She had interviewed and met both remotely and in person, this guy was merely an HR drone confirming her documentation. I was a little bent when she told me he had asked her to remove her blur filter “to have a look at her working environment, make sure it’s not cluttered” (something along those lines). No one else at this company requested such. Was he way out of line?
I should note, this is my PC in our living room and not where she will be working from. And this guy wants a look around our home?! Told my wife to bring this up once she’s settled in, ask HR if this is policy. She started today!
She thinks it’s a racism thing. I’m not so sure, but I don’t have any other explanation.
People who experience discrimination develop a sense for when someone is othering them. It’s not always correct, because it involves intuition, and you can misread people. But will still develop a sense for it.
Now, apply this to OP’s wife. OP says this about her:
OP should consider screen-recording her zoom calls.
Anybody know a good screen recording program for Linux that doesn’t alert Zoom to the recording?
Run Zoom in a VM and record from the host maybe?
If you use the browser version of Zoom, it would have no way to know
The Zoom client alerts all parties. You could use another screen recorder, but this is a two-party recording state, straight illegal to record someone without their consent.
But why racism is particular? Sure I see how she has been “othered” by the interviewer, but why racism?
I have a birthmark that reads ‘VAGINA’ on my face.
Some people treat me differently from the moment I meet them.
I say, “I think that those people are reacting to my birthmark.”
You ask: “Why assume they react to your VAGINA birthmark in particular?”
Now, apply this to OP’s wife. OP says this about her:
I’m heavily autistic. I’ve figured this all out logically, as a person who has experience discrimination myself. It wasn’t easy, because I don’t grasp social cues natively. I thought I’d been doing something wrong for a long long time when people initially appraised me as ‘other’, but it turned out they were just being judgemental assholes. If you’re not heavily autistic, I believe it should be easier for you to figure all this out, right?
…you have a birthmark in the shape of legible english characters, not just one, but a full sequence which spell a word?..
It was a metaphor, lol
The irony of the autistic person using a metaphor, and someone else taking it too literally. You have to laugh!
It was a dumb metaphor that made no sense.
Well if you aren’t willing to engage in any sort of introspection all metaphor is stupid probably.
Or maybe the problem is with you?
So, a visible difference that some other people react to with prejudice is not like racism. Got it.
I’m sure you can comprehend why removing the controversial topic of ethnic differences [controversial because e.g. some people want to claim racism is does not happen any longer, or is not of any importance when it does because ‘it’s illegal to discriminate’] to replace it with another visible difference made it a suitable metaphor. I’m sure that you knew this, in fact, when you called it ‘dumb’.
Your annoyance is, therefore, possibly more at me saying that a woman is allowed to believe she is being targeted for racist reasons, and that such a woman should be listened to fairly. Feel free to clarify on that, if you wish. As for me, I logically believe that racism exists, as I have seen it. And that people can intuit when it is happening, as I have seen it. And that other people can disagree with it, because they profit from racism being ignored, as I have seen it.
I think it made sense to most other people who read it
I’m autistic also and I understood it just fine.
Yeah that was a shit metaphor.
It’s about as likely as someone starting and ending all of their writing with ellipses, with some of those ellipses being incomplete.
… all part of the flow mang…