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Alphabet Inc.'s Google has fired an employee who wrote an internal memo blasting the web company's diversity policies, creating a firestorm across Silicon Valley. James Damore, the Google engineer who wrote the note, confirmed his dismissal in an email, saying that he had been fired for "perpetuating gender stereotypes." He said he's "currently exploring all possible legal remedies."
[...] Earlier on Monday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent a note to employees that said portions of the memo "violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace." But he didn't say if the company was taking action against the employee. A Google representative, asked about the dismissal, referred to Pichai's memo.
[...] After the controversy swelled, Danielle Brown, Google's new vice president for diversity, integrity and governance, sent a statement to staff condemning Damore's views and reaffirmed the company's stance on diversity. In internal discussion boards, multiple employees said they supported firing the author, and some said they would not choose to work with him, according to postings viewed by Bloomberg News.
"We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company," Brown said in the statement. "We'll continue to stand for that and be committed to it for the long haul."
Source: Bloomberg.
[Update: Apparently Julian Assange has offered James Damore a job, saying that "Censorship is for losers". - Fnord666]
Previously: Googler's Memo on Culture of Diversity Extremism Goes Viral Inside Google
(Score: 5, Funny) by Grishnakh on Tuesday August 08 2017, @08:30PM (37 children)
Well, on the bright side, Google is now a little bit closer to achieving gender parity....
(Score: 5, Troll) by DannyB on Tuesday August 08 2017, @08:47PM (6 children)
Google must not quit until it has complete gender parity!
Furthermore, Google must achieve hiring parody/parity in all other areas without discrimination. Race. Religion. (height, weight, shoe size, etc)
Because all people are equally capable of performing highly skilled technology jobs.
I'm sure you will join me in applauding Google achieving diversity by hiring mentally challenged and/or illiterate people for high tech jobs. They're all equally capable. Even the US President or congress critters could to these jobs.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @12:28AM
+1
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @09:30AM
Ah, the elusive 5-point troll!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @02:59PM (3 children)
I have never seen a +5 "Troll" moderated post.
Well done. Although, I would not have considered this to be a "troll" in the traditional sense.
It's enthusiasic sarcasm. Sarcasm is often only trollish to those that feel embarassed when the truth is exposed to them in this way...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 09 2017, @09:22PM (1 child)
I got a +5 Troll only once on that green site about 15 or more years ago when they had a router melt down in their co-location cage.
This is the 2nd time I got one here. So either I'm getting better (or worse?) at something, or it says something about the crowd here.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday August 10 2017, @04:24AM
I think whoever it was who saw that you were a +4 Troll and then modded you "underrated" -- is a comedic genius.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 11 2017, @12:27AM
Underrated/Overrated do not change a label. The last mod to stick will become the label if there is no mod plurality. So +1 Insightful, -1 Troll and a bunch of underrated will get the job done. If you got modded Touché, Insightful, Informative, Interesting, Troll, and Underrated in that order with no karma bonus applied, you should have a +5 Troll post.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MostCynical on Tuesday August 08 2017, @11:34PM (29 children)
Would a black woman have been fired for posting what Mr Damore wrote?
What about if it were a white woman?
A woman who outwardly identified as lesbian?
A trans person?
If any of these would have been treated differently to Mr Damore, then the diversity policy is discriminatory.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @12:10AM
Don't be silly, none of these could possibly write such a memo. Only a conservative white Chrisitian male could write such a memo. That is why firing him is not discriminatory. See?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by JavaDevGuy on Wednesday August 09 2017, @12:27AM (27 children)
Try this thought experiment, replace the word woman in Mr Damore's document with the world hispanic, or asian, or black, how does it read now? Would anyone writing a similar document be tolerated in any business for authoring such a racist document? I hope not. He has the freedom of speech but should not be surprised when he abuses that freedom to write a misogynistic tract that people sanction him for exposing those views.
Claiming this to be freedom of speech issue and positioning this as some kind of complaint about diversity gone mad shows how little understanding he had about the need for diversity, he simply reinforces that need in the worst possible way. Somehow we have someone working for a 21st C company dedging up the same arguments used in the 19th C to suggest women should not have universal suffrage. He absolutely had the right to expose to all the views he held, now come the consequences.
(Score: 3, Touché) by arcz on Wednesday August 09 2017, @01:18AM
I call bullshit on your reply. I absolutely DO NOT support racist policies like having programs for one specific race.
I would support him even if he were speaking on race instead of gender, the basic problem is the same.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @01:23AM (6 children)
Ok, I tried your thought experiment.
And it doesn't fit, because the appeals to well-investigated science in question don't map to those other categories. What he said was founded in specific, well-explored scientific fields on sex differences.
