More people than just the right believe things to be a zero-sum game, else you would not see the kinds of things expressed in the Github diversity slide-show you saw in this article [1]. This is the main slide [2]. And, one could argue it is, for every man hired, that's potentially one fewer woman hired and for every one white woman hired that's one fewer minority woman or man hired, if you look at things from an individual company PoV. If you look at it in a broad economic sense, it may not be zero sum, however.

The bullet points hint at the issue being interpreted as a zero sum game. Imagine this slide show from a different ethnic group or gender and how it might be interpreted.

[1]http://www.businessinsider.com/github-the-full-inside-story-...

[2]http://imgur.com/QevylxY

I just cannot believe what's on some of those slides. Here are some snippets -- imagine if you were to swap the races around, and replace every 'white' with 'people of color', every 'asian' with 'white', and every 'people of color' with 'asian'. If you do these mental gymnastics, some of these slides will seem incredibly offensive -- so how is it that they're acceptable at all, regardless of what the races are. Here are some juicy quotes:

"This is not work for white folks to lead"

"We need solidarity with our asian friends and colleagues"

"Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women"

(...)

Because they describe asymmetric power relationships, so you can't meaningfully flip them.

"Workers can sack employers at will, and that causes employers financial hardship, so we need employer protection laws" is a less-charged example of why it doesn't work just to straight flip such types of statement.

Power asymmetry makes sense at higher top to bottom levels, but not at the individual being hired level. There is no power asymmetry between candidates. That is, another interviewee has no power over me, nor I over her. And here we're implying hiring one type displaces one of another type and we're saying that we prefer one type to be displaced rather than another type to be displaced.

Additionally, if we accept that white women are underrepresented then what it's doing is saying that some underrepresentations are better than others.

well in that case you would also have to change the action 'sack' because firing an employer is by definition impossible for an employee of that employer.

The correct text should probably be:

"Workers can quit employers at will, and that causes employers financial hardship, so we need employer protection laws"

Anti-strike legislation exists though.

Yes, if you change the words in a sentence, the sentence's meaning can change.

Actually, I make an effort to be sufficiently even handed that only a committed partisan could take offense.

Reading what you wrote, and this comment seems to translate as:

> I make an effort to insult everyone therefore if anyone is insulted they must be a zealot. It's certainly not possible for reasonable people to take offence to an insult so long as I also insult the "other side" of the debate.

I'm not entirely sure that the "social math" you're attempting to use here actually works in real life.

But to digress further, even if this "social math" worked out, statements like "Trump is popular" are not necessarily contested even by people that disagree with Trump, while statement like "feminism annexed academia" is a much more inflammatory and contested statement.

Inflammatory, by that do you mean, problematic, citizen?

It's not my social math, it's from the book I mentioned in the original post. There is a political calculus to power, and there are some good game theory models of it. It would be hard to deny that academia has seen a sea change in political thinking in the last 20 years (unless we've always been at war with eurasia), just as against all reason and sense, Trump has managed to become a contender. Stuff changes. There are models to describe some of it. Sorry if I tipped a sacred cow. I thought this was hacker news not reddit.

My "social math" comment was directed at this comment that you made:

> I make an effort to be sufficiently even handed that only a committed partisan could take offense

not at attacking the contents of the book that you are discussing in your original post. I have not read that book, therefore I am not on sufficient ground to debate its contents.

On the other hand, your idea that you have been "sufficiently even handed" requires more explanation. From what I've read from you in this comment thread, that appears to mean, "I've made comments that people all over the political spectrum might not like, therefore somehow upsetting someone on the 'left' and someone on the 'right' balances out to upsetting no one. Therefore, only extremely committed zealots will be upset by my comments." This is the "social math" that does not work.

> Sorry if I tipped a sacred cow. I thought this was hacker news not reddit.

I could direct the same comment at you. Making comments like this is meant to put me on the defensive. You're claiming that I'm acting like an "irrational Redditor" rather than a "intelligent HN reader." Ending all of your comments with the equivalent of, "I'm just saying the truth that no one wants to hear" gives you more in common with Trump that you may like to admit.

Not much of an effort apparently.

Feminism has never demanded equal respect. Two Si olé examples,

1. Australian right for women to vote. It took another 60 years because they didn't care about aboriginal votes. That's not equality!!! 2. An education system that went from a majority of honors students being male to 80% women earning honors in 30 years - and you call that equality? Do you argue that boys have become stupid (as is the modern myth of feminism) for such a drastic swing at almost all levels of academia.

Feminism has nothing to do with equality. The poster you responded to was totally correct. Research falling performance of boys before commenting. While you're at it, check hiring rates and incomes of younger women in the states. I hear the word pendulum swing (which means double standard hypocrite) a lot these days.

> Feminism has never demanded equal respect.

Stating that Feminism has never been about equality is an absolute statement. Even if it's true that Feminism has had little to do with equality, all you're doing here of swinging to the opposite extreme in response to it, which doesn't seem like a healthy attitude.

> 1. Australian right for women to vote. It took another 60 years because they didn't care about aboriginal votes. That's not equality!!!

That was quite a long time ago when attitudes towards race were different. It seems unfair to take this attitudes and apply them with an absolute statement like "never." Would it make sense to state that the United States has never been about equal rights and point to slavery, "separate but equal," and the KKK as my proof?

> 2. An education system that went from a majority of honors students being male to 80% women earning honors in 30 years - and you call that equality? Do you argue that boys have become stupid (as is the modern myth of feminism) for such a drastic swing at almost all levels of academia.

Unless you can directly connect Feminism to this, then you need to explain what you feel the mechanisms are that Feminism uses to indirectly influence these results. Which education system (I assume Australia)? How has Feminism affected these results?

Typically it's the critiques of liberalism and capitalism that treat life as zero-sum. The capitalist defense of inequality is that the world isn't zero-sum. Because people can do extraordinarily well for themselves by creating value for others, they do, and we are all better off.

The 60s civil rights movement was a classically liberal movement. They were demanding equal treatment under the law. "Civil rights" movements today are usually asking for special treatment. (edit: Just to clarify, I'm referring specifically to the US for this last point)

> "Civil rights" movements today are usually asking for special treatment.

I wholeheartedly disagree with this opinion.

The civil rights movement of the day is always compared to some idealized civil rights movement of the past to disqualify it in the eyes of the anti-progressive. They focus on the wrong issues, they lack focus, they're too loud and annoying, they're not grateful enough for advances thus far, etc.

Seeing how he's idealized into an impossible standard for activists today, it's cool looking at the correspondence MLK Jr. got back in the day (http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/theme/4809). Here are some samples:

> Mr. Young criticizes Dr. King and the black community for their support of heavyweight champion Cassius Clay's refusal to be drafted into the military. He also expresses worry about the quality of black leadership and urges a move from a selfish focus on Negroes only to concern for all people.

> Calling Dr. King "The Trouble Maker of the United States," Mrs. Shaw criticizes Dr. King's methods in the Civil Rights Movement. She argues that a "campaign of love is in order" rather than demonstrations.

> Harl Douglass writes in disgust at the position Dr. King has taken on Vietnam War. As a once full supporter of the civil rights movement, he believes that Dr. King "is somewhat unstable and he has made millions of enemies for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference....." Douglass warns Dr. King and SCLC officials that if they continue to go down the same track they will lose support of white moderates.