If you manage to find it, you'll find your palm slapping your forehead, then you'll say, "Oh God, no... not again... we just got past women being equal (and getting the vote). We're nice to minorities our HR department hired based solely on a physical difference. We even stopped sexually harassing Shirley, the babe at the front door... at least until she asked us to start again... what's this gender difference stuff?"

No, it's not men and women treating each other as equals... it's treating coworkers who 'do not meet society's accepted definitions of gender'.

To quote Oral Roberts, "Jesus Christ."

What's wrong with HR now? Did someone sue, saying that their insistence on being a female hippopotamus got them fired? Quite frankly, the manure was getting out of hand. And on the walls.  Did someone send HR a pamphlet?

Do you work in a place that would encourage or require this course?

First we learned what sexual harassment was, just so we knew what to call the things we were doing. We all passed, provided we know which of the opposite sex you had to treat with respect and which of the opposite sex you had to treat with respect and a healthy dose of lust. Most were the latter, because there were no actual issues of gender; this was something some dreamer dreamed up in a faraway universe.

Then we had to be tolerant of diversity, because HR insisted we hire people of color or people of lack of color or people with internal plumbing or people who didn't bathe and braided their nose hair. No, they were not qualified for the job, but apparently this one difference qualified them. For extra brownie points, you could love and demand diversity, using the word in every other sentence.

So we were non-harassing and tolerant of diversity.
Then we had to be tolerant of people who identified as different genders, species, inanimate objects, and fire trucks. I was never popular at work til one day I identified as an elevator: everyone wanted a ride. [sigh]

Now it's gender differences.
You say, "but lefty, we are completely on board with gender differences... men and women are equal, some more equal than others. Why has this come back from the dead?"

Because, my children, we're not talking two genders. You bought the lie, as taught in schools all over the planet, obviously as a plot to undermine something that wasn't invented yet. There are, in fact, as Led Zeppelin said, "A Whole Lotta Genders." Or maybe it was Michael Jackson - I forget stuff a lot.

Yes, humans, we are no longer limited to a boring set of two genders - we're now on a spectrum, like dissociation or autism. Folks are not necessarily male or female - they're somewhere in between. But there are no definitive stops on the spectrum's train, so we recognize them as non-binary. While we're riding that train, as the Grateful Dead said, "high on cocaine," there are people who have no gender. Asexuals. Pansexuals. Trisexuals (they try everything), Momsexuals (same as asexual but married with children) and Dadsexuals (will screw anything with a hole in it).

Are you positive we need a course on this?
We really have been treating each other well at work.
When you see a woman who's more manly than your dad, with piercings in places you didn't know could have piercings, you don't point and laugh (at work, anyway). We get along (but only if she's on our team). Now she brought twelve of her friends, from her former employer, over to work. They all look like varying degrees of her, except one really gorgeous one (who is asexual), and a single white female, who the whole group makes fun of, because that's ok.

Like Rodney King said, "AAAAAAAAAAAAH, stop beating me!".  No, wait... "Can't we all just get along?"


If somebody has to tell you this, you shouldn't be working there.