California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, a 1959 law named after a powerful California politician, was a precursor to the federal 1964 Civil Rights Act. It prohibits businesses from discriminating against folks based on specified attributes, currently including sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, or sexual orientation. It is, by design, a very broad and flexible tool, and has repeatedly been interpreted to protect groups and classes beyond those listed explicitly. Defendants found liable can be ordered to pay up to three times the actual damages the plaintiff suffers (and no less than $4,000), and can be ordered to pay the plaintiff's attorney fees. A losing plaintiff can't be ordered to pay a winning defendant's attorney fees, with certain narrow disability-law exceptions.
Recently the Unruh Act provoked outrage. Why? Because this broad, flexible, and unilateral law was invoked creatively by the wrong people. Here's how The Mary Sue put it:
Some Jerks Used a 56-Year-Old Anti-Discrimination Law to Shut Down “Women in Tech” Group
Yahoo! "News" was even more indignant:
These men's rights activists are using a 1950s law to shut down women in tech
What happened? Let Yahoo! describe it:
Two men named Allan Candelore and Rich Allison, who had each prepaid a $20 registration fee on the Chic CEO website, tried to enter the restaurant. According to a legal complaint that they later filed with National Coalition for Men president Harry Crouch, Burns turned them away at the door, saying the event “was only open to women.” They took a photo, left the premises, then promptly initiated legal action, turning to a 1959 California law originally written to prevent discrimination against minorities and women.
According to The Mary Sue, this was enough to ruin Chic CEO, an outfit organized to support women in tech:
How much did that lawsuit end up costing them? $510,000. [edited to add: my clumsy quoting here made it seem that the Mary Sue was talking about this lawsuit with that number; they were talking about another one. Follow the link to see the context.]
It’s not clear how much the out-of-court settlement cost Chic CEO, but it was enough to virtually drive them out of business.
The Mary Sue is outraged that a civil rights law is being "twisted" by men, and aghast that the legal system allows meritless claims to extort compliance:
Frankly, the lawsuits are ridiculous. But more than that (so much more than that), there’s a special kind of insult in taking an anti-discrimination law intended to protect marginalized people and twisting it to “protect” those least in need of protection. It’s sad, to be honest, that men’s rights activists (ughh) can exploit something like that to effectively shut down organizations and companies like Chic CEO trying to improve female representation in tech and other industries.
The threat of a lawsuit is usually enough to shut a company down, even if the company stands a good chance of winning in court, simply for one reason: it costs less to settle than it does to fight in court. With the knowledge of a likely easy settlement, plus precedent on their side, how messed up is it that this is a weapon that can be used to stamp out organized attempts at improving representation before it even begins?
No shit.
Here's the thing: if you only wake up to how broken the system is when it's abused by one of your ideological enemies, you're a vapid partisan hack. The legal system — including, but not "only" or "especially" civil rights laws — is a tool of extortion, deceit, and thuggery. I've seen nothing in my 21 years as a lawyer to make me think that civil rights plaintiffs are any more likely than other plaintiffs to abuse the system. But some laws lend themselves to abuse — like laws that are deliberately broad, deliberately flexible, and that award attorney fees only to prevailing plaintiffs, removing all deterrents against frivolous suits and piling on incentives to cave to extortion. The result is a system that's profitable for lawyers, mediocre for individual plaintiffs, and a constant burden on potential defendants in a way that utterly fails to distinguish between wrongdoers and the innocent.
If you're only irritated by this when a group of Wrong People target a group of Right People, you're not to be taken seriously.
Last 5 posts by Ken White
- Now Posting At Substack - August 27th, 2020
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- All The President's Lawyers: No Bill Thrill? - September 19th, 2019
- Over At Crime Story, A Post About the College Bribery Scandal - September 13th, 2019
- All The President's Lawyers: - September 11th, 2019
A++++++++++ would read essay again
So I agree it is a badly created law, that is without a doubt. But I do have an issue with the way the group acted… Why was the group Women only and why did they feel that they needed to exclude men from the group?
As I have seen many places and I am sure on here, what if this was a Men's only group or a Caucasian only group? The outrage would be placed on the group for the rules.
As someone who has been in Tech almost all of my adult life I believe we need more women in Tech, their insights are different in many instances and almost always needed and they are just as good at the job as any man I have met. Rather than excluding men from the groups they should be bringing them in, white these two were asshats not all are. If they feel that they are being excluded or hitting a glass ceiling having men at the meeting that would like to help them along / are looking to hire more qualified women and are going to meet some they could only be a huge benefit.
I think that while the law needs to be looked at, we should also condemn the way the group acted. If the guys were not helpful and just listened at the group then they got the $20 each from them. If they were helpful, then they would have provided much more benefit than the $20 they already received. If they were unhelpful and causing a disturbance then you throw them out for that reason. No matter what letting everyone in that wants to come is a win, keeping people out for any discriminatory reason is wrong and should be shamed.
@BillyV:
{{citation needed}}
…which is to say, I see people assert this all the time, and I've never seen any evidence to support it.
Do you have any evidence or argument to back up this position?
I applaud the men for their actions. If we, as a society, decide that discrimination is a bad thing, then it is bad regardless of who is doing it. Instituting reverse-discrimination is not a solution to anything.
My personal impression after three decades in tech is that feminism has done more than anything else to drive women away from tech. There were quite a few women, and the number was increasing, back in the 1980s. Then the strident feminists came in and put those women in the spotlight. Women not interested in being examined like bugs under a microscope starting finding some other career.
We need to treat people as individuals, not as members of their race, gender, or whatever. Crashing blatantly discriminatory events is a very good thing to do, and takes a lot of guts.
I started my previous comment with "if we, as a society, decide that discrimination is a bad thing…" for a reason, but I forgot to add that reason.
There is an alternative, it is called "free association", and it is actually guaranteed to us in the Constitution. So the alternative is to actually allow this: let anyone discriminate for any reason whatsoever. If you want to start a company that hires only left-handed redheads, more power to you.
The thing is: it's got to be all or nothing. Either everyone can discriminate, or no one can. The feminists expecting that they can hold a women's only event must then accept that men may organize a men's only event. The Black Congressional Caucus should be balanced by, White, Asian, and Hispanic Congressional Caucuses. Or else none of those should be allowed to exist.
Gee, Clark, did you miss this in the Yahoo piece you cited? :
"…For Alfred G. Rava, however, this scenario was very familiar. The lawyer representing Allison, Candelore and Crouch has built a career around gender-discrimination lawsuits, filing approximately 150 complaints against California businesses over the past 15 years, according to CNN Money. Rava runs his own law firm in San Diego, and, as the secretary for the National Coalition for Men, he offers free consultation for NCFM members who feel they’ve experienced public discrimination because of their gender. …"
.
Sounds like these guys found a nice big cow to milk; ironic, since cows are female. There are no principles* involved in these cases, only money. Another set of Blood Sucking Parasites at work.
…….
*maybe there are some psychological problems at play, as well.
Does anyone really think these guys give a rats ass about womens issues?
. .. . .. o
And that matters…how? are you saying it permissible to discriminate against people if the don't have the Right Thoughts? I don't think you want to go there.
