Maybe some people are calling for stuff like that.

But that's not what Google's doing to him. Google's just saying: "You can't do that here."

IANAL, but it is illegal for employers to use the threat of firing to compel employees to take (or avoid) a political course of action.

Furthermore, it is illegal for employers to punish employees for speaking up about issues the employee believes affect working conditions (which was largely the premise of the employees essay).

Google side-stepped the issue by firing him for statements which may (or may not) violate anti-discrimination policies that just so happened to be in his essay.

They left largely unchallenged (and it seems to me, rather reinforced) the central complaint. Namely that Google was fostering a politically stifling atmosphere.

Instead of answering his concerns, they fired him because they thought his suggestions were offensive (or rooted in offensive ideology).

Not only were they offensive, they had no grounding in reality and made it impossible for many people there to work with or trust him.

the idea that females and males LIKE different things and its IN PART based on biology, is completely real and valid and not offensive in the slightest.

That's what this "manifesto" was.

if you're saying men/women think identically, then there is even no reason for gender diversity because it only becomes physical differences at that point, do you realize that?

See also: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/it-may-be-illegal-for-google...

And as to "organizing for better workplace conditions" - well yeah, there's some overlap, there. But his campaign went quite a ways beyond that, as well.

Ah that makes sense. A fair point. Still, I think that "organizing around workplace conditions" and "calling attention to possible violations of anti-discrimination laws" (both of which were mentioned in the article I referenced) are possible grounds for a suit.

> But his campaign went quite a ways beyond that, as well.

Do you mean the claimed violation of Google code of conduct that was the basis for his firing? I don't know what their CoC is specifically, but if it's anything like the other CoC's I've seen, I think it's debatable whether he did actually violated it.

Many of the claims I have seen about hurtful things in the memo (such as that the women at Google don't deserve to be there) are unsubstantiated by the text of the memo itself. The topics he was trying to discuss, the topics which the CEO himself (and at least 60% of the employees) say should be discussed, are an emotional minefield. Despite claims to the contrary, Damore was very careful with his words.

Google is one of, if not the, biggest player in terms of information served over the internet. If they are willing to censor at this level, how far will they go to protect their public image and suppress discussion they don't agree with?

Any more than I "censor" you if you come on to my property and refer to my daughter as the "c"-word. I mean... you can call my daughter whatever you like, I just don't allow you to do it in my house. That's not really censorship no matter how big the house is, that's just something that people should expect to happen. In fact... I think people should find it more strange if my daughter and I did NOT put you out of our house.

You can still call her whatever you like outside of our home. You're still free to do that.

I'm not saying you don't have the right to do that, or that in this example your son was right, I just think it would be an over-reaction and would create a chilling effect on your other children from asking questions or thinking about things differently.

Recall that the employee that was fired is an adult (and apparently in his 30s, at least).

Also yeah he had to bei in his 30th how else would he have gotten his phd? But like I said the age wasn't the point.

Worth noting: he could post this publicly on Google+, Blogspot, or any other Google platform. It's only his paycheck that's being suppressed, his views are not.

Make no mistake, it's his views that he was fired over, not the medium in which he shared them. Google made no indication otherwise.

Consider the people within Google who declare their unwillingness to work with the person that believes in science and in treating people like individuals.

Actually I found his piece to be distinctly unscientific.

It parades as scientific, for sure. But when you break it down, and consider the whole of the message it imparts... at it's core, it was very unscientific.

And I bet that those at Google who decided to terminate his employment felt pretty much the same way.

He was very good at sourcing almost every single one of his claims with references to published scientific studies.

Your statement on the other hand has zero quotes to support your claim.

I know which one I will consider "unscientific".

The last part is "the message" of a scientific publication (the "why I worked on/wrote this").

Why was his memo unscientific? 1. His choice of data presentation was almost exclusively for his side of the hypothesis, of the form "women are biologically inclined to X" without including any of the (vast corpus of) counter-studies* that directly offset many of his core supporting arguments.

2. Even if his arguments were sufficiently sound (which is unlikely as per 1.), his conclusions were a bit of a quantum leap from his "sourced" claims to "this is unfair, divisive, bad for business" (as per the TLDR). He pretty much just decided that for himself. There were few or no studies/data/observations to support that crucial step.

*going to piggyback off the sources linked in this slate article: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2017/08/07/the_google_a...

