There was a pretty disgraceful exchange between two so-called journalists in the United States on Thursday night. I’ve written about it in LGBT Perspectives; feel free to read the post there and comment there or here.

The sort of behaviour — threats and misgendering — exhibited by Zoey Tur and Ben Sharpiro in a televised panel discussion would never be tolerated by respectable mainstream news organizations, who would undoubtedly discipline staff who stooped to such levels, whether they were representing their organizations at the time or not. In this case, I don’t think either of them were representing their main workplaces.

As a journalist, I know that my organization expects employees to maintain a certain level of professionalism even when we are not at work, just as most other companies expect their employees to do the same and not do anything that would reflect badly on them.

I bet you have all heard of workers who got fired because of stupid things they did outside the workplace that their companies felt reflected badly on them.

We can talk about that here, if you like. Your workday may be only 7 or 8 hours, but you are an employee of a company 24 hours a day until such time you leave — whether you like it or not. Which places restrictions on your life.

For example, you might want to post nudism/naturism photos of yourself online somewhere, but your company might frown on that. So you don’t do it . . .

Is it fair?

— Jillian