Because sooner or later, you'll have Wrong Thoughts about something.
@albert, I know I didn't miss that in the Yahoo piece Ken cited.
Also, thanks to my advanced reading comprehension skills, that Ken just wrote a post about how if one crafts broad laws, they eventually get used in a way that goes against the spirit in which they were crafted.
"Gee, Clark, did you miss this in the Yahoo piece you cited?"
We can be sure that Clark read the Yahoo piece, because he wrote this:
The legal system — including, but not "only" or "especially" civil rights laws — is a tool of extortion, deceit, and thuggery.
@ Clark
Here ya go:
WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF GENDER DIVERSITY ON TECHNOLOGY BUSINESS PERFORMANCE?
We Need More Women in Tech: The Data Prove It
How Diversity Can Boost Creativity in the Tech Industry
Why diversity matters
Of course, I took just a few items from the first page of results from my Google query "advantages of gender diversity in tech industry", which reported a total of about 1.75 million results. Those who are only superficially acquainted with the business- and high tech-related press see articles about this all the time, so I assume that you are not even superficially acquainted with either.
—
The pearl-clutching tone of the post and some comments (and comments to come, no doubt) might be unjustified. If, for example, the meeting was billed as a private event, freedom of association might come into play.
At any rate, it's not clear to me that it would have hurt anyone to have admitted the two provocateurs to the meeting. They might have learned something. If they were turned away, they should at least have gotten their money back. I also wonder who came up with damages north of $500K, and how; it's hard for me to think of how this would not be excessive.
Is it so astonishing that sauce for the gander is also sauce for the goose?
Bob
@Clark
"@BillyV:
As someone who has been in Tech almost all of my adult life I believe we need more women in Tech, their insights are different in many instances and almost always needed
{{citation needed}}
…which is to say, I see people assert this all the time, and I've never seen any evidence to support it.
Do you have any evidence or argument to back up this position?"
You need evidence to back up the position that females have insights that are different from the insight of males?
Really?
Hahahahahahahahaha…
You've got to be fucking joking, right?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahaa..
Oh shit. You're serious? And you actually admit that in public?
/facepalm
@Clark
Not the original poster but my argument for diversity goes something like this:
Imagine you have an optimization landscape with many local optima, but are really trying to find the global one (or at least move from your current local "best" to a better one). If you always follow the same algorithm it will be impossible to get out of your local neighborhood and to a better peak. Having different algorithms has a better chance of pushing you out to a new local optimum that may or may not be better than the current one, but if you stay doing the same you're stuck at your current level.
Just adding diversity for diversity's sake based on superficial characteristics (gender, race, the usual suspects) does not necessarily increase this algorithmic diversity. A white male and a black female from the same Harvard class are more likely to have the same thought processes than two males one from MIT and one from a Couer d'Alene community college. There might be a Bayesian argument that different genders or races are more likely to introduce this intellectual diversity, but I don't have the data to back it up.
(Yes, education, elitism, blah blah… this is just for illustrative purposes, don't flame me)
For a more formal discussion look for the "Diversity Index" in relation to wisdom of the crowds.
Yeah, BillyV, any evidence? Like, say, the experience of "someone who has been in Tech almost all of [their] adult life"? You got anything like that?
@Mikee
Please educate us on your argument (mine's up there, ripe for picking), assuming it's better than "It's all common sense that the world is flat, have you seen it curve anywhere?" What seems obvious is not necessarily true once you scratch the surface.
Hmmm. Law prevents discrimination based on sex.
1) Group prevents men from attending, allowing women (or women-identified people) only.
2) Men sue under law.
3) Profit!
I'm just not seeing a problem here. That's too bad, so sad. The law hasn't been twisted; it's been used exactly as it is written. The letter of the law was followed. As a Legalist, if you want the law not to apply to those with institutional power – ie, us white male cishets – then you need to rewrite the law specifically.
Guess they need to petition their legislator to have the Unruh Act amended, if that's what they want.
@a_random_guy, @BillyV, @Castaigne:
At least according to the event organizer, the men were turned away because the event was over capacity, not because of their gender. From the first source, "“These men came uninvited and the venue was over capacity,” so she turned them away."
There's no evidence that the event was women-only, or that their being turned away had anything to do with their gender; that's what the people bringing the suit claim, but they haven't produced anything to back it up.
@Clark:
Well, there are really only two possible positions on this issue.
The first position is that women think differently than men (due to biological or social influences), in which case, they would have different insights to offer on a given issue. This suggests that it would be a good idea to have more women in tech.
The second position is that women think in the same way that men do. If this is the case, then a similar number of women would be interested in tech-related fields as men, and the skewed gender numbers indicate that there is some sort of pressure keeping women out of the field. Since ability would be similarly distributed across both genders (since both genders think the same way), that means that if you want to hire the best twenty people for a particular task, about half of them would be women, of which several would have been pressured out of the field, and are therefore unavailable. This also suggests that it would be a good idea to have more women in tech.
As to which of the above is the case: I leave that up to researchers (if they can ever figure out how to get past the WEIRD bias that's currently playing merry havoc with their results).
@Aquillion
I think the fact that this could work (regardless of the facts) is the mark of a bad law.
I know five male cishets who would strike the rewritten law down as unconstitutional, so there goes that plan.
@Mike T
As somebody with years of experience arguing on the internet, you seem confused as to what constitutes evidence.
All persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and
equal, and no matter what their sex, race, color, religion,
ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic
information, marital status, or sexual orientation[, except those least in need of protection,] are entitled to
the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities,
privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind
whatsoever.
Printer's error… so sorry about that.
"Everybody is a hero in their own story if you just look." — Maeve Binchy
My apologies to Clark….and Ken.
My point still stands:
"There are no principles* involved in these cases, only money. Another set of Blood Sucking Parasites at work."
Yes, the system is abused, but can this be fixed by changing or modifying the law, or does the issue of abuse need to be dealt with.
Perhaps if there was less financial incentive, the abuse would go away, or at least, diminish.
………..
@I R A Darth Aggie,
We'll never know will we, because they didn't get in :) I'll bet bet they would been disappointed if they did, as it ruins their business plan. We've heard about their 'discrimination' cases; how about those cases where the was no 'discrimination'? There had to have been some, or are all these women discriminatory hags?
. .. . .. o
Excluding men from their organization seems counter-productive. If the goal is for women in tech to be treated as equals then they should encourage everyone (including men) to join their cause and spread their message.
As a man who works as in Software? Some of the best Engineers/Devs/Managers/Leads I have worked with and/or for have been women. I am 100% on-board with the cause of equal opportunity and equal pay, but I would be extremely pissed if some organization chose to exclude me from an event I paid to attend solely based on my gender.
I think the only modification is that a defendant should be able to counter-sue/apply/whatever for lawyer fees when the plaintiff loses in order to discourage frivolous law-suits. Alternatively, it could be modified to award NO Lawyer fees to anyone.
Interesting. Shame the article seems to have pulled a collection of MRAs out.
