tldr: The half of the country that voted for the current President are all awful, stupid people, and they spend their time reading awful, stupid websites.
What happened to NIPS? Last I heard they had decided against a name change, since that was the sentiment of the survey, and even women seemed indifferent.
This sounds good--who could object to silencing white supremacists? But recent history suggests that this will morph in very short order into simply suppressing unpopular ideas, science even.
The telephone seems like a better model. Yes, people can do bad things with it, and law enforcement has significant resources for policing it. But we don't just turn off people's phones because we don't like them.
Ideas: Get some good headphones and listen to trance/edm/whatever music to get yourself in the zone. Get distractions like phones away from your desk and use a web blocker to zap crap sites like this one. Adrafanil or nicotine gum, maybe.
> Is this really an offense worth ending someone's career over?
In isolation? No. It's a social faux pas that should be responded to with apology and remediation. Nobody is perfect, after all.
As one incident in an overall pattern of abuse stretching one's career? Different matter. If this pattern holds, the accused doesn't need to be propped up as a role model for science communication.
> Why can't these men just learn to treat women like the humans they are?
This sort of willful misunderstanding of concerns feels like a subtle gaslighting campaign.
The vast majority of men being discussed here have zero problems in their treatment of women. They quite rationally have calculated that being around women at work is now a significant risk to them, with little or no upside in return, so they're bowing out.
You can preach all you like, but in my experience it's almost impossible to get people to act against their own self-interest, especially when the welfare of their loved ones is on the line.
