Get Off My Cubicle Lawn

Addressing my recent pronoun run-in

So this is how it went down; it was a discussion about email signatures.

Recently the company I work for got bought out by a bigger mover in the industry, and we’ve been doing the months-long transition thing—new email domains, IT stuff, logos, business cards, shirts, etc. One of those actions was temporarily changing our email signature from company X to “company X is becoming company Y!” to company Y. All in one week and we were musing as to the pointlessness of it.

By “we” I mean the dramatis personae of:

Myself, Fence of Chesterton

“Allan:” my team lead, a stoic and quietly conservative Northwoods American

“Dale:” The accusatory gay engineer

As the other two were noting the pointlessness of the one-week email signature change, Dale turned to me and said “I noticed that you don’t put pronouns in your signature.”

My response was exactly as reported before: “That’s right and I never will.”

Dale was taken aback. Allan made a small grunt of agreement, so subtle that only those who understand the ways of the Northwoods could pick it up. To anyone else, it sounded neutral.

That was it. Nothing big, no giant fight. No calls from HR. The conversation moved to something else. Just a small moment of challenge to the accepted culture of Corporate America the last fifteen years.

And that’s how it starts. Not the big grand gesture but plenty of small “noes” that add up to one giant “no” to the whole damned structure. A statement that we won’t have our morality dictated to us by corporations or the government.

As another co-worker and friend, let’s call her “Kelly” (mannish lesbian and my main gun range buddy) says, I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to work. I sell the company my labor and they pay me for it. That’s it.

I’m an orthodox Christian, high church Anglican. So yes, I am conservative. My church doesn’t have female clergy and we won’t be holding a gay wedding ever. Thems the old rules and we stick by them. We like it. We think we’re right. We’re not hateful, we just believe that the last 60 years of post-modern free-for-all is a bunch of raging nonsense and going along with it has damaged our individual and national psyches to a frightening extent. I grew up in the deep Left, I have those scars too. And I’m done with it.

But I’m also an individualistic live and let live American. So while you won’t be getting married in my church I don’t particularly care if you can get married in yours. At least you’re going to church! Better than most folks these days. Nor am I going to go sticking my nose in your life as long as you leave mine alone. I’m the token conservative among a lot of liberal and queer friends, and get along with all of them. They are dear to me and vice versa. Because people come first.

Where did this DEI nonsense start? After the drubbing the Lefties got at Reagan’s election, they retreated to academia and sulked, and plotted, and schemed and moped. When Clinton was elected with the mandate to make liberals money, they saw their chance to combine their ideology with corporate America. It was perfect. Who else has more leverage over our citizens than the employers who pays us? Cross them and you’re homeless. Inject their ideology into HR departments and you obey or else you get to live in a tent.

That along with their media’s slagging of everything third space—churches, Moose Lodge, etc.—meant that the culture of the West was reduced to two things: the government and corporations.

Nope. We need to take back our private lives, our third spaces, our right to live in our own communities separate from employer and government. My job pays me and my government fixes the roads. That’s it. Or that’s the way it should be. Everything else is me and mine, it’s my time. Go away.

My morality? That’s between me, deacons, priests and bishops, and the Lord.