What does that have to do with biology as opposed to the roles women have been expected to take for literally centuries?
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All the feels that come from those lady parts, obviously.
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If you take all criticism as screaming, than your premise is correct. However, since nothing I said is incorrect, and you took the road of attacking me personally rather than my statements, you are engaging in a level of discourse that you are accusing me of doing. Since that is actually the entirety of you argument, there’s little for me to say since you are actually falsely attributing something to the memo that is not there. If you care to prove your point go ahead, but most people refer to falsifying the contents of a memo to defending lying about the content of the memo.
Also, where did I attack you as a person, @8080256256, or even the former Google engineer in my post? I refuted your direct statements and not anything else.
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So you agree that what you just said are your thoughts and not a part of the memo you are attributing them to? Seems to be a pattern.
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Well, if you think it’s because of biology, you don’t have to do anything about it.
Whereas if you acknowledge that this stuff is mostly cultural, and in many ways discriminatory and harmful (also for men, though usually in different ways), it’s much harder to do nothing and feel morally upright about it.
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= I disagree with you, therefore you are obviously uninformed and/or unreflective, otherwise you’d have to arrive at the same conclusion as me.
I am certainly not free of bias. But I am not an American and live in a pretty ethnically homogeneous country far outside of these issues. So I don’t have as much of a horse in this race as it might seem.
I was also born in a country with an extensive historical experience with soviet communism. And I see frightening parallels between some of the censorious tendencies and purity tests of the current American left and what went on during the Stalin years.
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That tells me that you either don’t know much or anything about current American left, about Stalin, or both. Or you may just be arguing in bad faith.
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That wasn’t the argument I made, but since you are using it as a launching pad… Not only is it mostly false, he supports with false premises like “they’re universal across human cultures” which is plainly false when you examine matriarchal cultures. He even uses the logic that if men didn’t have societal expectations they would move to and succeed in female-oriented fields, so he’s not even consistent in his argument that biology is a driving factor except where he deems in convenient.
There are many articles decelerating the psychology he claims expertise in for his statements, and the other unsubstantiated arguments he makes such as “women outspend men so men have a reason to work more hours and be successful in their careers.” Google away.
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I agree with everything you wrote. I certainly don’t trust one random engineer’s interpretation of incomplete scientific findings
But, scientists are not a small cabal working in secret. They’re humans living in the current incarnation of that society. They have to publish their findings, and convince grant organizations to fund their research, and show that their results will have impact. As a side effect, “No one who isn’t working in this field of research should have an opinion” is not an implementable strategy unless you impose drastic penalties on anyone who steps outside constantly shifting and unclear bounds of decorum. Not to be too snarky, but where do I look up the official criteria for when scientists themselves can talk publicly about their work, or when the press can write attention grabbing headlines on papers they don’t really understand?
Also, while we certainly don’t live in a just society now, how would you go about determining what such a society would look like, or whether a policy intended to make society more just is doing what it is supposed to, or what policy interventions are a good idea, without an accurate model of why things are the way they are? In this case, if it turned out someday that sexism wasn’t actually the main reason for few women in tech, then trying to measure the efficacy of programs to reduce such sexism based on their effect on the ratio of women to men in degrees granted, or new hires, or retention would be worse than useless. We want to reduce sexism because that is the right thing to do, regardless, but experimental design is hard, especially in the social sciences, and especially especially if you want to enforce a wall preventing or chilling public discussion of the relevant ideas and hypotheses.
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So maybe English isn’t your first language? I ask because that might explain how you completely misinterpreted what I wrote when you summarized it like this:
= I disagree with you, therefore you are obviously uninformed and/or unreflective, otherwise you’d have to arrive at the same conclusion as me.
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I, however, have now pointed you out for attributing your own thoughts to others twice and both times you blame the communist oppression you were raised around for your poorly constructed arguments.
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Nothing? There are no biological differences between men and women? You do not agree that, on average, men remain fertile up to a higher age than women?
Then welcome to Republicanland! Where facts incongruous with your convictions are simply ignored!
Sorry, where was he censored? I see his manifesto available all over the internet, including in this very thread. No one was obligated to give him a platform, but he has not been prevented from speaking his piece.
If his superiors felt he created a hostile work environment and therefore they could not continue his employment, that’s a separate issue from removing his right to speak. He said his piece. He is not free from the consequences of said speech.
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/\-------------this.
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Yes. Getting fired for politely stating an unpopular opinion is exactly the sort of censoriousness I am talking about.
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No, I understood you perfectly well.
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I think this, right here, is the crux of the problem. Too many white men (of which I am included) are used to not competing for “equality”. Now that the hardships of gender or race as a whole are being taken into consideration, I suppose it could feel sudden or shocking.
Fine. Granted. But that perceived slight is so much less egregious than the literal career- and opportunity- defeating prejudices that gender bias, racism, and other bigotry has caused as to barely be a blip on the needle.
So, one takes a deep breath, pulls up their bootstraps, and realizes that sometimes changes are hard, but in this case a necessary step for an egalitarian, socially responsible society.
What one DOES NOT do is argue that repression, bigotry and misogyny are better alternatives, or that one deserves the privileged status that existed due to this imbalance.
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Getting fired for creating a hostile work environment, you mean.
Look, if I go around the office claiming that a large chunk of my co-workers are possibly not very good at their jobs for a common reason outside of their control, it doesn’t matter how “politely” I think I’m saying it. It is a real attack on a group (in his case, one that is already marginalized) and those people won’t want to work with me.
Was he supervising women? Then those women now have a very real worry that no matter how well they perform as an individual, they will be passed over for promotions in favor of a man because they know this guy just thinks they’re better at the job. Is he collaborating with women? Then they are wondering if their suggestions are dismissed by this guy.
Again, he got to say what he wanted. He is not free from the consequences of saying what he wanted. If I call Cory a bunch of rude names and he bans me from the forum, I can still call him rude names. But he doesn’t have to let me do it here.
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No one said that. We’re saying that the sorts of jobs people are good at have a variety of causes, one of which might be biology, but biology is not overly deterministic. Logic is not some inherent male trait and empathy and compassion isn’t the sole domain of women based on the fact that we are biologically different. What biological differences mean is that women can bear children and men can’t. I see no reason to ignore culture entirely in understanding the modern division of labor, which has almost nothing to do with biology.
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