I think the standard that you have set for the author expressing these opinions is unfairly high, and the bar that you have set for yourself for criticizing him for expressing that is unfairly low. You criticize that the author has cherry-picked his sources; you now have to support that claim by showing the deluge of counter-studies that show that it is not true that women are inclined to X personality. I've checked the Slate article and it doesn't link to sources that show that. In fact, the first paragraph of the article links to articles that agree with that WSJ article and with the author that discrim. leads to gender strife.

> the sources linked in this slate article

I couldn't find any counter-studies in the article you linked. I tried traversing the sources, but those sources don't have any studies either. Is that the link you intended to post?

I'll grant that I had a kneejerk reaction of "that can't be accurate" and assumed there must be lots of literature to back me up, but it isn't easy to find it. Personally I neither support nor oppose this manifesto, but I think given the very expectable backlash and damage potential, drawing such concrete conclusions without stronger grounds was a bit too risque to be considered scientific.

Whether a claim (or other statement) someone makes is "scientific" or not is, fundamentally, a matter of the soundness and logical coherence of the overall argument they're making. And about the aspects of the issue they sidestep and ignore (and this guys ignores a whole lot in his manifesto, actually) as much as the aspects they cite.

Not the number of footnotes, quote or diagrams it has.

This is a dangerous level of indirection. "The whole of the message". Sounds like you are reading into what it says, finding things that it doesn't actually say - without acknowledging that you are doing so.

The paper demonstrates that the author values diversity, open dialog, and science.

And many people at Google declared they were unwilling to work with such a person.

Those are the people who should have been fired, for creating a hostile, intolerant work environment.

No, it's called "assessing it qualitatively as well as quantitatively".

Which is a very useful skill, actually.

The author not only clearly stated this, he even included a picture to make it clear: https://diversitymemo.com/population-overlap.png

Does it really deserve a reaction of "You can't do that here"?

Google's decision was most definitely not in response to that graphic you linked to.

1) "... we will fire you, because you have generated negative press for us with this even though we had no explicit policy prohibiting this"

2) "... we will fire you because what you did has directly violated an explicit existing company policy"

3) "... we will give you a warning, and add 'workplace gender diversity' to the list of topics prohibited from public discourse by employees so that in the future we can fire people for this"

It's unclear whether 1) or 2) happened (I suspect it was 1), and they could have chosen 3). They didn't. And the poor sap probably doesn't want to consider a lawsuit against Google if it was 1) and not 2) even if one could argue wrongful termination. And that's exactly what authoritarianism is about, the power to make rules pretty much on the fly and expect those affected by your choices to play by them.

PS: Not taking sides here, IMHO the manifesto was dumb and the person sounded like a green'un who got a rude dose of reality from what he probably considered merely a provoking thought experiment/writing exercise.

And that's probably OK and kind of expected. To me what was interesting was that even the CEO had to not only denounce it, but also cut his vacation short to hold a staff town-hall.

That is, "really read" a select paragraph or two. Enough to make a basic determination as to what he's driving at -- and to note that we've seen variants of this message from other sources, before -- and make a decision about how much of one's attention resources it merits, moving forward -- accordingly.

As one does with any rant, or other poorly thought-out screed.

Crazy.

Did you ever actually read L. Ron Hubbard's seminal work, Dianetics? I mean, really read it? Cover-to-cover?

No, you say? And yet you dismiss it?

That's crazy.

I don't dismiss it because I have no idea what it's about. I don't approve of it either, for the exact same reasons.

Anyhow: You're comparing reading less than 10 pages of large text with generous spacing and numerous illustrations to end-to-end reading a full book almost 500 pages long.

You can't be serious.

The church he founded was one of the major annoyances of the latter half of the 20th century. If you're interested in the general history of Really Bad Ideas (and how they draw otherwise warm sensitive, intelligent people into their fold), you might want to look into it.

Let's just say I've considered the works of a lot cranks and crackpots, over the years - and a lot of viewpoints that, while not quite in that category, are just muddled and inflammatory and don't have a lot to offer to the discussion. Enough to develop a pretty reliable sense of "smell" as to whether a given piece of work merits further exploration beyond a few paragraphs or so.

So whether or not one thinks he should be fired for it -- his "manifesto" definitely does not pass that smell test.

That's my view. If you view his work differently, that's fine for you.

