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Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Did Christina Hoff Sommers suddenly forget all about James Damore?


Back in 2017 Google engineer James Damore published a memo on a Google company discussion board claiming, among other things, that women were intellectually inferior to men at STEM subjects. 


The memo has its own Wiki page which includes (my highlight):
The company fired Damore for violation of the company's code of conduct.[2] Damore filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, but later withdrew this complaint. A lawyer with the NLRB found his firing to be proper;[3][4][5] however, such a decision is not legally binding.[6] After withdrawing this complaint, Damore filed a class action lawsuit, retaining the services of attorney Harmeet Dhillon,[7][8] alleging that Google was discriminating against conservatives, whites, Asians, and men.[9][10] Damore dismissed his claims in the lawsuit to pursue arbitration against Google.[11]
Harmeet Dhillon - where have we heard that name before? Of course, Harmeet Dhillon is also Andy Ngo's lawyer.

It appears that Harmeet K. Dhillon, Republican National Committeewoman, is the lawyer of choice for the Intellectual Dark Web whenever they have a controversial issue.

Anybody who has read the memo can see Damore indisputably claimed that men had better tech abilities than women, biologically:
I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.

So imagine my surprise when my inbox had this retweet by Christina Hoff Sommers the other day.


I keep forgetting to unfollow Sommers on one of my Twitter accounts that she hasn't blocked. Getting a tweet almost every morning from professional misogynist Christina Hoff Sommers is sapping my will to live.

Meghan Daum, who appears to be a second-string member of the Intellectual Dark Web, apparently has not heard of Larry Summers, Steven Pinker, or James Damore, who all do believe that women have inferior math abilities compared to men, biologically.

But of course we know that Christina Hoff Sommers has heard of them, and has written in defense of both Larry Summers and James Damore.

So why does Sommers seem to agree with Daum's ignorance-based claim that "no serious person has ever said it's about ability"?

1. Is this a sign that the Intellectual Dark Web has decided that it's no longer about "ability" and instead plans to emphasize female "preferences" which are both factors attributed by James Damore to women's lesser STEM achievements?

2. Maybe Sommers, at age 69 is starting to show signs of losing it, intellectually, like other senior members of the Intellectual Dark Web and forgot why she considered James Damore a "truth-teller"?

3. Is this an example of "weak pinkerism" as I described in the previous blog post - when it suits the IDW, they pretend they don't believe the extreme hereditarian things they claim to believe when they think they have a friendly audience?

4. Or is it about the grift?

One of my all-time favorite articles about the Intellectual Dark Web is - although it was published before Bari Weiss popularized the term in May 2018 - The Free Speech Grifters by Mari Uyehara in March 2018. The piece includes a perfect description of the grift-loving soul of Christina Hoff Sommers:
At Lewis & Clark Law School, Sommers found what seems to be her favorite kind of audience: a disruptive one. Prior to the speech, activists handed out flyers labeling her "a fascist," among other hyperbolic charges familiar to anyone who has spent time on a college campus. When she attempted to give her talk, a handful of students, led by a blonde ringleader in a black "Stay Woke" jacket, disrupted it with chanting about comrades while holding up a cardboard sign that read "No Platform for Fascists." It was a Ben Shapiro wet dream. As the ringleader yelled, "Black lives matter," Sommers turned to the camera euphorically grinning from ear to ear. Here it was: the money shot.
Could it be that Sommers supported James Damore not because she has bothered to pay attention to what he actually said in the memo, but because it's her job as part of the wingnut welfare ecosystem that pays her to hate women, and also because she loves the grift so much?

It could be a combination of several.

But it's clear that Christina Hoff Sommers is not overly-concerned about intellectual integrity. Which is likely why she makes a living taking money from Koch and other plutocrats to be a shitty third-rate intellectual.

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