Mic.com has obtained a long list of e-mails from primarily female Apple employees (but also a few male employees), detailing a sexist culture inside the company that nobody seems to want to address. The 50 pages of e-mails were handed to Mic by an Apple employee, and obviously, all people involved have been anonymised.
“With such love for a company that does so much good, it is with a heavy heart that I declare my resignation from Apple,” a former employee wrote in an email obtained by Mic. “Despite all attempts to seek justice within this corporation, the cries of several minority employees about the toxic and oppressive environment have gone unanswered. I have witnessed the complete and utter disenfranchising of the voices of men and women of color and the fault lies not only in the direct management staff but in the response of those tasked with protecting employee rights. I write this letter hoping to highlight the areas that these departments have failed to properly support employees and as such have hence left Apple, Inc. culpable for various EEOC and ethical violations.”
According to Claire*, “several people” who have quit, citing a “white, male, Christian, misogynist, sexist environment,” were not given exit interviews. “Their departure is being written up as a positive attrition,” she told Mic.
This obviously – but sadly – doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Silicon Valley is an inherently toxic environment dominated by white males, and despite all the talk from Tim Cook and various company bloggers, Apple is not the special diversity flowerchild farting rainbows and puking unicorn dust it claims to be. I mean, this is a company who considers having a Canadian speaking on stage during an event as “diversity”.
From these emails, a picture emerges of a company culture actively trying to get women to leave, actively preventing them from getting into mid-level and top-level leadership positions. From everything I’ve ever heard about Silicon Valley culture – this is par for the course, no matter the company.
This article is an exceptional example of bullshit: strong on condemnation, very light on facts and quotations and contains mutually exclusive statements. Eg. how a 32% women environment may happen to be “male” and “misogynist”? All of remaining 68% Apple employees are misogynist, and only they contribute to corporate environment? Bullshit.
If Apple was a brothel, lack of gender diversity would be an issue. If Apple was in model agency business, racial diversity would be important. If Apple was a prison, lack of religeous diversity would be a concern. But Apple is in business of computer hardware and software; the only diversity that counts here is diversity of thought.
Edited 2016-09-14 22:54 UTC
Yes, and diversity of thought requires diversity of experience and background – hence diversity of gender and ethnicity and so on.
Now this is a sexist and racist statement. The diversity of exeperience and background depends on experience and background, not on ethnisity, gender and so on. Even geographic distribution contributes more then all of those factors combined.
Edited 2016-09-14 23:59 UTC
And experience and background also does depend on ethnicity and gender and so on. If geographic distribution contributes more, gee, I wonder how different places could have diversity? Perhaps those geographies themselves have diversity of ethnicity and gender etc? God forbid you should think further than one level of abstraction.
* Any reasonable person would also realize that the “and so on” part would include “geographic distribution”. Here are other diversity criteria that may be included as part of “so on”, since it’s painfully clear some people are incapable of thinking past one level of abstraction:
Age**
Field of study
Introversion vs Extraversion
** Of course, ageism in tech is another clear case. Yet, by your reasoning, unless all young people are actively bullying old people, ageism in tech DOESN’T EXIST LALALA I’M COVERING MY EYES AND EARS.
Edited 2016-09-15 00:32 UTC
And much, much more. In fact the factors are so numerous that every single human being is unique. Thus framing diversity in gender, racial, ethnic, etc. categories is absolutely pointless.
Another example wishful thinking. No, not “every single human is unique”. And definitely people do treat each other differently based on gender, racial and ethnic etc, and they do tend to treat each other in broad strokes. It amazes me people can deny that.
He has to deny it, because he feels threatened. For decades – centuries, even – the people in power looked at the white men they were exploiting, telling them “hey, your life might be shit, but at least it’s not as bad as that black guy/woman/Jew/muslim/etc.” Now that black people, women, etc. are asking and fighting for equal treatment, the white men feel threatened – they feel that their dominant position in society – no matter how crap that position is for 95% of white men – will get less dominant.
It’s divide and conquer. Just tell a bunch of stupid, impressionable white guys that black people and women are coming for their shit jobs and little bit of soothing dominance they have over black people and women, and these stupid white guys will fall in line faster than you can say wtf.
There’s a resurgence in this bullshit with people like Trump, Wilders, the Brexit idiots, Le Pen, and so on.
Edited 2016-09-15 08:15 UTC
He doesn’t seem all that threatened to me. Skeptical of bold claims made with insufficient evidence to convince him otherwise seems more like it.
I haven’t worked there. I haven’t read the emails, nor can I vouch for their authenticity, can you?
When this was the case, I was all for it. These times are long gone. They already are more privileged then white straight males, and they are asking for yet more privilege. Femenists are asking for changing the way rape accusations are treated. Black ask for reparations. Etc ask for etc. This thing is not about equity any more. It is about supremacy.
Edited 2016-09-15 12:30 UTC
Black people asking not to be slaughtered en masse by police and women asking for equal treatment in the workplace = supremacy. OK.
Just keep digging, buddy.
Again, nobody is against equal treatment of men and women anywhere. Problem is with numerous other demands: entitlement to maintenance with no father’s say over abortion, redefinition of consent, changes in court and police process regarding to rape. And that is in countries where women literaly have more rights then men as set in law.
Thom, if you try to misrepresent my arguments hard enough, of course you’ll have a moral victory over imaginary me. If that is what you want, I won’t even try to argue. But if you entered the discussion because you want to point out something where I am actually wrong, please, refrain from guessing my thoughts and putting your words in m y mouth. I am able to speak for myself, and misrepresenting my opinion in public won’t do anything good to you.
