THE GOOGLE “MAN-IFESTO”* AND WHY IT’S BULLSHIT
*It’s a “Man-ifesto” because a man is mansplaining why diversity isn’t what you think it is and how a woman’s biology limits her but a man’s biology…lets him be manly.
I knew before I read it that The Man-ifesto would make me angry. But I reined it in and tried to have a reasonably open mind about what was being said. Is it wrong — or rude — of me to say that I feel I have learned a lot about the person who wrote it?
As a writer, I make a specific point of giving citations about the facts (or claims) I am sharing. His failure to do so indicates personal opinion as the main source in his writing. Even phrases like “Women, on average, have more…” (repeated several times) and “maintains myths like social constructionism (not a real word, just a nice made up one that sounds good) and the gender wage gap” only indicate that he can dress up a pig. It’s still a pig. After all, one could write “Men, on average…” and make sweeping statements about them based on personal experience and opinion. Clue: if you want to write a factual, reason based argument for your position, use facts, researched and cited from reputable sources to support your stance.
And then there’s his facts:
- “…the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths”
“Men take undesirable and dangerous jobs…suffer 93% of work-related deaths.” That 93% statistic is true, see here and here — BUT these sites also make the point that men SEEK OUT these “undesirable and dangerous jobs” because of the usually higher pay — but also because of the prestige or reputation they also gain from being a firefighter, a pilot, or a lumberjack. From here, “This huge gap has nothing to do with discrimination, of course. It has everything to do with the type of jobs men and women voluntarily choose to take.” (Emphasis mine.)
From the Bureau of Labor, we have this graphic:

To put some of this into a different perspective, look at this graphic:

Did you note the cause of fatal injuries for women? It’s those top two lines: roadway incidents and HOMICIDES. Yes, women are much more likely to be murdered at work — to the point where it is a leading cause of workplace fatalities for them.
2. “On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because: …They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective.”
HELLO CAPTAIN OBVIOUS! And nitpicking here, “biologically differ” sounds important but is really rather awkward; I personally prefer the more direct way: “On average, men and women differ in many ways because of their biology.” But the response is still the same: no shit. If there weren’t differences, we wouldn’t have “men” or “women” — we’d just have “people”. Then he lists the ways they differ, ending with “They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective”. Once again, no citations and most of it is very broad, sweeping assertions, like “seen across all cultures” and the idea that biological males who are “castrated at birth” often …act like males. (Just asking: how many biological males are castrated at birth? Why? If they are male enough to have things to castrate, they are males — biologically, of course — and there would be no medical reason to castrate. Inquiring minds want to know.)
If we’re going to assert that biology is a prime driver for who gets what job (and how much they get paid for it), then we also have to admit that we do not need too many men. Just enough sperm donors to maintain the population. All those “dangerous” (and so-called “undesirable”) jobs that men are doing? Women are in those career fields as well — and where brute strength is needed, automation and job-specific tools are replacing humans. Women are under-represented in many “manly” jobs but I’m willing to bet it’s not from being unable to do the work — it’s from the behaviors and attitudes of male co-workers.
Women have historically and still frequently do one very dangerous job that no man has ever done: give birth. Biology arranged for that.
(Side note: I am an Air Force veteran; I was in computer maintenance (1980–1984), a very male-dominated career field within the male-dominated military. I did the same job as my male co-workers. And because it was in the military, I got paid the same amount. As it should be. The point is, I have personally dealt with male co-workers while being in a job within a male-dominated career.)
3. “Note that contrary to what a social constructionist would argue, research suggests that “greater nation-level gender equality leads to psychological dissimilarity in men’s and women’s personality traits.” Because as “society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian, innate dispositional (‘dispositional’ is another made up, polysyllabic word) differences between men and women have more space to develop and the gap that exists between men and women in their personality becomes wider.” We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism.”
That all *sounds* intellectual and important, but what does it really mean? And “We need to stop…imply sexism? Who is this “we” and when would we ever assume that gender gaps do NOT imply sexism?
When presenting a manifesto, make sure that it can be understand by everyone who it affects…so when writing a company-wide manifesto, don’t use engineering-ese (not unlike “legalese”) to share thoughts. Even his own footnotes are nothing more than continued personal exposition, still without a clue as to how he arrived at them.
