Specifically at Google, that bullying took the form of a
sophomoric anti-female screed by a male employee that was distributed to 40,000 coworkers.
Here is the Wikipedia summary of James Damore's
Google's Ideological Echo Chamber memo:
James Damore has said that he became motivated to write a memo after attending an unrecorded Google diversity program, whose rhetoric he described as largely "shaming and 'no, you can't say that, that's sexist'".[7] The memo was written on a flight to China.[8][9]
Calling the culture at Google an "ideological echo chamber", the memo says that while discrimination exists, it is extreme to hold that all disparities are due to oppression, and that it is "authoritarian" to correct for this with reverse discrimination. Instead, it argues that the gender disparity can be partially explained by biological differences between women and men.[1][10] According to Damore, those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, that women tend to be more social, more artistic, and more prone to neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).[11] The memorandum also lists multiple suggestions on ways to use those differences in order to increase women's representation in tech without resorting to discrimination.[1][10]
The memo is dated July 2017 and was originally shared on an internal mailing list.[12][13]
...
Responses from scientists who study gender and psychology reflected the controversial nature of the science Damore cited.[49]
Some commentators in the academic community expressed broad support, saying he had gotten the science right, such as Debra Soh, a sexual neuroscientist at York University in Toronto;[50][51] J. Peterson, Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto;[7][52] Lee Jussim, a professor of social psychology at Rutgers University;[53][54][55] and Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychology professor at University of New Mexico.[54] David P. Schmitt, former professor of psychology at Bradley University;[54][56] said that the memo was right about average group differences, but one could not use it to judge individuals.
Others said that he had got the science wrong and relied on data that was suspect, outdated, irrelevant, or otherwise flawed; these included Gina Rippon, chair of cognitive brain imaging at Aston University;[57] Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania;[58] evolutionary biologist Suzanne Sadedin;[35][59][60] Rosalind Barnett, a psychologist at Brandeis University, and Caryl Rivers, a professor of journalism at Boston University.[61]
I read the memo and don't consider it bullying. If we are going to discuss why a sex or race is under-represented in a certain occupation and what (if anything) should be done about it, all explanations for the under-representation with data behind them should be considered.