Edited 2016-09-15 14:43 UTC
So it sounds like your views might be considered progressive relatively to your country and society, while being conservative relatively to other countries which are more developed wrt civil rights. Nothing more than that.
Precisely. My point was that being conservative does not necessarily mean being motivated by fear of loosing social status or by founding self-respect on being better off then poor discriminated people elsewhere, as stated above.
And I just realized that somehow I ended up in defensive position after being attacked for just stating my opinion. Brilliant job, guys.
Usually have personal difficulty on long lines of argumentation. [i] Get the point on yours.
Such a big World that Everyone of Us is minority at a lot of life’s facets. Many times realizing -late on the conversation- that our position is actually at a corner of the panorama.
The politic debate has a dark, burlesque lighting. Don’t believe that ultimate intent could be to get all the crumblings falling from the table, all for themselves [put your ‘them’ here].
Somehow I realize that this is Minor Leagues for you. Being on the defensive sometimes is just part of the fun.
They aren’t being slaughtered on mass by police. Most blacks killed in the USA are killed by other blacks.
Don’t mind Thom, he’s a white European male and Dutch supremacist who never experienced any oppression and should therefore check his privilege before dutchplaining in these matters.
Gotta love this game.
A very white and powerful game, amirite?
Nah, talking down on people without knowing what they experienced is. Black people and women are not the only ones experiencing racism and sexism, and assuming as such is very narrow minded in my opinion.
The Dutch supremacist part was a bit of satire given that you’re always keen on downtalking the rest of the world when comparing them to the Netherlands. You’re just another person like the rest of us who judges the world from his tiny corner with his own limited perspective defined by his own culture and background while pretending to be the enlightened one with an open mind (you’re not). I just think that’s funny.
My opinion is that we don’t really know what happened. People respond differently to equal input, women included. My girlfriend would just make a joke back and honestly finds women rather boring on the workfloor as everyone’s always careful about joking around them (even when not about them). You can jokingly question a male friend’s capabilities and everyone will laugh. But that’s a lot harder to do with a female friend. So equal treatment is apparently not experienced as equal.
Anyway, none of us were there, it’s hard to tell what the atmosphere was. Perhaps it really was mean. Perhaps it was in jest and a lack of communication spiralled it out of control. We don’t know but I’d rather not judge anyone.
Edited 2016-09-15 13:32 UTC
Give me a break. You’re the kind of person that’d call a Muslim directly quoting the Quran or Hadith an Islamophobe. You’re only interested in listening as long it comports to your naive worldview.
What you said is the definition of white guilt. I don’t feel guilty for what someone else did in the past. The son shouldn’t need to pay for the sins of their father.
O_O
Please tell me you’re tired. You’re too smart to have said something so stupid with a clear head.
Well, thank your for this gem. I don’t see a point to continue from here.
Brexit proves you wrong there. It passed by a slim majority, and not all voting on racist issues, yet the amount of hate crimes and racist incidents has risen a hell of a lot since the vote, to the point where a lot of Britain’s non-white population really fear for their safety. So it doesn’t take a majority acting out for intolerant environs to form. Especially, in the case of a company like Apple, if management has a higher proportion of intolerant individuals.
Great example.
Citation needed. Or are you talking about emergence of UK branch of BLM?
This is easily Googlable. “Hate crimes rise after Brexit vote”. Again people like you keep demonstrating wilful, malicious ignorance so that you can keep your fantasy about living in a post-racial post-etc society.
No doubt you’ll find someway to weasel out of it with yet some other wishful thinking. Probably “it’s all just a coincidence that hate crimes rose after the Brexit vote” or some other reality denying nonsense.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/brexit-hate-crime-racism…
Use that one, if in doubt there is also pretty much every non-murdoch paper reporting it.
Taken together this spells out that there are SOME shitheads in that group that have decided to make things a lot worse for the people they hate because they perceive the majority to not mind. It’s not to far of a leap to apply the same social modeling to Apple. It would take many and they would only need to be a few management positions for the effect to be heard
Interestingly, violent crime rate in June was actually lower then in May, while “hate crime” rate in the last 7 days of June increased by 58%? Sorry, but this increase demonstrates the flexibility of the term, not the criminal situation.
P.S.: It is actually quite interesting that the article you’ve linked uses word “racism” for xenophobia. Another instance of language wrestling that is required to prove the point of “racism in UK” thing.
^A^1 http://ukcrimestats.com/National_Picture/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/brexit-hate-crime-racism…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/01/steep-rise-in-racist-inc…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/racist-incidents-skyrocket-afte…
Thank you for sharing this piece. It clearly demonstrates that the highlighted “hate crimes” mostly display xenophobic attitude, which was a leading tune of pro-BREXIT voting. Supposedly anti-BREXIT voters’ “hate crimes” rates went up as well since they lost. As it happens during political compaigns, people are saturated and are more prone to expressing the opinions they would otherwise keep for themselves. So UK finds itself in situation where majority of population being either active haters or particularly responsive to active haters.
As the post I responded to said: citation needed.
If I had a citation, I wouldn’t say “supposedly”. That said, even your sources say that only a “majority” of “hate crimes” are “racist” in nature. That leaves a lot of room for non-racist “hate crimes.” It is a pity that modern media are so concerned with xenophobia that they don’t even try to report on that non-“racist” part of the hate crimes.
Edited 2016-09-16 18:16 UTC
Those articles are based on the statistics reported by the police forces across the UK, who have specific requirements for crime recording. Those requirements were the same before and after the referendum result. The recorded crimes in those categories increased sharply.
