Sunday, May 19, 2019

The Mind of Sheryl Sandberg

You would think that Sheryl Sandberg has enough to do. She is a major corporate executive and the widowed mother of two children. And yet, she is still running around promoting the gospel of political correctness… to bring gender equality into the workplace.

The obvious rejoinder is for her to clean up her own company first. Facebook and the other tech giants of Silicon Valley did not become what they are by putting diversity first.

Now, Sandberg has taken to the pages of Fortune Magazine to discuss the negative consequences of the #MeToo. Surely, she is correct to say that #MeToo exposed much of what is going on behind the doors at America’s companies. It turns out that far too many women have been subjected to far too much sexual harassment. And far too many women have also been having bad sexual experiences in their private lives, many of them consensual.

And yet, as I have often mentioned, male harassers are merely emulating the standard set by Bill Clinton and his enabler wife. Back in the day feminist leaders rushed to the barricades to defend (and fellate) Bill Clinton. They rushed out en masse to put Hillary Clinton in the White House. As the Bible says: “They that sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.”

Remember that we are living in the house the feminism built. It is well and good to call out men who have assaulted women, but the pervasiveness of the problem suggests that something larger is at play. That would be a general antagonism between men and women. Some of it comes from men, but surely some of it comes from the feminist revolution. To imagine that the fault always lies with men, as Sandberg does, is to blind oneself to the realities of American cultural politics. Feminists declared war on the male patriarchy. Why did they think that this would improve work conditions for women?

Even today, the #MeToo movement has been suffused with overt hostility toward men. Recall the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. Do you really think that overt expressions of full throated hatred for men is going to produce a more congenial work environment? Do you think that it is going to improve relations between the sexes? If you do, you do not know how to think.

In her own way Sandberg has contributed to the hostile cultural environment. The Lean In movement that has occupied so much of her ample free time invites women to threaten men. Leaning in is a threatening gesture. Most of the time, as even Sandberg knows, it provokes pushback. An ideologically driven weak thinker like Sandberg believes that that means that men should get sensitivity training. In truth, it means that, as Michelle Obama said of leaning in… that shit doesn’t work. 

Of course, she does not realize that men have been getting sensitivity training for years now. And that numerous studies have shown that it does not work. It fills men's minds with imagines of women being harassed, which does not promote respect for women. And it makes women into threats.

Now it has come to Sandberg’s attention that #MeToo is hurting women’s career prospects. As has often been reported, more and more senior male executives refuse to have private meetings with single women. They refuse to have dinner with single women or travel with single women. Dare I mention the obvious, a point that is so obvious no one has made it, but how many wives of male senior managers would ever allow their husbands to mentor a comely young woman. Be serious, folks.

It ought to have been known by now, but apparently Sandberg is now totally alarmed by it all.

She explains:

New research by LeanIn.Org and SurveyMonkey reveals that 60% of managers who are men now say they are uncomfortable participating in common job-related activities with women, such as mentoring, working alone together, or socializing together. A year ago, that number was 46%. And senior men are now more hesitant to work with junior women than junior men across a range of activities. One-on-one meetings: senior men are 12 times more likely to hesitate to meet with a woman than a man. Business travel: nine times more likely to hesitate. Work dinners: six times more likely.

It is the perfectly normal consequences of the mindless rants against men. You cannot fill the airways and social media with hatred of men and not expect that some men will take it seriously. #MeToo has turned women from victims into threats. It has made them radioactive.

Sandberg, whose company has joined nearly all the other tech companies by prospering while being run by white and Asian males, bemoans the fact that women are not getting a fair chance at reaching the executive suite. In truth, given her own blindness Sandberg does not understand that most women do not want to be corporate executives. They have other things to do with their time. They understand that more time at work means less time bringing up their children. And, truth be told, few women want to be Sheryl Sandberg. The point does not register for her. And the point cannot register for her. Because if she is not the vanguard leading the world toward a more equal workplace she is just a superhuman freak.

She continues:

This is disastrous. The vast majority of managers and senior leaders are men. They have a huge role to play in supporting women’s advancement at work—or hindering it. If they’re reluctant even to meet one-on-one with women, there’s no way women can get an equal shot at proving themselves. Instead, women will be overlooked and excluded, which is a terrible waste of talent, creativity, and productivity. It’s not good for business or for anyone.

How can we close the gender gap if senior leaders and managers—the people with the power to hire, promote, and mentor—choose men for too many of the plum assignments requiring close collaboration?

Sandberg does not understand that women do not want what she is selling. She certainly does not understand that her Lean In movement has contributed to the hostile environment that currently exists in the workplace. And she does not see that her favorite politicians, especially the Clintons, are largely responsible for this state of affairs.

It is not disastrous. She is indulging in some mindless hyperbole. And, by failing to take any responsibility for the current state of affairs, and for failing to understand how women set their own priorities, Sandberg has become more the problem than the solution. To be clear, if men get the impression that the best that women can offer is represented by enabler-in-chief no-account Hillary Clinton or a Sheryl Sandberg who seems to be more loyal to a crackpot ideology than to her company... why would they want to hire and promote more women?

6 comments:

  1. Sandberg is one of the many women who got her position by knowing people (her best friend was the boss's sister). They truly have no understanding of just how competitive the job market is.

    Their advice is useless, as in the Real World, either you have connections, or you better sell your soul, or your body, to your bosses. For men, that means they take the blame for morally compromised actions, failures of judgement, or other pass-the-buck issues.

    For women, that usually means schtupping your superiors. Relatively few of the men are the sexual aggressors - it's generally the women who take the sexual initiative.

    Starting your own company, for women, is a better option. However, that takes a major toll on their families.

    I hate to say it, but for the average woman, taking a less-demanding job, or deliberately keeping their business smaller and more manageable, is a better option. I'm assuming that having a family is a priority for most women.

    The single life, for women, is seldom as satisfying. Women are meant to bond and nurture.

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  2. We've all heard of "toxic masculinity", but femininity has become toxic in the workplace. Men are proactively protecting themselves against accusations. THEY have learned. Women haven't.

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  3. Behind every social media purge, both online and in the corporate world, there is a cabal of bitter, irrational and vindictive women leading the charge to destroy the opposition to their crazy worldview. I view women like Ms Sandburg as the enemy of liberty and freedom of thought.

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  4. In my company we have an unstated no breeders policy.

    We will hire younger women through temp agencies for disposable scut work and positions. They come and go as expected.

    And we have no problem hiring older experienced professional women, proven and established in their fields for senior positions. They've proven invaluable as expected.

    But we do not hire women starting out in their field where we are expected to train them up only to lose them in a few years to maternity leave, have them come back and commit half assed for a time and then go on maternity again. Plus the liability of having a pound me too eruption. No way. It's a business.

    It's worked very well for us.

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  5. >> ...femininity has become toxic in the workplace.
    >> Men are proactively protecting themselves against accusations. THEY have learned. Women haven't.

    "Elections have consequences"
    "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction"

    Of course men will react to new potential threats with increased caution; what reasonable person would act otherwise? Apparently the #MeToo crowd thinks they're so special that they can avoid natural law. Sorry ladies, get all the votes you want, you still can't repeal the Law of Gravity.

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  6. Sheryl was a heavy influence in Megyn Kelly's professional self-destruction.

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