For the religious questions I answered them with the thought that atheism is a 'religion' (my beliefs about God, or rather my lack of belief in him and Jesus). Workplace accommodating of my religious practice? Yeah, as long as they don't lead everyone in the lord's prayer at lunchtime or try to bring references to 'God' into the workplace, I would say they are catering to my religion.
What they really wanted to get at was giving a bunch of 'non-privilege' points for muslims (and a few other smaller groups).
I can't make myself do that. Atheism isn't a religion, and it wouldn't be right (for me) to pretend it is.
That said, I can honestly say that I've been discriminated against on this issue, on numerous occasions. Forced to participate in prayers? Yep, all through Grade 1, and during my practicum for my B.Ed. program in college. And the City Clerk was NOT pleased when I refused to swear on a bible when we were going through the formalities for municipal elections/census. Come to think of it, I got a lot of dirty looks from my colleagues, too. Even my dad said, "why didn't you just do it and forget about it?".
The answer is because I wouldn't have considered it binding. It would have been like swearing on the weekly TV guide - meaningless. If I were ever to have to go to court, even they can't legally compel people to swear on any religious text.
Not bringing religion into the workplace (unless you work in a church or other place of worship) should be the default, not the exception.
What I wasn't sure of was in the last dozen or two questions were they vaguely say 'your identity', i wasn't sure if that was just sexual, gender and religious or if that includes "too skinny" otherwise I would have scored lower.
These days "identity" seems to be about what gender/orientation you are. For me, it's female, straight. Next question!
Does 'bullied' online have to include the perpetrator knowing your personal information? I know it can, and I've read the stories of members here who was bullied on other forums, but didn't know being bullied online had to include the exposing of personal information. Someone not being welcomed in a forum (beyond simply being ignored or debating/challenging their views) I would say is bullying too, even if it's not to the level of exposing personal info.
Bullying does not have to include offline information. It often does, though, if the bully finds something out or if you trust the wrong person.
I've experienced it in both forms - and when it involves personal, offline information, why not just call it what it is - stalking? A couple of stalkers followed me here to CFC some years ago, copy/pasted some of my posts on their own blog, and proceeded to twist what I'd said around to the worst possible interpretation and mock it.
They did the same thing when they found me on the Doctor Who forum I admin. I actually considered changing my identity there... except that would be letting them win.
This is THE reason why I will never post photos of myself or my human family members anywhere online. That's just asking for more trouble. And thank goodness I have a few namesakes in Canada. Sure, it's led to a couple of instances of mistaken identity - a really bizarre one once, where some woman accused me of lying when I said I hadn't met her at a poetry symposium in Toronto - in fact I've never been to Ontario. She refused to believe me and kept demanding to know why I was lying. Inconvenient argument, sure - but at least my stalkers don't actually have
my photo.
That's the problem with common names sometimes... my stalkers went after somebody on a Babylon 5 forum once, just for having the same username as mine. Thing is, I've never joined any B5 forums. And then there was the time when the owner of another forum (with whom I had a less-than-amicable interaction) decided to toss his own rules about publishing anyone's RL information. He put everything he could find about me out in the open, with a musing, "wouldn't it be fun to pay her a visit?" kind of post along with it. So next thing, someone else warned me that my RL photo was posted there... and when I went to look, I saw that it wasn't me. However, it was an underage high school girl with the same name as me - they'd taken her photo from her blog.
I promptly wrote to the senior admin of that forum and said that unless she took all of that down NOW, I would be informing the RCMP that the owner of an American gaming company was openly advocating stalking a 17-year-old high school girl who had absolutely nothing to do with anything about the goings-on of that forum.