OK, I guess I’ll have to explain in more detail. First, there was a sharp increase in “hate crimes” during June. It peaked on the day after results of BREXIT vote were announced. After that it declined, but eventually totaled in 42% increase over previous year. NPCC’s press release notes:^A^1
<blockquote>The main type of offence seen during this two week period is violence against the person, which is primarily harassment, common assault and other violence (verbal abuse, spitting and ^aEUR~barging^aEURTM). The second and third most prevalent incidents were public order offences, followed by criminal damage.</blockquote>
Now, that does not sound inherently racist. It sounds like a lot of angry people doing bad things. That is the statistics from police force.
Next, there are articles you’ve linked connecting the increased “hate crime” rate to “racism” using anecdotal evidence [of xenophobia but not racism, which already sets doubt about the credability of publication]. That includes various vague statements which are pretty much summed up by the following quote:^A^2
<blockquote>Many of the alleged perpetrators cited the decision to leave the EU explicitly.</blockquote>
What exactly is “many”? None of your articles give precise numbers within those “hate crimes.” They basically state that and continue with examples.
On September 7 NPCC released another statement saying:^a'
<blockquote>The latest returns from August 5 ^aEUR“ 18 2016 show 2778 hate crimes and incidents. This is a decrease of 479 offences on the previous fortnight but it is a 14 per cent increase on the equivalent period in 2015.</blockquote>
Another NPCC release of interest:^a'
<blockquote>We have seen a significant rise in the reporting of hate crime and urge victims to continue to come forward.
[…]
As a result, we are seeing significant rises in reporting of hate crime and there were 12,845 convictions last year, which is a 4.7% increase on the previous year.</blockquote>
So your source of statistical information specifically notes that the rise in “hate crime” rate is due to increased number of reports, not increased number of crimes. But the most interesting part is that monotonic increase in hate crimes before BREXIT. If we account for this 4.7% yearly increase, the absolute percentages from two reports above turn into relative 36% for June and 9% for August. So even if we ignore NPCC’s opinion on reporting rate increase, essentially the lsting effect of BREXIT is no more then 9% increase. (I won’t be particularly amazed if that number will go down yet further.)
Now why were we discussing this? Yes, because of this quote:
So, what do we have here? There was a slim majority on the side that was primarily motivated by xenophobic reasons, and the outcome is 9% increase. That proves absolutely nothing.
^A^1 http://news.npcc.police.uk/releases/hate-crime-undermines-the-diver…
^A^2 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-eu-referendum…
^A^3 http://news.npcc.police.uk/releases/tackling-hate-crime-remains-a-p…
^a' http://news.npcc.police.uk/releases/we-will-work-with-others-across…
Sorry, did you just suggest that a 9% increase is not statistically significant? The Leave campaign only one by a couple of points. 9% is not some sort of statistical slight of hand. It directly supports the statement you’re so desperately trying to disprove.
1) It passed by a slim majority.
2) There has been a rise in hate crime since the vote.
You’re twisting in the wind.
Even with that idiotic definition of the “hate crime” and even under assumption that 100% of “hate crimes” were xenopobic in nature, there are 2778 xenophobic incidents per two weeks, which is 75006 incidents per year or 0.1151988941% of “hate crime” per UK citizen per year. That is 0.0345231147% incidents per UK citizen per year more then in 2015, not accounting for normal annual growth. And that in a country where 48% of population would be “hate crime” offenders if they merely express their view. By no means it is not statistically significant change in UK environment.
So how exactly does it prove my statement above wrong?
^A^1 https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3748…
^A^2 http://news.npcc.police.uk/releases/we-will-work-with-others-across…
^A^3 http://news.npcc.police.uk/releases/tackling-hate-crime-remains-a-p…
Edited 2016-09-17 12:35 UTC
Or, to put it another way, there was a 9% rise in recorded hate crime in the UK after the referendum. I’m not sure why you felt the need to break it down to 10 significant digits. Oh unless it makes the numbers look really small and insignificant.
Oh.
Oh, so you too know better then me why I do what I do, yes? These numbers are raw output from my calculator, copy-pasted with the amount of significant digits it provided.
Know better? No. Only you alone know why you’re so desperate to deflect such a basic statistic. I mean, whatever; you obviously have some reason.
OK, one last attempt. The figures of the “hate crimes” are so small that an increase by 9%, by 14%, by 42%, or even by 900% won’t actually indicate any sort of “toxic” climate. UK is just not a country with a “toxic” climate. Look elsewhere.
See, the level of humidity in my location changed over a couple of days by 60%. Does it mean that my location changed climate zone? No, because this figure, although statistically significant in its context and directly related to the definition of climate zone, does not necessarily mean that the climate zone change occured.
Now, if there was indeed “toxic” climate coming to the UK, the rate of “hate crimes” would increase over time. The 9% figure that you chose to poke in my face as an evidence that BREXIT vote outcome formed “toxic” environment in UK would not be a product of decrease by 29% percent since June, but rather an increase.
Those pesky facts, poking in your face eh? The 9% figure is evidence of an increase of 9%. Because the number went up. It increased.
Exactly! That is exactly the point I am trying to make. There was an increase. The statistics on “hate crimes” meaningfully changed. In context of “hate crime” prevention, “hate crime” victimology and maybe even police procedures that makes some sense (little or lot of, I don’t know and I am not interested in).
But this increase on its own does not prove that another related figure changed: the “toxity” of the social environment in UK.
