Ross Bagley
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

On point 1) four experts and researchers in closely related fields to human sexuality and gender believe that James’s factual claims about gender are almost entirely correct.

https://archive.is/VlNfl

According to them, you don’t understand gender nearly as well as James does.

On point 2) I agree with you. Many of the differences that exist between men and women are as likely to make females better or at least differently excellent engineers when compared in aggregate with their male counterparts. When James went beyond the science to his understanding of engineering skills and diversity prescriptions, he reached unjustified conclusions.

On point 3) you make a lot of statements, and I have different reactions to many of them. Yes, James was naive in approaching this subject and asking for feedback in the way he did. He was attempting to build a case that it was dangerous to discuss diversity and then astonished at just how right he was. Hm. Yup.

On the other hand, your willingness to hypothetically fire James for repeating facts that you, out of ignorance, disagree with, and your approval for violence against James, destroy almost everything useful about the rest of your argument. Spectacularly ironically, you join in with the mob and conclusively prove James’s actual argument: that it is unsafe to discuss certain topics at Google, no matter the facts or the usefulness of those topics.

James was certainly wrong about what attributes are useful/helpful/necessary for engineering and creative problem solving, but the response called for here is 1) verifying facts, 2) understanding extrapolations and arguments and 3) correcting mistakes. However, nobody wants that in our culture any more.

And much of value is being lost.

    Ross Bagley

    Written by