But even so, assuming that he had similarly well-explored science backing him up, mutatis mutandis, with respect to, for example, hispanic people, it wouldn't have been problematic.
What you seem to have missed was that he was saying that Google is being sexist, and racist, and bigoted with respect to politics, and he was trying to get them to undo their sexism and racism and bigotry.
Now read it again, with attention. There will be a test next Thursday.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @01:30AM (5 children)
FTFY.
First, they came out with Faux News, and I said nothing.
Then, they came out with fake news, and I said nothing.
After that, they came out with fake science, and I had to say, WTF?
(Score: 2, Informative) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday August 09 2017, @02:12AM (4 children)
Um, I'm pretty certain the research hasn't come from Republicans. They're just as beholden to and invested in social gender theory as feminists are.
Granted, there was some transphobic Christian think-tank that almost got it right, if only their analysis had included the brain being a gendered organ. So close, and yet so far.
I know—empirical evidence such as male children, like normal male children, not intersexed etc, who are raised from birth as girls (one famous case of a botched circumcision resulting in complete genital amputation… would that I could trade places with that person but c'est la vie) nearly consistently transition to living as men later in life, despite being completely socialized from birth as a girl. Despite being injected with estrogen beginning at the medically appropriate age iirc.
Empirical evidence is just simply not convenient for social gender theory. It also has the strange side-effect of legitimizing the experiences of every trans man (and trans woman) out there. How odd, and how un-feminist, no?
Fuck your caste system.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday August 09 2017, @04:08AM
Meh, the ones who insist gender is entirely social and the ones who insist it's entirely biological are both equally wrong and both for the same reason: they don't seem to understand the idea of emergent properties. The intersection and interactions of a person's brain structure, prenatal environment, hormones, cultural ideas about gender, and individual experience all give rise to one's identity.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @10:49AM (2 children)
Could you please take your constant, and boring, tranny screeds somewhere more appropriate?
Every evil in the universe is not based in the travails of confused sexuality.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday August 09 2017, @01:51PM
No!
Next question?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 09 2017, @03:47PM
STFU asshole. Her "screeds" are completely relevant in this discussion thread, which in case your little brain didn't notice, is all about gender and the differences between genders.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday August 09 2017, @01:44AM (11 children)
*sigh* I guess I'm going to have to actually read the thing.
*reads*
Woah, holy shit!
Do I need to read anything more from this anti-feminist? Now I'm intrigued!
Well! I can certainly see why a feminist would have problems with this memo!
It's just a fucking caste system with feminists, isn't it? Can't have feminine males. Can't have those assigned to the male gender caste acting in womyn-born-womyn only roles. I mean, what's next?! Holy shit, you mean he wants to take away professions and roles reserved exclusively for womyn-born-womyn? He wants to let men into the kitchen! Omg, panic everybody! Panic!
And for goddess' sake the first bit I quoted! How dare he present empirical evidence that the brain is a gendered organ, which has a gendered determined before birth (in the womb, i.e. he noted testosterone level differences in the womb—he didn't say, but it's 2nd month iirc that may determine brain gender)! How dare he imply that gender is not merely a social construct—a vast conspiracy of 3.6 (and counting) billion individuals for the express purpose of oppressing womyn-born-womyn!
I just….
I can't tell you how it reads because you're trying to compare apples and oranges. Seriously, if you fucking think gender is only skin deep like skin color (we'll assume that skin color is merely skin deep… no, I don't want to hear from an MD telling me about sickle cell anemia! beyond scope of argument! We're talking about cognition here.)
If you fucking think gender is only skin deep like skin color, please go back to Janice Raymond or Germaine Greer or whoever and tell her to soak her damned head. The death wish people like that have for people like me is mutual.
Consequences… yes, another person assigned to the male gender caste at birth is learning the consequences of challenging feminism's social gender theory, and I'm sure he's learning his place as an assigned member of the inferior, “incomplete” gender.
Either that or hopefully he's getting angry, as fucking angry as I am. This guy gets it. The brain is a gendered organ, whether that's convenient for you fucking feminists or not.
I know what consequences are like personally. Check my post history, or I can post it again if you don't want to wade through that, just so you understand that injustices have happened to me, injustices that will likely never find answer.
At least it sounds like this guy didn't get his healthcare directly fucked with like mine was. I guess feminism just saves direct fuck-overs for trans women only. (He's still effectively fucked over, don't get me wrong.)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday August 09 2017, @02:03AM (1 child)
Any link that explains the story about where your health care fucked up?