I am not interested at all in “hate crimes,” because I am not a believer and was not indoctrinated. What I am interested in is whether there is a meaningful change in foreigners’ security and overall ability to make a worthwhile living in UK. As demonstrated by impact of this particular (very real and statistically significant) change in “hate crimes”, neither old nor new level is statistically significant. That is all this argument is about. It was never about significance of “hate crime” rate change in its own context, because its own context is just irrelevant to the discussion: we were not dicussing criminology of hatred in UK, we were discussing social environment in UK. And I demonstrated that the change in “hate crimes” rate (again, very real and statistically significant in its narrow domain) is absolutely insignificant in overall picture of the topic we discussed.
Now, You failed to produce a meaningful argument and retorted to stating the same statement over and over, even after I proved it to be irrelevant to the topic of discussuion. So, please, either bring your evidence that the increase in “hate crimes” rate did bring significant change to the social environment, or stop insulting my intelligence by implying that I am too stupid to understand that by this point you jsut could not avoid understanding what I am talking about.
I’m just going to leave this quote here for anyone else reading the thread. You heard it: a statistically significant increase in recorded hate crime does not actually reflect an increase in hatred.
OK, so you insist that absolute value of “hate crime” rate indicates whether society is “toxic” or not. Then what is the number of “hate crimes” that makes society “toxic”?
Dunno, but I’m going to with a statistically significant rise of 9% means there has been a statistically significant rise.
Any more hairs you’d like to split?
OK, so you have found a figure that fits your narrative and willingly ignore more relevant figure that doesn’t. Well, thank you for this discussion.
Facts are such a bitch.
Well, unfortunately for you, Britain is not in a state of racist chaos as you seem to think or hope it was.
He didn’t say it was racist chaos, did he? A sharp rise in hate crimes is a sharp rise, whether or not it has tipped over into chaos or not.
You seem to think only white males are capable of hate crimes. Usually the case is the opposite. For example in Finland, my home country, the number of hate crimes has increased after last autumn’s asylum seeker catastrophe because asylum seekers are committing hate crimes on each others and sometimes against native people aswell.
Not a single asylum seeker has been a victim of violence by natives whereas just a couple weeks ago two ‘refugees’ murdered a man they were trying to rob.
Edited 2016-09-15 08:36 UTC
He was talking about Brexit and the aftermath. You know: Britain + Exit? Not Finland. Try to keep up.
And we were talking about Apple employees in the US, not Britain. Try to keep up.
He was using Brexit of an example of how it doesn’t require the majority of a group to create a toxic environment because the other guy couldn’t fathom how such a thing could happen, despite it being how things happen.
Your attempt to bring Finland’s problems into this has NO RELEVANCE to that discussion.
Try to keep up.
No, I simply pointed out your flawed logics in assuming that only white males commit hate crimes. (Isn’t it funny how bigoted you seem to be, accepting examples only in the cases that suit you, while flagging everything else as offtopic blabbering.)
Well, statistically speaking that might be true in some cases, because police are often reluctant to classify any other hate crimes officially as hate crimes.
Pretty safe to assume that this is the policy in the UK aswell, since they are apparently also bringing “misogyny” in as an official crime category, and happen to define “misogyny” to be something as “hatred towards females done by males”.
Edited 2016-09-15 09:35 UTC
The racists / nationalists rear their head when they think they have public approval. These are a very small minority of people that are doing these disgraceful things and do not represent everyone else.
Your logic is is the same as “Well some Muslims are Terrorists, therefore all Muslims condone Terrorism”.
“There were some people after Brexit committed hate crimes, so therefore everyone who voted out condones hate crimes.”
Which is obviously nonsense.
And we were talking about Apple employees in the US, not Brexit nor situation in Britain. Try to keep up.
Edited 2016-09-15 09:01 UTC
They’ve also redefined hate crimes willy nilly at the moment. In Nottingham at the moment it can be a hate crime to ask a woman out on a date.
Yes the nationalists / racists come out of the woodwork every so often. The same happened in 2009, they let BNP on question time, Nick Griffin was exposed for who he was and BNP haven’t been heard of since.
“…Britain is not in a state of racist chaos as you seem to think or hope it was.”
;D Put ‘Polish’ on your Job Application Form. Good luck.
Some people only need to feel they’re in a majority before they start acting like arseholes
Steve was arsehole#1 and it helps to get work done.
Also there are less stressful jobs exist like cleaning toilets, etc.
Edited 2016-09-15 00:06 UTC
If I remember correct, you SJWs call this “silent agreement” and consider all these people to be racist/misogynist/whatever aswell. So it seems that most of Apple employees who are not “white cis male scum” are also haters towards the people that left the company claiming some sort of discrimination. Why do you concentrate only on white males? Sounds quite racist and sexist.
Edited 2016-09-15 08:30 UTC
Your use of the term SJW to label me is an ad hominem and invalidates your argument. You lose.
It describes a lot of people like you that seem to revel in identity politics
Hahahaha.
Wait, you were being ironic, right?
I know you think you are being smart by saying that, I am calling out his behaviour.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics
“I identify as A, and Identify you as B, therefore you cannot as a B can’t criticise my reasoning because you are B”.
That is what SJWs do, because you are part of their group and are the other you cannot have a valid opinion or even a right to one.
Therefore it is no an ad-hominem attack as he claimed.
Edited 2016-09-15 17:31 UTC
Right, but by invoking a group and labelling it (“SJW”) you’ve done precisely that. You have automatically created a group of “them” who are not like “us”, and then set yourself up to be angry at whatever it is “they” are for.