Actually … it kind of is. If I hold a meeting of the International Feminist Collective (Local 326), then I get to kick you out if you're not a feminist. Of course, that meeting is a private meeting, not a public accommodation, so I've got shitloads of leeway …
I love that this happened, but I can't help thinking that the law will soon be amended to "fix" the "problem" by allowing only members of Protected Groups to sue.
THE YEAR IS 2024.
MEN CUT OFF THEIR OWN ARMS TO APPEASE REQUISITE FOR LEGAL SYSTEM.
ARM REATTACHED POST-COURT.
ARM TRAFFICKING AT LARGE.
BAD END.
@a_random_guy says:
Thirty seconds on Wikipedia:
Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus
Congressional Hispanic Caucus
As for "Why isn't there a Congressional White Caucus?", the answer is the same as for the inane "Why isn't there a White Entertainment Television?": There are hundreds of channels (and congressional caucuses) whose primary concern is the interests of white people. And if you don't believe that, you're probably the sort of person who grouses about how if there's a Congressional Black Caucus there really should be a Congressional Hispanic Caucus, without actually bothering to check whether there is one.
I read the comments expecting douchery, and I was not disappointed by either side of the spectrum.
My misanthropy survives another day.
With all due respect, I think a large number of people — perhaps including the plaintiffs and the plaintiffs' lawyer — are confusing the group (which, as far as I know, has a 1st Amendment right to control the group's admission policies) with the restaurant (which, as far as I know, is not allowed to discriminate in its admittance policies).
Unfortunately, the words "admission" and "admittance" both have the word "admit" as its base, but they have distinct meanings.
Waiting for @Clark to step out of his snark-hole and respond to the citations and arguments he asked for…
But not betting on it…
Completely OT, but I think Popehat's SSL cert is borked. I'm getting errors on multiple browsers when I try to read using an https:// URL.
Yes, we got rid of cloudflare, so no current SSL solution.
@JohnD, probably, yeah. Then the next time it comes up, he'll probably ask for evidence all over again, saying he's never seen any sign of it. It's the same kind of thing as the guys who jump into any discussion of feminism demanding a definition of all first principles before allowing the conversation to go further, then complain that their concerns are ignored.
I'm having trouble parsing the various layers of editorial snark. Why are we pissed at the plaintiffs? Is it because they are douchy MRA's or because they were trolling for cases?
I think this case is substantially different then the ADA trawling cases. It doesn't cost anything to stop discriminating on the basis of sex, nor or are there baroque regulations or esoteric knowledge involved, you just have to stop discriminating on the basis of sex.
@hymie!
As stated in the Yahoo article, the company has male board members and clients. As far as I can tell, this was an event that they were charging money for. That's why this falls into discriminatory business practices.
I am hesitant to believe the explanation given by the company CEO that the venue was overbooked and they showed up uninvited if the two men turned away had pre-registered and had already paid for their tickets. That seems to be a very easy thing to prove in the lawsuit.
@Clark as posted by many others there is ample evidence to back this up from some of the top names in the business.
I base my claim specifically off of my experience. I have had numerous times where we have had an issue with no quality resolutions being offered by anyone in the initial meetings. Yes we have had options for a resolution but they were all just hacks. As I always do when hitting these issues we start bringing in others, be in more Jr staff, staff from other departments that are still relevant, new staff, whatever we think may help break the wall down. I have had more times than I can count where after 3 or 4 of these meetings and probably 20 people more this was discussed with where a woman has had an idea that was completely outside the box. The idea was something that seemed unusual to the men in the group and when it was really broken down worked on paper and then in production.
I got curious after probably the 5th or 6th time this happened and talk to women at other companies I knew that were in the same position as I and the solutions almost always seemed to accepted as the, duh that is what I would have looked at first, solution. Is this scientific evidence? No. Is this enough that I am willing to look at this as something to be considered and make use of in the future and recommend to others? It is.
"You need evidence to back up the position that females have insights that are different from the insight of males?"
I know, ridiculous, right? I mean, everyone knows that dames are all fluff-headed ditzes what can't do, y'know, mathematicals and stuff, so it's only sensible they don't belong in the computerizing fields where they has to do the figurating and the logicalizing. They're evolved to be all nurturing and caregiving and empathatical 'cuz of caveman days, so that's why they're like nurses and secretaries, jobs which fit their woman-brains, which are totally different from guy brains, which evolved to count mammoths or something.
(Yes, that was sarcasm. I am deeply depressed that I know I have to point that out. But consider carefully the consequences of pushing too hard on the 'women think differently than men' button. It has, as they say, unfortunate implications. If your argument is not that they think differently, but they have different life experiences… well, fine, but every human on Earth has different life experiences than every other human on Earth. That's why diversity *is* good and *is* worth pursuing, but when you turn (nearly) 8 billion unique people into simple labels like 'men' and 'women'[1], well, there goes diversity. One woman is just as good as another, right? Their individual personal qualities are rendered less important than their gender — ironic when the goal is, presumably, to eliminate gender as something person-defining, to transcend the idea that gender is the primary defining characteristic of an individual, outweighing all other aspects of their identity. It isn't, and acting as if it is just sets back progress. )
[1]Which ignores the wide range of genders people identify as, but that's another topic.
@Aquillion:
'At least according to the event organizer, the men were turned away because the event was over capacity, not because of their gender. From the first source, "“These men came uninvited and the venue was over capacity,” so she turned them away."'
Then why were both charged on their credit card for $20 from the even organizers? If the event organizers purposely overbooked because they figured some may not come then denying the only 2 invitees that don't fit the demographic makes me wonder if this person should be running an event for "Chic CEO" as she doesn't seem to understand the first thing about liability. This would set off HUGE warning flags for anyone with a business degree or a passing understanding of business law.
First, this:
I'm pretty sure we're talking about the damages the plaintiff suffers.
Second, let's add this:
Assuming that calculation is based on "three times the actual damages", that means those two guys suffered $170,000 for being turned down from a women-only reception they prepaid $20 to attend? Did they fly down from the moon to attend this event? Even counting attorney fees, that seems exaggerated.
I agree with the reminder of the article though.
Laws to protect minorities from discrimination are a good thing, provided they have been written correctly. When they have not and you still rejoice from their existence, you are as wrong as the one you wanted to defend against.
So, when you realize that the law is wrong only when you discover what it feels to be the target of a lawsuit, you've been missing the important point for a long time.
@Wyrm: for the total amount, you cut off the rest of that sentence "and can be ordered to pay the plaintiff's attorney fees."
I assume that attorney fees somehow managed to be quite high.
@jerslan:
What is this nonsense?!? INCONCEIVABLE!!! My sojourns to Reddit, Return of Kings, and A Voice for Men have proven it as FACT that ladybrains are too emotional to do math or program and that all such females in those positions have either a) slept their way into them or b) have received their title from affirmative action, like the brilliant Paula Bean. Clearly, you are a beta SJW spreading feminist propaganda!
I also have no doubt that these supposed female "programmers" have been GENETICALLY MUTATED by their casual sexual encounters. Roosh, one of our premier MRA scientists, has explained it to us all.
Unruh Act lawsuits shut down Squeeze Inn, Chile Lindo, dozens of other small businesses whose quirky layouts provided the "local color" we're all supposed to prefer? meh, whatever.
