Google employee mansplains why diversity is bad for the company. His 10-page screed went viral, and then he was fired. [Gizmodo]
Jay-Z recreated Friends with black actors. [LaineyGossip]
Taylor Swift’s brother got a part on Pretty Little Liars. [Dlisted]
Adrianne Curry is engaged. Remember her? I do. [Wonderwall]
Let’s talk about Jaime Lannister’s armor. [Buzzfeed]
Gigi Hadid catwalks about Manhattan. [Moe Jackson]
I totally forgot that Laura Dern is in The Last Jedi. [JustJared]
I love the way Rihanna lives her life. [IDLY]
Craig Ferguson went on an awkward date with Sharon Stone. [Seriously OMG WTF]
Mark Wahlberg wants you to look at his muscles. [Socialite Life]
Cue the neverending diatribes of seemingly intellectual dissections of that puffed up, misguided illustration of male douchery. Not here of course, wink wink.
Honestly, I totally get why Google fired him. Imagine what his code looks like if he took 10 pages to say ‘i believe in badly supported evopsych and dont understand science’.
Well said 🙂
Not to mention, his screed will end up as “Exhibit 1” in the next discrimination lawsuit filed against Google.
LOL. 🙂
Probably unnecessarily rewrites perfectly good code someone else contributed too so it “reads better”, introducing errors along the way.
I am a women, senior lead programmer in a big high tech compagnie (wont name). My team is 70% women programmers too. And we kick ass. I see no difference between men and women programmers. There is NO DIFFERENCE. We are the same. in my 20+ years of programming, I never encounter what he describes, or sees, or whatever.
People, dont listen to this guy. And dont believe we are different.
And maybe, MAYBE there is less women in tech because of guys like him.
Decades ago, I read an article by someone who had interviewed scientists consideeed as particularly creative by their colleagues. She also interviewed the colleagues. She concluded that very creative types had the same characteristics whether male or female. Some characteristics were considered “feminine” when seen in the men, others were considered “masculine” when seen in the women. But they really were the same.
A long time ago, there was a study of male and female physicists in the US (just a few percent are women here, numbers are larger in other countries), looking for any gender differences that might be useful to bear in mind when trying to get more women in physics. The conclusion of the study committee was that there was really no difference except the men had a small tendency to be more aggressively competitive while the women tended to work a little better cooperatively. Which they admitted indicated the women were better suited for modern science, since the lone wolf playing king of the mountain is a royal pain and that kind of approach gets a lot less done than the cooperative teams we need today. I would say from my own experience that super competitive aggressive types are definitely a hindrance and cause more trouble than they’re worth. Most successful men in physics today are not in that category and teamwork is essential.
The dude bros are out in full force on George Takei’s page. I read the full memo. Oh boy, what an idiot.
There ARE inherent differences between the male brain and the female brain though. That’s all he seemed to say in his gender section and he’s not wrong when he says that.
From what I have read, he didn’t just say there are differences between male and female brains. He said that women have more anxiety, less drive for accomplishments, and that they are less qualified to be engineers because of their biology.
+1 Tiffany
This argument used to also justify promoting racism. That certain races are just genetically not as capable as others. The lighter you are, the more smart genes you have.
Women and more anxiety?
Try being part of a team that is the physically weaker team. And then try to live in today’s times as the “strong man” or “tough man” aka macho guy is making a comeback.
Men would sh** their pants if they had to live like women with all those “nice” experiences women have. Unwanted sexual attention aka ” “flirting” “. Imagine this google guy had to face a homosexual heavyweight boxing champion who expressed sexual interest in him and who wouldn’t stop “flirting” despite being told “not interested”. Then watch the google guy brownie-down his pants.
Current neuroscientific theory posits that there are significantly more similarities than differences, he’s touting old and bad science.
This is fairly recent metastudy (2016) published in Neuroscience in their themed gender and cognition issue. It’s behind a paywall though,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959438816300083
Thanks. He’s touting junk science to advance his sexist agenda. And anyone who thinks women are too emotional and insecure to take on mission-critical projects should look at the matter of Donald Trump s Kim Jong Un and nuclear escalation in the Korean peninsula.