Is that like, a hobby? And by "considered", do you mean you read them, or skimmed them, or just heard about them from uptight censorious authoritarians on the internet?

Actually it was, for a while. And I actually did read a lot of these works; and considered their points, very carefully; and debated them with their adherents, very patiently and thoughtfully.

Until I figured out what general superstructure of thought patterns was behind their arguments (which mostly boil down to: cherry picking; what-about-ism; and "authority, authority authority") -- and moved on other things.

It was an internal memo in good civil form posted internally opening to an internal debate on a subject related to work conditions.

Despite Gizmodo's obvious attempt to frame it as such, it was not posted as a revolutionary manifesto.

It was public only when leaked by someone else. Notice how that person has not been fired.

> addresses sensitive and controversial issues.

So if a company makes a sensitive and controversial issue an internal policy, nobody should be allowed to question it? Really?

Are you still confident in your judgment?

Most likely because, whether the author intended it that way or not, the memo was draft in a way that was pretty much guaranteed to push people's buttons. And when people -- particularly very smart people who have a lot more important things to do with their time -- feel their buttons being pushed, they tend to react, and get to the root of the matter very quickly.

But maybe I'm saying the same thing as you are...

I think you are speaking of those who wish to become part of an authoritarian elite.

I'm speaking of the mob members who simply agree with certain absolutist and easily manipulated notions. (Like: "Hate speech is violence", or "we should never question someones claim of being emotionally hurt"). Simply believing in these notions make prone to mob aggression in support of authoritarianism.

Do you have anything to support that notion?

We are all prone to mob aggression. That is the whole problem with mobs. It allows the individual to disconnect themselves from the actions of the whole. Any large group of people has the potential to turn into a mob.

I’m usually at least somewhat amenable to the “but the bad actors are mostly just the outliers” position, as well. In most cases, that’s true. Again, however, not here. Anyone who read the manifesto and the “response” post by Zunger while practicing even a nominal amount of epistemological integrity would have immediately recognized that Zunger’s post was wildly dishonest, did not deal directly with the content of the post at all, and apparently even thought that fantasizing violence against the manifesto author was an acceptable way to respond. It wasn’t.

I was and remain extremely disappointed in Bay Area tech culture right now. This “manifesto” —a ridiculous and politically expedient moniker— was a crucial opportunity to have a culture-wide teaching moment and we blew it spectacularly. We could have had a nuanced, intelligent discussion about an extremely personal and difficult topic while also demonstrating to Mr. Damont why his application of the very real, widely accepted science he cited was wrong-headed and possibly even oppressive[1]. But no. We didn’t want to acknowledge the facts at all, and our aversion to doing so was so strong that a witch-hunt was executed instead. Meanwhile, we still seem largely oblivious that we made Mr. Damont’s broader point for him. And for the alt-right. They’re having a field day with this, and it’s all the more infuriating because they’re not wrong this time.

[1] e.g. https://contemporarysex.tumblr.com/post/163876071377/doing-a...

They might think something like this: "The very wealthy people who control a sizable portion of the Internet and hold vast influence in society hate me. They would gladly ruin me even if I gently express a rational and benign version of what I really think."

My point: be very careful about making threats in reaction to benign speech. People might take you seriously.

In the grand scheme of things, being intolerant towards intolerance is certainly on the positive side, but it is still scary seeing the vitriol directed towards whoever is the current target of our internet hate.

You can argue the current anti-intellectual attitude of a large part of the population is a immune reaction to the political power intellectuals had when their opinion was sought by politicians.

You can also argue white supremacism is an immune reaction to what some white populations incorrectly perceive as a threat to their historic prosperity.

I have heard people say he should get fired, but I haven't heard anyone saying he should be "expelled from society" or "forever vilified as an outcast."

Before, the major actor that could issue genuine consequences for speech was the state. The word "Consequences" in the statement "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences", means a punch to the face or a stern shaming from townsfolk. You got on with it, kept doing your job, continued to live your life.

When the state objected to your speech, it would end your life, it would destroy you.

But fast forward to today. Suddenly loud demographics of people have the ability to destroy you in the long term, destroy your working prospects, smear your reputation, mark you as unhireable, harass you everywhere. State level consequences. It's no longer a punch to the face in a bar for obnoxious speech. It's no longer the "consequences" in "freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequences". Those consequences are now state level. How meaningless would this statement be if it was "Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequences from the state."

