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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: 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...