If your organisation believes that it knows which topics should be talked and thought about it's a church not a university.
He was hypothesizing their motives, and definitely down-playing the severity of the abuses, which understandably could offend people who have been in similar situations. I think part of his message was "don't jump to conclusions" which is good, but he went a lot further than that. In a leadership role, he should strive to be as unoffensive as possible imho - he doesn't want to alienate people.
On your second point however I must disagree. I'm afraid being inoffensive is a losing battle. If people see you try to avoid offense they simply start nitpicking harder. Desire to not offend should never stifle academic speech.
No, I agree with you in general, and from an ideological point of view, but from a practical standpoint, you have to choose your battles - I think it's usually worth the effort, even when it seems tedious, to go out of your way to not offend people you're working with in order to reach your goals.
Plus, once you've offended someone, you have very little chance of influencing them. Once you've established mutual respect, people won't take things you say in bad faith, so discussing controversial topics can actually be a discussion instead of a heated argument.
I personally like Google's approach to this internally: mistakes are to be expected and are often a sign of bad process, not faulty people. But egregious repetition of mistakes of the same kind indicates a failure to learn and grow that can slate someone for dismissal, and treating one's coworkers as less than human is also a short path to the door.
(There are some outliers also. Crafting yourself into a walking Title VII violation ties the company's hands regardless of whether they'd be willing to let an employee grow and change, because the law isn't structured that way).
For instance, biological sex is binary/bimodal for all intents and purposes. It is discrete, and very much not a spectrum. However, there are activists who are trying to override empirical findings to justify their ideas about gender (I have no horse in this race). Furthermore, their voices have found a home in organisations like big tech. In such a case, and given the zeal of these activists, wouldn't someone who remark that sex is binary (in a casual conversation about biology) be punished? Or to put it more precisely, how can we trust those in authority to fairly judge that the innocent remark made isn't a "mistake"?
In a climate where "speech is violence" and "intent doesn't matter", people are free to project their views onto others and accuse them of tall crimes. Without free speech, the case I've mentioned above seems likely to end up in unjust persecution. Unfortunately, my hypothetical scenario isn't theoretical, but has happened in academia already. The system you proposed doesn't seem immune to this.
This is such an interesting example for why free speech protections are important, but good faith discussion culture is even more important.
The first sentence is correct, the second isn't, when taken literally. The overall thrust of the statement still has merit, but it pays to be careful about one's phrasing.
To be clear, biology is messy and there are exceptions, which is why biological sex is not literally discrete in the sense that, say, binary logic is discrete. But it's also fairly reasonable to say that this is one of those cases where the exceptions confirm the time: There is a spectrum, it's just incredibly focused around two points.
The two extreme groups around this discussion both completely distort this nuanced observation. On the one side, you've got people that pretend that because the bimodality isn't perfect, it doesn't matter at all (and saying that it matters is hate!). On the other side, you've got people who pretend that there is no nuance to the bimodality (and many of them do actually hate people who don't fit perfectly into the binary).
It's pretty frustrating (to put it mildly), and free speech or lack of it has nothing to do with why it's frustrating.
AFAIU one group think gender should be a social construct, rather than a biological one. I don't this whole debate has even been about the 0.1%(?) who are not XX or XY.
No, one group, pretty much without exception, recognizes that gender always has been a social construct, and that it has historically been socially constructed differently in different culture. The other side may or may not recognize that; that’s not actually the point of disagreement. The point of disagreement is that the first side things that the proper social construction of ascribed gender is to align it with the subject’s gender identity. The other side, whether they frame it in terms of “gender isn’t real, only biological sex is”, “gender should reflect biological sex”, or in any of a variety of other terms, believes that the correct social construction of ascribed gender is that it should be based on some aspect or combination of aspects of biological sex (often based on a stereotype that elides the fact that choosing different aspects of biological sex for this purpose would result in different assignments.)
[Members of the first group may, in fact, view gender identity as a biological sex trait, in which case their disagreement with the second group can be viewed as a disagreement over which aspect of biological sex should be the basis.]
