I read it as "our biases are subconscious". A lot of the white men being jerks to their female and ethnic minority colleagues aren't aware they're doing it, or if they are it's justified because it's a "meritocracy" and the techbros ascribe significantly more merit to whiteness and especially maleness.
Given that reality is subjective, how would you separate "lots of men are being jerks and don't realise" from "lots of women are hyper-sensitive to perceived slights that aren't there and don't realise it"?
I've seen so many accusations of sexism in tech by now that I tire of it. When investigated, it seems to always boil down to one of two things:
1. Some guy hit on me and I thought it was gross^Wharassment.
2. I feel a general aura of sexism that I can't pin down or concretely identify but I'm sure it's there, so I've become instantly triggered by mundane things.
All too often the latter feels like women (and male feminists) on a power trip. The feelings of being offended aren't real, it's just a way to convince/force others to do what they want.
I'm thinking of cases like the dongle incident for that. A trivial remark over nothing that led to guys getting fired. But the Damore memo is another good example. Guy points out that lots of scientists think men and women have different interests for genetic reasons, so maybe we should be more willing to discuss that -> outrage, firings, power successfully exercised. Nobody is ever actually offended by science, or even abstract arguments about science and politics, even if they may claim to be. The offence is manufactured to meet an end goal: the punishment of those who do not bow to the power of the ideology.
The people trying to get evolution banned from schools probably are.
Some of the responses I saw to the Damore memo, seemed to boil down to that some things should not be said regardless of truthiness.
Attempts to even look for differences in intelligence or I think personality by race tend to get shouted down rather quickly, because historically they've been used to justify some seriously nasty shit.
The offence is manufactured to meet an end goal: the punishment of those who do not bow to the power of the ideology.
I really don't think it's all that calculated. There are things that people want to believe, or feel it is necessary to believe, and they get upset if you tell them they're wrong (evolution), if you tell them they're only partly right (Damore), or sometimes if you even look like you might be thinking about questioning them (race).
A lot of scientific inquiry is un-politically correct and therefore "wrong" even though it was arrived at by the correct processes. That is especially true when cognitive traits among races have been compared. Many just can't accept certain findings because it's "racist." So instead of making decent progress for humanity, we ignore the hows and whys and flounder around aimlessly instead of seeking a way forward for everyone that might actually succeed.
>All too often the latter feels like women (and male feminists) on a power trip. The feelings of being offended aren't real, it's just a way to convince/force others to do what they want.
Please explain this statement further. I am trying to understand how the person who is harassed is the person with the power or on a power trip as you put it. Wouldn't the best way to avoid such a scenario be to avoid the circumstance of making unwanted or unwelcome statements? How in the world can you definitely tell the feelings of being offended are not real?
If the "person who is harassed" is actually a "person on a power trip", they will find "unwanted or unwelcome statements" in any behavior that you do. Because they can set the definition for "unwanted or unwelcome statements" and will abuse that to satisfy whatever their agenda is.
You can definitely tell in cases where the target of this is a particular individual in a group setting; the double standard in treatment becomes stark after a while.
I am not saying that abuse never happens by someone who is looking to get rid of someone they simply don't like or a boss that gave them a bad review. It has happened and no doubt it will happen again. However, rest assured that it does not take long for the person who is complaining of unwanted or unwelcome statements to see that, historically at least, they are viewed as the problem.
In general, businesses, regardless of industry, have tended to view complainants as the troublemakers (or at least a legal risk) and their future at the company is affected in one form or another. Anyone that can sue a company is a threat and threats are not typically viewed positively. The individual may achieve a short-term goal (or satisfy their agenda as you point out) but long-term they are not on the winning end of the game they are playing.
Any individual who would use complaints as a career driver, or to drive whatever agenda you are alluding to, is in for a rude awakening. This would apply to those who complain of harassment, whistleblowers', or simply well intentioned employees. We have yet to come up with a way to resolve the issue and protect reputations, career advancement, etc for the parties involved when it comes to unwanted or unwelcome statements that reasonable people can disagree about.
Note: I am not addressing repeat offenders or blatant harassment. I am only addressing situations where a comment was not meant to offend but is offensive to someone but reasonable people differ on if the comment was offensive. Clearly people are different and what offends one does not offend someone else. These are the difficult situations that I am addressing, not someone showing up in a bathrobe at a coworkers hotel room.
> However, rest assured that it does not take long for the person who is complaining of unwanted or unwelcome statements to see that, historically at least, they are viewed as the problem.
The amount of actual time that "long" takes can vary wildly, and assumes that businesses are generally competent at identifying and eliminating "threats." "Long" can sometimes be years of the behavior. Many businesses, even successful ones, are not fully aware of what goes on inside the company.
Even with those issues aside, none of these things you mention will stop you from being the first victim of someone who manipulatively uses complaints about objectionable comments to screw you over. Most places need a pattern of behavior established before they're willing to assign blame to the complaintant, especially if the complaintant is difficult to fire for other reasons (e.g. is a member of a legally protected class or is connected to someone up the corporate food chain).
And yes, I know you're talking about comments and other things that are subjective like that. Those are the ones most likely to be abused, because they can be interpreted in multiple ways.
Depends on if you mean objective, or subjective harassment. Offense could be described as the latter. The power comes from being able to provide the latter, and it being treated as the former.
Assuming that's true (and I suspect it is, testosterone is rather powerful), as a male I don't find that to be offensive. If it's indeed true than I can no more be offended by it as I can be offended that in the winter the sun sets earlier than I would like it to. I genuinely have trouble understanding how someone would be offended by the way physics and chemistry work.
Now the issue with some studies that can be considered flawed at best being used as a justification would be a problem but that's an entirely different argument here, I feel.
This idea itself is quite ironic in a self-reflectional way, given that "being offended by something" is also just another manifestation of how physics and chemistry work.
The problem happens when you start digging into such science as the data isn't clean cut. It makes the outrage over scientific data that more complicated.
For example, aggression is context bound by the cultural environment. In some cultures aggression would be to talk to an elder without being spoken to first. To argue then that men are biologically more disposed to mechanically perform such aggression is silly, so we would need to disassemble what aggression is and how it plays out in our culture.
If we take violence, we find a similar patterns. Researchers have tried and failed to find any correlation to violent crime and testosterone levels (as long those are within naturally occurring). Similar, a household with two men has equal risk to have a domestic violence happening as a household with two women. Passive aggression is a different topic all by itself, but is clearly defined as aggression.
The science isn't what is hurtful. What hurts is when people hate me for what I am. Being hated for attributes that a person has (but not necessary defines them) is very harmful. Scientific data can sometime cause this and I would say often do when data is taken out of the cultural context in which it is observed. It doesn't make science the culprit, but it does require a more careful discussion by all sides in order for the data to be useful. The Damore memo is an example where such discussion fell apart almost the instant it was created and blame can be pointed at many places except for science.
> When investigated, it seems to always boil down to one of two things
Investigated by whom? Yourself? What criteria are you using, or are you just using your "general aura?"
> The feelings of being offended aren't real
So they are liars?
> Guy points out that lots of scientists think men and women have different interests for genetic reasons
Guy implies that leading to them being less fit for programming without evidence and segues into promoting an alt-right agenda.
> Nobody is ever actually offended by science
People do get offended by poor science used to prop up a political agenda (Global warming, anyone?).
> The offence is manufactured to meet an end goal: the punishment of those who do not bow to the power of the ideology.
So your logical conclusion boils down to a conspiracy theory with the opposing power being a group of lying women on a power-trip. Now why wouldn't people want to enter into a constructive dialogue about gender differences and their effect on the workplace with you to try and improve things?