Unruh Act guaranteed-award lawsuits provide a career for people who sue over specious issues like the exact shade of blue on the curb, half-inch deviations in sink height and mirror width, the precise placement of the "disabled" sticker on a table? meh, whatever.
Guys use an Unruh Act lawsuit to go after a women's-only conference? FUCKING MRA SHITLORDS.
The $510,000 refers to a different suit filed by the same lawyer, and was a class action settlement. The Yahoo article quotes an anonymous lawyer as saying typical settlements are $8000-$10000.
"Even counting attorney fees, that seems exaggerated."
We haven't got anything to on other than the MarySue article, which…um…doesn't seem like a completely unbiased source.
So it's probably one of those deals where the cost was $510,000 the same way that a prosecutor tells you he can put you in jail for 25 years; it wasn't (and he can't) but it's the top end of the scale and so they use it as a Big Scary Number to make the stakes seem higher.
We outlaw discrimination, then folks are shocked when they are punished when they discriminate.
I haven't seen anyone else pointing out the irony re: woman who purports to be qualified to give business advice to other women gets business shut down by easily foreseeable lawsuit.
If a system is designed for bloodsucking leeches to abuse it then I frankly do not get upset when bloodsucking leeches abuse it.
The problems aren't the leeches, the problem always was the abuse-ability and the people who perpetuate the abuse-ability for personal gain.
RE: Alex
You're right, maybe women having different insights than men is so obvious that it could be missed…. by someone with extremely narrow fields of view and tunnel vision, or a male that has never actually talked to a female if it didn't include a receipt afterwards.
@Aquillion: "There's no evidence that the event was women-only, or that their being turned away had anything to do with their gender; that's what the people bringing the suit claim, but they haven't produced anything to back it up."
Really? There's a whole bunch of people in the comments here saying it is completely okay for men to be turned away from events because of their gender. Are they all just speaking hypothetically, because that totally didn't happen here?
@BillyV
The fact you presented evidence suggests that you haven’t grokked onto the inherent contradiction. You cannot argue for diversity on the basis that it is beneficial without arguing for discrimination.
In order to support the inclusion of different ethnic/gender backgrounds as beneficial for their viewpoints, you have to agree that there are statistical differences in the population that break around gender/ethnic lines. If there aren’t any statistical differences, then why does including these groups matter? Assuming equal skill sets, experience, etc, then why should I hire Jill #1 instead of Joe #50, if there isn’t anything additional that Jill has better odds of bringing to the team? If the differences aren’t predictable, then everyone is randomly different to an equal degree. That would mean there is no general reason to hire Jill instead of another Joe, as it’s the same dice roll as to whether or not I get a useful difference. If everyone is equal, then everyone is interchangeable. If everyone is interchangeable, diversity is meaningless.
Before you go there, ‘different but equal’ does not lead down a path that is significantly distinct from ‘separate but equal’.
In order for diversity to add value, people have to not be interchangeable. Different cultures, genders, lifestyles, or what-have-you have to create meaningful predictable differences in the person. However, associating someone with those differences because of X immediately becomes X-ism. Claiming that you should hire people because their ethnicity/gender/lack-of-hooves allows them to uniquely contribute is inherently racist/sexist/pony-ist as you implicitly have to claim that you should hire people at least in part due to their race/gender/lack-of-hooves. (Via Angus might have something to say about hiring based on the lack of hooves)
In short, the argument that diversity along any category has a predictable impact is inherently bigoted as with it comes the implicit assumption of meaningful differences across sections of that category. The more you think diversity impacts outcomes, the more X-ist you are.
Is it really true that this lawsuit is unusual or unforeseen? I always thought that the Unruh Act reflected a considered judgment that a world where people can't discriminate against women but also can't discriminate in favor of women was preferable to a world where people can discriminate against women but also can discriminate in favor of women. If this is not so, the people who wrote and supported the Unruh act are idiots, and I find that at least a tiny bit hard to believe.
@David Schwartz: The people who wrote the Unruh Act weren't idiots. But the people commenting on it nowadays in the news media are very, very, very, very dumb, the sort of people who can't imagine an anti-discrimination law that protects people they don't like.
Those guys (three of four who make a living regularly doing this legal trolling) must have been popular kids in school. Sounds like they'd be the sort of people who'd invite people to their birthday party, then sue for loss and damages if someone brought a present that wasn't as good as the rest.
But being an MRA arsehole and making a living from a bad law isn't illegal. And neither is patent trolling. Or libel tourism. Or the TSA. Unfortunately.
My wife runs a couple of "female focused" tech ventures in the DC and Baltimore areas, and I am deeply proud of her for doing so. What the Chic CEO got wrong, and what my wife got right, is that you can be female focused without being female exclusive.
There have been a few mistakes in which other coordinators have mistaken the intent of the group, and deliberately excluded men, but to my knowledge, in each case there was an apology made, and an explanation that "Yes, we're female focused, but that doesn't mean that men aren't also welcomed."
I personally question the premise sometimes. Exclusion is exclusion, and in modern society, with the rise of gender fluidity, I don't even know how exclusive one could be; on what grounds would you discriminate anyway? If gender identification is to be taken seriously, and it probably should, then who's to say that any given male identifies as such?
At the same time, there *is* a genuine lack of women in tech, and it's possible, likely even, that organizations like this do a wealth of good in opening those doors to the under-privileged, and that's a noble goal.
So far, being women-inclusive hasn't proven to be too much of a challenge, and shockingly, not that many men are viewing it as a new dating pool, and to my knowledge, none of the women at events in which men attended had complained that their safe spaces were being violated, so at the end of the day, I think that perhaps the expectation that exclusion would, or should work is really what's at fault here.
Past that, it would be easy enough to re-create the organization as a private club and exclude on whatever grounds they wanted to, and probably wouldn't even draw too many comparisons to the Boy Scouts of yester-year, even if they would be fair, so it seems a little silly at how preventable this all was.
This assertion inspired me to go back and reread the comments. I found zero comments saying it is completely okay for men to be turned away from events because of their gender. (I did find two or maybe three comments (not "a whole bunch") that kinda sorta suggested that it might be somewhat okay for men to be turned away from events because of their gender.)
So, what are you talking about?
@Jason K:
I'm not Billy V, but I think I can clear up a few problems with your argument.
Wikipedia defines "discrimination" as follows, and I think it is an appropriate definition in this context:
"Discrimination is treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing is perceived to belong to rather than on individual merit."
There is only a contradiction between discrimination and diversity if "individual merit" is confined to one group, class, or category of people (or very few) AND if that restriction can be demonstrated not to be the result of a bias towards that group, class, or category. (Or you can put the onus on the excluded groups to prove this, but I personally don't think it belongs there.)
The notion that a diverse group of people who are all qualified to do their jobs is usually more effective than a homogenous group of people who are all qualified to do their jobs is, at the very least, plausible and does not trigger the condition for discrimination and diversity to be contradictory.
The foregoing is complete nonsense unless you specify metrics by which different segments of a population can differ statistically.