But enough of the editing/structure analysis. The author has been identified as male and an engineer. Okay, that means that he sees the world through at least those two filters. I think it’s interesting that in his description of “Left” and “Right”, he seems to shade over to being on the side of the Right: authoritarian, keeping control, preventing change. He says, “Only facts and reason can shed light on these biases, …, Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture ...” It’s obvious that he disagrees with Google’s way of dealing with gender gaps — and that he considers the company to be “sham(ing) dissenters into silence”.
Defining dissension is done by those in charge; what is dissension in one entity may be a necessary exchange of ideas in another. A single employee in a company cannot know the full story of how the company operates or why it has the policies it does. That’s not part of the job description. So to focus in on just one aspect of a workplace environment and use it as a reason to perpetuate privilege to a group that is already privileged is … well, childish. By the end of this Man-ifesto, all I could really say about it is that the author is, by all appearances, threatened by having women at work in his man-cave of manly tech work. He doesn’t think that they should get paid at the same rate because being women, of course they don’t do the work as well as men. <snark font> He doesn’t want to see programs that are designed to assist women (and others) with gaining employment in a career field that is heavily weighted against them from the very start. He thinks that these programs are not a step up for others, but an attempt to block men from their appointed career ladder.
I hate to be the one to break it to him, but technology has ALWAYS been a woman’s world, from the first computer up to this moment:
++Ada Lovelace was unique in that she developed an algorithm for a computer that didn’t yet exist — an accomplishment that some say qualifies her as the world’s first computer programmer. (During the early 1800's.)
++Hedy Lamarr: Largely known as a screen star of the 1920s, Hedy Lamarr proved to be more than just a pretty face. She played a key role in the invention of spread-spectrum technology; specifically, by conceptualizing the idea of frequency hopping, which is a method of sending radio signals from different frequency channels.
++Grace Hopper: Called the Queen of Software by some and Grandma COBOL by others, Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper helped invent some of the early English-language programming languages. She is most famously associated with the Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL), which was based on the FLOW-MATIC language that she designed back in 1958.
++Roberta Williams: Perhaps best known for her adventure game series “King’s Quest,” which went all the way to an eighth sequel, Roberta Williams was a pioneer and visionary in creating and popularizing this niche of PC games. Sierra On-Line was the name of company (later known as Sierra Entertainment) that Williams co-founded with her husband, Ken Williams. Together, they helped shape the history of video games with their complex puzzles and detailed storylines.
++And others, see here
So in the end, this Man-ifesto is an unnecessarily long, pedantic, op-ed. The problems laid out are not problems for anyone but a man. The suggested solutions are nothing more than maintaining the status quo for same. Which brings us around to the question of “open speech” at Google.
First Amendment rights, free speech, being able to express whatever you want to say. I’m all for that, to the point where I would protect with my life anyone’s right to exercise that particular freedom. However, at some point, there needs to be a moral compass to guide that kind of decision. And if companies are people, as they have worked so hard to be considered as such, then the company (specifically Google in this context), needs to address moral issues when considering policy.
There are more suitable platforms for sharing items such as this particular engineer’s Man-ifesto, like Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. Public, social forums and places where the consequences are immediate. The writing can be “liked” or “shared” to go viral — or it can disappear in an avalanche of cat photos. By permitting it to be posted within a company’s work platform, without being removed by The Powers That Be, it then gains the tacit approval of management. That bothers me more than the original document, that it is in free circulation within the company and that no one (who should know better and is) in a position of authority has said that it is unacceptable with the mission statement and the guiding principles of that company.
I’m not even saying that it has to be taken down; it just needs that corporate disclaimer. It needs it because there’s more than the male-female issue going on. It’s not a far leap of logic to say that if someone is willing to subjugate 51% of the population because of biology, they would also be willing to subjugate anyone based on the biology of things like the amount of melanin in skin, disabilities, or age. Discrimination in wines is a good thing; discrimination when talking about people is just plain wrong for many reasons.
I think we should thank Mr. Engineer and his Man-ifesto for providing us with the chance to talk about things like wage gap, sexism in the workplace and why diversity programs are not just a good thing, but a vital part of having a thriving business. I also think he should check his privilege before hitting “send” on anything else he wants to write along these lines. And for gods’ sakes, citations, sources and references, man! Don’t make it up.