Blankouts, Gender-War Division

"Most women are damn fools and children." -- Robert A. Heinlein

Most of my life, I've enjoyed the company of women. I was initially pleased at efforts to bring more women into the American workplace. I felt it would be good for all concerned. I no longer think that's the case.

The reason? I detest stupidity. I do what I can to avoid the stupid, especially the willfully stupid. Unfortunately, the weaker sex is especially inclined toward the condition: partly because of innate tendencies, and partly as a result of sociopolitical encouragement.

Today, Ace of Spades provides a couple of illustrative links. The first:

Recently on Facebook I found myself being hated by several women who previously were at least friendly online. They are wives and gamers who I knew online and we got along well. I try to always treat women with respect, especially online where they tend to be treated as at best second class players or meat to be devoured by horny gamer boys.

However, when the topic of unequal pay came up, I made the mistake of pointing out to two pregnant women that because women can get pregnant they are less valuable to an employer than men who cannot. I'm sure a combination of hormones, frustration, stress, and general vulnerability played into their response but now they hate me....

Think about this objectively and it will make sense to you. Say you have a company, and you have two prospective workers.

• Worker A might, and is likely to, take on a condition wherein they will miss 6-12 months of work or more, and by law the employer must not only retain them as an employee, but pay them for the time they are gone.
• Worker B cannot suffer from this condition.

Now, assuming you are prohibited by law from simply never hiring Worker A, what will your response be?...

From a business' perspective, the conclusion is quite obvious. But women seem to have a problem with the deal because it is tilted against them. All of us want things going our way and are frustrated and unhappy when things go against us, that's just normal for humans on this earth. So I do sympathize with women being less than pleased with the reality.

Yet there seems to be another layer lately, one that has been tacked on by feminism which argues that women should have the upper hand and best deal in everything, and in the name of equality get the good parts of all things and none of the bad. For example, women don't want to be equal to men in lifespan or likelihood of heart disease.

So when I brought this up, the embittered women declared that I thought women as a gender were "worth less as human beings" because of their body parts. This would come as a shock to the women in my family, not to mention the many I've dealt with and known in my life.

The author of the above was unprepared for the reaction he received. I could have told him, without knowledge of anything but what he was going to say, what it would be. The reason is quite simple:

• First, women have an innate preference for steering their decisions according to feelings and the consensus among their friends, as opposed to using logic and evidence.
• Second, women have been privileged creatures in Western society from an entirely objective standpoint for a long time now.
• Third, now that literally everything is political, and women have been taught that no depth of viciousness is out of bounds, their natural propensity for emotional manipulation has been set free to "work" for them in the economic domain.

Classic stupidity. The women who reacted as described above have alienated a potential ally in many matters. More, they have contributed to the burgeoning realization among men that women can no longer be trusted to react at all rationally to a situation they find unfavorable, or to a logical analysis thereof.

But they got their spleen out. They hit their "detractor" in his sensitive parts. No doubt they enjoyed the short-term "We sure showed him" pecking-party satisfaction from it. That's what matters, isn't it, ladies?

The second citation illustrates the ultimate outcome from such viciousness:

So here’s what happened:

1. While sitting in the 10th row of a Python programming conference, a developer who used to work for mobile monetization startup Playhaven apparently made a joke about “big” dongles and “forking someone’s repo.”
2. Adria Richards, a developer evangelist sitting in front of them, called them out on Twitter and in a blog post for making the conference environment unwelcoming toward women. PyCon then escorted them out to the hallway.

“Women in technology need consistant [sic] messaging from birth through retirement they are welcome, competent and valued in the industry,” she explained in a blog post.

3) Shortly afterward, Playhaven said it had fired the developer. CEO Andy Yang explained, “As a company that is dedicated to gender equality and values honorable behavior, we conducted a thorough investigation. The result of this investigation led to the unfortunate outcome of having to let this employee go.”...

Bad enough already, right? But wait: there's more!

After news that the developer was let go came out, Richards said on Hacker News that she didn’t intend for the developer to get fired. She then started getting some incredibly degrading criticism on her Facebook page and on Twitter. I won’t re-print it here, but you can just read the link. It’s awful.

PyCon is still discussing how to change its code of conduct around reporting incidents like this one.

Someone claiming to know plans of the hacker group Anonymous posted a note this morning saying that it had acquired SendGrid’s client list and was going to attack the company’s infrastructure if the startup didn’t fire Richards.

Adria Richards engaged in malicious conduct to destroy the another individual’s professional career due to what she perceived as an affront to her own extremist views from a comment that was not directed at her, not meant for her to hear, and certainly not for her to provide unwarranted input on. As such, she should have her professional career destroyed just like her victim in order for justice to be rendered and balance restored to the universe. The hivemind’s judgement is final and there is no appeal. No forgiveness, no forgetting remember?

SendGrid acknowledged that they had suffered a DDOS, or distributed denial of service, attack today.

And now, just hours ago, SendGrid’s Facebook and Twitter accounts plus their company blog posted that Richards has been terminated:

Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards. While we generally are sensitive and confidential with respect to employee matters, the situation has taken on a public nature. We have taken action that we believe is in the overall best interests of SendGrid, its employees, and our customers. As we continue to process the vast amount of information, we will post something more comprehensive.

The author of the article wrings her dainty hands over the whole affair, concluding that "none of this had to happen." I disagree. Not only did it "have to happen," it is essential that conduct such as Richards' receive exactly the responses -- all of them -- that she received.

For men to withhold the retribution female viciousness earns is to abdicate an important responsibility: the culling of the human herd.

We cannot afford to tolerate viciousness. We cannot afford to tolerate intrusion into the private conversations of others. And most especially, we cannot afford to tolerate stupidity, nor permit it to run rampant among us.

Stupidity is always a capital crime.

A species that doesn't remove its stupid and vicious members from any possibility of harming the larger herd will not survive. The stupid and vicious can and will destroy the achievements of the intelligent and benevolent far faster than the latter can build them. The inevitable end state is savagery.

Adria Richards was vicious. She was removed from the possibility of harming her employer by her association with it. SendGrid no longer risks the wrath of the anonymous attacker. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

The typical woman, reading that tale, might judge Richards as I have judged her, but almost certainly would say that SendGrid's reaction to the DDOS attack was "unfair to her." This is stupidity. The company's firing of Richards was the only rational response to her conduct. It exhibited admirable proportionality and concern for its other employees in doing so. There should an award for so pro-social a commercial action.

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I know, that went on quite a bit longer than one of my usual Offenses. Apologies. I feel an obligation to be complete and correct about matters such as this. And though I generally despise the phrase "teachable moment," if anything ever constitutes one such, this surely does.

Christ didn't tell us to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" out of an arbitrary desire to encourage human amity; He did so because it's a law of nature.

You cannot break a natural law. All such laws are self-enforcing. The Golden Rule is more reliable in its effects than any Act of Congress.

Perhaps Adria Richards has learned that. It would be well; she's unlikely to get further employment if she hasn't.