Incorrectly using evidence to support your opinion as you broadcast it at work, and not listening, discussing, or considering critical feedback (like this) is a different matter. Especially when it means incorrectly classifying your co-workers and trying to change how your work fights social biases.
Sorry, but while your observation is interesting, there is nothing incorrect about citing such evidence.
Especially when it means incorrectly classifying your co-workers and trying to change how your work fights social biases.
Exactly how did James Damore go about classifying specific co-workers? [Citation Needed] Seriously, cite James Damore and show how he "classified" anyone in particular.
> Women, on average, have more:
> - Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas...
> - Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness...
> - Neuroticism...
Damore supports this with a link [1] to a Wikipedia article, which immediately says:
> On the scales measured by the Big Five personality traits women consistently report higher Neuroticism, agreeableness, warmth (an extraversion facet)...
Damore incorrectly uses this information to make the broad statement that "Women have..." instead of "Women self-report...". This is incorrectly classifying your women coworkers as being, among other things, more neurotic than their male counterparts.
You may think, "So what?", but this is being used in an argument about how a company fights social biases, and this is incredibly relevant because lexical self-reporting is open to the same biases that are being fought. Damore, intentionally or not, glosses over this, but more importantly was not receptive to this type of feedback, hence the broadcasting.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology#...
Just because there is correlational evidence for the general population, it doesn't automatically follow that any given explictly selected population (such as Google's employee population) follows the stated correlation. Does he say so explicitly, and can you honestly rule out a speculative reading of his memo? I asked you for James Damore citing any particular coworker as having any particular quality. Still, the best you can do is to nitpick words and impute motives.
Also, what's particularly wrong with sensitive, agreeable, and warm people? I'm quite sensitive, though I'm only agreeable and warm in certain contexts. I could see how all of those traits could be of great benefit to developing many of Google's apps. Your implication that those traits are somehow bad also smacks of bias.
Given all the above, it sure seems like I could purport to read between the lines and say that you have some kind of vested interest in a particular reading of his memo, but my doing so would be falling into the very kind of irrational projection I'm self-referentially citing. So am I wrong in making this kind of projection? If I'm wrong for doing that, then it would seem you're wrong for your projections as well. If you say I'm correct about the projection, well, I'll take that just as well.
Until the people who dislike what he had to say are willing to have an honest conversation about things he actually did say, progress here is impossible, and further backlash and resentment against minorities is inevitable.
I see their point, but there is a way of discussing it in a way that would minimize this risk. On the other hand, if you have some assumptions and consider their negation offensive, it's very difficult to have any form of conversation.