There are far more commonalities between the female and male brain than there are differences. People are more interested in the differences, and that’s what gets reported on. Furthermore, insofar as there are differences, there is a range to those differences that is such that you can’t really say that those differences apply entirely across the range of men or women. For instance, the corpus callosum TENDS TO develop earlier in women– but there are women out there whose corpus callosum develops later, and there are men out there whose corpus collosum develops earlier, so this isn’t a difference that is absolute at all. IF you’re interested in talking about neurological and how gender plays a role, you ought to read more than the latest buzzed articles. For instance:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/brains-men-and-women-aren-t-really-different-study-finds
https://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502215463&sr=8-1&keywords=delusions+of+gender
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/10/3-sexist-myths-about-men-s-and-women-s-brains-debunked/
There seem to be statistically significant differences in some areas between the average woman and the average man. Don’t get your panties in a twist about that! You are unique. Fight to “know thyself” and be recognized for you yourself, not grouped with Ms. Average. I think EvPsych is based on the fact that many of our psychological, social traits seem to flow from nature not nurture. Look at the identical twin studies. And genome studies can sometimes pinpoint which genes are responsible. But,hey, it’s just a theory.
But EvPsych also seems to depend on how s-l-o-w-l-y genes evolve — it’s all just a bunch of random mistakes and some stick — contribute to fitness — and some don’t. I know it took forever for evolution to result in any life at all, but I don’t know much beyond that. But EvPsych guys think we are still operating on stone age genes.
EvPsych seems to believe there was a “wish fulfullment” movement in the “soft” sciences and that anthropologists, psychologists, etc., used sloppy studies for decades so the results would reflect back to them their own values. Some classic studies are not replicable, and yet many intelligent people still believe them and still raise their children based on them.
Darwin theorized survival of the fittest, not survival of the most equal or the most just or the most benign or the happiest. It’s rather ipso facto: those most fit to reach puberty, mate, have healthy children who in turn reach puberty and mate, and so on and on, will be well-represented in the gene pool.
The EvPsych theory could be right — I am no scientist and I will read the counter-arguments provided here. If it might be true, if we are truth-seeker and keep our minds open to the fact it might be true, let’s learn from it, not clutch our pearls and deny it because it just isn’t what we want to hear.
Darwin never actually said that. I believe it was a scientist named spencer. Im only pointing that oit bevause it proves how much people just assume heresay equals scientific fact. It’s not actually the “fittest” either, it’s specific traits adaptable to a specific environment.
No, science has not proven that nature wins out over nurture. A lot of things we think are biological facts are simply cultural influence. Women and men are more similar than different. And of those differences, intelligence is not one of them. When studying the iq of men vs women, they were virtually the same now that women are just as educated as men. Im glad youre open minded (sincerely, no shade), it’s always important to question the things about science “you know for sure” just because it’s common knowledge. Common knowledge can be influenced by sexism and racism.
Just to prove how ridiculous and not serious this guy was about his long essay, one of his arguments is that women spend more money. That’s a stereotype, not a fact. He never entertains the idea that all of the stuff he’s heard during his life, “women are bad at math” might not be based in fact. And he could be enlightened by reading articles upon articles about where that stereotype came from. Use Google scholar dude!
That is correct — Spencer originated the term but, as I read the following from Wikipedia, Darwin did not seem to dispute its accuracy:
Darwin wrote on page 6 of The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication published in 1868, “This preservation, during the battle for life, of varieties which possess any advantage in structure, constitution, or instinct, I have called Natural Selection; and Mr. Herbert Spencer has well expressed the same idea by the Survival of the Fittest. The term “natural selection” is in some respects a bad one, as it seems to imply conscious choice; but this will be disregarded after a little familiarity”.
I might have goofed in my post , but I was striving to cull out words like “belief” and “proven” and “beyond dispute.” EP is theory. Many scientists believe it. Many scientists laugh at it. Heck, I think it is possible that evolution itself is still properly called a theory not a law.
