As an addendum, PC is also the *intersection* of discouraging certain speech and protected groups. So you can't have the latter without the former. If there are protected groups, and therefore consequences (legal, that you probably support, or social, that SJW's inflict) for crossing them, they can and will be used even if one is not crossing them; that's human nature.

So if a man gets promoted over a woman, in some cases the man will genuinely be the better performer, but the woman experiences the popular Dunning-Kruger Effect and sues. Or if a man says something to a woman at work and she takes it the wrong way, another lawsuit. So no one will want to work with people in these protected groups, out of fear. And organizations will be less likely to hire them in the first place.

So, the conclusions are:
1) If you support the notion of protected groupings of human beings, you also implicitly support muzzling speech, because that is necessarily one of the results.
2) Rather than make the situation worse, for *both* protected and unprotected groups, it is wisest and fairest to abandon this Left-wing cancer of an idea (that's designed to tear us apart) and to instead tell people tough titties*, there'll be no protected groups, you're on your own, adapt.

*Phrase chosen intentionally for its sexual (/sexist?) reference.

That's not what Political Correctness is. PC is not just the bullying of people to not say things against certain groups. It's obviously also the recognition of certain groups. As victims, and deserving of special awareness, and laws.

That's why this whole thing strikes me as odd, being against SJW's but being in favor of PC, like Barb, and in all likelihood, you as well. It's like you guys are for the cause but against it being defended online?

And to clarify, what I was saying was I'm against the totality of PC, *including* the notion of "protected classes". If some women feel tech is too hostile to them to work in it, work in something else. If some Conservatives and Christians think it's too hostile to them to work in higher education, work somewhere else. Stop making a big damn deal over a select few types of discrimination when there's probably hundreds of them in total.

Short men with the same qualifications as tall men are paid less, and it has nothing to do with merit or innate ability to do the job. But that and a myriad others don't fall under your rigorously-defined, well-thought-out "bread-and-butter" category. So that makes you an illogical, arbitrary bigoted person. I didn't know that about you before.

Except you only recognize the qualifiers that are recognized by the Left. (And the Left recognizes the particular qualifiers that they do only to divide and conquer us and snooker us into giving away more of our rights and freedoms to them.) I've repeatedly brought up other qualifiers, that the Left hasn't declared a "victim" division of people, but are still just as victimized as other divisions of people, and you ignore them. You're pretty fucked up.

Fuck people who are discriminated against and make fucking social causes out of it.

I'm trying to point out, but you're probably not capable of seeing, that you're trying to have it both ways. Don't bag on SJW's for believing in the victimhood culture that the Left has foisted on us, when you believe in it too. We're all victims, every day, of how other people treat us.

What's this "groups" crap? If I join a quilting club, that's a group. The Democrat Party is a group, since can I register affiliation with it. If it's not something I've specifically volunteered to associate myself with, then it's not a group to me unless there's some clear-cut, bonafide scientific reason for the delineation, like "only women should get gynological checkups". Fine, that's an actual, undisputed reason to conceive of a division amongst human beings. The Left's arbitrary divisions of us, are not. I am not the sum of my accidental memberships in the Left's list of approved groupings of people.

Is that really your argument? Is that really an argument? Almost everything we do affects other people, to some degree, somehow. My car pollutes the air. My voice can be heard by others in the vicinity. Should my car be taken from me and my tongue cut out because they affect other people? Isn't that really an asinine, simpleton's threshold?

People can't even agree on what's "common sense", so how then could a vague, hand-waving "bread-and-butter issues" description be of any use? Can't define it, but know one when you see it?

And where on earth did we get the idea that those with vaginas should advance and earn at the rate as those with penises? And why is that even the delineation?!? I've read that shorter people don't advance and earn at the rate that taller people do. We could think of a million ways to slice and dice people into groups, and then compare them and say aha, another million inequities discovered!

Smart people probably generally earn and advance more than dumb people. Who says yours/the Left's invented dividing lines amongst people (race, gender, and whatever the fuck else) are more relevant than mine? Just because? Because of mob rule/the people who shout the loudest should get to define the terms in which we reason about things?

And there's where I reject how we're trained to think about things. By writing/thinking "it's a problem" instead of "that person's problem", you took what is "someone's problem" and made it "all of our's problem". Which is also what people you call SJW's do; make their offense at something the whole world's problem.

For any given thing that someone does not like (and there's billions of people on the planet, and we're all unique), at what point should it be escalated to having its own identity? "Widespreadness"? At what point should some people's experiences, whether offense by a bunch of Conservatives at the Left calling them racists, or a bunch of women feeling hostility in a sector of the private sector, become "an issue" that therefore should be imposed on everyone else to include in the long list of problems in this life that need dealing with?

But note that here you're talking about what needs to be done to solve the "problem", but I asked why in the world is it really a problem? I.e. you may not want to examine things at this more fundamental level, and instead prefer to go on just assuming that "x should feel welcome in y" basis, but there it is, that's what I'm asking about. Because I think the bases we're herded into thinking in terms of is actually a real problem.

From TFA:

I've got a really fundamental question, about nowadays umpteen things like this: Why is that defined as a problem?!?

That's some big talk coming from a seemingly steadfast doormat for the Left. Assuming you're serious, remember that, whoever this is about, they know not what they do. If you're really gotten over yourself and the thinking that you can save those who are really too far gone, recommend ixnay on the venom and just forgiving and moving on. Maybe God has a plan to later reach certain people, through other vessels. Something worth praying for.

I would've never guessed someone like that would do such a thing. I'm sure it was just a fluke. Don't give up hope.

Attitudes are different outside of Silicon Valley. The worst I've seen along these lines is a few of my peers who've done things blatantly towards adding to their resume vice being a professional at their current gig.

While "software engineering" isn't "engineering" per se (it's a lot of art(isanship)), consider that it's not all just a bunch of phony stuff that doesn't matter a hill of beans. And that those who strive to do software well in languages including C#, Java, and JavaScript would be as adverse to working on a development team with you as you would be with us.

I get that you can't unteach laziness and lack of follow-through, but you also can't teach a passion for doing software well. If you're satisfied with people whose interest is elsewhere but can easily learn a couple of languages, that's fine, but I sure wouldn't want to work with them.

tl;dr: "Someone who learns how to design can design anything" is about as true as MBA schools' "someone who learns how to manage can manage anything".

Yikes, add reduced reading comprehension to your list of side effects! Because that's what I was saying too, but just that it's not a bad thing (relative to reality). I know I would gladly trade 2 points off the top end to spare me 4 point drops at the bottom.

How do you know you could get any "real engineers" to work as programmers?

I consider good programmers to have deep interest in software engineering principles and techniques. My experience has been that it's a real crapshoot to find this in CS degreed people, and almost impossible in other degreed people. (YMMV.)