Definitely consult HR, or his own supervisor, or the EEOC, or a lawyer if he had personally been discriminated against based on, say, gender, or even witnessed such discrimination. There are ways to deal with harmful company policies. Often imperfect, but better, for this situation, than what he did.

Are there? It's been a long time since I was studying this (not since casually considering it college) so my information could be super out of date and incomplete, but I'm not aware of any studies that established clear gender-based distinctions in brain functioning that translated into anything so clear as, "This…

My family almost never plays the actual game. We'd just read off the cards and see who could answer first. That's pretty fun.

Considering that our understanding of the human brain and how it functions is roughly at the "maybe if we stop hitting ourselves repeatedly in the head, it will help" stage, the idea that anyone would guide company policy based on theorized biological differences between genders is comically idiotic. I'm reminded of…

I suspect he started it by calling for the termination of "commie retards in skirts."

I think it's especially inappropriate in a work-setting too. If you have serious concerns about a massive company policy, you don't air them by emailing the whole company. And you don't send out emails implying that some of your co-workers are performing pointless tasks to those same co-workers. I mean, do the people…

Yeah. I thought Yellow Wallpaper was a fairly straight-forward story about someone going insane. The only "twist" I guess is that it ends so unhappily.

Is a 10-page manifesto emailed to hundreds of people really the best way to have a discussion about ideas? I would think managing the replies would be a cumbersome process. It seems more like an example of a person wanting to hold forth without the risk of being challenged.

I think being a successful artist is among the most difficult things to achieve professionally (if not the most difficult - maybe astronaut is harder?). My comment wasn't about whether or not something was "easy" but whether it was a profession girls are or aren't encouraged to think about during childhood.

When I was small, my dad told me, "We don't eat Nestle, they kill babies." So I still can't eat their candy without a twinge of guilt and I don't buy it myself. Childhood lessons hanging on forever.

"I am not like some humanities person who completely dismisses the other side."

Your dichtomous approach to everything is very strange to me. You seem fixated on that idea that there would be some singular tool that solves every problem. "Empathy isn't a perfect guide to making decisions thus empathy plays no role in making decisions." That's like arguing hammers are useless for home-building…

Why is that the "end question"? And biology seems like a weird thing to focus on when currently culture is actively discouraging people from participating in the activity. Going back to the violin example, maybe we should stop chopping off fingers first?

You seem to be laboring under the assumption that biology and culture can be separated when clearly they heavily and continuously interact.

"Philosophers argue"? Which ones? Utilitarian philosophers? The notion that you could even define what "utility" is in any given case without empathy is laughable.

I'd argue that his education has clearly been rather narrow as his understanding of science and political history is thin to say the least.

Or the first and second branch since making something a law at all is extremely subjective and culturally controlled.

Union Carbide.

"De-emphasising empathy" is actually pure idiocy. It's pretending that you have no cultural or psychological blinders while obsessing over everyone else's.

Neither is a 10 page screed which cites no evidence in support of its points.