Btw, to dig deeper into the issue:
Average IQ by country [iq-research.info]
Though I think IQ misses the wisdom and creativity side. So while IQ is the shit to get through college etc. There's more to doing great things. A reading of Nobel prize winner bios hints a lot towards this.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday August 09 2017, @02:31AM
Ah, that's a data set that can be terribly misinterpreted if we don't control for poverty levels. And as you note, there be dragons looking solely at IQ.
Heh, even I don't want to dig through my post history to find the last time I outlined what happened to me.
Basically, I was between doctors and suddenly lost access to my meds. I'm certain this was in retaliation for a certain very specific (and somewhat tense) exchange between… (*checks client confidentially agreement*) between another assigned male and a feminist, but I'll never be able to prove it. If I ever found hard evidence, I would probably be able to retaliate myself with a sueball or two.
Anyway, I would have run out of my meds before I could have possibly gotten a new letter of recommendation from a psychologist to become established in a new practice. Health care for a trans person is something that nobody is willing to provide around here just like they will for a cisgendered person walking off the street with any other rare condition.
So, I did what I had to do, weighed options, and decided that my new medical home would be in the big city, even if driving out there is a royal pain that requires me to take time off. Fortunately, my employer is understanding.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @02:48AM (8 children)
I did not realize that womyn-born womyn was a term that you did not make up until I read this article [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday August 09 2017, @04:10AM (2 children)
Yeah, Kurenai is nuttier than squirrel diarrhea but she's E. O. Motherloving Wilson compared to the TERFs. I am still, several years later, a mixture of amused and bemused at being called "traitor to the lesbian race" by one of them, to my face, for daring to suggest that trans* people are humans too and aren't just crazy.
That Horseshoe Effect is a killer. I never thought I would see Bible-bashers and radfems swapping arguments, but there you go...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday August 09 2017, @07:14AM (1 child)
About time you got here, Azuma! Please explain, "horseshoe effect"? Have an idea, but want to be sure.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday August 09 2017, @07:49PM
Basically, when two groups of extremists who are supposedly at odds with one another find out that their mutual batshittery has pushed them surprisingly close together in terms of their beliefs and arguments.
The example in question here would be hardcore TERFs ("trans-exclusive radical feminists") and "conservative" "Christians." It is sometimes very difficult to tell them apart when the subject of trans* people, almost always trans* women, comes up. (Trans* man, of course, are even more invisible than lesbians...).
In particular, both of them will usually invoke 1) There are only two genders and they are determined by genitalia/chromosomes/something else physical (the Christians will add "by God" here), 2) Trans* people are mentally ill simply for being trans*, 3) Trans* people are usually or always predators, of ("real women"|"womyn") and/or children, and 4) Trans* people are transgressing the "natural order."
Whatever the assumptions one makes, whether the "natural order" is God-ordained or simply metaphysically naturalist, both of these groups see either mental illness or willful perversion at work here. And, to a man/woman, they're ignorant of everything from the idea of emergence/supervenience to the very long and well-documented history of gender-variance in ancient societies to the peer-reviewed literature on brain difference between cisgender and trans* individuals.
It's basically just bigotry and icks wrapped up in a veneer of pseudoscience and pseudo-logic. Do I "get" the trans* thing personally? No. But human is human, and I will not stand by and allow a fellow human to be abused simply for being transgender or transsexual. They are not insane simply for being trans*, there is a long history of third/other-gender concepts in human civilization, and modern science shows that they're not "choosing" this.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday August 09 2017, @04:21PM (4 children)
I'll admit to completely making up “gender caste.” I just cannot think of anything else that can adequately express the absolutely arbitrary and bigoted attitudes that TERFs hold (who appear to be the vast majority of feminists from over here, but maybe I'm just living in bizarro world). They exhibit all the patterns of thought that, according to Altemeyer, describe a right-wing authoritarian follower.
(For example, mention intersexed people as a way of illustrating that biology is messy and they go all concern troll on you, eventually coming back around to their dogma that the brain is not a gendered organ. I don't even know if they literally believe that the womb is the seat of the soul, but that's what everything they say seems to imply. That's just how right-wing authoritarian followers roll. Compartmentalization of concerns, regurgitated talking points, and a +15 to doublethink.)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday August 09 2017, @07:52PM (2 children)
You are seeing things through a crooked lens, yes, though given your experiences I really cannot blame you. But I guarantee you the TERFs are a small minority as I've been saying to you with nearly every reply.
They're a very noisy minority though, so they tend to be much more visible than most of us, who are basically just humanists who realize that there is a major, major problem with the way the sexes relate to one another and would like it to change.