Rather than, I don’t know, excepting that people are not homogenous, may have different views and experiences, and that listening and engaging different people in conversation may be more productive than dismissing them entirely based on a false premise.
Although I guess that’s hard and it’s easier to just throw a bunch of people into a box and get angry at the label you’ve put it in.
Well I made my case why I didn’t think a lot of this was sexist and Thom’s response was:
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?634383
You are accusing me of doing this, and I am not the one doing it. Those guys are, there is proof right there.
You’re both doing the same thing. Mainly being dismissive and angry for no good reason instead of engaging and debating. It’s the modern political scourge.
I am not shouting or swearing at anyone, so why I am angry? I am questioning their motivations and logic.
You are accusing me of doing something when I am doing the opposite as I have demonstrated.
Edited 2016-09-15 18:06 UTC
Maybe I am reading too much into your reply; but to be honest this entire discussion depresses me. Political discourse in general depresses me; everyone just wants to shout the loudest and hope the can drown out the other side. Hell, people talk about “opponents” like it’s a boxing match (maybe not specifically in this discussion but in general).
I find it disappointing that if you question the narrative you are told “you can’t because you are a straight white male”.
Sometimes it’s valid. You may not have the same experiences as the group in question.
Usually the “Straight white male” problem is that it more often than not boils down to “I’m a straight white male and I see no problems with homophobia/racism/sexism”. Well no, you probably don’t: because you haven’t faced the same situations and had the same experiences. That in no way invalidates the experiences of someone who is gay/black/female, and it doesn’t mean they’re just complaining for the fun of it.
Firstly this assumes (as a White Male) that I assume that I don’t take discrimination seriously (I do). However I do think that there are a lot of people now claim discrimination over almost anything. This de-values claims by affected individuals when there is genuine discrimination. It will become a boy who cried wolf scenario, everyone will become skeptical of any claim.
I don’t think any of the claims in this article were genuine discrimination. Some things may have been in bad taste or ill-advised, but that doesn’t mean it is sexist.
Secondly
I am a nerd, I was a bullied at School (quite badly) by other kids. I know what it is like for people to be genuinely horrible to you. None of these examples were people being malicious.
The major examples in the article:
* The “rape” joke isn’t a rape joke, it is a joke about their boss being a hardass. If they said “He is going to murder us”, she probably wouldn’t have battered an eye.
* Men and Women complain about the spouses all the time. News at 11.
* A guy being not to be “bitch”, is basically other co-workers telling him “stop being dramatic, and be more professional”. Most guys take the mickey out of other guys … especially when they are acting like dicks.
* The lady that complained about her desk seating late at night was being irrational, she is in a secured building. I would imagine Apple HQ would be quite secure, I have worked in similar environments and there is security patrolling and key card access is needed to enter and exit every room.
Edited 2016-09-16 17:39 UTC
The thing is, it doesn’t always have to be consciously malicious. Without wishing to go into details, and as you mentioned it; when you were bullied at school, was everything direct? Did the bullies just walk up, punch you in the face and walk away, or was it more of a general pattern over an extended period of time? Did it put you on edge? Did you analyse everything that was said for intent, and sometimes wonder if a comment overheard was directed at you, or not?
Because I know that happened when I was bullied.
No imagine that sort of thing continued into your adult life. How do you think you might react to that general pattern of behaviour from others, both perceived & real?
I would try to keep any paranoia which is what the “perceived” crap is to a minimum.
You can’t say that because someone felt something was sexist (which is subjective) it was actually sexist which is objective, there is no easy answer, buy saying the things Apple is sexist because of leaked mails, not having a link to those mails and have some things that are at worst ill-advised does not make Apple sexist.
Edited 2016-09-16 21:41 UTC
So your solution to racism, sexism & homophobia is to tell everyone to man up and get over it?
Good thing there’s talent, and a lot of it, well outside of Silicon Vally, that’s certainly not dominated by personal preferences, gender, race and so forth.
I work in a diversity rich, highly complex technology environment and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Edited 2016-09-14 22:53 UTC
“…I mean, this is a company who considers having a Canadian speaking on stage during an event as “diversity”. ”
Thom, this is -obviously- sarcasm. Full of hubris, on taking the offended side. The industry is one of the highest on educated alien visa contracting.
Gender unbalance beyond the Corps. It’s an Occidental Cultural issue with Women at Science & Technology.
[Don’t know the inside of the issue at Cupertino]. Wishing the best on sustaining those personal arguments.
In this brave new world where some one else is to blame, there is a whole lot of attention paid to the Eeyores.
The quote you picked suggested racist. Why go with that the sexist angle, and then pick a racist suggesting quote?
Not that one is better than the other, it just seemed really odd.
…but not in the way that Thom is thinking of.
– Female dominated fields like nursing and teaching are protected from global competition by licensing bodies that have often failed to protect the public, and mostly serve to limit the supply of workers and keep fees high (read: gouge consumers). At the same time, when majority-male industries struggle to compete with East Asia on price, feminists sneer about a “mancession.” It’s time to put *their* jobs up for global bidding. They wouldn’t be laughing then.
– An advanced Latin or physics teacher in my state is required to take “play therapy” (baby sitting) classes in order to be licensed. That’s why most of our public school teachers are women. The only legitimate argument for such a gender-biased requirement is that a high school teacher might be required to fill in in a grade school class at some point, but that argument should be even more applicable to the military. Solders have to do things outside of their Military Occupational Specialties in emergencies, but the military isn’t allowed to have the sort of arbitrary requirements that schools use to keep men out of teaching.
