Well, it is a public holiday here and I’m looking around the newsfeeds. I note that Wired blames Mitchell’s firing on the sexism of geeks. The lobotomized troll who wrote this (what else do you call an assistant professor (lecturer in the commonwealth) who studies “sexism and misogynistic speech in a third rate university?) states the following…

Yet the myth of equality persists, since the technology industry considers itself a meritocracy where the “good” ones — for example, talented engineers and programmers — will rise to the top regardless of nationality, background, race, or gender. When considering the dismal numbers of women (as well as African-American and Latino men) in tech, the meritocratic presumption is that these minorities aren’t good at or interested in technology; otherwise, there would be more of them.

If we admit there are structural barriers to entry, and a culture that actively discourages and women and men of color from participating, then it logically follows that technology is not a meritocracy. And this threatens many dearly held beliefs of technology workers: It suggests those at the top aren’t there because they’re the best, but because of hard work and privilege. It suggests that the enormous wealth generated by tech startups and founders isn’t justified by their superior intelligence. It requires change from a culture in which male normativity is, well, the norm — to a more inclusive one where penis jokes and booth babes are no longer acceptable (and the mere suggestion to discard them isn’t met with a hailstorm of protest).

In short, it requires geeks to re-examine their own revenge fantasies of being outsiders who now rule the world and admit that they might, themselves, be actively excluding others.
Masculinity places just as many limitations on men as femininity does on women.

This is why seemingly tiny, individual acts of sexism — like innocent dongle jokes – matter. Such “microaggressions” combine to reinforce structural sexism. MRAs and garden-variety geeks expressing similar attitudes may not be radical activists … but they’re radical defenders of the status quo.

Now, where shall we start?

1. Serious programming is hard.  You have to be able to hold the stack in your head, and write code without error. I don’t program much now –  I’m old enough to remember when you had to write your own tools to do evidence based medicine — but I do write, and if you interrupt me in the process I lose the thought flow. Consider for a second the Joel Test. Functional companies have offices with doors that can shut so you can get things done.
2. Hard things are done by outliers. An outlier, for those who do not spend time doing statistics, is a person who does not neatly fit within the distribution you are measuring. Another way to say it is that the hard things are done by the talented, the freaks.  And freaks are unequally distributed.  There is a reason that most Rugby players are Maori and Pacific Islanders, most elite marathoners are from Kenya and Tanzania, and most math geeks come from the Chinese and Ashkenazim.  And, as men tend to have a wider distribution of talent, more freaks are male.  It therefore follows that any argument made on some comparison of distribution of ethnicity or gender between the outliers and the general population will find differences. Since most liberal arguments are based on two false assumptions, the tabula rasa (blank slate) and that all outcomes should be equal, and feminism is a subset of liberal progressivism, her main argument is false.
3. Over sensitivity causes damage.  There are true injustices in this world. Historically, the poll tax on the Chinese in NZ, the confiscation of native land throughout the Commonwealth, and Slavery in the sugar and cotton growing areas of the Americas are examples of this. So is the ongoing slave trade in Arabia, and the mass starvation Norks (North Koreans) so that the Kims can wave nukes at whoever is in power in China and the West.  But being over sensitive leads to blindness to the damage you are doing.

Obsidian, writing at the Spearhead, notes that this over sensitivity causes  damage, and Ms Richards is not alone. The comments that follow this are illuminating. Spike notes that sensible women warn against the Richards of this world.

While I was walking to lunch one day last year I happened to overhear some fellow contractors from another company talking as they walked. Two men and a woman, specifically. They were speaking about a second woman who was in their company, and the first woman was warning the men about her, in that she was essentially an Adria Richards (though of course, she didn’t say that…), that she was perpetually aggrievved and looking for excuses to take men down for harassment.

As it happened, I had just gotten out of job a couple years earlier where I had a new subordinate come in who was an attractive young woman who was also utterly untrainable. Not because she was stupid, but because any attempt to tell her what to do that she disagreed with, any attempt to tell her she was wrong, would result in various harassment claims. To my amazement (and yes, relief) she very quickly convinced the bosses that she would work ‘better’ with them than down in the trenches with us losers, and they agreed.