I read a good part of a book (depressing!) about an anthropologist who spent many months with a stone-age tribe on the border of Brazil in the 1960’s. Sorry, can’t remember the name or the author and I can’t find it now. He was meticulous and mathematical. I.e., I sure ain’t one, but he did convince me that he was a scientist. And the title of the book was anthropologist fighting violent stone-age tribesman on one hand, and condescending established anthropologists on the other. His research ruffled feathers — for instance, he found strong tribal commitment, where others had found much less. Maybe one or two of those other anthropologists had a loyalty to Marxism and they wanted to believe that workers of the world might unite – workers from Tribe Sweden might break off from Sweden to throw in with the workers of Tribe Mexico. (So I definitely realize that scientists must always be wary that their personal beliefs don’t influence their results.)
If I find the book title, I will correct this.
But I must must give three cheers to Celebitchy. They believe in presenting all people’s arguments to provide food for thought. Google… not so much.
Yeah, thank you, that’s what I meant about darwin. You clarified it well. Evolution isn’t in dispute, natural selection as a mechanism for evolution is considered a theory. But, a scientific theory isn’t the same as our common use for the term theory. I’m being pedantic though.
I’m curious about that book. There are tons of competing theories in anthropology so im not surprised. What do you mean by tribalism? Its hard to understand things/explain things through comments. I’m not surprised there were Marxist anthropologists because karl Marx was an anthropologist by trade. His theories are based in anthropology and egalitarianism. It’s pretty interesting once you read into it. Who would’ve thought his theories would turn into the political ideology it did.
If you like anthropology, you should try “the world until yesterday” by Jared diamond. Interesting stories from different cultures about how they approach subjects we think are the norm for humans as a whole. Like children, the elderly, individualism. There’s also a scholarly article, can’t remember what it’s called that argued agriculture was the downfall of certain aspects of humanity, caused inequality and wealth disparity. If you remember that book you were talking about, it sounds intetesting.
You’re talking about philosopher Herbert Spencer and Social Darwinism, right? This takes me back! Spencer tried in ways that would seem a stretch, to say the least, to us now to apply biological principles to social structures. His work reflected the Victorian-era struggle with science and religion, right? He also coined the term “survival of the fittest.” I just scanned the Wikipedia entry on him, which seems pretty balanced, and his work was an inspiration to many in politics for different reasons – including modern libertarians.
From what I remember from high school, so help me, ‘survival of the fittest’ was taken by those at the top of the wealth and social pyramid to mean that they deserved every bit of it, and those at the bottom did not. And here we are: What goes around comes around.
I like the Jaime Lannister armor analysis. Yes he needs to take off the Lannister armor to survive. Literally and figuratively. Good foreshadowing!
FYI: breakdown of the Loot train fight scene
https://youtu.be/pE2wcBeyNdk
Re:GOOGLE
The company survives from either the work of foreign workers from Indian or Asia or Indian and Asian-Americans. Amongst those cohorts both the men and women recruited from University are equally talented. Because success is culturally encouraged from both genders. Totally discredits this guy’s argument.
There’s an expression in French: “on a tous la philosophie de sa personne”, i.e. we each have the philosophy that suits us individually. This guy defines success and aptitude based on what he thinks he’s good at, and then says women are incapable of that. First of all, success doesn’t have to be just late hours and jockeying for position (some people can get their work done by 5 and want to work on the product rather than compete against colleagues) and second of all, there are plenty of women who are willing to play by his dumb, life-sapping work rules if given the chance.
All the blather about pseudoscience, but no room to admit bias, which was demonstrated and resolved in cases such as orchestras hiring more women when they literally couldn’t see the gender of the applicant:
https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias
or ethnic minorities being likelier to be hired when names were masked on job applications:
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/how-an-ethnic-sounding-name-may-affect-the-job-hunt/article555082/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&
His whole screed is about everyone else having to get over their discomfort with unfairness and the inefficiency that discrimination produces (see Fox News), rather than a few fellas renouncing an ounce of privilege or thinking about altering how they do things.
