[yedava]

Being polite seems like a good idea until you realize that people having arguing against gender stereotypes, politely, for several decades at the least. But even after all that, people find it far easier to believe that men are more inclined to work with things. (One has to wonder then why women don't form the majority in leadership positions, given that being a leader is all about working with people and not things).

Historically, the biggest social changes happened by force. Like the civil rights movement. The threat of civil disobedience forced the government to enact laws. Sometimes you have to drag people, kicking and screaming, into social change. Waiting until you persuade everyone is futile.

[backpropaganda]

The problem with the "social change by force" approach is that it's easy to find yourself in the wrong side of history. Hitler also wanted social change, and decided to do it by force since it was such a good social change. Just because what you're doing "seems" like a good thing doesn't mean that it actually is. You might try the forced social change, and years later, get revolted against, and go down in history as the people who forced their ideas on everyone else.

People v/s things is not the only gender difference. There are others, which could explain why there aren't more women leaders. Or, it could very well be that sexism/glass ceiling is the reason women aren't at the top. That doesn't mean the people v/s things theory is wrong. It has the most amount of evidence and the largest demonstrated effect sizes (d > 1 even).

[yedava]

No need to invoke Godwin's law. There are different degrees of force. Even the staunchest libertarian will concede that some amount of force is warranted to protect rights. The question here is the nature and degree of the force. I'd say firing someone is warranted especially if an organization has committed to fighting gender stereotypes amongst its workforce.

People vs things is just one example. The cited science also says that men are more prone to anger and aggressiveness. So in net, leadership positions should be held by women if one were to make an 'ought to' argument based on the science.

[Houshalter]

The Google memo made a number of points on why women might be less likely to pursue leadership positions. Women prefer lower stress jobs and more social-work balance. Men are more competitive than women and may have more of a natural drive to "reach the top". But the biggest effect I think is that our culture values men based on their job a lot more than women. Men have a lot more pressure to get a high status job.

Note that all of this is purely a "interests based" argument. No one is saying women would make worse leaders than men. As you mention, there might even be some good arguments that they would be better at it. I'm just saying there are good reasons why they might be less interested in pursuing that. As opposed to it all being because of sexism.

[skybrian]

It's certainly true that you don't have to convince everyone. However, winning court cases requires convincing judges, and winning elections requires convincing a majority.

The civil rights movement included winning court cases, getting laws passed, and convincing politicians that they should support it. It didn't happen at a barrel of a gun.

More recently, same-sex marriage happened by winning court cases and a lot of work to change public opinion.

It's way too soon to give up on persuasion. Don't support thuggery.

[yedava]

Well, MLK did say that a riot is the language of the unheard. And he deemed the white moderate is the greatest obstacle to freedom. How does that square with your understanding of the civil rights movement? We'd like to wishfully think that social change can be achieved without any fuss. It can't. Firing someone isn't thuggery. Or the barrel end of a gun. It is just an organization walking the talk.

[skybrian]

Maybe this is a matter of semantics? Firing someone (ending a voluntary relationship) is legal and nonviolent, so I wouldn't call that "by force" either. You probably shouldn't use "by force" unless you mean it.

[sinxoveretothex]

> Historically, the biggest social changes happened by force. Like the civil rights movement. The threat of civil disobedience forced the government to enact laws.

That's one point of view. Another might argue that MLK sent a letter from a certain jail in Birmingham rather than oppose the arrest, say. Yet another might invoke Gandhi or Mandela.

Is civil disobedience a form of force? Yes, I suppose it is one of the possible meanings of 'force'.

However, if that is what you mean, then how is this opposed to being polite and understanding?

Compare your statement of "dragging people kicking and screaming" to MLK's attitude[1]:

> The decision prompted King to write, in a statement, that though he believed the Supreme Court decision set a dangerous precedent, he would accept the consequences willingly. "Our purpose when practicing civil disobedience is to call attention to the injustice or to an unjust law which we seek to change," he wrote—and going to jail, and eloquently explaining why, would do just that.

Or even to Lincoln's[2] (who wrote this at a time when victory in the war was pretty certain):

> With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Your error is in assuming that being polite and understanding means you are to apply exactly no pressure of any kind in furthering your goals. It is not so. Non-violent protest and even self-defense can be done either politely just as well as adversarially. If you ask me, Lincoln waged war yet was more understanding of his enemies than many civil protesters are today.

[1] http://time.com/3773914/mlk-birmingham-jail/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln%27s_second_ina...

[yedava]

One way to counter gender stereotypes is to show that they aren't welcome in an organization. I hope you would agree that this is a non-violent act. And yet, we see Google being equated with the Gulag. My use of the word 'force' is in that context.

[sinxoveretothex]

Preventing something from being done or said does not counter a claim.

Passing a law against ICE cars does not prove electric cars superior, the same way passing a law against EVs does not prove ICEs superior.

However, if I am guessing correctly, your point of view is that gender stereotypes have no factual basis and exist only due to a cultural pressure. If that assumption is true, then there is a sense in which what you said is true: by disallowing the cultural pressure, the stereotypes and therefore their evidential basis would disappear.

Whether the assumption is true or not, I agree that an "anti-speech" organizational rule is not physical violence, which is the conventional definition I would use. I hesitate to say it is not 'violence', because people like the WHO define the word much more expansively[1].