– My “progressive” state is cracking down on sex trafficking, but *not* labor trafficking. The disparity in prosecutions is more than 100:1 even though we have a lot of meat processing plants that are notorious for hiring workers without visas and exploiting them. If you told someone who works in the food industry here that there’s equal enforcement, they’d laugh at you.
– If my girlfriend gets pregnant, I can be on the hook for the next 18 years. It doesn’t matter if I consented to have a kid. Supposedly this is ‘for the good of the child,’ but I’m physically incapable of creating one. The only process that I can initiate is fertilization, and that’s been ruled by the supreme court to be so insignificant that a woman’s implicit right to privacy outweighs it. How can her implicit right trump my *explicit* right to be ‘secure in my person, house, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures?’
So yes, the US is a deeply sexist country. Go Apple!
I have no truck with Thom and his seeming infatuation with right-on causes but I will say this: you are an incredibly creepy and weird person.
The principle of “you stick your dick in it, you own the consequences” applies to women just as much as it does to electrical sockets, meat grinders and policemen’s pockets.
Edited 2016-09-15 04:07 UTC
The female has a choice to keep it on get an abortion, while the male does not.
Not if the pro-lifers have anything to say about it.
The US is a crazy mixed up country.
So don’t go there and don’t buy/use any US products including movies, books, medicine, etc. No one is forcing you to.
I’ve had to go there once for work. It did not motivate me to return for vacation. I’ll follow your advice.
I try to avoid it whenever I can. Sometimes I can’t unfortunately, such as when I have to travel there for business, and when I have to use Windows in work. But I’m also not a martyr and will use US products when there’s no reasonable alternative. Just because a country is crazy and mixed up doesn’t mean they don’t occasionally come up with a decent product.
Yes it is, but it is one of the only countries where you can pretty much say what you want. Even in the UK we don’t really have free-speech like the USA does and Free-speech is a wonderful thing.
Your ass is a crazy mixed up country.
So? The male has a choice to not impregnate the woman in the first place.
You have to take the consequences of your actions, it’s add simple as that.
To play devils advocate for a minor second, there are legitimate times when that doesn’t work. Take for example a guy meets a girl through and app, has sex with her but the condom breaks, she is against abortion and has the baby and demands support. Or if she says she’s on the pill but isn’t.
HOWEVER the sticking point is that in those cases is that there are, in almost every country, laws or judicial precedent to give a guy the power over such situations. If the US doesn’t have those laws then they do as much a horrible job at protecting a fathers rights as they do mothers rights
I know we’re not perfect, but what failures to protect mothers’ rights are you thinking of?
Most Democratic-leaning states have pretty strong social safety nets (which predate Obamacare). Even in Texas, the fight over family planning is about the density of clinics, not the legality of the procedures. And the conservative hard-liners lost. We also have free or subsidized daycare in many jurisdictions.
If proud of being a walking liability, Christ sake, sterilize.
Will tell female kids to hold umbrellas, when you’re wandering around.
And you should stand outside a department store holding the automatic door open for every women who walks by.
Did it hurt? This goes for any walking ‘sperm fountain’. And I have better uses for magnums.
And yes, I hold the door open for women at my grounds. I’m that kind of imbecile minority. Two lost seconds of my precious life.
“…holding the ‘automatic’ door…”
????
I get your point on equality, NorseWind. Not the same for a CEO’s son to simply set aside an additional check for ‘private, past mistakes’, than for a newly-arrived alien, frustrated-education new parent to comply.
But that is no reason to pass the heat down the chain. If you are who you say, I am totally confident you are a gentleman. You are brave enough to pass the heat up the chain, and to endure the heat that -in justice- belongs to You.
I forgot to ask – are you thinking of any countries in particular? I don’t doubt that there are ones with saner laws on this issue, but I just don’t know of any.
The sarcasm was against the last Spiron devil’s argument:
“… in almost every country, laws or judicial precedent to give a guy the power over such situations. If the US doesn’t have those laws then they do as much a horrible job at protecting a fathers rights”
In almost every [modern western] Country, law is about protecting unborn rights.
Takes two to tango dude.
What a bunch of retrograde wannabe chivalry.
Are people who insist on Men ‘manning up’ (in this case 18 years of indentured servitude as you would put it) sexist? Yes. These same people probably also think woman are ‘natural’ caretakers. Another grand sexist statement.
Heck, an academic feminist would probably say as much. Something along the line of Men being just as much victims of patriarchy and so on and so forth.
The problem is that academic feminism is not what most people on the ground talk about. Pretty much the same as any movement.
Despite whatever progress we’ve made, traditional men still see woman as weaker and in need of protection. Traditional men still see a man’s role to sacrifice and be the work horse of society. And a woman who is not an academic feminist, but just someone who wants what’s good for woman is likely to just pick and choose without a coherent ideology. Pretty much like everyone else. Conservatives for example might want the government to stay out of their life… but then it comes to drugs, and they want the government in it.
So when the tides blow towards men protecting woman; they are they to play along with that sexist role.
When the tides blow towards women being independent… they are there to play along with that feminist role.
I’ve had such talks before and the one thing I’ve come to is something kind of funny in my mind.
For men to have equal rights (in all the areas you can enumerate on mass), they need the voice of a woman to make that claim and to make that change. Quite frankly, powerful men don’t give a rats behind about the plight of oppressed men. History has shown that and it continues. And a man can’t make that claim to women on mass because he’ll just be seen as a whiny creep.
For women to have equal rights, they need the voice of men to make that claim and to make that change. We just saw this experience in the past 50 years.