Also, I’ll leave this here:
http://www.catalyst.org/media/companies-more-women-board-directors-experience-higher-financial-performance-according-latest
Precisely. While he’s entitled to his opinions, he crucifies his own assertions by opining in his own echo chamber. He’s a hypocrite through his own words which, in turn, comprehensively negates whatever new road he thinks needs paving. He’s simply on the same sad, discriminatory road that has always been.
I feel like Gigi is disappearing before our very eyes
So no diversity at google then…
T
“When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination”
+ 1000.
Rihanna tho… she killed me. She killed me dead. Apparently Chris Brown tried to jump back into the discussion? Monster, bye.
She looks soooo gooooooood with that blue hair and her matchy matchy nails and all that glitter and dear lord i’m sorry but that weight is going to all the right places, also please fan me, it must be hot in here or something.
I knew you would be here to swoon over our girl.
She is so swoon worthy, you do not blame me do you? I have a cold bevvy here (hope you like ginger beer and dark rum) and a giant palm frond for fanning. And .gifs
https://giphy.com/search/crop-over-rihanna
I don’t have time to get into it right now, but I have to say, I kinda agree with most of what he said. He wasn’t offensive or douchey, he had clearly thought things out. He wasn’t wrong about the way we perceive and attempt to deal with gender bias. There’s too much PC bullshit these days where we are expected to behave and react a certain way just because it’s supposedly right, rather than what we actually know or believe. It’s not like ALL women or ALL men fall into those gender roles automatically, but in a general sense they often tend to. He wasn’t saying women can’t or shouldn’t do certain jobs, he was saying they generally don’t because they’re wired not to, to an extent, and I sort of agree. We’ve been programmed for so long to care about how we look, and nurturing, and raising families, and so on, it makes sense that less women head for power jobs, than men. I’m not saying it’s progressive thinking, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
When it comes to the racial diversity thing he is also correct. You don’t get proper integration without actually INTEGRATING. Separating people for different treatment is still separation.
Just my opinion.
Nope. “PC bullshit” is what bigots whine when they get called on whatever offensive thing pops into their empty heads. Go complain to Jeff Sessions, snowflake.
His BS claims are based on societal norms, not biology. Out of all the people I’ve met, men are usually the neurotic ones. Women are usually too busy to indulge in neuroticism. And I personally HATE collaborative work. I always end up doing the heavy lifting and prefer to work alone.
“-Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.
-Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things
-We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration. Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles and Google can be and we shouldn’t deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this).”
Same people that whine that any kind of affirmative action for ethnic minorities is unfair are the same people who think that 500 years of legal preferential treatment of white people somehow didn’t give them any advantages. Y’all gonna act like 50 years of “equal” rights (Native Americans didn’t have their religious rights protected until 1978 and let’s not pretend that racism disappeared with the end of the 60s) somehow corrected everything so affirmative action is the “real discrimination” but really gonna pretend those first 500 years of denying groups rights to land, education, prosperity, culture, religion, language, voting, rights to fair trial, legal representation, reproductive rights, humanity and autonomy while heaping it onto another demographic (white people) caused no disparity. Lmao!!!
Also, the biggest benefactors of affirmative action are and always have been white women. That’s how the gender gap was closed in a lot of places. That being said, the real problem is this increasing notion by white men in particular that anyone who does come from a few select schools or have the same background or experience is automatically less qualified than them. That’s the problem. It all goes back to this myth of white male superiority when in fact what they are doing is trying to mask and overcompensate for white make insecurity.
Did it ever occur to you Ferny that it is NOT biology but the fact that women are told THEIR WHOLE LIVES SINCE BIRTH that men are leaders? They see the faces of MEN on their money, previous MALE leader names, churches that spout on and on about wives submitting to their husbands, we thrust dolls into the hands of young girls and give the building toys to the boys, and on and on. You seem to be greatly underestimating social programming. Women are completely capable of leading as long as they ignore the insidious social programming thrown at them since birth.
