Remember James Damore, the (now former) Google employee who created a firestorm for that controversial memo he sent to colleagues?
Well, he's up a creek again.
In early August, Damore was fired after a sexist memo he wrote — in which he falsely claimed biological differences between the genders were a reason why fewer women work in tech — leaked to the press.
Damore has since defended (and even doubled down) on his debunked assertions. And now, that's led him into yet another self-inflicted controversy.
In an interview with Business Insider, Damore suggested being a conservative employee at Google is like "being gay in the 1950s."
After being asked about how he'd respond to women at Google who were offended by his remarks, Damore segued into the allegedly oppressive work environments keeping conservatives quiet in Silicon Valley:
"Really, it’s like being gay in the 1950s. These conservatives have to stay in the closet and have to mask who they really are. And that’s a huge problem because there’s open discrimination against anyone who comes out of [the] closet as a conservative."
The internet wasn't having it.
After the interview published, Twitter users piled on, pointing out how asinine Damore's remarks truly were.
Damore was fired for sending out a sexist memo — not for being conservative — which sort of nulled his point from the get-go.
It's absurd for someone like Damore to try and play the victim card in the first place, though.
Because it's difficult to be part of the largest political ideology base in the U.S. and also claim you're oppressed.
You can't get fired simply for being conservative, after all. You still can be fired, however, for being LGBTQ.
Decades-old research, one user highlighted, found large majorities of LGBTQ people reported being harassed or assaulted because of who they were.
You don't need hard data to understand what LGBTQ people went through, though. The tales are horrifying enough.
Damore probably should have done his research before making a claim like that.
When words failed, images said it all.
Le sigh.
GIFs, too, seemed like an appropriate response.
A very appropriate response.
Damore's clueless comparison shows the dangers in forgetting history — or failing to learn it in the first place.
In 1950 — long before gay marriage or same-sex adoption laws were even up for debate — homosexuality was still considered a sociopathic personality disturbance by the American Psychiatric Association. In 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower signed an executive order banning LGBTQ people from working for the federal government because they were perceived as a security threat.
It wasn't until 16 years later that the Stonewall Inn riots — considered the launch of the modern day LGBTQ rights movement — erupted after years of harassment and abuse of queer New Yorkers at the hands of city police.
You really believe the challenges you face as a conservative are comparable to what closeted LGBTQ people dealt with 60 years ago?