So rather than argue with a traditional man who is going to try to shame you on ‘manning up’, work with friendly women to advance things.
Heck, the US as always in a magical land of contradictions. Big on women’s rights. Yet also still very traditional in some senses.
But if you look at more feminist countries like say Sweden or heck even Canada, you do see men’s issues being pushed by feminist. Everything from paternity leave to more child care; to a solid welfare system. Heck just recently it was posed in Sweden to allow men to opt out of a child’s life. Of course it was shot down… (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3476888/Fathers-able-choose…). Even Sweden is not that liberal yet for that.
The next generation of men/woman will be interesting.
We have to remember, those in power are still very traditional. Even if they have accepted rights, they still hold certain views on society and how it should operate.
…and since none of them brought it up, my point has been made.
Thom, I’m not too sure of your point of view.
But I’ll just point throw in my personal view point now.
I look at the world, and if I had to pick a side, I choose the feminist side instead of a patriarchal side at this point in history.
Do I think either of them are on ‘my side’. Probably not. But the realization that powerful men are not on the side of men stuck with me when I saw it for what it is.
The reality is that I like a good workplace. I like one with good work-life balance. I like a life where I can spend time with my kids. I like a life where I am more than a cog to toil away…
In all these areas, my goals tend to align with feminism. In truth, I really don’t see this all as a women’s right struggle. Just as I don’t see the ‘patriarchy’ as a male thing.
I don’t know many men who like the constant competition and long work hours… We do it because we have to and that is the corporate culture.
When people talk about it as a ‘gender’ issue, it does polarize people into camps. But if you take the gender out of it, you can come to much better agreements.
And heck if getting more work-life balance and a kinder workplace means less offensive jokes; it’s a pretty small trade off in my book.
And if I look at these cases of corporate culture; take away the argument of it’s just a joke and look at almost every other issue in the work place; I tend to find myself on the side of the feminist movement.
Yes, as a person who makes a lot of jokes; I am often taken to the point of… it’s just a joke… but again… I look at the big picture…
To me, it’s more about people in power. That’s it.
If a feminist quota pushes for more female executives; what is it to me? One female power-hungry maniac in place of a male power-hungry maniac.
If there’s exception, those exception exist in either case. I’ve had some great female executives; and some great male executives. But on the average, executives have just been well… executives. Not every male executive is an Elon Musk or Jeff Besos;
Manning up in this context is just meaning “not to have such a thin skin and get on with it”.
I’m Arctic Norse by ancestry. I bike to work bike at -26 C and I learned to shoot with a safari magnum that would break your collar bone. I doubt that I owe you much.
The men in my family have been excellent providers for at least the last 400 years, in conditions much worse than what we have in the G20 today.
We’re just tired of fake chivalry. We’re tired of guys who would never be there if it mattered, and are so weak that their only hope of contributing to women is to steal the goods from other men.
Those guys are just as bad as the robber barons, and a lot more numerous.
The guy is being for want of a better term is being a “diva”. It is pretty much the worst personality trait anyone can have in professional environment especially the tech sector, his colleagues are pointing it out by making crude remarks.
The guy isn’t oppressed, he is being a dick and people are calling out his bullshit.
Edited 2016-09-15 15:57 UTC
Canadian here. Citation needed.
LOL! Sweden’s feminists banned prostitution because “women selling sex to men is considered abuse against women”. I’ve no idea how advancing welfare system is supposed to display feminists are working to improve men’s rights. Parental leave might be the only display of gender equality in that system, but it’s pretty obsolete as parents tend to decide to favour the mother anyways.
Here’s a question you can ask yourself in regards to the welfare state in relation to men’s rights.
Where would you rather ‘accidentally’ get a woman pregnant?
The more of a welfare/progressive state it is, the less a woman might go nuts trying to get money from her man. She gets it from the government. Subsidies, child-care… They also tend to push for woman working… reducing the impact on men.
Unless you think woman’s rights are going to go away in the West, the greater the welfare state it is, the less the men are the focus for things like child support.
The choice for most of the West isn’t small government state with woman’s rights.
That is theoretically possible, but is not being born out in reality for most of the West or pretty much anywhere in the world.
You probably do not live in one of these countries so you don’t know how it works. Every country requires the father (i.e. the one not caring for the kids most of the time, usually by law the father) to pay a fixed amount of money every month until the kid reaches a certain age, that can be either 18 or less.
Only in the cases where the father can’t be traced, will the government grant the mother a small fee to make up for the father’s part. But that fee is the same for everyone and quite small, whereas the father would pay in relation to his income. Nobody is going to get rich by sucking up the government’s money.
And even if the parents have agreed upon something else initially, there is no official way for signing a child “permanently fatherless”, so the mother can demand the government to make the father pay his legally determined share even from earlier years.
Edited 2016-09-16 06:40 UTC
This is actually a complicated problem, because:
1. Ideally a child is a product of mutual consent. If a woman gets pregnant, both man and woman are equally responsible: pregnancy can’t happen without both sides’ envolvement. (Obviously I’m leaving out donor thing.)
2. Abortion has serious impact on female body, so providing both man and woman with equal votes over abortion does not really lead to equal responsibility. Sure, female contraception is a thing, but in case due contraception measures were taken and failed woman should be entitled to reject the medical procedure that might severely damage her health or severely reduce her chances of getting pregnant again.
3. It is literally impossible to establish whether pregnancy came as a result of neglect, malice or acident. That is always his word against her word, with no meaningful way to logically pick one. So basing policy on the causes of pregnancy is essentially impossible.
