People wonder why there was such an outrage. This article is a good starting point showing some of the effects that stereotypes can have on people: http://mita

People wonder why there was such an outrage. This article is a good starting point showing some of the effects that stereotypes can have on people: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-stereotypical-male http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-s... Two examples extracted and paraphrased: * When women and men were both asked to "think like men" (article details how this was done) on a mental rotation test, they did about the same. When asked to think like women, there was a significant difference - around 1/3 drop of average score for women, 10% for men. * Two groups were asked to take a test, but one of the groups was primed by the statement: “This is a genuine test of your verbal abilities and limitations due to various personal factors involved in performance.” - the test takers were given the impression that their score on the test was associated with their personal academic aptitude. The second group wasn't primed in this way. In the primed group, black people had a drop of performance of 2x (the number of items solved was halved). Imagine having looked at studies like these. They show how severely people can be affected by stereotypes - orders of magnitude more than any statistically insignificant biological differences. If even the stereotyped are personally affected, imagine how much worse that can be in multiple-people situations (interviews, meetings etc) where the other people are not the target of the stereotype but has been influenced by it in their life... So now a colleague is seemingly perpetuating stereotypes and those stereotypes are going viral. His argument may be more nuanced than that, but you fear that the stereotypes are all that people will take from it. For the most part that fear seems to be coming true. Whats the normal reaction there?