From that, 2 things: first, I think the experimental evidence is hard to explain under the assumption above, like the fact that more progressive countries like my own Canada or Sweden have high gender occupational differences, but countries doing very poorly on equality metrics quite lower differences there[2]:

> The least sexist countries I can think of – Sweden, New Zealand, Canada, etc – all have somewhere around the same number (30%, 20%, and 24%, respectively). The most sexist countries do extremely well on this metric! The highest numbers on the chart are all from non-Western, non-First-World countries that do middling-to-poor on the Gender Development Index: Thailand with 55%, Guyana with 54%, Malaysia with 51%, Iran with 41%, Zimbabwe with 41%, and Mexico with 39%.

Second, while I have no doubt you're right that Google is being equated with the gulag quite literally by some, I think there is a sense in which one can talk about a weak commonality between both. In this case, the link being a form of 'violence' (WHO definition) against saying certain things. I can understand why this is a quite upsetting similarity if one were on the other side of it, particularly when people abuse it. I wish there was a way to sort of get reasonable to call out people "on their side" when they do that.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence

[2] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...

[DrScump]

  MLK sent a letter from a certain jail in Birmingham rather than oppose the arrest

How, specifically, do you propose that a black minister demonstrating for civil rights safely oppose an arrest in 1963 Birmingham?

[TimTheTinker]

Thanks for this excellent comment.

[innocentoldguy]

@yedava - The only issue I see with your comment (at least the first paragraph) is that the "men are more inclined to work with things and woman are more inclined to work with people" commentary that has everyone whinging this week is actually backed up by various scientific studies. Here is the abstract for one.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...

I'll leave it up to you to read the full report and research the topic on your own before dismissing this notion as ignorant, when it clearly isn't.

If you feel I'm wrong, please provide your own scientific/scholarly citations and we can discuss the matter intellectually.

[TimTheTinker]

"Dragging people, kicking and screaming," sounds like the antithesis of democracy. Not sure if that's what you meant...

At least in the US, the civil rights movement was characterized (primarily) by peaceful, non-violent protests, demonstrations, and speeches. A social movement characterized by force and violence cannot effect positive social change, as far as I know.

[maxerickson]

The movement wasn't especially violent.

The Civil Rights Act and enforcement of said act tended to be backed up with guns and such. You know, state police escorting little kids to their schools.

[Aron]

As information, I had given up on your comment persuading me of anything before the first comma. It's really that easy.

[alexholehouse]

Then, with all due respect (and perhaps I misunderstood), perhaps you should consider a greater degree of open mindedness?

If the fact that you disagrees with the first clause in an argument is enough for you to conclude the rest of the discussion is unable to make you change your opinion, I'd argue that is a much more significant barrier to open dialogue.

[abecedarius]

"With all due respect" so often precedes a mark of disrespect that it's already a small example of the kind of rhetoric that gets people's backs up before you even get to your point. I don't think it's generally deliberate, but it's a pretty good sign of talking at someone instead of genuinely trying to get closer to a common understanding. If I notice those words about to come out, I try to step back and remind myself we're both human -- prone to being wrong about practically everything. My career is all about being wrong dozens of times a day sometimes, about really obvious stuff once it's pointed out by the helpful little computer. Do I really know the bigger picture so well I can just lay down the law to this disagreeable fellow human?

I don't even expect either of our beliefs to change much here, but conversations do add up to something over the decades. And some people are much better at this than others. I know, your side of the culture war compared to them, oh Lord. I don't know if Dunning-Kruger applies to open-mindedness -- are there studies?

[alexholehouse]

Ha! - point extremely well taken, in much the same vein as "I'm not racist, BUT...".

I did feel awkward writing it - in this case it was actually meant sincerely. I really wasn't sure if I'd misunderstood. It seemed too ironic in a discussion on open minded-ness to basically say "I immediately stopped listening after I heard something I didn't like" (although maybe this is a reasonable approach? I'd strongly argue it's not, but that's certainly a discussion we can have). I'll do my best to catch myself in the future. I should say that I did read your comment as a touch condescending, just FYI.

WRT to Dunning-Kruger for open-mindedness (which is a very interesting idea) some quick searches didn't reveal anything obvious, but I may be using the wrong keywords - social psychology isn't exactly my strong suit! Sort of intuitively you'd think a similar kind of relationship might exist ("Of course I'm open minded, but I _know_ that X is X and Y is Y, but those are truths not debatable ideas!") - although maybe now I'm conflating open mindedness with the ability to think critically...

[abecedarius]

> I did read your comment as a touch condescending, just FYI.

Sigh, yeah, I need to watch that. Good of you to let me know.

My take on the not-listening thing -- of course I'm not Aron -- is that if you've heard a faction hector you a lot, and you don't think they're listening to you except maybe to match some of your words into their standard bingo cards, then it's natural to tune someone out the moment they say one of that faction's shibboleths. From this POV, telling the speaker how their rhetoric failed is actually reaching out to them a little. That's not the POV I aspire to: I try to consider more words that piss me off than I really feel like, because I meta-want to be less biased. Sometimes I do, and sometimes they even get through.

Re: social psychology, I'm just starting on Haidt's The Righteous Mind in hopes of learning some basics.

(Since many more people might read this, I guess I want to make it completely clear that I didn't say what brand of words piss me off.)

[alexholehouse]

>My take on the not-listening thing -- of course I'm not Aron -- is that if you've heard a faction hector you a lot, and you don't think they're listening to you except maybe to match some of your words into their standard bingo cards, then it's natural to tune someone out the moment they say one of that faction's shibboleths.

Ah - this is very good point, thanks for following up on this!

[doubleshame]

You can be fined for not calling people ‘ze’ or ‘hir,’ if that’s the pronoun they demand that you use

https://www.google.co.in/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtm...

[msla]

You can be fined for being an asshole by ignoring a revealed preference? SHAME AND SCANDAL!