> I don’t this whole debate has even been about the 0.1%(?) who are not XX or XY.
Not being XX or XY isn’t the only biological divergence from simplistic stereotypes of biological sex that occurs.
I have been on the fence about this whole subject, even though I have read quite extensively. But at least get your facts straight.
Large groups of people classify people by their gender at birth, and 1) would disagree that this distinction is social in nature (for example all religions identify the gender as such, and the source [at least from the POV of the adherents] is not social. and would also disagree that it 2) has historically been socially constructed differently in different culture. You won't fnd any example where such a norm went mainstream, and you won't find any society which lasted more than 50 years after such ideas became even speakable in public.
Strictly speaking, they did - but then for a time in the West (70s to about ten years ago) they just observed sex at birth and indoctrinated against the social imposition of normative gender expectations … but then all of a sudden people were born ‘gendered’ again, albeit with the novel twist that innate gender was no longer necessarily tied to their biological sex.
It’s a bit of a puzzle, as it appears that forty years of individual liberalisation (“See the person, not the stereotype”) something which transformed the lives of half the population is being reversed in order to please a small group of trans gender / gender non-conforming people for whom identifying as a one or other specific stereotype is apparently at the core of their identity.
Nope, that didn’t happen. Socially ascribed gender, with important social consequences (most importantly, ones coercively imposed by, or with support of, the power of government), did not go away. (If it had, the grounds for the dispute would be somewhat different, but the overall character would be the same, since the side opposing ascribing gender in accord with identity is also fairly universally in favor of coercive discrimination and/or segregation on the basis of (their preferred form of) ascribed gender, which is a fairly central point of their argument.
Importantly, the normative consensus among progressives was as GP describes. The trans activism movement is a move backwards in that regard, since it tries to shift the normative consensus back towards gender being important and that gender should be impactful. It's no wonder they clash with some feminists.
The disagreement is not over the factual physical observation. “Was born with (or without) a penis” is not a social distinction, but is also not the source of the disagreement.
The social weight given to it, OTOH, is. “Gets addressed in a particular way, is allowed in certain shared spaces and banned from others, etc.,” are, factually and indisputably, social distinctions, and are the focus of the disagreement.
> 2) Would also disagree that it has historically been socially constructed differently in different culture
This is just factually wrong; systems with more than two gender roles, and/or where one or more of the most closely corresponding to the supposedly universal binary defended by the side that claims one exists can be ascribed on bases other than the physical traits that faction demands should control ascription of gender have, in fact, existed (before now.)
> You won't find any example where such a norm became dominant, and you won't find any society which lasted more than 50 years after such ideas became even speakable in public.
This is, simply false; there are, for instance, very many examples in the indigenous cultures of the Americas.
Gender distinguishes men from women, male-like thoughts, acts, emotions, capabilities and appearances from female ones. Other than for the direct purposes of reproduction, why would we want or need to classify individuals into the social groups of men and women?
You see, there’s a third group that flatly denies the desirably of socially constructing something called ‘gender’ at all.
Because men and women behave and think differently on average and treating them the same is going to cause a lot of problems in life. I mean sure, there's overlap and some men will behave in a feminine way only on one particular axis and vice versa, but ignoring the information gender gives is a very bad idea.
If you consider a definition of feminine (prettiness, gracefulness, gentleness, empathy, humility, and sensitivity) it’s not someone who acts to make their mark on the world as a man might - it’s someone who at best achieves that by supporting a masculine partner. What a terrible vision of the world that is, and what an incredible waste of individual human talent.
For example, men being so much physically stronger and larger than women does impact a fair amount of basic things in life. Car design is a pain in the ass (it's super fun that if I adjust the steering wheel in my car I can't see the speedometer), office chairs and tools are only made for men's bodies (my hands are small and I'm short), etc. Erasing sex just means things get designed for the average and large swaths of the other sex are ignored. (I'm not male, but I'd imagine large men have similar issues with things like sewing machines, bottles, diaper changing stations, etc. being designed for females only).
