A new lawsuit against Google by two fired employees boils down to toddler’s tantrum: “I don’t wanna share my privileges.”

I had one word for James Damore upon reading yesterday that he and another former Google engineer were suing Google for discrimination: wah. And maybe “suck it up, buttercup.”

In case you’ve forgotten, Damore was fired by Google in December 2016 for emailing a pseudoscience-filled misogynist rant that claimed women’s low representation in the tech industry was due to inherent biological and psychological factors instead of social conditioning and outright discrimination. Given all the awful shit that been in the news lately (for example, the 708 racist, misogynist, authoritarian, anti-environmental, and even real 1930’s-style fascist things that Donald and his minions in the Administration said and did between July 1 to December 31), it would be totally reasonable if you had forgotten about Damore.

Damore’s lawsuit is a class action suit alleging that Google’s culture is discriminatory against conservative white men. He was joined by another fired Google engineer, David Gudeman, who was fired for comparing Muslims to terrorists and who had a history of making racist remarks.

It’s not surprising to me that Damore chose to sue Google, or that he found a conservative law firm (the lead lawyer is a VIP in the California state Republican Party) happy for the small chance to make millions of dollars off Google. And given how far the President’s own misdeeds¹ have gone toward normalizing behavior like Damore’s and Gudeman’s, it’s also not surprising that misogynists and racists are choosing now to claim reverse discrimination against them. Because while this is an attack on Google, it is first and foremost a reactionary push by conservative white men against anti-discrimination laws and regulations in the hopes of keeping women and minorities from becoming fully equal members of society.

In many respects, Google didn’t fire Damore or Gudeman. They committed a “resignation by Human Resources.” There was no way that Google, or any publicly traded company, could have kept either man on staff after what they said. Creating a hostile workplace is a serious problem, and what they did was toxic. And as I said back when Damore published his bullshit-filled screed,

Ultimately, Damore’s firing is on his own head, not Google’s. He wrote the rant in the first place, and he clicked “send” of his own free will. So now he gets to face the consequences of doing so.

If Damore wasn’t OK with possibly being fired for this, he shouldn’t have written the rant in the first place.

And the lawsuit? It’s no more than a toddler’s tantrum of “waaah, it’s not fair I have to share my toys with those mean women and minorities.”

Footnote

1. Let’s start with the 19 women who have credibly accused him of sexual assault over the years, his own words on the Access Hollywood tape, and his strong support for Roy Moore, a serial sexual predator of children and young women