But actually getting work done is a function of too many variables to establish a metric on each, actually make the measurements, and compare them. The most important variables typically go into something called a "job description", which makes the criteria for inclusion and exclusion pretty clear: regardless of race or gender, someone who can't do X will not be hired for the job.
Then there are the diffuse, difficult-to-predict, difficult-to-measure variables. These can be accounted for only by the life experience and background knowledge of the people on the scene. To the degree which diversity provides a broader range of life experience and background knowledge, it seems plausible that a diverse team would be better able to deal with the many unforeseen problems faced within organizations than would a homogenous team with a very restricted range of life experience and background knowledge.
Note that "diversification" is probably the most important risk mitigation strategy in finance. Note also that it shares a root with "diversity". The suggested effect of diversity within an organization is quite analogous to the effect of diversification in financial portfolios — it is a way of dealing with "unknown unknowns".
If my arguments above don't make it clear, the problem here is the word "predictable." If it was even remotely possible for managers to predict all the future needs of their organization, they could simply include all that stuff in the job descriptions. If God was a CEO, diversity would be unlikely to benefit his company. In the world of humans, though, it is at least plausible that diversity is beneficial.
There are other arguments related to the idea that opportunity and particularly equality of opportunity are good things. There's a societal benefit to hiring Jill #1 if Jill #1 can serve as a positive role model and expand the field of X from exclusively male to unisex, partially because it doubles the pool of potential hires, but also because from many reasonable moral perspectives, it is better (ceteris paribus) for an opportunity to be accessible to a particular group than for it not to be.
This is an interesting bit of news. Are the men who did this wrong? In one sense no, but they were Asshats in how they approached the issue. Yet, my google-fu is failing me, but my memory in my brain says that at times whether it was title xi, EEOC or other civil rights laws by crusading folks of a minority class have done (and are doing same things.
Meanwhile CNN has this to say about the other women tech groups are now having a petition drive to get on the ballot a change to the law to prevent discrimination lawsuits like this. http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/11/technology/mens-rights-activist-chic-ceo/
To which I think of the 2nd and 43rd order effects. That is in an attempt to prevent the wrong people from using the law against what some consider the wrong way, they will destroy the law to save it.
Clearly, discrimination is one direction is acceptable, but not if the sword cuts both ways.
See also the Black365 page on McDonald's corporate site, wherein scholarships are offered:
Imagine the outrage if they offered a scholarship with the requirement that no more than 1/64th of your heritage be non-white.
Could the same poorly written law be used to attack McDonalds? Probably not – they have Very Deep Pockets and Very Many Lawyers.
David Schwartz says September 10, 2015 at 12:06 am:
The Unruh act was passed by the legislature of the State of California. What additional facts are necessary to mitigate your skepticism?
Because if there's one word that applies to race in this country–past, present, and foreseeable future–that word is "symmetrical." Strong work, FW.
Right, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that the law doesn't apply to that situation. After all, who ever heard of McDonald's being successfully sued by someone? (I mean, other than pretty much everyone.)
Dear Ken White,
If you mine the blogs that fight 'feminism' (which really is the modern day Jim Crow), you will find TONS of juicy lawsuits that can be taken up pro-bono.
There is an endless supply of fees available here, given how brazen the 'feminists' have gotten.
punch back twice as hard and twice as much
Frankly, the men should be arrested for fraud and put in jail. While I abhor discrimination in all forms, these scummy white men took advantage of an archaic and outdated law and committed a crime. They should be put in jail for hate crimes. In fact, prosecutors should review if crimes were committed under VAWA. Bankrupting their business is violence against women.
Well Played!
I would leave a comment over at Mary Sue, but I am blocked by them.
What my comment would be:
Using the law to get what you want is all fun and games until someone turns the tables around on you, isn't it?
Perhaps if civil rights groups considered what would happen if the laws they advocate for were turned against them, they might soften their stance.
Just wait, these types of lawsuits will get more and more common as men avail themselves of the tools the law gives them to demand redress for grievances. Colleges are going to have to pay out a lot of money for the show trials they call disciplinary review boards.
So Western civilization was accomplished with diverse viewpoints from women and minorities, correct? If not, how did it come to dominate the world for the past couple of centuries?
Me thinks 'diversity' is highly overrated.
@Vincent Vega
Pray tell why should they be thrown into jail? How did they commit fraud? Specifically what crime did they commit? Why is the law archaic and outdated? Are you saying that discrimination doesn't exist anymore and that we have nothing to fear from bigotry in the world? If so then please tell me why is it that there are still reports of everything from women being denied jobs because they are women to challenges about non-white folks being denied rights as it comes to application of governmental benefits and rights for court? VAWA applications to a civil case? You must be a trolling.
Trolling and sounding stupid to get a rise out of folks who misunderstand how trolling works? I slow clap in your general direction for such a poor form of trolling. There is always next time good sir.
Vincent Vega – really, trolling on Popehat is the big leagues. Gotta up the game.
i came for the schadenfreude, i stayed for the "i've spent a century in tech and all my best bosses and engineers were females with essential insights" white knighting baloney
accepted as being true, the superiority of the female tech worker would not take long to get out to an industry begging to avoid being attacked for being too white, too male, too whatever
prediction, these kinds of workshops will have a very long future as women's general disinterest in engineering keeps the 'problem' intact and professional whiners in business, complaining that men somehow change minds of women toward nursing and teaching. and good-thinking men will continue to spout off about how all the women they know at work are geniuses
Equality is a wonderful thing, especially when you are treated as special snowflakes , right ladies ?
@PonyAdvocate:
Your Google-fu is weak. Just because you can conjure up some articles on the web with keywords of your choosing does not equal "evidence". Take the second citation for example (I skipped the first one because my doctor tells me that I am wildly allergic to all-caps) "We Need More Women in Tech: The Data Prove It"
Let us deconstruct this opinion piece – and it is an opinion piece. It opens with some statistics about the employment of women in "computing occupations" (NB this term remains undefined). Of course, the same observation could be made about female employment in deep sea oil drilling, or construction (3.7% and 2.6% according to my Google-fu). Be that as it may, let's agree with the assertion that women are under-represented in "computing occupations."
Next we find the section "This is bad for tech." It starts off with the supposition that "half of the users of technology products and websites are women." Then segues into a cherry picked quote without explanation "Research shows that [women’s] choices impact up to 85 percent of purchasing decisions." If "impact" means "influence" on a scale of 0 to 100%, then the implication is 15% of all purchasing decisions are totally free of any female influence whatsoever. While I can not seem to find this particular study on the Deloitte University Press web site, I am unsure if a 1% (or 5% or 10%) influence on a purchasing decision can be treated as a significant influence – and that could well represent 50% or more of the purchases studied. After some more hand waving and homage to “largest single economic force,” we end with the triumph in tech that is Marissa Mayer. To be honest, I wasn't even aware that Yahoo! is still viable, so she has that going for her. To sum then, there is not a shred of actual evidence to support the assertion that "this is bad for tech." Well, there is plenty of hearsay and conjecture – those are kinds of evidence.
