First set up a society that massively favours women for a few millennia, seeing men primarily in terms of sex and procreation, THEN do your experiment, ensuring that there are still a good few people around who still see the world in that way and are happy to both express that view and use it to guide their actions.
Otherwise you're only doing the very, very end bit.
Seriously, you can't just flip the genders, there's a mass of context that ignores. The point is not that everyone is malicious and see the world this way, just that there are many people who do. That means that, while it's often not how the comments are intended by the person saying them, it's an entirely reasonable way to believe that they're intended.
Can you cite research from reputable journals to support this? And are the measures of whatever the hell it is you're measuring that says women are extraordinary aren't biased in terms of the way society sees the sexes (that is measuring what has been deemed historically useful based on a male perspective) and are judging genuine ability in things that matter, not just one easily measurable thing.
I only ask because rankable measures of ability of the sort you're talking about are generally consider bullshit these days.
It's not a case of how fragile they are, it how much they have been, and still are, disadvantaged by the way society is structured.
Things have improved in recent years but look at average salaries, representation in government, representation at senior levels in companies and so on and tell me that it's all sorted.
And if women aren't being fairly represented at the top (unless you're saying that there have in history genuinely been no women capable of being, or even running for, US president), why do you think they're represented fairly further down? And then why do you think that is?
I accept that she has to take her share of the blame doesn't make her judge, jury and executioner.
The company had plenty of other options about how they handled it and firing was in no way a foregone conclusion.
As an aside it is another reminder that we now live in an age where we may all be held to account for things that would otherwise have passed largely unnoticed. There needs to be adjustment on all sides - we all need to start acting in ways we'd be happy to be publicised, we all need to be aware that publicising others behaviour might have wider consequences than we'd initially anticipate, and we all also need to be a little more balanced in our judgement when it comes to behaviour which might be closer to an isolated incident than representative of something more.
So once the information is public the person who publishes it responsible for any and all consequences resulting (even if what he or she posts is factual)?
I agree that it wasn't the best way to handle it (at least publishing the photo wasn't, I'm fine with the rest) but that's different to being held responsible for all actions that follow.
The person in question has responsibility for what they did, the company has responsibility for what they did. There are many points during this whole process where the chain can be broken, not just one.
This doesn't feel like it's a major sexual harassment case in the making but if it is then the damage has already been done and sacking someone can't remove that liability.
I hope I'd also look at the cost and difficulty of recruiting decent developers, the opportunity to possibly salvage the PR situation (which I think a constructive approach might get us, unlike sacking someone) and the fact that there seems to be genuine remorse and that the individual in question seems like a reasonable guy who did an unreasonable thing rather than some arsehole.
Sorry but the company were judge, jury and executor, not her.
If you report a crime to the police and as a result the person gets sent to prison did you send them to prison? Of course not.
She reported something that happened (which the person in question doesn't deny) - that's a reasonable thing to do.
The neutral party you ask for should then be the employer who can listen to both sides of the story and work out the appropriate way forward. If they felt there was damage to their reputation it feels a public apology from both the individual and the company, plus possibly some sort of corrective training seems more than enough.
Instead, based on what I've read the employer has over reacted and that balance didn't happen, but you can't blame that on the person reporting the event.
Yes it's utterly shitty that he lost his job over this and it really shouldn't have happened but it's not fair to lay it at her door in this way.
Actually I think he does give a shit, he just feels that things could be a lot worse than they are and tinkering isn't necessarily going to improve things. Given how widely used it is there is some merit to this argument.
From a comment on Twitter yesterday in response to someone, it doesn't seem that Gruber is particularly interested in engaging with this (though I may be wrong). If that is the case I suspect we'll see a forking of the project and we'll get to see whether a committee will do better.
It may well do - Jeff has a good track record at getting things done and is well respected and well liked - but personally I wouldn't put my mortgage on it because as well intentioned as these things are we all know how design by committee usually turns out.
What I love here is that not just satisfied with running down Gruber, you also feel the need to get in a little swipe at Jeff ("as much as [he] leaps at every chance to play the fool"), a man who seems broadly in agreement with you (though is far more constructive in his approach).
First set up a society that massively favours women for a few millennia, seeing men primarily in terms of sex and procreation, THEN do your experiment, ensuring that there are still a good few people around who still see the world in that way and are happy to both express that view and use it to guide their actions.
Otherwise you're only doing the very, very end bit.
Seriously, you can't just flip the genders, there's a mass of context that ignores. The point is not that everyone is malicious and see the world this way, just that there are many people who do. That means that, while it's often not how the comments are intended by the person saying them, it's an entirely reasonable way to believe that they're intended.