Privilege (e.g. white male privilege) is intrinsically special treatment. If you can figure out how to eliminate that special treatment, then compensatory special treatment to those who aren’t fortunate to be born into that group will no longer be necessary.
Ferny, you’re right, thank you. He was by no means anti-diversity, just claimed there might be a better way to achieve it, given the STATISTICAL distributions of preferences and traits. Women, as a whole, do score differently on the ‘big 5 traits’ and other things — but, as he says, so what? He doesn’t claim they shouldn’t be programmers, or that some of them can’t be far, far better than most men. Just as claiming that, say, 10% more American man are obese than women, doesn’t mean that I’m calling Matthew Mcconaughey fat, right? Ot that I’m denying men’s ability to work as fitness instructors…? It just means that, on average, I can expect them in a drugstore more often, buying insulin, or that if I go to the plus-size clothing business, maybe menswear is a better choice. He also takes time to talk about sexism, that it exists, and that it is ALSO a factor in low STEM representation. I really, really wish all good-hearted commenters with a propensity for knee-jerk reactions read this post before commenting — a very good summary of the state of the gender differences research: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/
There is a statistical difference between the distribiution of preferences and traits, but this guy claims, it is all due to biological differences and completly ignores the differences in the learned socialy roles for men and women. The classic example, that the same behavior in a man is seen as strong and selfassured and as “pushy” in women. As Long as Girls are still tought to behave “like a girl” and Boys are told to be strong, it is impossible to quantify the biological differences vs learned behaviour.
The whole text is based on a misogynistic assumption.
And if the different employment quotas were based on biological differences, why just 1% POC at Google????
What you’re describing is not necessarily hard wired but rather encouraged culturally from infancy. Boys and girls are typically raised in different cultures even in the same house. The same behavior is encouraged in one but discouraged in the other. Kids pick up on this quite early.
To Chermcherm:”Napoleon Chagnon has been called the “most controversial anthropologist” in the United States in a New York Times Magazine profile preceding the publication of Chagnon’s most recent book, Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes—the Yanomamö and the Anthropologists, a scientific memoir.”
This employee rightfully lost his job. He used his own employer to explain his view as opposing to the Company’s viewpoint. Why did he work there? And if he disagreed so much, he could have written a memo without pointing out Google’s diversity policies or he could have contacted the diversity department to discuss his views instead of sharing his memo…
Was he trying to copy the movie Jerry Maguire? LOL
Precisely. California is employment at will,, so Google does not have to justify firing him
According to some websites and papers he already has a job offer. Julian Assange, Wiki leaks offered Damore a job. Assange wrote on twitter:
Censorship is for losers. @WikiLeaks is offering a job to fired Google engineer James Damore.
He brings us censorship? It would’ve been censorship if Google hadn’t “allowed” him to write his opinions or went through it first and redacted certain parts. Does anyone think this is censorship? Being fired for not conforming to the company’s mission/values is different than censorship but I’m open to discussion.
I agree with you, Trillion! He not only conforming to the company’s mission/value, he made it “public”.
Ah yes, Assange. Another one of Amal Alamuddin’s hideous clients before the Clooney PR makeover…
Lawyers taking on clients doesn’t mean they support their views. Irish lawyer Pat Finucane was mudered by people who confused representation with endorsement. Everyone is entitled to representation. That includes far worse people than Assange.
Censorship? Google is not the government – at least, not yet. As well, nobody stopped him from writing or circulating the memo. Censorship applies to the speech, not the speechmaker. Well, now he can go out there and be a “First Amendment advocate” and enjoy his 15 minutes on Fox News. Asshole.
Rihanna gained weight, yes but those boobs are not from the weight gain. As if! Home girl got her boobs done, that’s why she was walking around in the baggy clothes. She looks hot.
Lol there is no way Rhi got implants. Those are home grown all the way!
I will bet you that in the next two months Rihanna will be back to her previous size in no time.
Google guy complaining about women. Eh. I won’t even bother to read it. What else is new in the techbro world. Rationalizing why there is a “No Girls Allowed” sign on their door is so commonplace I can hardly believe they fired him.