Probably the most sane approach – providing an opt-out for father in case mother rejected abortion. If it is her choice is to disregard his opinion, it is she who have to live with consequences.
Absolutely.
For some reason the first quote is mangled, and it strips all markup when I try to edit it.
Edited 2016-09-15 22:26 UTC
Of course it is. The USA is extremely misogynist.
Women have no moral agency. No culpability.
See “Mattress Girl” and Rolling Stone’s “Jackie”.
But in this why does the man own it when it is the women’s body, the women (supposedly but apparently either doesn’t) know that having sex leads to babies and they won’t prevent it (some have taken semen from Condoms to entrap men), and claim they can act on that knowledge (the reason they have suffrage).
We need equal rights. If the man doesn’t consent to have the child, the man should be able to abort it, at least as long as Abortion is legal.
There is too much of Women are Equal! then followed by an equal demand to add fainting cultures, and safe spaces and avoiding triggering.
I can only ask which is it. My mother worked as a manager in the 1950s USA, was NOT paid the same as men, was smarter and kept things running for a medium sized company. These fragile flower feminists, and special snowflakes would have her attacking with greater vitriol than any manosphere site. But she had brass. Many working women I’ve met and worked with did too. But today we need to turn the offices with cubicles into My Little Pony nurseries with nannies for the women.
Before 1900, there was actually a legal tort where women could sue if a man said any cuss word in their presence. Are we returning to that? Is that the idea of “equality” today?
From the article
Irrational fear of being alone in an office late at night and management declined because it was irrational fear. It not like it is a public area it is Apple people need keycards to move in and out of the building and everyone is vetted (via police checks). Again not sexism.
This just in: white male focuses on a subset of female Apple employees’ concerns and decides for them these are not sexism. Problem now solved. More at 11.
“White Male” is just used by people like yourself to shut down debate when you know you are losing the argument.
It is a shaming tactic, and quite frankly it doesn’t work quite as well as it used to.
Edited 2016-09-15 14:40 UTC
This is pathetic. The description of events is right there, yet you seem to discard the proof of nothing happening and only focusing on the word sexism.
-> A woman claimed sexism so anyone trying to argue against it is wrong.
Edited 2016-09-15 14:27 UTC
Also how are any of these sexism? Why do you think they are sexist?
I would even go as far to say that “rape” joke isn’t really a rape joke as they are not joking about raping someone (btw men can be raped to). They are joking about the fact that this person is known to be a bit of an arsehole and likes to put people down.
If someone said “This person is going to murder us all when they come here”, murder is an horrific crime. But is isn’t a joke about murder, it is a joke about how much of an asshole this person is.
Edited 2016-09-15 18:15 UTC
Employees concerns are real. Maybe premium parking lots, working hours ‘a la carte’, selecting your workmates [better yet, vetoing them], forbidding jokes that could probably be taken as minority pride eroding [If anyone Vulcan then ear jokes forbidden at the Company], etc. etc.
Gosh! This argument taste a lot like Euro-Corp working environment
I think I just had enough of such posts. During the last years my mental image of US tech companies have transformed into a funny-looking jester dancing around shouting diversity! to a techno-trance rithm. In my opinion, formed based on my maybe limited experience, in a healthy work environment led by normal people diversity is not something you can avoid, and if you don’t actively go against it, it will happen. However, when trying to enforce it – which is what I see in the US – weird situations can occur, especially when you’re starting to slide to the other side of the horse, including the now very popular blame game where you score good points by bashing some company or the other for their lack of diversity (doesn’t matter much if it’s about gender or race). Also, it’s a thing now to actually put numbers on it, saying well 10-20-30-whatever% of this or that is not enough, so you are all misogynist, sexist, racist, or the seven forbid, either too religious or too anti-religious.
I’m not saying companies, well, people at companies don’t have faults in this matter. But things won’t change just because companies follow some kind of enforced quantifiable diversity-increasing hiring policy. It’s much deeper than that, lots if social, cultural, educational, historical, religious issues are in play here. For instance, let’s say the educational system would suddenly pump out 50% non-white and/or non-male professionals, e voila, diversity issues as a whole would simply disappear from most companies. Of course, and unfortunately, there are reasons why this isn’t happening, and they won’t be solved by talking your heads off about this or that company not hiring more diverse people.
As for hair-crossing what is -in principle- systemic. And to those cringing male ‘collaterals’ -well, ‘man-up’, babies.
“Apple emails reveal complaints about sexist, toxic work environment.”
“If you can’t take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed.” –Q
Apple were very keen to recruit a female Asian friend of mine for a senior engineering position (she wasn’t interested).
FSF/GNU as well :
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreboot/2016-09/msg00036.html
Yeah, it’s not because the behavior of a few can cast shadows on many, but since the top management (Apple/GNU) have high power, hence high responsibility, it’s not completely stupid to make assumptions and generalizations.
If FSF fired transgender person for being transgender, it is indeed disgusting. But did they? Again, we only have claims that are supposed to be believed without any proof whatsoever. No single prooflink, no single name. When did civil rights movement turn into a religion?
Better yet, see the followup message^A^1 from John Wiegley. He is not even interested in details, he merely asks whom he is supposed to hate now.
^A^1 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreboot/2016-09/msg00037.html
Edited 2016-09-16 12:22 UTC
Well, considering that it is public dirty laundering, I do not care much. But something is rotten these days.
I’m pretty sure that’s a clarifying rhetorical question, not “pls tell me who to hate nao kthxbye”.