He very clearly stated that the average male programmer is as good as the average female programmer. Please don't insinuate otherwise by stripping away some of the semantics Mr. Damore used - he used it for a reason to make a more precise claim than you're criticizing.

Again, that's not the argument. Even stating that men are more suited to become programmers* is problematic!

Is it problematic if it's true?

Say I could prove that in a fair society 2 out of every 100 men would want to be programmers and only 1 out of every 100 women want that. Would stating that be problematic?

Edit: Sorry, I misread your comment, lukev. It's not a strawman though. This is exactly how many of the harshest critics of the memo have described his stance. Too many to count.

Stating "members from group X are better than members from group y" (which is how Damore's opponents describe his claim) is a not the same as stating that “more people from group X than from group Y might be suitable for this job”. The first is qualitative, the latter quantitative. The latter also implies that members of group y can be as good.

I am sure everyone has experienced how sentences and context radically can change through the addition or omission of just one or two words. Here we have such a case, and it should be acknowledged.

>Stating "members from group X are better than members from group y" (which is how Damore's opponents describe his claim) is a not the same as stating that “more people from group X than from group Y might be suitable for this job”. The first is qualitative, the latter quantitative.

But the problem is that it isn't any more quantitative because it still depends on the highly subjective notion of what it means to be "suitable for this job" and assumes that there is only one way to be "suitable."