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Comment by strken | Hacker News Reader

Covertly flirting with your female colleague in ambiguous ways after she asked you not to and then pretending you didn't do anything, asking your black colleague if he "knows any rappers", and wearing a dress to a company dress-up party when you are in no way trans then claiming to be "trans until tomorrow" and laughing loudly are also all unprofessional.

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How is any of that related to the issues I raised? I never argued that any of that was acceptable.

I'm not arguing that anyone should be able to do anything in the workplace, and that is a bad-faith reading of what I said.

People are assholes. And assholes need to be dealt with. But the term "professional" is consistently abused as a tool to oppress people.

I am arguing that the general (American) expectations of "professionalism" are deeply influenced by hateful people, and we should question those standards.

My point was that general expectations are exactly what professionalism is and they reflect the broader society you're in, and there's nothing wrong with professionalism as a concept that isn't also wrong with everything else. We shouldn't question professionalism in isolation because there's no point to doing so: it's just a convenient mirror of broader society used to beat on workplaces for doing what everyone else is also doing.

That last one may well be professional enough to win you business awards, if you do it boldly enough - as in the case of Credit Suisse director Pips Bunce:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/outrage-male-bank-dire...

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