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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: 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.