Recently fired Google engineer James Damore, author of the now-infamous 'antidiversity memo' that caused a firestorm both at Google and beyond, had a fairly easy time finding support from his coworkers. According to screenshots of discussions on Google's internal message forum, several employees agreed with the 10-page manifesto that cost Damore his job.

That memo, which Google employees first started tweeting about on Friday night and has since leaked in full (several times), attempts to make a case against the push for gender equality in tech and engineering, specifically because "men and women biologically differ in many ways." Damore argues that women are more likely to have innate biological traits that make them inferior engineers. For instance, Damore writes that women "have more ... neuroticism," which "may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs." (Googlegeist is the company's annual data-driven employee survey.)

Damore's memo brought a renewed focus to Silicon Valley's gender inequity, as well as the inevitable charges from conservative corners that Google was attempting to silence Damore simply for speaking his mind. But screenshots of Google's internal forums acquired by WIRED show that Damore found plenty of support from his coworkers. While it's hard to know how representative the views expressed below are of the company at large, they do illustrate that hostility toward Google's diversity efforts is not an isolated incident.

Damore further argued that people inherently want to protect women, which in turn creates a hostile environment for men: "As mentioned before, this likely evolved because males are biologically disposable and because women are generally more cooperative and agreeable than men. We have extensive government and Google programs, fields of study, and legal and social norms to protect women, but when a man complains about a gender issue issue [sic] affecting men, he’s labeled as a misogynist and whiner."

Google CEO Sundar Pichai disagreed. "To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK," Pichai wrote in a note to employees. He also said that parts of the memo actively violated Google's code of conduct by "advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace."

But the internal discussions that followed Damore's memo and its fallout show Google employees both embracing and advancing its views. Damore himself indicated that his former coworkers had reached out privately to express "their gratitude for bringing up these very important issues." Others chimed in publicly as well.