Kerri Hicks
Aug 8, 2017 · 7 min read

I’ll be happy to share my thoughts on Haidt’s talk when I have an hour to watch it, although I did read his populist monograph “The Righteous Mind” while studying ethics in my master’s program — is the video mostly an encapsulation of that?

Note: As an aside, I especially recall his assertion that universities have become “more liberal” over time. However, he failed to recognize the shift over the past hundred years or so in what “liberal” means. My grandmother was a Rockefeller Republican through the 1970s…a right-leaning centrist. Today, the views of her affiliate group would be considered not only liberal, but in many cases, progressive. Rockefeller Republicans were a majority in many parts of the northeast US at that time— places that are now progressive strongholds. And remember, it was Nixon, a conservative, who raised the minimum wage by 40% in the mid-1970s. Haidt doesn’t take into consideration that it may not be the academy that has changed, but instead, the benchmark by which he’s measuring and defining this aspect of the academy. All that said, I agree that it’s in the best interest of all parties to be frank and upfront about their aspirational values. I would disagree with any assertion that Google is not upfront in this way.

In the meantime, however, before we take this orthogonal turn, I’d ask you to engage with the actual points I made in my original comment. I certainly appreciate the opportunity to take the conversation farther, but I’d appreciate more your reflective thoughts on my points before doing so, perhaps as a basis for that conversation. I’ll add a bit of exposition to my comments here.

On my first point, that I am required to defend my validity as a professional because of my biological sex assignment:

  1. I have had to continually both prove and assert my competence and abilities as a programmer — because of my gender — for my entire professional career, even though I am already employed as a “technical” person. This is not a complaint in this context, I’m simply stating a fact. Based on the reductive reasoning I’ve seen in Mr. Damore’s essay, and many responses to it, the fact that I remain successful in this career is likely due to one of two factors: Either it’s because I’m one of the rare “good” women engineers, or it’s because I’m a diversity hire. Do straight cisgender white or Asian males working in technology have to confront colleagues, peers, or collaborators wondering if he’s a diversity hire? Often, this “wondering” is cloaked in probing questions upon first meeting someone on a project I’m participating in as a technical lead or consultant, such as, “Oh! Where did you do your undergrad? Where did you work/what did you do before coming here? What are some of the other projects you’ve worked on recently? What’s your favorite programming language? What technologies do you think will be appropriate for my project?” (I especially love the last one — we’ve just met, we haven’t even discussed your project yet, but you ask this leading question to validate that I can meaningfully discuss a Lucene/Solr/Python/Django/React stack. Note: I’ve never heard a colleague who expresses his gender as a man asked such benchmarking questions in this context. Never. Not even once. Not to say it doesn’t ever happen, but it has never happened to me. Anecdote != data &c.)
  2. I walk into a tech conference and I’m informed helpfully where to find the rooms where the “design” track sessions are being held. And I have to explain, no, I’m the one presenting tomorrow’s session on crisis server-load management. Or I walk into a tech networking/social event with my male-expressing spouse, and the person at the registration desk immediately begins looking for my badge in the “plus one” box, or asks for his name so my “plus one” badge can be found with his registration.

Can the incorrect assumptions of these people explained by their biology? If not, how can they be explained? By my biology?

Is it, or should it be (as you intimated in your original comment) my, or some other feminist’s job to reeducate the people who act this way towards women in technology, to teach them that it’s harmful and not appropriate, because it’s not based on “logic” or “facts”, that these perpetuated stereotypes are continually damaging not only to individuals, but to the profession (which does, of course, include and rely on individuals such as me)? If not me nor a feminist, then whose job is it to reeducate them? And after such a long time, why is it even still a thing (perhaps you see this as a rhetorical question…I do not)? How and why is it even possible that this sexism (yes, it’s sexism) continues to be perpetuated?

Or is it no one’s job, and instead, women should just suck it up, because “boys will be boys”? Or is it everyone’s job, and people who perpetuate the sexist myth should be silenced within or ejected from the ecosystem until such time as they no longer infect it with their damaging “opinions”? Or something else?

On to my second point, about private business’ obligation to employ…well, to employ anyone, really. My spouse owns a business. He has to comply with many laws regarding hiring and employing people. His business does not have a labor bargaining unit. Also, there exists no law requiring him to hire people who don’t share any of his personal ideologies — as long as the employment decision is not based on the candidate’s protected-class status. (Note: Bigots are not a protected class.)

You framed Damore’s essay as a “difference of opinion” in your original comment. I suppose on a semantic level, that could be true with an exceptionally liberal definition of “opinion”. But “opinion” cuts a wide swath, and the notion that the only way to behave as an ethical corporation is to provide a voice to all opinions is fraught and misguided.

Here are some values that I may have. Assume I’m hiring for engineering positions at my hypothetical tech company. Please let me know which “opinions” of mine I should or should not use to decide whom to hire.

  1. I do not want to employ someone who has been convicted of a violent crime, such as sexual assault or murder.
  2. I do not want to employ someone who is a member of NAMBLA.
  3. I do not want to employ someone who is a member of the KKK.
  4. I do not want to employ someone who does not attempt to maintain basic hygiene practices.
  5. I do not want to employ someone who smokes.
  6. I do not want to work alongside someone who carries a striped backpack into work.
  7. I want to give greater consideration to an otherwise qualified candidate with a liberal arts degree over a candidate with a computer science or engineering degree.
  8. I do not want to employ someone who cooks fish or popcorn in the break room microwave.
  9. I do not want to employ someone who is or has been part of a multi-level marketing business.
  10. Women are smarter than men.
  11. I do not want to employ someone who is going to provoke colleagues, intentionally, by sharing personal opinions that I find offensive — whether or not they are backed by a lack of understanding of scholarly research and what it means — unless those opinions are strictly linked to that person’s affiliation with a protected class, are otherwise supportable, and/or could be justified as unintentional provocation.

And that last one is where we land. See, I’m the boss. I get to have opinions. I have a choice in whom I hire, and I have a choice about the values I want to see in my employees — people with whom I have to share parts of my life, and people who stand as representatives of my company simply by our association. Since I’m not a government agency and don’t work with a bargaining unit, I can refuse to hire, or I can fire, an employee at will for any reason not related to protected status. (Similarly, I can’t force anyone to work for me.)

Would it be OK to fire an employee who published a document to an internal employee forum about why certain forms of man-boy love are natural rather than damaging to children, and shouldn’t be illegal? (Note, for context, that Google is currently being investigated by the Department of Labor for “systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce”.) How about if in that document he complained that I was discriminating against him by not providing a safe space for him to discuss NAMBLA issues with like-minded people, and that he should be protected from shaming by colleagues because of his stated opinions on man-boy love? How about if I know there are men working in my company who were sexually assaulted as children by adult men? I think most people, conservative, liberal, or otherwise, would be pretty offended by this person’s screed, and would feel uncomfortable working with him in the future. I don’t think it’s my obligation to employ this person, much less create a “safe space” for him. (If he worked at a NAMBLA-affiliated business, I suspect that employer would have differing “opinions”.)

What about a KKK member who writes about property value statistics that are declining, assigning the shift to the increasing number of people of color moving into his neighborhood? Whether or not it’s “factual” (which would be difficult to prove to any degree of scientific certainty), is it an assertion that I should feel obligated to protect and give voice to?

No.

I assert that it is not.

Do you have your own thoughts on my comments, and how they might relate to the issue at hand?

    Kerri Hicks

    Written by

    Nerd.