I thought the head of Google was a woman.
I actually did.
?
As far as I know, the CEO is an Indian American man. The VP for diversity is a woman.
This story hit uncomfortably close to home. I’m in a male-dominated STEM field, pursuing an advanced degree. My awkward interactions with one of the other male students in the department began with this type of rhetoric. He kept asking me about feminism, and then explaining to me all the ways women are weaker and less suited to STEM fields. This behavior quickly escalated into comments about my female coworkers being ‘b*tches’ and him commenting on my breasts. I just reported it as sexual harassment to the department. It’s 2017 and women are still subjected to being told they’re not good enough in the workplace!
Wow @BobaFelty. That sucks. I’m so sorry you had to interact with that douchebro. Good for you for reporting him. What an a**hole!!
First, exactly how small is this guy’s dick?
Second, as a woman, 90 percent of the men I’ve encountered explicitly and implicitly hold these views. How’s that for gender discrimination.
Women need to stop dealing with men if ever possible and start only hiring and working with women. I’ve started doing that in my life. Any time I need a tradesperson, or a doctor, a lawyer, anything, I choose another woman, and hell, best effing decision I ever made. Better work ethic, better qualified (most women are 10 times more qualified because of this kind of sexism) and it’s freedom from being mansplained to ever again. Do and you’ll never look back.
This is a great idea. I saw a van locally for a female-run plumbing company called ‘Plumbhers’ 😀
Great idea.
Solid first point about the guys dick. I see that body shaming men is cool and accepted on this website.
Body shaming? Uh, no. Crass? Maybe. But it’s a valid way to respond to a 10 page diatribe that boils down to “all women have penis envy and here’s all the pathetic ways I’m going to defend my and all my bros systemic discrimination of all women ever.”
That comment is the perfect reductive response to an overly elaborate essentialist reduction of women to their biology and neurology, a biology that he is defining as scientifically proven as fact which is anything but.
Gender essentialism is sh*t any way you slice it. And calling out so-called “body shaming” sounds suspiciously like a way to shut down criticism of discrimination with a tit-for-tat claim of discrimination.
I think it’s more that men have been equating their superiority with their male hormones (I saw on one board that young male programmers were actually saying hormones alter women’s “personalities” – so there you go, raging hormones), and male hormones >>> testosterone and testosterone has been equated (wrongly) with the male sex organs, so ….
Kelly – Have you read the full 10 page paper? Not the comments about the paper. Not the Edited Gawker paper where they took out charts and references? All I hear is name calling and dismissing without addressing the points in the article.
Calling it body shaming is trying to shut down criticism? How is calling him small dicked an actual argument?
He had a lot of good and interesting ideas about how to help women into his field. Certain people want no part of that discussion, however. Best to attack, punish, and pretend these things don’t exist.
When you predicate your argument on how half the population is lesser, you arent going to get much suppport. He also quoted things as facts that have either never been studied or have been studied poorly. Stuff on castrated makes for example, there’s no way to control for that without a population who voluntarily selects to castrate.
He just used science words so that people unfamiliar with that field would think he knew what he was talking about.
If he left out his entire piece of why women suck, and just kept in the pieces that would help, his reception would be greatly different.
See, that’s the kind of nonsense that has everyone arguing these days. Stating that there are differences between the sexes that lead women to certain fields and men to certain fields, and then making recommendations as to how to get more women into his field, is not saying women suck. I’d hope that’s obvious to every fair-minded person.
You know who has great ideas on how women can get into and succeed in STEM fields? Women.
That’s great. They should be encouraged to share them without being attacked, belittled, and misrepresented as this man was.
I’ve enjoyed this conversation and don’t want to leave threads hanging, so this is a reply to several people:
Carol: you roar!
Who Are These people: I went to school (catholic) so long ago that Aquinas was The Only Philosopher we studied. So I don’t know about Spencer or Social Darwinism.
Chermcherm: I cannot remember or find “my” book anywhere. But thanks for the Jared diamond recommendation — I mean to follow it up.