Now we get to the meat of the opinion piece, also proffered as "evidence": "This Is Bad for Women" Well, that seems to be women's problem then, not the tech industry's. And that is totally not germane to tech benefiting from the presence of more women: in fact, it is the converse, women benefit from their presence in tech. So from a self-interest perspective, sure, but it is what it is. But what it is isn't supportive of the issue in question.
Finally, we get to "How Do We Fix It?" Well, since the author has done such a terrible job of demonstrating that there is anything that needs to be fixed, it is pure charity to continue reading past this point. But I did, and, sadly, it doesn't get any better. Here we find so much hand waving that the poor author is in danger of taking flight. We are told that, upon further reflection, that women are leading adopters in "Mobile phone voice usage," "Text messaging," and "All Internet-enabled devices". I'm not sure what this proves nor does it further "fixing" anything. In fact, I'm not sure that the message that "women talk on phones more" and "women send more text messages than men" are particularly constructive, nor indicative of a subset of people who spend their time productively with their nose to the grindstone at work. Perhaps all those afore mentioned construction and oil well workers need more time off so they can phone each other and complain about their work – communicating and emoting.
The last two segments could have been written by the "CEO Chic" crowd, promoting gender based discrimination in an "ends justify the means" assertion of moral truthiness. They add nothing to the premise of the piece as stated in the title – which is, to remind the gentle reader – "We Need More Women in Tech: The Data Prove It".
To be frank, I am a bit disturbed by the low level of discourse in the comments on this essay. So many ad hominems about "jerks" and "assholes" premised on the unproven assertion that some animals should be more equal than others. I hope you will indulge me with a few of my observations as someone who has retired from the tech industry. While in graduate school, I attended a SWE (pronounced "swee" for the Society of Women Engineers) event with free pizza – attendance was open to all because they were a campus activity-fee funded organization. Their advisor (also one of my professors) accused me of attending to cause problems. I assured her that nothing could be further from the truth, and she was crestfallen when I informed her that I was only there for the free pizza. To a grad student on a research fellowship, it was a welcome opportunity to skip dinner of ramen noodles or mac and cheese. Further vindication came when I ran into a fellow student from my department who stated that she was there for the same purpose. Why should I be discriminated against, but not her? We both had the same motive for attendance. Later, over the course of a dozen years at smallish tech companies in the Silicon Valley, I had the opportunity to work with many women in tech. Sad to say, I was not impressed by any of them. They were my manager, my peers, and my subordinates. This is not to say that all of the men with whom I worked were star achievers: far from it. But the top performers in my experience were always men – they were more committed and often sacrificed their family life and personal time. In fact, one former colleague, in his 20's, worked himself to death – ignoring an illness, he worked through a weekend, went home and died alone. Take these facts as you may, they represent solely my observations. If you choose to discount or savage them as not being in accordance with your dogma, then by all means carry on with your fight to force your "right think" on the masses.
@Retired Tech Guy
I would say that the reason I think these men were jerks or asshats or whatever descriptor fits your vocabulary, is that there is a tactful way to approach this issue about discriminatory groups. There are plenty of incidents in the legal history of past where folks tried to apply for association in clubs, jobs, various other groups and they approached it in a manner of trying to apply. Asking for why they couldn't join and then either spread the word of being denied the permission and use the court of public opinion to break this organization. Only then using the court case to hammer this Chic CEO organization because men couldn't go to the meetings. These two men walked in with the whole point of being provocative and being jerks and forcing an issue when there could have been a more peaceful or lower level of conflict resolution to this.
At the same time the whole idea of a women's only group seems wrong for business groups, tech groups, military groups etc. It speaks against the idea of melting pot and we are all diverse and we all respect diversity.
Retired Tech Guy, your experience mirrors mine.
System engineering is a weird world, very constricted by the systems you have to design solutions to function in, you have to deeply understand all the decisions that those who came before you made and how they restrict your choices. This is not shallow knowledge, it requires an obsessive amount of study which cannot stop in college, it must continue for the rest of your life.
I go home and work on problems till late at night, trying things on my home system (a rather expensive set of VMWare servers where I have replicated a lot of the basic environment to test and validate ideas).
Most men are not willing to commit that much time and resources to their livelihood. Neither are most women. I see people everyday who want the rewards but refuse to invest the time or energy.
Our outfit has hired a bunch of Business Analysts and Project managers, mostly female, and they have been a boon to our output. They are not technical but they keep the most obsessive programmer or engineer on track, aware of schedules and away from the customers. They also keep us from running down rabbit holes, helping us stay within the "scope of the project".
I work in a building full of RainMen (my wife calls it The Asperger Palace) and it isn't a start-up so none of us are becoming millionaires anytime soon.
I will retire within the next few years and I am working very hard to inculcate a sense of what it takes to make shit that works into a new generation and I don't care what color you are, who you sleep with, where you came from… can you think?
@Charles
I'm sorry about my mis-attributions: "jerks" came from one of the sources Ken White quoted, and "asshole" was actually the more convivial "asshat" (by you).
I meant to quote the more descriptive terms "Blood Sucking Parasites" and "MRA arsehole" as used above. Thank you for helping clear that up.
Now please help me to understand how a "a more peaceful or lower level of conflict resolution" would have lead to a different outcome. You know, other than delaying the same end result. Because I doubt that "Chic CEO" was at all interested in settling the matter by admitting the disfavoured gender to their soirée – so much so that they instead preferred to dissolve as an entity. As an aside, what advice would you have given Rosa Parks on her historic bus ride for that matter? Or at a KKK cross burning? The actions of "Chic CEO" were so "in your face" that they had to expect to be called on them. They did not exist in some jurisprudential vacuum where these issues have never arisen and been settled. In fact, they made a bold move, out of ignorance, principle or some linear combination thereof, and lost. To me, that is the lesson to be learned. The name calling after the fact by their butt-hurt supporters is what I believe really brings down the level of discourse.
PS I just figured out how to use the markup code to link back to your comment, and others. Sorry about my first post.
@Retired Tech Guy,
First off no worries about the vocabulary comments. There are times that I have read some of the MRA stuff and there are nuggets that get me to start to nod in agreement with the idea, then they divert way off into back 40 acres and tinfoil that I am turned off. So yea jerks, arseholes whatever works for you works for me.
As to the low-level conflict resolution ideas. Is everything from getting the media involved to staging protests about the discriminatory practices. In my mind and my political teachings from family, school and friends; the use of the government to help resolve issues like this form of discrimination is a form of violence. Since when it is boiled down you walk in with a writ of whatever to have a judge sign it and say to your opponent that they must do X (lets just say put up a white picket fence like everyone else in the neighborhood) then your neighbor still tells you to pack sand. It will eventually become a situation where the police and criminal statues become involved in what is again at its heart a civil discourse that was elevated to a violent situation. Violence in the sense that when we involve contempt of court then you have the government putting a gun to your head and saying "DO X OR DIE!". It that really simple explanation and probably a little wrong, maybe but still strip away most of the law nuances and this is what we have when the government starts to become involved in conflict resolution such as this incident that Ken mentions. It is also how amazing how fast things spin out of hand when lawyers get involved as well.
To take some of your examples you cite there is usually more to the backstory that most might know.