I also have a hard time fitting in in female-dominated spaces because so much of it is based around mollification/preventing conflict. Which makes sense because if you're female, starting shit with the other half of the population doesn't end well for you. Het and bi women generally live lives where they spend their time being aware that they will not win physical confrontations. (Aside: I'd guess this is why DV is more of an issue in lesbian relationships: The risk of being an abusive prick isn't being offset by the fact that your victim could pin you to the floor and punch you until you pass out). Being aware of this means I can place my own assertiveness/aggression in context and be like 'ah I feel out of place here because I am a statistical anomaly for my sex, not because anybody is wrong'.
> If you consider a definition of feminine (prettiness, gracefulness, gentleness, empathy, humility, and sensitivity) it’s not someone who acts to make their mark on the world as a man might - it’s someone who at best achieves that by supporting a masculine partner. What a terrible vision of the world that is, and what an incredible waste of individual human talent.
This I find really interesting, as I spent a lot of my life fighting any parts of myself that were traditionally feminine. I'm a more masculine than usual cis woman; bordering on butch but not quite there. And in my 30s I'm unlearning a lot of messiness around that and starting to accept the part of myself that likes teaching and nurturing + has a very strong passion for making sure the next generation is armed for the world we're sending them into. After all, surely wanting to pursue an academic career creating digital skills and history curricula for K-12 (mostly K-8) education is a 'waste of my individual human talent' when I could be writing new algorithms, isn't it?
I submit that the only people who get to determine whether something is an incredible waste of human talent are the people possessing the talent.
I think that's an excellent way to consider the topic as long as we remember the protections like title VII and title IX were put into place to bar obstacles to employment and education such as "We don't think it would be worth our time and effort to train you because people like you don't succeed here."
Its important to separate three things:
“Gender” in the broad sense is one of several possible social constructions of divisions of people into groups and associated distinct expectations and roles; it is a feature of the social context. While there is considerable variation in between social milieus, it is always grounded, to a greater or lesser degree, in current or historical stereotypes associated with some subset of anatomical sex traits; in fact, that’s part of what we use to identify which of the many socially constructed divides in a society is gender.
“Ascribed gender” is how other people treat a person with regard to gender.
“Gender identity” is how a person sees themselves and prefers to be treated with regard to gender.
None of these things are disconnected, in either practice or the theory of the major factions, from biological sex (the last is arguably itself either a biological sex trait, a set of biological sex traits, or an interaction of biological sex traits with the social context; for it to be anything else either requires dualism, or an arbitrarily restrictive definition of “sex”), except that maybe the side opposing recognizing gender identity as the basis for ascribed gender thinks gender identity is divorced from biological sex.
When a man identifies as a woman, he is expressing his desire to be a woman, based on his ideal of what a woman is. Similarly, when a woman identifies as a man, she is expressing her desire to be a man, based on her ideal of what a man is. Neither have any direct experience of actually being the opposite sex, of course, so this ideal is based around gendered stereotypes and superficial cosmetic traits, particularly those related to sexual attraction.
No, gender critical people very much don’t want gender to be a biological construct - they find the idea of innate biological masculinity or femininity appallingly regressive. They prefer to think of men and women as primarily unique individuals, ones who are incidentally sexed purely for reproductive purposes ie not for social ones.
And because they're also pushing a large-scale redefinition of the terms "woman" and "man", and trying to make it law, which most people don't agree with.
Gender is a social construct by definition.
This all starts with the purely descriptive observation that when you analyze the informal man/woman distinction that exists de facto in society, there is a component that is inherently biological (visible traits, hormonal differences, etc.) and a component that is arbitrary social convention (clothing, color schemes, etc.). Having different terms for those components helps, and so the first one is called sex and the second is called gender.
This is all purely descriptive and I don't think anybody reasonable has major disagreements about it on either side of this topic.
The question is whether and what kind of normative conclusions one can or should draw from the observation.
For example, very conservative folks would make the normative statement that gender expressions must align with sex (women can't wear pants, men can't wear dresses, that sort of thing). There are two major strikes against this position as far as I'm concerned: first, it's clearly very illiberal; second, even ignoring the illiberalism, it doesn't leave room for the few people who, through no fault of their own, don't fall neatly into the sex binary. Those folks are left in a Kafkaesque situation of having no real way of complying with such a rule.