"You're free to talk, no one will stop you, but we the state still get to destroy your life." How meaningless is that?!

You say people shouldn't be vilified as an outcast. But that's what will happen!

He published his opinion, that Google's efforts that enabled thousands of his female peers to pursue careers there, are misguided and harmful, that some of his female coworkers are biologically unsuited to their jobs. He did it to himself.

He opted out of his contract - making himself a free agent.

http://www.49ers.com/news/article-2/Colin-Kaepernick-Opts-Ou...

This is like quitting your job and complaining you don't have a job.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2017/05/31/john-lynch-4...

"We gave him the option, ‘You can opt out, we can release you, whatever.’ And he chose to opt out, but that was just a formality."

https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2017/3/1/14599712/colin-kaepern...

There's a lot of other issues here - it's unfair to say he got "fired" because of what he did last year. He's been very bad lately - huge dropoff since he went to the SuperBowl.

http://review.chicagobooth.edu/magazine/winter-2014/how-gary...

Edit - backups should be technically solid and be able to execute the same plays as the starter. Not flashy and unorthodox. When your starter is injured you don't want the whole team to have to change systems.

And, as a consequence, the US now has an immature tantrum-throwing child as President with a GOP doing nothing but enabling his worst actions.

Do I think this guy should have been fired? I dunno. Not sure. I need more context.

Am I upset he was fired? No. That's Google's choice, regardless of how good a choice it is or isn't.

It betrayed a spectacular lack of common sense and judgement for someone in a senior[1] role - which is exactly where you'd want those in spades. Also made his working position untenable since a senior role is going to need to get along and interact with many people. Also, also, his utter disregard for evidence and inability to make logical arguments would give me great pause as to his usefulness as a senior engineer.

I'd have fired him first for being an idiot, second for his bullshit "scientism", and third having reprehensible views.

[1] Disclaimer: I don't know if "senior" within Google is the same as "VP" in banks, ie just a defacto title you get after a while rather than a mark of actual competency.

How is this any different than if I was to exercise my "free speech" to insult my CEO and found myself fired? This was a private corporation, operating in an at-will employment state. Now if the government had taken steps to censor speech, one could argue that we're in an authoritarian regime. But workplaces have always (at least since I've been working), been places where we voluntarily subject ourselves to private authority, or else quit or are fired.

I think it's widely accepted that work is generally a place where discussion of politics and gender relations is not appropriate. I know I do my best to avoid arguments on those topics at work, and that's fine. But when your employer explicitly encourages carrying out this kind of discussion in specific work-only forums, and then turns around and punishes you for it when some people throw a hissy-fit, that's gonna leave a bad taste in many people's mouths.

To use your example, if I insulted my CEO and got fired for it no one would be surprised. But if my CEO was soliciting honest feedback on their performance and then I got fired for pointing out some stuff they dropped the ball on, I'd be (understandably, I think) quite upset.

http://tim.dreamwidth.org/2035407.html

Could you give a link to that rant?

It seems like every time I make a politically controversial post on Reddit and increasingly HN, I can just CTRL-F my comment inbox and assure myself that there's some reference to punching in there.

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...

He's very clearly siding with the face-punchers.

That is wholly unsupported by any reading of his sentence.

He literally says he would avoid creating a situation where even the possibility of someone punching him in the face might happen. If he was siding with the face-punchers, why would he avoid that situation?

People can't work with someone because he has a different point of view about injustice in the society and has the courage to voice it respectfully? They would resort to violence against someone because they have a different point of view?

If you can resort to violence against someone and get away with it, you're the oppressor in the society, not the oppressed.

Sundar, Yonatan and their likes are so privileged and delusional. These people have no issue with a war-criminal like Kissinger being invited to talk at Google but have such serious issues with a software engineer writing his views.

Forcing minorities and women to work with people who are bigoted against them is a recipe for a lawsuit.

A better example is an atheist working with an evangelical. Both the atheist and the evangelical will have very strong opinions on each others' belief systems.

But that's not what I was responding to. OP implied this guy is a racist or a misogynist and stated she couldn't work with someone who held his kinds of beliefs.

I've read the manifesto and it's not as strong as you make it out to be. For example, I've argued that you can't expect perfect proportional demographic representation in a free society in any field. It will not happen, for a variety of reasons that may not be nefarious. If women are under-represented in programming it may not be because of sexism.

