Hacker News Reader

Comment by malandrew | Hacker News Reader

Let me modify your statement so you can realize how absurd and sexist it is:

> Men shouldn't have to pick and choose who they feel comfortable working with around the office.

It is just as ridiculous if you make it about race:

> [Black|Asian|White|Latino] people shouldn't have to pick and choose who they feel comfortable working with around the office.

This is the fatal flaw of modern day progressives. They make everything about group identity. To make things worse, they then apply those perspectives asymmetrically.

"ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS." - George Orwell, Animal Farm

Taking offense does not make one a victim.

View on HN

I don't think your statements are as self evident as you think they are. You are personally attacking the poster above you, and then just spinning words around to make a point you agree with. We understand you agree with yourself; would you care to help us try and agree with you?

Personally, I agree with your statements. I do not see the issue that you see with wanting all people to be comfortable in their workplace. James Damore outright stated that he believes that women are genetically inferior at the job he does. I don't grasp how people miss how destructive that is.

>James Damore outright stated that he believes that women are genetically inferior at the job he does.

Outright? Certainly not. It requires multiple layers of hostile interpretation to reach 'women are genetically inferior' from what Damore wrote. That's an absolutist, determinist, morally-tinged statement which is nothing like anything he said.

If you think otherwise, please give the quote where Damore outright states women are 'genetically inferior' at anything.

Damore was extremely clear about the difference between "all men have X trait more than women" and "statistically, the prevalence of X trait is higher among men than women (but some women still have a lot of X)". He even included visual aids to help explain these concepts, literally on the first page of the memo.

If your mind integrates the studies Damore cited as stating that women are 'genetically inferior', that's something you need to learn to decouple. We don't have to choose between anti-science denialism and fascistic supremacism, so please don't try to force everyone's opinions into one of those two categories.

If that's the case, then it follows that:

> You are personally attacking James Damore, and then just spinning words around to make a point you agree with.

Specifically, this following statement is a gross misrepresentation of the argument he was making, which really was only clear with the bell curve diagrams that most news media companies purposefully omitted:

> he believes that women are genetically inferior at the job he does.

Furthermore, I disagree with the part about either argument being personal. We both attacked the argument, not the person. There was no ad hominem in either my original statement nor your retort.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com