‘Like Being Gay in the 1950s’: Fired Google Engineer Says Conservatives ‘Have to Stay in the Closet’

‘Manifestbro’ Went Viral 

James Damore, the software engineer who was fired by Google, is now comparing being a conservative at the multi-billion corporation to being gay in the 1950s.

After publishing an internal memo that argued women, because of their biology, are less suited for leadership roles especially in the tech industry, Damore was reportedly fired by Google for violating its code of conduct. In an interview with Business Insider, Damore disputes the reason he was fired, claiming the public reason was just a “PR” reason.

But his comparison of his political views to being LGBT, which is not a choice, is both disturbing and illogical. Political views presumably are considered and chosen, and not innate. Being LGBT is innate.

After being told by Business Insider’s Steve Kovach that his former female colleagues “felt attacked by a lot of what was written in that memo,” Damore said, “no one should feel attacked.”

And then, this.

“I was simply trying to fix the culture in many ways,” Damore told Kovach. “And really help a lot of people who are currently marginalized at Google by pointing out these huge biases that we have in this monolithic culture where anyone with a dissenting view can’t even express themselves.”

“Really, it’s like being gay in the 1950s,” Damore insisted, after seeming to pause before deciding to stick with that analogy and move forward into it. “These conservatives have to stay in the closet and have to mask who they really are. And that’s a huge problem because there’s open discrimination against anyone who comes out of closet as a conservative.”

The 1950s for gay people were kicked off in February of that year with infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s “Lavender Scare,” a witch hunt that led to mass firings within the U.S. government.  

For years LGBT people were believed to be communist sympathizers and security risks. 

Unlike being a conservative, being gay – or more specifically, the act of sodomy – was illegal in the 1950s, subjecting countless people to felony imprisonment.

In his “manifestbro,” as some have called it, Damore claimed women suffer from “Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance),” which “may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety… and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.”

“Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for status on average,” Damore also claimed in his memo, and said “women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas.”

Damore’s claims are not only false, they’re offensive. 

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