We need you to stop smearing all feminists with the TERF brush though. Most of us aren't anything like that, and the most thoughtful of us actually make it a point to oppose them in print and online for the harm they do and for the fallacious arguments they use. I would wager well over 90% of feminists are trans-inclusive.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday August 10 2017, @03:37PM (1 child)
When will all these good feminists speak louder than the cacophonous minority of bad feminists?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 10 2017, @09:49PM
Never, because assholes are inherently louder than decent people. Westboro Baptist Church is a tiny proportion of Christianity, not even statistical sampling noise, but more people know of them than of the thousands of churches who do charitable work.
It's on you to understand this.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday August 10 2017, @02:09AM
Authoritarian followers occur at both extremes of the so-called political spectrum.
I prefer moderation in all things, even moderation in moderation.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Wednesday August 09 2017, @08:12AM
You sound as if you've not read the entirity of the manifesto.
Stop trying to reword his argument into a straw man - which bit of his argument do you think is factually incorrect?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @08:19AM (1 child)
That thought experiment was stupid. If the data still supported the thesis after changing 'women' to 'race of your choice' then I'd be fine with it. But it doesn't because he was talking nature not nurture and statistical trend not all women and certainly all women currently in the field.
Try this though experiment, in the genetically engineered salmon article, replace the word salmon with.... yup just stupid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @09:13AM
I was going to say, thought experiments only work when there is some thinking going on. Conservative dogma is no substitute.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 09 2017, @04:04PM (2 children)
I also call bullshit. Despite decades of attempts to do so, progressives have failed to hide or negate all the evidence that women and men are DIFFERENT. Little girl children seldom act like little boy children, and vice versa. The jails and prisons are filled with males, and few women see the inside of either one, except in visiting rooms. There are a lot of reasons for that, and those reasons are not limited to cultural pressure.
Many of the supposed metrics that attempt to show differences between black and white, Hispanic and Asian, or whatever, are made up, bogus, cultural things. The differences between males and females cross all barriers, cultureal, ethnic, historical, religious, class, or any other barrier you wish to consider.
If 1/4, or 1/2, or even 3/4 of the population pretends that there is no difference between men and women, that doesn't mean I have to poke my own eyes out so that I can be as blind as they are.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 10 2017, @10:03PM (1 child)
Entirely correct. And it doesn't seem to occur to the ones who insist gender is entirely social and malleable that they're not only barking up the wrong tree, but hurting those they claim to help.
I would wager their fear is something like "People are going to abuse the science to attempt to *force* $GROUP into $ROLE." And this is a legitimate fear, as proven time and time again by everything from eugenics to "race realism" to the questionable psychology of the 19th century (Freud etc.) has shown.
But lies never were beaten with worse lies. What we need here is 1) acknowledgement that these differences exist, and 2) realization that, especially in the modern world, they don't mean as much as they did before. The problem is that most people are falling into the ought-from-is trap, that is, thinking that "Women are in general less spatially intelligent than men, THEREFORE, women can't into math hurr hurr hurr."
There are definitely physical differences between the sexes and the genders. I suspect very strongly I've got a somewhat masculinized brain, which would explain the interest in computers, lots of active voice during typing and speech, a tendency to want to fix problems rather than discuss them, and so forth. Denying reality, no matter how noble the aim, is only going to cause trouble long-term.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday August 11 2017, @12:39AM
Even if women are in general less spatially intelligent than men it doesn't mean every women is such. Thus there are women in positions that need spatial intelligence, just not that many.
Seems the public at large just doesn't grasp that general isn't equal to everyone.
But it might be, it's just very unlikely ;)
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday August 10 2017, @04:38AM
The problem is that he cited no research about race, just about different preferences women and men have. During this kerfluffle I've been reading a number of things and seems not so much to be a male/female issue, as a testosterone issue during gestation and thereafter. It's like the differing chemicals running through the brains of most men and women, are programming us to behave and desire differently. I have no expertise in this area so I can't talk with any authority, but it is interesting reading (and viewing, e.g., the documentary on Norway, the most equal country, with ever widening gender gaps in employment types).
Anyway, it's pretty obvious that in today's society, that looking into differences between the sexes is forbidden (Damore). As is objecting to certain kinds of racism (Bret Weinstein), as is merely suggesting working with natural opponents on those issues for which there is agreement (Caitlin Johnstone).
And so you know, I'm a pinko Green -- I just see the attacks on freedom of thought from the left, aside from being astonishingly ferocious and Godwinesque, as being extremely misguided and dangerous. Kind of like how Democrats never complained while Obama pushed executive authority, as if it never occurred to them that a Cheney type or a Trump could wield that same power. Forcing people to shut up and toe the line is beyond stupid no matter what side of things you are on, because inevitably, there will be a day when it is YOU being repressed.