Saying something is 'tone deaf' is not an ethical argument against it. First you need to show the tone it is not hitting is one that should be hit.
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My mother was tone-deaf when she posted memos at her workplace saying that women should be allowed to take accountancy exams. Was she right or wrong? Her 'tone-deafness' doesn't tell us that. We need an ethical argument on the issues.
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So, if James Damore was tone-deaf to bring biological gender-differences into a discussion of diversity issues, this does not mean he was also wrong. The question is '*Is* this acceptable as part of the discussion?' I would argue that it is.
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In that case, the problem would not be the tone-deafness of the person challenging the expectations of his workplace but that the workplace had the expectation that its cultural/political norms would not be challenged.
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Nevertheless, some people who are all for disrupting hegemonic cultural norms and dominant discourses in some circumstances suddenly discover a new-found respect for authority and convention when the dominant views are their own.
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I have just finished reading a paper which looked at the way trans people who were also trans activists went about disrupting the norms and expectations at their workplace. There was much approval & no mention of tone-deafness.
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That is a good thing, I think, although it could get rather tiresome if you're just trying to do your job and your colleagues keep deconstructing gender binaries all over the place. Much better to do so in, say, a memo.
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End of conversation
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