They clearly have the power to cause trouble for tech companies. Witness Pax Dickinson, Julie Horvath, and various other incidents.
It just makes (selfish) sense for Altman to try to appease them. It's bad for the industry - showing weakness will encourage more behavior of this type. (Think about why they are targeting a bunch of unlikeable low status geeks.) But it's good for YC to encourage them to target others
It's really not. Feminist ideology has permeated many levels of public institutions today -- not all, of course, but quite a few. There's a reason it's seen as the 'correct'/default viewpoint to take today; if that weren't the case, then it'd be less surprising when someone declares themselves not a feminist. There might be a long road yet ahead for feminists, but I don't think it's fair to diminish their vast and obvious accomplishments thus far; doing that just feeds into the victimization cycle that's endemic in the radical subsets of it.
It's something that everyone knows to pay lip service to, in the same way that everyone pays lip service to being "green." But are you going to say with a straight face that environmentalists are in a position of power?
We (as a country) are trying to do something about global warming are we not? Sure we have nut-job deniers and all that, but compared to many countries that legitimately do not care about "being green", the US is doing rather decently (although arguably still not good enough, but it all has to start somewhere). Holding "power" is not a zero-sum game -- having slightly less power than another slightly more predominant ideology != 'not' having power. Just because we have a democratic president does not mean republicans have no power.
Similarly feminist ideology has made itself into the american public's view of the 'ideal', and anything that opposes it as unquestionably 'bad' -- to say there's no power in that sort of collective consciousness about any issue is ignorant. Just because it's not ideal yet absolutely does not mean it's not in power -- even powerful things take time to reach their full potential. When behaviors like this YC post talks about hadn't had any negative ramifications before, but now do, that's power.
> We (as a country) are trying to do something about global warming are we not?
Only to the extent that it doesn't get in the way of the hundred priorities ahead of global warming on the list. And all the pollution that isn't associated with a hot-button issue like global warming isn't even on the radar. Coal, for example, is something that's so damaging that there aren't even nut-job deniers arguing otherwise. Yet, during one of the debates of the 2012 election, Obama was arguing with Romney about which of them was more pro-coal.
> Similarly feminist ideology has made itself into the american public's view of the 'ideal', and anything that opposes it as unquestionably 'bad'
People are quite willing to embrace ideals but take little to no inconvenient action to work towards those ideals. Feminists have "power" in the same way environmentalists do. They can win a tiny victory here and there by making particularly egregious acts public,[1] but that's the extent of it.
[1] In 2012, environmentalists in Chicago were successful in shutting down Fisk and Crawford, two coal plants in Chicago that a study showed were costing the public $127 million per year in health costs: http://elpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/MidwestGeneration.... Only 598 more to go!
Yes, but lets not go around bashing something that is clearly better than nothing, and needlessly belittling the accomplishments of clearly influential movements. Things will always be open to improvement, and we should focus on that, not on how little power we have (oh no!); that's exactly the type of needless victimization that gives feminism a bad name (if you're not familiar with what I'm talking about, google around for 'Suey Park').
In any case, it is still an idealistic ideology, because then at what point does it declare/define 'victory'? That's never been made very clear, and despite the massive strides it has made in the past several decades, we're still talking about it like it's some totally unknown, underdog minority issue -- where are the goal posts? That's a rhetorical question because it's not supposed to have goal posts, just like how environmentalism doesn't -- it's an ideal, one of female rights that people should definitely strive for, but let's not make it out to be some sort of clear-cut political policy that has failed to be implemented, that just does the whole movement a disservice.
> We (as a country) are trying to do something about global warming are we not?
Not really. The federal executive branch is sort of unilaterally trying to do a bit using a legal framework not specifically designed for it, Congress has no clear commitment either way (the Republican Party holding a majority in the House and mostly opposing concrete action -- some members denying GW is real, some members opposing federal government action on environmental issues that might limit immediate business opportunity generally, and others just opposing any specific proposal related to global warming without necessarily having a clear ideological framework for general opposition), and some states are trying to do some things (and some states are trying to promote things directly opposed).
As a country, there's really nothing coherent going on.
Then the fact that we have powerful regulatory bodies like the EPA, and are much better off environmentally than countries like India and China is somehow just a fluke? Global warming is an environmentalist issue, but environmentalism != coherent global warming prevention -- that's really not a small problem, and would be a tall order for any nation to fill.
> Then the fact that we have powerful regulatory bodies like the EPA, and are much better off environmentally than countries like India and China is somehow just a fluke?
The EPA does not exist to address global warming specifically. The claim I addressed was that "we as a country are trying to do something about global warming", not "we as a country are trying to do something about environmental issues more generally". Those are very different claims.
You are correct. Apologies if it appeared I was talking specifically about global warming, but the context was with regards to what the parent was addressing with "being green" and the environmentalist movement as a whole, so that was the main point I was trying to convey.
But in any case, global warming is an environmentalist issue, and the environmentalist ideology does have power -- whether or not the government has managed to take coherent action about it yet is not indicative of the significance of the issue within the nation, because like I said, it is not a simple issue to solve, and we are still doing more[0] than India and China to help it anyway. And like I said in my original comment, while there is obviously still much room for improvement, there's no need to undermine what we have done to fight it... we'd all be worse of if environmental progress completely stopped in the 60's. Still a shame that we haven't done more of course.
[0] actively regulating pollution is a form of action...
The premise of this question is that execs have been fired for being "insufficiently diverse" or "insufficiently feminist". But there's a difference between not believing that anthropogenic global warming is a problem that demands changes to the way industry is run, and doing things that have the overt effect of creating barriers for women in the industry.
Leaving that aside, I think you'll find that a more careful look at the Pax Dickinson drama will reveal that it's not a particularly helpful example for this thread. There was a lot of stuff happening there.
I don't see why you think Dickinson is an unrelated example. He was never accused of any misconduct beyond wearing sunglasses while disagreeing with feminists.
The fact is that feminists have power in our society and the tech industry is relatively weak. We provide a great source of symbolic victories for them.
Just a bunch of tweets mocking feminists, liberals and Mel Gibson.
[edit: Tom I really don't understand how you think this disagrees with what I said above. How do these links imply any misconduct, or anything other than disagreeing with feminists? Are you asserting that opposing the welfare state or mocking Mel Gibson is what got him fired?]
As for the rest of it, if you want to argue that libertarianism rather than anti-feminism got him fired, square that viewpoint with Business Insider's statement about firing him. They didn't say he was too conservative, they said he disagreed with them on diversity.
Disagreeing with feminists and liberals is not misconduct. Neither is making fun of drunk celebrities.
