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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   31571 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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I have to ask - has anyone ever been sued for a hostile work environment, and the "look at all the woke stuff we're doing" was found to be a valid defense? I'm a bit tired of these mundane "gosh, we didn't want to, but we really had no choice" theories of corporate action.

That wasn't the claim. My claim is that a public anti-trans stance would open them up for lawsuits.

American courts always seemed kind of insane to me, so it wouldn't surprise me, but come on... how can advertising with JK Rowling be grounds for a lawsuit more than advertising with Dylan Mulvaney?

You're a gay employee. You have a fallout with your boss and you are fired. Now you get to claim that your fallout was caused by a culture of homophobia at the company, as evidenced by public statements.

You could construct a similar case with Dylan Mulvaney, but I somehow doubt courts will entertain the idea that those ads are evidence of an anti-Christian or anti-women bias.

You're a gay employee. You have a fallout with your boss and you are fired. Now you get to claim that your fallout was caused by a culture of homophobia at the company, as evidenced by public statements.

Except you won't find any statement by JK Rowling that's homophobic. You won't even find one that's transphobic. Your argument would end up looking like "JK Rowling is perceived by the trans community to be transphobic, therefore advertising with her is an anti-trans statement" or something. Now, like I said American courts are kind of insane to me, so the argument would fly for all I know, but the argument "wouldn't it open them up for a lawsuit" seems to explicitly assume the courts are ridiculously slanted, but the passive voice makes it sound like there's nothing to see here.

Except you won't find any statement by JK Rowling that's homophobic. You won't even find one that's transphobic. Your argument would end up looking like "JK Rowling is perceived by the trans community to be transphobic, therefore advertising with her is an anti-trans statement" or something.

No, it would end up looking like "JK Rowling is a well-known anti-trans hate monger as evidenced by this list of prominent anti-trans hate mongers published by this very serious NGO that employs very serious credentialled people".

Bud Light functionally has no choice but to eat the cost of a frivolous lawsuit for not being gay friendly enough(they will eventually win- American employment law is very pro corporation). They just don’t want to, they want to continue trying to win over liberal underaged drinkers from wine coolers.

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