THE truth hurts, especially at Google.

In fact, they’d rather their staff didn’t point out undeniable things like the differences between men and women or the fact that it’s bad business to hire someone just because of their gender.

Software engineer James Damore, a previously anonymous techie at Google, has become the latest whipping boy for the identity politics police, sacrificed for betraying the company’s PC ethos.

Google’s US arm sacked him for sharing around a 10-page document which suggested, among other things, that the firm was wilfully ignorant of the inevitable differences between men and women and that this meant gender imbalances might appear in different areas of the business.

Correct. Men and women. We’re not identical.

Or as Damore wrote: “Nearly every difference between men and women is interpreted as a form of women’s oppression.

“As with many things in life, gender differences are often a case of grass being greener on the other side.

“Unfortunately, taxpayer and Google money is spent to water only one side of the lawn.”

Hallelujah. He speaks the truth.

But Damore was strung as up as “The google engineer who wrote a memo that argued women aren’t biologically fit for tech jobs is out at the company’”, according to one news outlet. Plenty took to social media to paint him as the enemy of modern, progressive society.

The company’s new chief diversity officer responded by telling him to shut up, effectively putting her foot in her own mouth.

Danielle Brown, the ink on her contract barely dry, issued this directive: “Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions.”

She went on to say that Damore “advanced incorrect assumptions about gender” and “did not display a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages’.

The only thing is, Damore said nothing of the sort.

Reading Damore’s memo, I got no sense that he was the sexist, racist man-child eating pizza by the keyboard he has been portrayed as being. Instead, I felt despair knowing that someone so young could lose his job for eloquently saying the unsayable.

“I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more,” Damore writes. “However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices.”

The left-leaning company, says Damore, not only buries conservative opinions but refuses point blank to acknowledge that biological differences play a role in the shortage of women in tech.

Damore condemned the special treatment of “diversity candidates” whose selection naturally fosters the bias they claim to condemn.

He also said it was guilty of silencing dissent in its “ideological echo chamber” and that working at Google made it tough to distinguish between its “politically correct monoculture”.

In fact he wanted to suggest ways to get more females in the industry but “without resorting to discrimination”.

media_camera Google’s Danielle Brown. (Pic: Supplied)

Too bad for Google they just binned a unique employee who tackled issues facing corporations globally.

Even amid all the furore and insults, Damore stressed the need to see people as individuals. Differences can be a matter of tendencies, not absolutes.

Maybe some women are genetically predisposed away from engineering.

Who is to say they’re not, unless we’re pumping out folk from the same human cloning factory?

We can acknowledge the fact that many women care less about a title and huge pay cheque and more about work-life balance. We can acknowledge that choices that women make have a substantial impact on their long-term salary earnings.

“We always ask why we don’t see woman in top leadership positions but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs,” Damore writes.

“These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life.”

This is down to a distribution of traits he says. Again, on average and not applying to every person on the planet.

Women, on average, have more “openness directed towards feelings as aesthetics rather than ideas” and a “stronger interest in people rather than things”.

And if you look around your workplace, family or circle of friends, doesn’t this frequently ring true?

But the shrieking from the kneejerk critics kills any chance of allowing an open discussion.

Where Damore really touches a raw nerve is by saying we “need to stop assuming the gender pay gaps imply sexism”. He’s right, of course.

The sex pay gap myth is one of the worst tools used by those who refuse to acknowledge any part they may play in their own income and destiny

Any realist knows that a woman is getting paid less than a man for doing the same job, it’s not his fault.

Meanwhile Damore says any man complaining about a gender issue affecting men is labelled “a misogynist and a whiner.”

There’s no denying Damore’s words have ripped off a giant PC bandaid at Google and it’s still bleeding.

People are fainting at their keyboards at Damore’s screed. Female employees at Google are throwing sickies in protest of his words.

Whether you agree with him or not, his arguments have been proven right by the admonishment of what he said. Damore says the company illegally fired him and he’ll see them in court.

His “honest discussion” memo designed to make these elitists wake the hell up to the secular culture they had built byte by byte has exposed their blistering intolerance.

He told the New York Times: “I have a legal right to express my concerns about the terms and conditions of my working environment and to bring up potentially illegal behaviour, which is what my document does.”

It’s a war on free thinking and Google is just one of the generals. The gimmicks and the edgy company quirks are merely a smokescreen shrouding a totalitarian thought police.

We need more of Damore’s ilk.

@whatlouthinks