For example the Rosa Parks incident was an act of civil disobedience but it was the final straw after other events that had been building in Montgomery (and the region) with regards to busing and transportation. In the region there were attempts to price out the Blacks from using public transportation and protests were held. In other locations based on court cases brought by others some years before (such as Keys vs Carolina Bus Co. and even using the language in Brown vs Board of Ed) that the segregation of busing was unconstitutional and even illegal at least with regards towards interstate transportation. Add in that a young 15 yr old girl was arrested almost a year prior to Ms. Parks and was part of a larger court case. So Ms. Parks lead the charge to become the face of the fight against segregation, she has also admitted that she did the action as part of being provocative. There had been many attempts and ways to remove the legal barriers towards segregation, most of which were created after the horrid SCOTUS ruling on Plessy. From trying to get representation in government to trying to get the laws overturned at the larger federal level. So that at the point that Ms. Parks did her act of civil disobedience there was not choice but be provocative and in people's faces about it.
As to the KKK burning a cross. To which I would say that it is distasteful speech and ugly speech, but there have been plenty of court cases where cities or counties have said they can't do that sort of thing. Only to see the government get slapped down by the other half of government in saying that as long as they weren't using it to incite violence then it was protected speech and as long as they were doing such event on private property belonging to some member of the group. Again if you look at some of these situations, such as the Skokie Nutsy's government did its darnedest to stop the stupid from asking them to march some place else to asking for fees for extra security in hopes to price out the march to finally denial of the gathering permits. The government lost on that final stall tactic and again the lawyers got involved. Again, the march was a distasteful bit of speech and ugly; but it is protected as long as it doesn't incite others to violence.
I dislike that Chic CEO is discriminatory and the actions they took was wrong. That they should have been called on that discrimination is important. What these guys did was good in the sense that they used the law in their favor, but I wonder if calling out media attention to an exclusionary group like this would have been more helpful. Arranging for a peaceful picket protest as the gathering locations on the public street talking about how Chic CEO denies men's ability to join in violation of the civil rights laws would have been more helpful. Also reading a few of the other news articles, it appears that this lawyer (and the group he belongs to) specifically is using vexatious litigation against women's groups like this in an attempt to destroy them for the mere fact that these groups exist. Not for the fact that they are civil right issues with them. Nope it appears this group likes to go around suing and using the laws on the books about civil rights to make people pay up. Sort of like patent trolls or certain other vexatious litigators that this blog has talked about in the past. That is wrong and stupid way to get people to notice your complaints and a stupid way to play the game in the courts of public affairs.
I approve what these men did. It's high time the militant perpetrators got a taste of their own medicine. Maybe now they'll change the law so outrageously frivolous lawsuits on both sides get cut back, or possibly equality comes out instead of the current suggestion of wrongthink getting businesses shut down and people fired.
I, for one, have suggested many times that Curves should be sued for discrimination since their business strategy is to ban men from working out in their establishments. There are anti-discrimination laws in every state and in the federal code, and Curves explicitly discriminates. Sue them. In every state.
@John Hitchcock
Earlier in the day I cited a CNN article from a couple of weeks ago where a slew of women's groups in California were trying to get a petition started to have the voters change the law to prevent so called "frivolous lawsuits" like this one from happening. The problem as I see it is the 2nd and 43rd order effects from this idea. That we will see the ability of even those people the law was designed to protect given such a higher burden of proof that it will be impossible to bring civil discrimination cases in against true bigotry. So the women who have been abused are going to burn the law down to save the law.
The oppressor chooses the form of the protest, not the protestor.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/05/09/6-reasons-why-pamela-gellers-muhammad-cartoon-contest-is-no-different-than-selma/
The problem arises in who gets to define "true bigotry" and whether Christians will be further persecuted, all legal-like, for actually obeying the Bible. And if people like Amanda Marcotte have any voice at all in the definition process, because if people like her have any say in the matter, it's all over. And if someone says a "men only" organization is true bigotry, I would rather just throw the entire law down the toilet than to try to save any portion of it.
makes me wonder if this person should be running an event for "Chic CEO" as she doesn't seem to understand the first thing about liability. This would set off HUGE warning flags for anyone with a business degree or a passing understanding of business law.
~~~
Well, it's evidence of how women run operations, isn't it?
And so Bastiat is proven right. Again. As the power of the state is expanded we are all incentivized to warp the authority of the state to further our own interests at the expense of our fellow citizens. Bastiat would say that this is a reason to limit the state to it's original and core purpose. I go one step further to say that the state should be abolished, for only when there is no law to distinguish between man and woman shall man and woman be truly equal.
@Alex. Wrong. Good reasoning, except that It's perfectly possible – this is part of my day job as a marketing technologist. Google for "Cluster Analysis".
@Retired Tech Guy:
That you would think this would merit praise, describing such a person as a "top performer", makes your entire account suspect. A "top performer" knows his limits and knows how to maintain good productivity — which people do not do when they are ill or extremely fatigued. While tech culture loves their long hours, there's plenty of research suggesting that productivity starts to drop after a certain point (obviously varies individual to individual).
But worse, one person overworking himself can drag a whole organization down — a developer who makes mistakes is directly costing the organization money whether it be due decreased QA throughput or a shoddier product.
BUT EVEN WORSE an employee who dies takes a great deal of implicit organizational and domain-specific technical knowledge with him and forces the company to go through the expensive process of hiring and retraining a replacement. Meanwhile, there is a shortfall that will either have to be filled by current employees who still have their own workload to deal with, or things will slip through the cracks — again, costing the organization money.
All that lost money should be counted against that employee's productivity.
I also am a little suspect that you could spend a few decades working with tech and not find a single woman who could plausibly be described as a "top performer" — that would seem to defy statistics even assuming that woman are congenitally less capable as technologists than men. You can typically find an outlier as long as your sample size isn't abysmally small. Having worked in tech for 8 years, I have already worked with several women who could plausibly be described as "top performers".
@burke:
Any particular reason I should be skeptical of that guy's account of his career? Any reason why I should find you especially credible?
Who said "the female tech worker" was superior? They seem to be about average on average, but may face a few extra hurdles getting tech jobs. You can see why based on comments like…well, like your own. Or Retired Tech Guy. Or Almost Retired Tech Guy.
It almost seems as if the attitude that women don't have any place in tech is a self-fulfilling prophecy, held as it is by so many people making hiring decisions in the tech world.
Have you ever held up a mistake made by a male CEO as "evidence of how men run operations"?
Another example of how using the state to promote personal preferences, even widely supported preferences, also expands the state for your opponents. If you aren't comfortable seeing a law enforced and interpreted by both President Bernie Sanders and President Rick Santorum, then maybe it shouldn't be a law.
Regulatory power seems great when you want to protect unionized businesses or manufacturing jobs or enforce center-left regulations. But what about regulatory power to protect conservative values and traditional morals? The power to shut down businesses and clubs for regulatory violations was used a couple generations ago to harass gay bars and black businesses.
What seems like the power to do good for Our Guys is also the power to do bad for Their Guys.
This is easy to see when you are a libertarian and are permanently resigned to seeing laws enforced by adherents of different political persuasions.
