[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.