Who is Antonio Garcia Martinez? Apple fires new staffer for saying 'women are full of sh*t' in FB exposé book
A former Facebook employee who had joined Apple as a product engineer last month, has been fired over sexist and racist remarks in his bestseller book. Antonio Garcia Martinez wrote the memoir, 'Chaos Monkeys', in 2016, which went on to become a New York Times bestseller. However, his colleagues soon discovered the problematic contents of Garcia Martinez's book. Over 2,000 Apple employees petitioned to probe his hiring and eventually effectuated his termination.
The book, which is majorly an exposé on Facebook, has been flagged for remarks like 'women are full of sh*t' and period-shaming a female coworker as 'PMMess'. His book has also been termed racist for comparing a coworker with a 'thick Indian accent' to a 'bored' rickshaw driver from Delhi. The petitioners claimed that his book was in clear violation of Apple's commitment to 'Inclusion and Diversity' and contested the decision of his appointment.
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Who is Antonio Garcia Martinez?
According to his website, Antonio Garcia Martinez had been a PhD student in physics at Berkeley, which, by his own admission, did not work out. He decided to join Wall Street 'as a way out', and started working at the trading desk of Goldman Sachs. In 2008, he joined a startup that he dubs as 'Shitty Unnamed Company'. In his bio, he mentions, "Right around 2008, when Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns blew up, I knew the financial jig would be up for a while (and possibly forever), unlike most of my colleagues, who seemed to think orgies of rapacious greed lasted forever."
He then started working at Facebook where he spent two years and designed the segment Facebook Exchange as an aid in marketing. However, he was fired from his position of advertising manager in 2013, which led him to chronicle the book 'Chaos Monkeys'. His book was published by Harper Collins in 2016.
He later also worked as a writer for Wired and as an advisor to Twitter.
Some of the offensive remarks in the book
A spokesperson from Apple confirmed García Martinez's dismissal on Wednesday, May 12. They told The Verge, "At Apple, we have always strived to create an inclusive, welcoming workplace where everyone is respected and accepted. Behavior that demeans or discriminates against people for who they are has no place here."
In his book, the disgraced author wrote: "Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of sh*t. They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they'd become precisely the sort of useless baggage you'd trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel."
He also additionally claimed being 'snookered into fatherhood via warm smiles and pliant thighs', further adding that he 'played it fast and loose with the safe-sex rules'.
In one part, he targets his former women colleagues at Facebook saying, "There were few women one would call conventionally attractive at Facebook. The few there were rarely if ever dressed for work with their femininity on display in the form of dresses and heels... If her look was supposed to disarm me, she needed either more cleavage or more charm."
Released in 2016, the book also comprised misogynistic admissions, like the time he nicknamed a female colleague as 'PMMess' - which is an offensive term to designate a woman on her period. "'PMMess, as we'll call her, was composed of alternating Bezier curves from top to bottom: convex, then concave, and then convex again, in a vertical undulation you couldn't take your eyes off of," he wrote.
The marketing executive even referred to women offensively with terms like 'jaw-droppingly hot', 'jeans-clad ass' and 'got lost on the way to New York Fashion Week hot'.
In another instance, he took the racist path while describing his Indian colleague Chander, saying, "In his ill-fitting polyester polo shirts with color palettes stolen from the late seventies, he reminded me of the bored auto-rickshaw drivers in front of Connaught Place, Delhi, who'd overcharge you a hundred rupees to go down the street to Paharganj."
''It is concerning that the views Mr. García Martinez expresses in his 2016 book Chaos Monkeys were overlooked — or worse, excused — during his background check or hiring panel," over 2000 outraged Apple employees included in their signed petition against Garcia Martinez.
"Given Mr. Garcia Martinez's history of publishing overtly racist and sexist remarks about his former colleagues, we are concerned that his presence at Apple will contribute to an unsafe working environment for our colleagues who are at risk of public harassment and private bullying," the petition further stated, demanding a deeper probe into "how his published views on women and people of color were missed or ignored, along with a clear plan of action to prevent this from happening again."