Diversity training is provided to protect the company from law suits. It will work.

HR people are not to be charmed but laughed at and shunned.

Yes, I know. As I said, I'm intelligent enough to know how to stay hired without accepting their brainwashing attempts and thus maintain my integrity.

So a little heads up on how this works: nobody gives a shit if you're sexist or racist or whatever. It's your speech and behavior that we care about. So if you keep yourself hired, your speech and behavior are acceptable.

Likewise, I don't care if Agustino is sexist. I just want him to keep his sexist comments to himself. Now I know that at least Baden will delete his sexist crap. He knows it too.

Yay!

[ Apparently not.

Now I know that at least Baden will delete his sexist crap. — Mongrel

But... this assumes you know what sexism is. If sexism means "whatever Mongrel and Baden deem to be sexist," then anything could be sexist, and that's a recipe for abuse.

No, your line of questioning assumes she doesn't know and needs to prove she does to you. She doesnt

What we all need right now is a big group hug! C'mon, everybody!
(L) (L) (L) (L) (L) (L) :D

Either way I'm done witcha. — Mongrel

Merciful God.

@Mongrel It would be helpful if you could give at least one or two examples here of posts by @Agustino you consider objectionable. In which case we mods can transparently set some kind of a benchmark so everyone knows what is acceptable and what is not.

In any case, folks, here are the relevant guidelines:

"Racists, homophobes, sexists, Nazi sympathisers, etc.: We don't consider your views worthy of debate, and you'll be banned for espousing them."

"Admins have the right to ban members. We don't do that lightly, and you will probably be warned about your behaviour if you are under consideration for a ban. However, if you are a spammer, troll, racist or in some other way obviously unsuited to the forum, a summary ban will be applied."

So, the best use for this discussion would be to clarify as best we can what we consider sexist and how it will be dealt with.

Mongrel concluded her learned comments with "Hey Bitter Crank. Why don't you go fuck yourself?" This confused Mr. Dogar:

I legitimately cannot tell what's real and what's banter in this thread, but seemingly the burden of proof lies on you. — Dogar

I didn't feel any lacerations from the verbal lash wielded by our esteemed colleague, Ms. Mongrel, so it would seem that her admonition "Why don't you go fuck yourself" was probably closer to banter than a real suggestion.

Were I to have felt lacerated, it would be evidence that my skin was thinning out -- an unfortunate condition I had suggested that SHE might be suffering from. (I use a personal deflector shield which is fairly effective at neutralizing caustic comments (comments far worse than "go fuck yourself").

My response to you is 100% banter, with just enough edge to it so that if Mongrel read it she will be further annoyed--not annoyed a lot, of course, since this is a civilized cyber salon.

We try not to actually enrage each other because we just never know when someone will finally lose their grip on reality and will tear themselves away from the computer and begin devastating the countryside in acts of appalling mayhem. While the spectacle of wise and learnéd philosophers melting down and going ballistic is really quite interesting, it is dangerous.

Here, Baden. Augustino wrote this on page 42 of the Post-Truth thread. It's both sexist and repellent:

↪Agustino
The women on TV pretend they are disgusted by what Trump does to them. But secretly, they all desire it, and wish they were the ones. In the polls they pretend not to vote for Trump - but when they're alone, with themselves inside the booth, they cast their vote where their hearts are. It is good - they imagine - to pretend to morality but act immorally.

I agree that's sexist. Any dissenting opinions?

But yes, that is sexist, and I'm surprised to find that Agustino said that. but it's not a direct quote, so I would appreciate a proper quote so as to see context.

Any off-topic stuff will be deleted. Let's try to stay on track here. (Start a separate discussion if you want to do that.)

It's on page 42 of the Post-Truth thread. Go check it out for yourself. I direct quoted it at the end of that thread.

How many do you want?

I think women (in the modern age, and in the West) are NOT submissive to men.

I think women (in the modern age, and in the West) are NOT submissive to men sexually, nor intellectually.

I think philosophers are generally dominating. Indeed, being dominating is a trait required for success in philosophy.

I think women should be more submissive (as should men by the way) than they currently are - generally speaking. I'm saying this just cause most people are bloody selfish at the moment - which is the opposite of submissive.

I don't think women should be more submissive to men sexually, but neither should they use sex as a way of dominating men, which, unfortunately, I see more and more women doing in the West.

Women should be more submissive to men intellectually than they currently are, on average, as men seem to make better decision makers. Why? Because men can be ruthless, aggressive and competitive much more frequently than women, traits which are required for making great decisions in the world. This largely has to do with biological makeup (testosterone). — Agustino

I agree that's sexist (towards the end at least). Any dissenting opinions?

As I said, setting benchmarks here so feel free to pipe in.

I think women (in the modern age, and in the West) are NOT submissive to men. — Agustino

This is a statement about his opinion on the state of submissiveness in the sexes. It's not specifically sexist.

I think women (in the modern age, and in the West) are NOT submissive to men sexually, nor intellectually. — Agustino

Same

I think philosophers are generally dominating. Indeed, being dominating is a trait required for success in philosophy. — Agustino

No mention of gender

I think women should be more submissive (as should men by the way) than they currently are - generally speaking. I'm saying this just cause most people are bloody selfish at the moment - which is the opposite of submissive. — Agustino

Vague; not a sentiment I would tentatively agree with, but it's hard to know what he means here without more context.

