The Productive Pessimist

  I don't usually write personal accounts. That's not what The Productive Pessimist  is about, I tell myself. Problems are universal. Problems don't have names. We're here, as a company, to solve anyone's  problems. But The Productive Pessimist also claims to provide the solution by living through  the problems.  We talk about how our lived experience informs and complements our professional expertise.  Which means, sometimes, personal accounts are exactly  what The Productive Pessimist is about. The recent EHRC legislation around access to "single sex" spaces is deeply personal. So is Kathleen Stock's recent musing on "why are  so many young people using walking sticks, hmmm?" I won't be linking to either of them. They'll come up easily enough on a Google search. I'll be speaking on both of them, because of both of them bring up problems for businesses, and both of them are deeply, brutally personal. The advisory in the title isn...

  We enter Pride Month at a time when global LGBTQIA+ rights are under direct, immediate attack, including in developed Western countries - which has not been the case, on a systemic level, for many years.  For some younger LGBTQIA+ Western people, they have never in their lifetime   known a situation where, systemically, at a legal level, they have not had  rights as a default position. It feels frightening - even when you have  lived through being LGBTQIA+ without rights, or without the level of rights younger Western people have been able to assume were "just naturally there." It actually is  frightening. It is terrifying when your government directly positions itself in opposition to your ability to safely exist as yourself in the world. And LGBTQIA+ people have to exist in the world. Including non-passing trans people. Including very butch Sapphic women, and very femme gay men. Including people who are visibly intersex. Including polyamorous people who...