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> "Abilities" is the operative word there, as in women, on average, aren't as able

Except that quote doesn't imply that women are less able. You could read it that way if you wanted to be uncharitable of course, but strictly speaking, that sentence simply says that women have different abilities, not lesser abilities. One way that sexism presents itself is an underappreciation of valuable skills, where traits that are typical of the dominant group are recognized as valuable and marked for advancement instead.

This is a standard feminist claim about work place sexism, and so a charitable reading of your quote is basically agreement with the prevailing wisdom.

> Pointing that averages don't imply individual ability doesn't make it better.

Sure it does. If you've made it, then you clearly have the skills required to be where you are.

"6 foot tall basketball players are at a serious disadvantage in the NBA". This is a clear fact. However, height doesn't determine individual ability. This too is a clear fact. Therefore, 6 foot tall players that make it into the NBA should feel reassured that they earned their place.

> he was fired because he made women felt excluded and othered

There was nothing exclusionary about the memo, and "othered" is a meaningless term. He was fired because his memo caused a PR nightmare, and through no fault of his own.

> See also Sundar's quote: "to suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK

Also not something that Damore claimed. This whole debacle has been a grand exercise in strawmanning.

The original argument was that it is uncharitable to claim that Damore was "exactly" fired for pointing out pipeline problems has an impact on closing the gender gap. That's not what he claimed, and it's not why he was fired.

> One way that sexism presents itself is an underappreciation of valuable skills, where traits that are typical of the dominant group are recognized as valuable and marked for advancement instead.

I agree, but Damore positioned the differences in gender abilities as a "Possible non bias cause" and not because of systemic sexism (of or relating to "implicit (unconscious) and explicit biases are holding women back in tech and leadership").

> "6 foot tall basketball players are at a serious disadvantage in the NBA". This is a clear fact.

This is a bad example because, unlike height in basketball, there is no evidence that dimorphism in humans (size, psychological, hormonal or otherwise) causes any difference in preference or ability in tech culture or software engineering in general.

> There was nothing exclusionary about the memo

You're welcome to that opinion, but many at Google felt otherwise.

> and "othered" is a meaningless term.

The editors at M-W feel otherwise [1] and a one sentence definition is returned by most dictionaries and at least one search engine[2].

> He was fired because his memo caused a PR nightmare, and through no fault of his own.

Again, you're welcome to this opinion but that doesn't change the original claim that he was fired for merely having an opinion about "pipeline" issues affecting the speed at which the gap can be closed. That claim would be uncharitable.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/other-as-a-ver... [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=othered+definition

> "to suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK"

That quote is plain stupid. I assume my colleagues to be all qualified for the job because they've been hired according to the same standards.

If my company only hires people that is more than 1.80 metres tall, I'm not diminishing the height of my female colleagues if I suggest that the reason there is a gender imbalance is that women are, on average, shorter.

That Sundar's quote is weird and it does a similar population sleight of hand. The "group of our colleagues" is already a subset of population selected for relevant skill (by virtue of having been hired by Google), so it's out of scope of Damore's memo.

I believe both Sundar's note and Damore's original memo were in the context of people hired by Google.

Damore's thesis was that Google shouldn't expect gender parity because (among other factors) the preferences of women are distributed differently than the preferences of men. So Damore was talking about both groups, but he was fired specifically for suggesting that Google's hiring practices were unfair--the argument being that criticizing Google's hiring practices implies that the women hired under those practices didn't really deserve to be there. This is especially interesting because lots of people make the inverse claim (Google's hiring practices are biased in favor of men) and no one is trying to fire them for implying that male Googlers don't belong (note that recently Google has discouraged activism, but this is because it stirs up unwanted controversy and impedes business, not because it offends a demographic; never mind that being told to behave is not the same as being terminated).