I don't think women should be more submissive to men sexually, but neither should they use sex as a way of dominating men, which, unfortunately, I see more and more women doing in the West. — Agustino

Definitely not sexist.

Women should be more submissive to men intellectually than they currently are, on average, as men seem to make better decision makers. Why? Because men can be ruthless, aggressive and competitive much more frequently than women, traits which are required for making great decisions in the world. This largely has to do with biological makeup (testosterone). — Agustino

Definitely sexist.

Agustino is speculating about how women on TV (not all women in general) secretly desire to be humiliated by Trump. He notes that this is hypocritical, because they publicly profess to be appalled. (There could be some truth to this, in some specific cases, could there not? I think people are prone to hold irrational desires--men and women both.)

It is, I suppose, sexist and certainly unflattering. It would be more serious if the comment were directed at women here because it would be more personal and hurtful. Men and women speculate on the motives and flaws of each other's behavior all the time and while it may be sexist and unflattering, it doesn't rise to the level of a "hanging offense".

It may be sexist to suggest that women are not as good at math, or music, or art as men are, but that seems to me to be a possible opinion. Camille Paglia noted in her book Sexual Personae that women have had two centuries of extensive access to art instruction and art materials without producing much notable art. Is that sexist?

Now they have the education and opportunity. Are they as successful as men in terms of leadership capability? No. On average they'll probably never be as successful as men in terms of leadership, because again, they are just programmed differently biologically. Women don't want to dominate, to engage in conflict, etc. Why not? Because they have lower testosterone levels. Such desires are necessary for effective leadership, maybe less so in some areas of the world today, but fundamentally they are. Only 4.2% of Fortune 500 companies have a woman CEO. Really there's no competition, here, most women simply do not have the biological drive to compete with men in terms of leadership. They excel in other attributes - peace, compassion, emotional resilience etc. being some of them. — Agustino

Do you disagree that women have lower testosterone levels?

Thank you for clearing matters up for me, Bitter Crank. It is difficult to appreciate the lay of the land when just starting out.

Interestingly enough, the ending is rather reminiscent of the Google memo making headlines at the beginning of this week (which was, as per usual, hilariously misinterpreted by leftists desperate to outleft each other). It could be argued that such claims are considered sexist under neo-cultural Marxist ideology - yet many social scientists would agree that such discourse is and should be up for debate and that more research should be done on the topic. It's not inherently sexist to question the status quo.

Edit: it could also be argued that attempting to silence dissenting views as sexism is in actuality a form of censorship. All of the quotes supplied thus far have been brash and self-assured, sure, but are they really topics we should not contemplate, especially in an era of diversity and identity politics? Can we justify gender quotas et cetera if we are not prepared to ask difficult questions pertaining to their effectiveness? The quotes seem acceptable for discussion to me. In my opinion sexism is too easily thrown around in 2017 as a synonym or excuse for not having to read an opinion one disagrees with.

Edit 2: John Harris' post below me embodies the type of attitude I'm referring too. Delete evil, see no evil, hear no evil, immune to the possibility of ever actually having to debate evil... is this not a philosophy forum I have recently joined? One should be convicted enough in their own beliefs to be capable of challenging them!

I know exactly what Augustino was doing Crank, and it was sexist--if not downright misogynist--and vile. To say all the women on TV who protested--and that's a lot--actually want to be groped is disgusting and wrong. The specious and irrelevant claim "there could be some truth to that" doesn't change that. And, honestly, since you seem to be a fairly thoughtful person, your defense of that sexist vileness is more repellent than his statement. I can't believe you defended that. And I won't read your response. I don't engage people who defend such filth.

Because men can be ruthless, aggressive and competitive — Agustino

Is it bad to say that women aren't ruthless, aggressive, and competitive enough? When did ruthless aggressive competitiveness become a virtue to be prized?

That's the irony of the world we live in. It's wrong for men to force those characteristics on women; but it's liberating for women to force those characteristics on men. Revenge, mothaf***as!

And that is the tangle we get into when trying to lay down rules about how men and women can talk about alleged sexual/gender differences, imagined sexual/gender differences, and real sexual/gender differences (maybe it is sexist to think there are differences?).

Some people maintain that there just are no differences (other than anatomical) between men and women. It seems to me that evolution would have led to differences beyond the anatomical. But the "biology is not destiny" crowd dislike that kind of idea. To some extent biology is destiny -- Guys, just try to conceive a baby in your belly.

Hey, I found both Trump's actual behavior and his own reported behavior toward women during the campaign to be quite wrong. I don't know whether Agustino thinks "all women" are attracted to crude, sexually aggressive males or not. I doubt very much that he thinks that. I would allow, however, that it is possible some women are. Why? Because men and women both are capable of irrational sex-role (and other) behavior, that when they observed it in other people would readily identify it as unwise, but are none the less sometimes themselves attracted to it.

As Freud observed, "People are not masters of their own houses."

I need to take a break from the discussion for a little while. Feel free to continue the debate but just to clarify, sexist comments, which include stereotyping women, have no part to play in this forum except to be ridiculed, despised and ultimately deleted. I hope going forward everyone will take that on board.