@Pete Austin
Now we're getting technical. :)
That's kind of what I'm trying to express here. If all your individuals in are the same cluster you will never look outside of it, where the global optimum may be found. My skepticism is that recruiting by external characteristics (e.g. gender, race) will not necessarily pick up members of a different cluster that may be more relevant to the problem at hand (e.g. risk profiles). SOME characteristics may partially map to these clusters – I would expect men to have higher risk tolerance for example – but if they are identifiable it's preferable to use the desired characteristic directly, and only resort to heuristics of the gender/race variety once they have been properly informed by data.
"{{citation needed}}
…which is to say, I see people assert this all the time, and I've never seen any evidence to support it.
Do you have any evidence or argument to back up this position?"
Note: Clark will only accept as evidence 250,000 word screeds from Mencius Moldbug or paranoid ejaculations from Vox Day.
Burke wrote:
But enough about your insecurities.
For whatever it is worth… I find the justification for purposeful gender diversity in the workplace, that women's brains function significantly differently from men's brains… to be problematic. It's a bit like saying that European brains are different from African brains. Isn't it?
It's as though the whole "feminist" modern paradigm has traveled so far into the fringes that it has met the male chauvinists at the other side. After all, what is the primary assertion of the male chauvinist other than that women's brains are different from men's brains. We're emotional, intuitive rather than rational, we don't *reason* we *relate*. Therefore there's all sorts of important things we're not suited for. Right? And now, supposedly, I'm supposed to be happy that someone is explaining that I'm valuable in the workplace because of my different way of thinking? Because what… intuition? My brain is hardwired for relational intelligence instead of logic? Why *thank* you.
It looks like Jason K. said more or less what I just said, but a couple of days ago.
So… what Jason K said. If you believe in a statistically significant break in abilities and attributes along gender or ethnic lines, you're guilty of X-ism.
And what I said… the new X-ists have gone so far in the other direction from the old X-ists that they're meeting on the other side.
@wysinwyg
Well then, I can infer that you have never once set foot into a Silicon Valley tech start-up company, much less worked in one. So your further assertions are plainly completely disjoint with reality, and just short of risible.
Yeah, that's called "marginal productivity," and it only stops contributing when it goes to zero or negative. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you're not very strong with quantitative analysis. You should not continue to do it because you're probably not very good at it. And all your uncited sociological research has very little bearing on the reality of the go-go tech boom environment in the mid to late 1990's. I watched co-workers cancel family Christmas plans under intense schedule pressures. I watched marriages fall apart and co-workers get divorced because of the demands of work. I didn't have time to date at all for years, which gave me more time to work, and succeed in that pressure cooker environment. By all means, reflect on that from your distant, comfy armchair.
Do you even contemplate your own points? Who, do you think, considers the risk of death in their office job? Do you honestly believe that small, start-up companies are doing cost/benefit analysis of working their employees to death? Are you insane? Of course they want their employees to live: live and work. That's why they cater lunch and dinner: so the highly skilled employees remain on site, and continue to work. At $100K/year, a "full time" engineer costs them $50/hour, so if the company can extract another hour or two per day by spending $20 on food, they win $30 – $80 of marginal work per employee per day. In fact, 12 to 16 hour days and 6 or 7 day work weeks were not uncommon. But the pay off – if a start-up had a successful IPO – was the brass ring dangled in front of everyone. This is no secret, and has been covered many times – perhaps you should check the web – and your incredulity strains my imagination. For what it's worth, it's not just in tech, my ex was an associate at a "big law" firm and worked similar hours. Her work stories were much worse than mine because there seems to be very little camaraderie in law, compared to engineering. From her I learned that lawyers hate other lawyers more than anyone else. But their carrot was the senior partners who made crazy big dollars. However, I defer to the lawyers here and their experience.
Additionally, Silicon Valley engineers' tenures are generally far shorter than the rest of the profession. Many engineers, like myself, jumped from job to job, as better opportunities became available. Yes, this was a problem for employers, for the obvious reasons you state, which is why engineering salaries were very high. But employee turnover is a reality, though employers mitigated "expensive retraining" by hiring skilled employees. Of course, the bigger firms' solution to this job mobility has just burned them pretty badly.
So pretty much all of your completely off-the-mark conjecture is irrelevant. I'm so terribly sorry that my narrative does not comport with your ideology. And I did not say that I have never encountered a woman who was a statistical outlier. I dated several very intelligent women – I just never worked with them, because they were not engineers or in my field. In the late '90's, the Silicon Valley population was 2:1 male/female in my age group – I even posted the San Jose Mercury News article about it on my cubicle wall at one company. Within the tech industry, the ratio was much, much higher – closer to 20:1. In fact, it was worse than in engineering graduate school. Of course the sample size was small, but it was my experience, and that is all I can offer.
But, hey, I'm sure that your entire life experience of 8 whole years working, I must assume, in the fringe of tech – well outside of the boom years and Silicon Valley – is totally relevant and overshadows my decades of military, academic, and commercial work history. Party on, white knight!
Law for preventing discrimination prevents discrimination? Color me shocked. Yes, the owners did claim they were over capacity. Why did they overbook and why didn't they refund the two then? Not really seeing the issue. The law is a little harsh when discrimination is commonplace, but if you want to put a stop to it, lawyers like these are doing
God'sthe legislature's work.Bravo to these "Mens Rights Activists."
"Women in Tech" groups are particularly disgusting. They're not interested in women in tech. They just want to shut things down. (Like when Adria Richards attended a tech conference and _overheard_ a double entendre not directed at women–she essentially screamed RAPE and blew her whistle.)
I generally support feminism and think "Social Justice Warrior" sounds like an awesome person. My opinion on Gamergate is somewhat tempered by my opposition to the death penalty.
That said, I always thought the goal was equality and equal access and being judged on individual merits instead of stereotyped and categorized in ways that exclude or disadvantage.
I support these guys, in general. Though I would also support changing the law so that fees are symmetrical, (loser pays) and the punitive portion should go to government civil rights enforcement instead of the plaintiff.
Why should it matter? These people want to hang out with others of their type. Freedom *of* association, by necessity, includes freedom *from* association.
The kicker here is that they got hung up by a law that is designed to prevent *other* people from doing the very natural thing *they* wanted to do.
But, too often, its seen as 'OK' when a 'minority' (which women are not) want to group together and exclude outsiders, and OK for these same people to *force* their inclusion into other groups. But when the tables are turned, all of a sudden it 'THAT'S NOT FAIR!!!!'
There is no such thing as reverse discrimination, only discrimination, you do not want to "help" from any sides of a cause who believe that its a thing that exist, they are the stupid part of the group. If you reverse lynch a white person for being white, that's not the super opposite of lynching somebody.
Its also sad that the Mary Sue and what not fail to realize that in a country where only the Right people get to use laws against Wrong people its not, Right people equal women or minority and Wrong people equal White men, its the actually the reverse because its the people of privileged and in power gets to decide that. Of course, conspiracy theories because that has absolutely never been true most of the time.
@Ken–There is rumbling in the appellate courts here in Texas about how the anti-SLAPP statute here is so very broad and how it is being used.