Yes, it looks bad... taken out of context. Here's the full context:
At Google, we’re regularly told that implicit (unconscious) and explicit biases are holding women back in tech and leadership. Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the workplace differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole story.
On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because:
* They’re universal across human cultures
* They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone
* Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify and act like males
* The underlying traits are highly heritable
* They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective
Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
He does mention abilities once, yes, but that's part of his general argument for natural sex differences. His argument about Google and coding doesn't appeal to any specific ability differences. Instead, he stresses differences of interest, using several specific examples to make this point.
It's the core of his general argument. His general argument is that Google's diversity policy is bad because women are biologically less inclined to want certain jobs. That's biological determinism that, if applied to different ethnicities, would rightly be called racism.
In order to justify his political position he then cites whatever interpretation of the avaliable evidence justifies his position and ignores that which contradicts it. That's not a scientific approach.
Related, this isn't a thread about science and technology. This is a thread about politics, specifically labor relations. It's not a tech issue by virtue of the fact that it happened in a tech company and it's not a science issue by virtue of the fact that Damore uses science when it's convenient to bolster a political point of view.
I note you still haven't answered Murdin's takedown of the "science" used in Damore's manifesto. Still researching, I guess.