Thread by @wesyang

Open letter from employees about Believer editor who resigned after accidentally exposing hisgenitals on Zoom, cites "an expectation to divulge personal stories of trauma."

Rather than wokeness run amok, this may be a kind of revolt against wokeness.

desertnote-97667.medium.com/open-letter-re…

Rather than claim that the genital image "traumatized" them, the workers are in fact revolting against an implicit demand that they trade trauma stories for recognition.

"Freedom from the oppressive demand to merchandise one's personal pain" is probably the most important conceivable intervention in today's literary world...

"Professionalism, formality, and impersonality in the workplace" is a sorely needed reform that all should get behind

That this demand has to take the form of "women uncomfortable", "harassment", "sexual misconduct" etc. is one of the realities of the moment. But its solution is a restoration of pre-therapeutic behaviorial norms of personal dignity.

Now, it should be noted that the literary and artistic worlds have never been places where professional norms obtain. It's a place where charismatic weirdos who don't fit into professional workplaces go to eke out a living.

These institutions do badly with succession because the charismatic oddball who set the tone at first had a special authority that the person who succeeds them does not. (Believer and Paris Review are examples.)

This is right, of course, but the ultimate resolution is a grand compromise where employers and employees on alike behave more professionally and impersonally within work settings and leave the personal trauma to their therapists...

https://twitter.com/drocto/status/1389596952849915904?s=20