Some trans activists also make questionable normative statements, such as "transwomen are women". That's a normative statement because it implies that the word "woman" should be used to refer to a person's gender instead of a person's sex. It's no wonder they clash with some feminists who point out that, while there may be significant overlap, the life experiences of transwomen are generally not the same as those of women (in the sex sense), and there are situations where the distinction matters.
Besides the big one (penis vs vagina) there are things like the rest of the reproductive system, breast size and functionality, brain structures, muscle function, bone structure, facial features, and others.
These develop at different times during fetal development, and don't have to all come out "male" or "female".
In programming terms it is like XX/XY is a master setting for a complex distributed system, and then there are a bunch of flags that control implementation of that master setting in various subsystems of the distributed system which are "supposed" to all be set if the master setting is XX and all clear if it is XY, but sometimes you end up with some set and some clear.
This isn't the first time something like this has happened. Take a look at Lysenkoism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism?wprov=sfla1
"Lysenko's assertion that all science is class-oriented in nature."
Stalin Russia had Lysenko's Science. We have Critical Race Theory. Though not to the same extreme, we are seeing seeds of Ideology taking root in the west.
I had a side-row seat to that event, and that's what I meant by "Walking Title VII violation." For American law, the question of the capabilities of men and women is settled and a workplace is not the venue to question it.
Believe me, there were plenty in Google who were willing to give Damore a second chance, but (a) being offered that second chance, he refused to step back from his position and (b) the lawyers made it very clear the consequences for the company would be... Unfortunate, in the courts, if they were perceived to be supporting him.
(And, to be clear... None of that implies he was right, either. Sometimes, there are things you "can't" say because they're both wrong and hurtful, not because they're secret taboo wisdom.)
He can certainly support his opinion, but he can't do it in the context of an American workplace by law.
https://www.nlrb.gov/case/32-CA-205351
""" [] statements about immutable traits linked to sex—such as women’s heightened neuroticism and men’s prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution—were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, notwithstanding [] effort to cloak [] comments with “scientific” references and analysis, and notwithstanding “not all women” disclaimers... Once the memorandum was shared publicly, at least two female engineering candidates withdrew from consideration and explicitly named the memo as their reason for doing so. Thus, while much of the Charging Party’s memorandum was likely protected, the statements regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected. """
"""In furtherance of these legitimate interests, employers must be permitted to “nip in the bud” the kinds of employee conduct that could lead to a “hostile workplace,” rather than waiting until an actionable hostile workplace has been created before taking action."""
In essence, the memo from Mr. Sophir does not claim Damore had already created a hostile work environment. It does not have to consider that question one way or the other, because it is legal for Google to fire Mr. Damore on the expectation that his conduct would lead to a hostile work environment. The fact Google had already lost two candidates in the pipeline who cited Damore's memo as their reason for withdrawing was evidence enough of the risk.
(This reminds me of the rule of thumb regarding forum moderation: the line for when content can be curtailed and users can be banned is well away from the actual line of legality, because the goal of such policies is to not end up in court in the first place).
But whether Damore's were valuable or not isn't really up to Google, as an American company. Title VII carves out several opnions as, by law, not "valuable" in the sense that expressing them constitutes either harassment or creation of a hostile work environment. And doing business in America means complying with that law; debating the philosophy underpinning such a law is not the purpose of an American workplace.
Yeah, but the thing is that what Damore did was nowhere near the criteria of title vii hostile work environment. You're making it sound as if there was some legal obligation for Google (or any other American business) to let him go, but there was not. It was cowering to activists which lead to the termination, not any legal obligation for doing business. The argument that it had anything to do with title vii holds no water for me
The title VII argument may hold no water for you. If you find a way into the NLRB board of judges, that may matter to companies.
Sure, but it is in their business interests to have a good approximation for where the line is, hence why they have lawyers. My point is that from everything I have read about it, it doesn't even seem like they were close to said line
Here is a link to the emails [2].
[1] https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21... [2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scient...