a consistent element of workplace reports of noxious behaviour is an “insider culture”: there’s an in-group and an out-group. If you’re in the in-group, even if you’re from an otherwise underrepresented background, your experience is different because you’re aligned with power.

That means that anytime someone challenges the center of power—from whatever perspective, could be DEI could be a union—the folks in the in-group experience that challenge as an attack on their status.

when folks wheel out people from underrepresented backgrounds to say “look this person had a great experience! How could that place have broken dynamics?”, it’s useful to ask: who were their patrons and defenders? To whom did their allegiances lie, and why?

Anyway: “Those who’ve worked with him say the 53-year-old executive cultivates an insider culture, where certain agents join him in workouts at the gym, or fly on a private jet to the Telluride Film Festival and stay at his house in Colorado.” https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-05-05/icm-partners-pledged-gender-equity-but-women-say-they-were-mistreated