The dismissal of Costolo's point about the urgency of addressing sexual harassment based on a false dichotomy summarizes the key flaw in the entire article. You cannot simultaneously have an intellectual debate about a topic when one of the parties involved is being actively demeaned and marginalized.
None of these issues will be solved until those who feel they are being demeaned find the strength to address their opposition with the dignity they demand for themselves.
The problem is that "intellectual debate" often ends up just being thinly-veiled excuses for why it's ok to discriminate against the marginalized group. It's kind of like how "intellectual debate" about phrenology was used to justify attitudes about different races.
Has anyone claimed that? No.
Why arguing against something for which no one is arguing for? If sexism exist because of a perceived answer to which no one is asking, then maybe it is time to stop.
Just want to point out that this isn't necessarily true in a broader sense; look at all the recent coverage of women being allowed to serve in frontline combat roles in various Western militaries around the world - their drop out, and medical discharge rate has been exponentially higher than their male counterparts. So while some women can do that same job as men in that field, the vast majority physically cannot.
So as long as a single man is sexist, there’s no place for intellectual debate?
Let's take the example of the Men's Rights Movement discussed in the article. While there are of course many factions within the MRM, the very existence of something that arose specifically to counteract the rise of feminism is a slap in the face to the struggles brought forth by women. With the same veneer of rationality, its purpose is to drown out women's concerns by raising the voices of men to a raucous cry.
This is not to say that men do not experience problems, but the MRM is almost exclusively a reaction to feminism. It's an age-old divisionary tactic, of pitting an oppressed group against an even more oppressed group. The English American colonists considered the genocided Native Americans to be one of their biggest oppressors, the war-torn Germans took to blaming the Jews who have already been persecuted for centuries. It's easier to find a weaker target than to look for the deeper causes of oppression.
The problem with Damore is not that his stats are wrong, but their veneer of rationality. Disagreeing with his repugnant conclusions (such as, eliminating Google's diversity programmes), is not because we hate scientific discourse, but because his veneer of rationality is just that: a veneer. The causes and explanations are far more complicated than what he cites or could cite in the space of 11 pages, and in the meantime it's far better to err in the side of caution and offer an advantage to the underrepresented group.
Here in Sweden we saw a bunch of laws being removed that distinguished between gender in the period of 1960-1980. Alimony was removed, and laws was drafted to address social problems in a gender neutral way. Divorce law and family law was also changed. Practically all those changes stopped at the end of the 1970, with the only exception being gender equal conscription in 2017 (which the feminist movement has been mostly against and the MRA movement mostly in favor).
As with any movement there are extremes and splinter factions, but MRM is mostly a reaction to feminism leaving behind the theory of being undifferentiated.
Alternatively it is a group of people who disagree with what feminism has created and who considers themselves unjustly harmed by that movement. You can choose to smear them, of course, but if you do they are unlikely to want to help you and you should not be surprised when somebody else gets their support by trumping their course.
Or you could engage with them, try to understand their point of view and maybe, just maybe, reach some sort of common understanding.
"These discriminatory practices are both unfair and divisive. Instead focus on some of the non-discriminatory practices I outlined."
The discriminatory practices he's referring is to have a few women-only classes. From my understanding, there also exist classes for everyone. Requesting to remove women-only is repugnant because those classes and similar initiatives have increased women's participation without reducing the number of men nor the opportunities for men.
Wanting to get rid of those classes is just the holders of the status quo fighting to keep the status quo.
"Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts. "
This is beyond stupid, having more women in something positive isn't the same thing as having more women in something negative. There are nuances and differences and wanting to have more women murdered is nothing like wanting to have more women in tech.
"In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility"
This is just an example, but the whole memo is written in a conservatives vs progressives or right vs left. This is divisive and confrontational. Bringing in more people shouldn't be a matter of two warring tribes, of which we must all pick a side. I don't know about you but there are some things I like about how things are now (conservative?) and some things I want to change (liberal?)
We're all a mishmash of opinions, not football teams.
"Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts."
It's impossible to be emotionally unengaged. There isn't some kind of division between thought and emotion, and emotion isn't the antithesis of rationality. We're all frail creatures with biases, emotions, thoughts. We're not machines, and even the machines we build exhibit our own emotions and biases.
So, no we should not de-emphasise empathy like he says. We're humans and we should be empathetic towards each other.
"Reconsider making Unconscious Bias training mandatory for promo committees."
We all have biases. I have them, and so does Damore but he calls them rationality. By trying to remove training about those biases, he's trying to safeguard his biases even further.
Then there's the further damage that his document did... it has created a hostile atmosphere. Damore was right to be fired because who would want to work with a guy who is very rational about why women aren't statistically suited by nature for certain roles within the company?
I remember watching Peterson's interview with him, and Damore didn't really seem comfortable with many of the former's statements, just based on his body language. Maybe that was just social awkwardness.
Also, I don't follow Molyneux or Carlson, but neither Peterson nor Shapiro can be truthfully called extreme.
Peterson just has a head the size of ontario at this point.
I think there are several conflicting ideas of flagging:
- Reason: I'm tired of this topic (I feel like this doesn't happen much, or else all this bitcoin talk would have stopped 3 years ago, as well as "Building X in language Y").
- Reason: I think this piece is non-factual and doesn't present any falsifiable claims.
- Reason: I think this piece is demonstrably inaccurate
- Reason: I think this is a controversial topic
I think controversy is an indication of the importance of a topic.
Personally I think the biggest problem is that people who criticize him keep going "he's wrong" "you can't say that" "saying women are less interested is sexist". It just lets others further their manufactured outrage and act like victims of oppression.
Vs he said things that strongly implied his female coworkers were less competent and he was fired because of the damage this did to the work environment.
> it is difficult to see how one could read his memo in its entirety and walk away with the conclusion that it was written by someone who seeks to keep women out of technology
uh huh. I'm getting really tired of being told I just didn't read it or understand it. I read it. I think Damore is a fucking idiot for writing it that way. I also think the basic idea "maybe less women are interested" is perfectly reasonable to talk about. I think bringing up how much more neurotic women are was incredibly fucking stupid. I think bring up the fact that he's a conservative was just him whining. I think the people who say "it's science" are missing the point. I think his memo was incredibly slanted and discussed no reasons beyond some tenuous biological links as reasons for women not to go into tech.
I also think a lot of the people who keep complaining about how they want a dialogue are being disingenuous, because when someone says something against the memo the response is that they obviously didn't read it.
> a political movement seeking to raise awareness of how gender inequality issues affect men and boys that has long been smeared in the media as misogynistic.
maybe cause it's pretty misogynistic. check their Reddit sometime (although it's not as bad as MGTOW).
> it is not a hate movement rooted in misogyny
but there does seem to be a lot of misogyny in it.
They have real complaints about some things, but I feel like it's pretty easy to why people are turned off by it.
