I chose a single sentence because I wanted to point out how insidious stereotypical gender roles can be, and I don't think you can just pick any sentence and make it less indicting of women and more indicting of men. Try that last one if you want :)
I'm happy to get into the rest of your post which I also think is a good discussion topic:
> And I think that's really what was missing from his piece;
> why do these differences exist and isn't it possible they
> are constructed rather than innate? He lists a few reasons
> he is convinced they are not, including their consistency
> across cultures, but I remain unconvinced all of his list
> of differences can be explained in this way.
>
> Particularly leading. There are way too many studies that
> show the biases women have to deal with in that regard and
> assuming they have no impact on behavior is silly.
From a public policy perspective, you often have to deal with social problems. For example, White men are far and away the most frequent perpetrators of white-collar crime.
You have two options. Option 1 is assume this is a race/gender problem because of genetics and say White men can't be in business. Option 2 is to assume that there is a different cause and try and find it. I don't know what the cause is, actually, though I'd assume it's because the vast majority of people who are even able to commit white-collar crime in the first place are White men.
The problem with the line of thinking from that Google doc is that we start going down a road where we just take Option 1 for everything. That sounds pretty bad right? Well welcome to being a woman, a person of color, or an LGBTQ person in America. Sexual harassment wasn't even a term until the 1970s, marital rape wasn't even a legal concept until the 80s. I'm a white cis straight software engineer and not once have I ever read a document questioning my ability to be such because my gender is "extremely murderous and likely unable to focus" despite the fact that men are responsible for nearly 80% of murders world wide. The document circulating at Google is just the latest from a long line of bigots trying to support the crooked chair of their opinions with any science they can shove under the short leg.
All of which is to say that I don't find your added consideration of "maybe it ISN'T genetics" to be balancing. I read your entire post as the statement of someone who has an open mind about these issues but has a lot to learn.
> Every woman is sexist. Every man is sexist.
This jumped out at me and I want to make a point about gender roles. Gender roles were created by male dominated societies, and while they're harmful to people of all genders it's important to understand that this is still a system created by men that primarily benefits men. I agree that everyone is sexist because like you said, sexism exists in every culture, but I don't want to tacitly agree that women and other genders share in the responsibility as much as men do. It's our system and before anyone else it's on us to fix it.
> Which is definitely NOT what I am trying to communicate and is
> honestly offensive and not backed by data. Feel free to
> reference studies if you disagree and think men are particularly
> prone to respond to assertive women in the office more poorly
> than other women.
That's a completely valid request:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3544188/
https://sociology.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publicati...
https://granolagradschoolandgoffman.wordpress.com/2014/12/08...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18425573
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0730888499026001...
Note that those are just about the incidence of sexual harassment of women in authority, which I think is clear indicator of "men have a hard time dealing with women in authority". For something a little less terrifying and maybe more topical: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167215593491.
I have a couple of points about this overall though. First, I really just Google for this stuff, and I think if you or anyone else is honestly willing to learn about gender issues then there are myriad resources. Gender studies is a legitimate academic field and smart people are doing great, important work in it.
Second, let's dial it back with the "honestly offensive". Making a comment based on stereotypes about men is not the same as making a comment based on stereotypes about women. Stereotypes about men haven't held men back for thousands of years. Stereotypes about men haven't chopped off 20% of their paychecks. It is a false equivalence, and it's what the phrase "you can't be sexist against men" is getting at. The real social ill of sexism punishes women, and while -- again -- gender roles hurt everyone, the group on the losing end of this system is pretty much always women. You may also have heard the term "derailing", where women (or people of color or other groups) are airing their grievances against our culture, and white cis straight men chime in with their grievances against them. Again, these things are not the same, and while they're definitely problems, let's be sure that we're not showing up to a discussion about metastasized cancer demanding that everyone look at our paper cut.
> We'll just have to agree to disagree. Intent is never irrelevant.
When we're talking about the challenges women face in the workplace, intent is irrelevant. For example, 1 in 4 women experiences sexual harassment in the workplace. Oftentimes men are unaware they are sexually harassing women. Their behavior is either harmless, friendliness, their idea of courtship, or something else, just not sexual harassment.
But it really doesn't matter, as in it's irrelevant, if we're discussing the experience of women in the workplace. The perspective essentially is, "I don't care what you were trying to do, your behavior is causing a severe social problem for millions of women; stop it".
Sometimes intent is relevant! Like in the law (mens rea) for example. But the sad truth of things is that gender roles have so permeated our culture that even basic interactions are problematic. A good example is complimenting a woman on her appearance in the workplace. It feels friendly! Maybe they changed hairstyles or whatever. In fact, it feels unfriendly to not say something.
But women have been judged solely on their appearance for... basically since forever. So what seems like an honest compliment actually entrenches harmful gender roles.
I'm pretty tired; I've been sick the last couple days and it looks like I'll still be at least a little sick tomorrow. So feel free to write back but I might not respond until tomorrow. Have a good night!