Atlanta Brother concurs

I have had to deal with angry, independent, conflict minded women for awhile now in the workplace. It is stifling,and affects a business’s bottom line, and is destructive to worker moral. The problems that arise from having people who get offended at the slightest offhand statement, is it makes others unlikely to ever want contribute anything to a meaningful to any substantive discussion. Then you end up with an office full of people making benign comments all day resenting each other. Notice how the easily offended feminist type is never really talented, or achieving much in their given field.

Now, the issue of sensitivity has been moved. From groups that find and lynch to groups that say things that certain people do not like. The biggest offender here is the Southern Poverty Law Centre, who according to wikipedia, list the following sites, some of which are on my blogroll.

Anti-LGBT

Main article: List of organizations designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as anti-gay hate groups

Anti-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) or anti-gay can refer to activities in certain categories (or combination of categories): attitudes against or discrimination against LGBT people, violence against LGBT people, LGBT rights opposition and religious opposition to homosexuality.

• Abiding Truth Ministries, (see also Scott Lively)
• American Family Association
• American Vision
• Americans for Truth About Homosexuality
• Bethesda Christian Institute
• Chalcedon Foundation
• Faithful Word Baptist Church
• Family Research Council
• Family Research Institute
• Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment (H.O.M.E.)
• Illinois Family Institute
• MassResistance
• Mission: America
• Parents Action League
• Public Advocate of the United States (see Eugene Delgaudio)
• SaveCalifornia.com
• Sons of Thundr (Faith Baptist Church)
• Tom Brown Ministries
• Traditional Values Coalition
• True Light Pentecost Church
• United Families International
• Westboro Baptist Church
• Windsor Hills Baptist Church
• You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International

Anti-immigration

Anti-Immigration typically means opposition to immigration or efforts to lower the political or legal status of specific ethnic or cultural groups because the groups are considered hostile or alien to the natural culture, and it is assumed that they cannot be assimilated.^[15] Nativism favors the interests of certain established inhabitants of an area or nation as compared to claims of newcomers or immigrants.^[16] It may also include the re-establishment or perpetuation of such individuals or their culture.

• American Border Patrol, (see Glenn Spencer)^[17]
• American Immigration Control Foundation/Americans for Immigration Control
• American Patrol/Voice of Citizens Together (see Glenn Spencer)
• Border Guardians
• California Coalition for Immigration Reform
• Concerned Citizens and Friends of Illegal Immigration Law Enforcement
• Federation for American Immigration Reform
• Save Our State
• Social Contract Press
• United for a Sovereign America (USA)
• US Border Guard & Border Rangers

Anti-Muslim

Anti-Muslim or Islamophobia is prejudice against, hatred or fear of Islam or Muslims.^[18][19] The term seems to date back to the late 1980s,^[20] but came into common usage after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States to refer to types of political dialogue that appeared prejudicially opposed to Muslims.^[21]

Let’s consider the tactics of the progressives for a second. Firstly, they bully us.

Florida Atlantic University has maintained for a week now that no student was suspended for refusing to participate in an exercise in which students were told to write “Jesus” on a piece of paper and to stand on it. And for a week now, the lawyer for one student has been saying that the university suspended his client for objecting to the lesson. Florida’s governor and numerous other politicians have also joined the discussion, denouncing the lesson that was used, and demanding to know why the student was suspended.

But the president of the faculty union at Florida Atlantic asserted in an interview with Inside Higher Ed Thursday that the university has neglected to explain that the student faced charges for making a threat against the instructor. Chris Robé, the head of the faculty union, said he has spoken to the instructor, Deandre Poole.

Robé — who did not name the student — said that Poole has been ordered by the university not to talk to any reporters, and is thus unable to defend himself, even as he has been widely criticized as anti-Christian (among other things). Poole is non-tenure-track, working on a one-year contract.

Secondly, as the quote shows, they double down and make any attempt to correct their bullying illegal or censured.

Thirdly, they then blame the very people they bully for the lack of productivity that their very policies produce.

And if that does not work, they call us names. Racism has now lost any meaning, and if the SPLC’s list of hate groups (although I cannot see how a solo blog, like Sultan Knish, can be a group) then the term hate group has also lost meaning.

The message is that you cannot speak freely and honestly. Well, that puts me on the side of the hate groups. I would much rather people who I think are dangerous — such as RAM, most Wahabite Islamists, or the National Front — are allowed to speak than speech is restricted to the appropriate.

It stops honest debate. Honest debate is offensive. And this site is not a hate site: it is just labelled by the offendari as such.

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