"May" is the important word here. We really don't know.

A better statement would be: "Will the Evangelical write a 10 page memo "explaining" why there are naturally fewer Atheists in church organizations because their beliefs makes the inherently less interested in it?"

The answer would be yes. But it's not a good example.

It's kind of offensive to be judged by this hypothetical "average X person" stereotype. It more or less implies it's their fault, that they are underrepresented because they want to.

As long as that person isn't constantly soliciting investment advice from me or asking me to front them loans, I don't think it's unreasonable for an adult to be expected to tolerate opinions that do not affect their work.

Hell, I've worked with co-workers who consider Jews illegitimate occupiers of their country, yet we still got along just fine by avoiding talking about politics in the break room.

Avoid talking about something controversial is deemed self censoring by a lot of people here in HN.

You might be a forgiving person, but that is a gift not a necessity, and better not assuming people would return the favor. For more controversial stuff I choose to only talk with my inner circle which I assume I knew them well enough. The author makes the memo public to ALL employees, most of them he wouldn't even know their names. That is his freedom, however he should expect there will be reactions to his piece from them. And it is not really his business or within anybody's control to decide what reaction is appropriate or over the top at that point. This is internet, where things escalate proportional to the speed of light.

My understanding is that is that the guy shared this memo among a small group of friends at work using an internal forum specifically designed for this kind of discussion. If that's true, I hardly think it's fair to hold him accountable for the reactions of Googlers he never shared the text with, let alone those of the world at large once someone else leaked the memo to the internet.

To play devil's advocate, what makes it right for certain groups to be able to be preferred over others? How come perceived racists, homophobes, and anti-semites are pushed out and the subjects of their hate allowed to stay?

What if we flipped your statement around. "As a misogynist, I could not work with a woman. As a homophobe, I could not work with an out homosexual. As a an outspoken anti-semite, I could not work with a reverent jew."

Let's say for the sake of this example both parties are the same in efficiency. But, come due time one party starts to openly resent the other and demand they be fired from the company because they cannot work with [insert group here]. Now, I didn't say this was the anti-semite or the jew. It could be either, so let's not shut down here.

Group A says they cannot work with Group B, because Group B holds X idea. Group B can work with Group A, even though Group A holds Y idea.

Is management really right in, in this isolated fairy tale example, in firing Group B because Group A cannot work with them?

Let's reverse the roles in the Google fiasco. Let's say it was the detractors who were fired instead of Damore. Do you think this would have been unfair?

If so, why do you believe it's okay for the original situation to happen? I'm aware there are other variables, but this is what it boils down to.

Zunger's response makes it clear that the promulgation of ideas in the memo are unacceptable, but is strangely silent on judging the actions of the hypothetical face-puncher.

And as we now know from Google, taking no action is tantamount to endorsing the opinions of those under you.

You'd be hard pressed to find a company where leveling personal attacks against your co-workers isn't a fireable offense.

Freedom of speech isn't the same thing as freedom from the consequences of his actions. All it means is you can't be jailed or executed for it. You are not entitled to have people continue to have you in their lives.

Furthermore, his employer has a right to freedom of association, and they have chosen to exercise that right by ceasing to associate with him.

If this is authoritarian, than I will proudly call myself an authoritarian. Perhaps Hobbes was right after all.

That would be very disturbing, but that's not what's written in the document. Saying that there are average differences between groups, and that therefore people should be treated as individuals, is not at all like saying that all individuals in one group are inferior to another.

I think he was wrong on some facts, and also didn't explain things in the best way.

But I think it was wrong of many people to misrepresent what he said (as "women are inferior"), and it was wrong of Google to fire him.

thankfully, google hires individuals as individuals, and google employees are exceptional and meet the requirements of the job they are hired for, in spite of the average of their community, and in spite of the supposed problems of diversity programs.

It was an internal memo, which someone else leaked.

Whoever leaked that memo was not fired though.

You can try to cloak it in a longform "civil" or "facts-based" document but ultimately what this man wrote was sexist lies a.k.a a steaming pile of shit.

FWIW I don't give flat earthers the time of day or try to humor them as being scientific either. You have to go back to arguing the basic laws of kinematics with them. Sexists are one of the same.

A threat is never just an opinion in authoritarian thinking. It's outside of what constitutes an opinion, it's outside the system.

Hence, for the greater good, it must be not just be rejected, it must be destroyed as a moral necessity.

