I was very dissapointed in your handeling of the Brendan Eich Mozilla CEO discussion. I felt especially that Jono failed the community and was at least somewhat pleasently surprised to see Bryan get it more right.
The problem is the asymetry of it all. From so many angles. First, a team of the most privledged class, white hetero cis males (what author John Scalazi refers too as “The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is”) telling another more marginzlized group in our community to stop complaining about their civil rights issues is pretty stomach turningly hard to hear. That this one single white hetro male, while publically attacking the civil liberties of an entire community of people and trying to deny all of them rights that he and you already have, that it’s then “unfair” to interfere with his “rights” to work any job. You are telling this entire community that his right to work is more important than all their civil liberties. I felt sick listening to you all be his bigotry apologists. Especially Jono, the so called Community man, selling out an entire segment of his community for one white hetro man’s right to be a CEO.
You all sounded so politically deaf and blind it was quite diappointing. Trying to justify his appointment based on “meritocracy”: “Well, he should be good at his job, and not bring that to it”. Where to begin with that. Ignoring the broader context as you mostly did, are you all so naitve to trust that an out bigot like that won’t bring any of it to work, in an infinite multitude of slightly most subtle and “justifiable” ways that you’ll probably apologize for? I mean first there is just the appearance of it, it looks so wrong that half the board of Mozilla quit, that ever single non-hetro employee in the company felt it in their gut, their new boss doesn’t see them as equal. And that’s the rub. How can you have a person who clearly sees part of the community as less deserving of basic civil rights succsefully run this supposedly meritocracy based company. He claerly and demonstrably doesn’t hold that view that everyone is equal and should only be judged on their work. And then when you call out us on judging him on more than his work, the hypocracy stinks.
So let’s really get into the nitty gritty. You feebly tried to hope that he wouldn’t just start massivly discriminating against non-hetro staff and decalred as long as he didn’t do that it would be ok. That is so far from sufficent for fufilling his role it’s staggering. The societal window is shifting. As Bryan rightfully pointed out, this is a civil rights battle and I think we all know how it’s going to end given enough time. So he is on the wrong side of that. But now so is Mozilla. By contrast Google, Apple and Microsoft are all very “gay positive” giving great benifits packages and etc to their staff. But it’s more than that. As companies they are part of a broader tech community and political community in the lands they live in (city, state, country). They are all supporting gays in the communities in a multitude of ways, examples like, support at pride parades, Apple pushing back against Arizona’s new super homophobic laws. Do you think it’s in anyway surprising Microsoft’s home state now has gay marriage? I don’t, Microsoft pushed hard for it. Mozilla has been supportive in the past of the community but do you see them pushing any new windows going forward? What about likely quitely dropping some support? Maybe it won’t directly affect the staff, this new CEO hiring, but can you say it won’t have a dramatic effect on the broader community? And drop the company from a progressive leader, to at best just a quite passive member? Again I reiterate my dissapointment that “community leader” Jono missed all this.
So please again explain to me why the right of one man to have any job he wants trumps the civil rights of an entire community. As you can see I’m not calling you homophobic as you sadly joked about on the show, I’m saying you have the ignorance of priviledge. You are blind to how discrimination works and effects others. And from your position of some influence in some communities, to hear you perpetuating it, was a bit heartbreaking, I had expected better from you.