If you go down this road, there is only one destination.

I can sympathise with your view point. Of course I can. That is my whole point. It takes incredibly mental expenditure to not follow that style of thinking.

You're misinterpreting freedom here. It's not authoritarian to have rules. The existence of rules and enforcement != authoritarian. If trump makes all the rules absent of the peoples' will, that's authoritarian. If society agrees that you're a net negative and makes a choice to ostracize you, that's the level of freedom we have under democracy.

The golden rule isn't a high bar.

He was fired for saying things which were deeply hurtful for a large number of employees.

Now replace woman with black (or Jew) and see what happens.

Do you still think it's OK?

And to your point... yes?

If someone said a profession mostly working outside in the desert has less gingers in it because most of them are biologically unsuited for prolonged sun exposure, would you really take offense?

This isn't phrenology we're discussing here. If you're discussing real, tangible biological differences backed while proper scientific research, while taking care to treat people as individuals and avoid generalizing based on the distribution mean, then what's actually the problem here?

There IS well-established scientific evidence for differences IN THE DISTRIBUTION of areas of interest and specific abilities between the sexes, although even /that/ is apparently too taboo to discuss in this day and age. How big an effect this has on the gender bias in specific professions is a much harder question, although personally I find the assertion that it is "none" difficult to accept without overwhelming evidence.

Add on to that the question of how to correctly tackle this bias and you've got an even more divisive topic, as now you've layered on an ideological issue on top of a difficult-to-isolate research question on top of a scientifically well-studied but publicly controversial topic. Unfortunately, this is the issue the author of the memo tried to address.

- There are fewer white men in the NBA because they are biologically unsuited to it.

- There are fewer tall fighter pilots because they are biologically unsuited to it.

- There are fewer women as pitchers in the MLB because they are biologically unsuited to it.

These are descriptive statements about reality. The world in which we find ourselves. You may not like that world, you may think we should change the rules of that world, but it is the world as it exists today. Calling it out as such can not rationally be considered offensive.

Other people were clearly hurt by it though and I don't believe I'm in a position where I should tell other people what they should or shouldn't feel.

If they are mentally unwell, it doesn't make their suffering any less real does it? I admit I am biased as someone with a mental illness, I wouldn't want someone to disregard my opinion based on knowledge of my illness.

As for dishonest people, I suppose I like to believe I can believe other Googlers, especially when there are so many of them in this case who were upset by this.

> If they are mentally unwell, it doesn't make their suffering any less real does it? I admit I am biased as someone with a mental illness, I wouldn't want someone to disregard my opinion based on knowledge of my illness.

I meant only to reference the variations in tendency towards certain mental behaviors (such as accurately assessing reality, or taking responsibility for emotional responses) that exist among people. I gave an example of the "mentally unwell" to illustrate that this spectrum exist, but all parts of the spectrum are worth considering.

As an aside, and to hopefully show I'm not brushing with too wide a brush here: people with mental disorders are, sometimes, actually far better (at, say, having an accurate view of events) than people who don't have disorders, because they have [in the course of learning to cope with their issues, have also] learned to understand and correct for flaws that we all have.

I did not mean to suggest that people with mental disorders should automatically have their opinion/experience/claims discounted!

We should evaluate each situation individually. But there are clearly cases where a person's claim of "being hurt" should not be allowed to influence certain decisions, or policy, regardless of their overall mental/emotional functioning.

This touches on another problem area of ambiguity/clarity in my statement. We should question the reasonableness of the claim of being hurt - by which I not only mean "Were they really hurt?", but also "Is it reasonable for them to have been hurt?"

I can choose to be deeply hurt and offended by almost anything. We must strike a balance between respecting peoples feelings, and not allowing manipulators to exploit that respect to unreasonably coerce our behavior.

If you take 'respect for people's feelings' to an absurd extreme, we could create a world in which I could have you jailed for posing the questions you pose above. 'They hurt me.'

The fact that some demonstrably ideologically intolerant people successfully pressured Google to fire someone for expressing reasonable opinions based on evidence - this suggests to me that our society has already crossed certain thresholds in the balance between "respect for claims of being hurt" and other societal values - such as the allowance of independent thought.

Lol. He is fine. He got fired from one job, will find another one. What you describe however does sound like the price people usually pay for not being white males. So common we don't even think about it any more.