The Fluff and Nonsense that is Feminism
Trudy W. Schuett
Kelly is talking about feminism
In the days when I thought it was still possible to have an open discussion with feminists, I used to say, “Maybe you think you don’t hate men. So why can’t you stop acting as if you do?”
Of course, that was always the end of any communication. Today’s feminists refuse to even entertain the idea their “philosophy” may be flawed.
There are gaping holes of logic and even of comprehension, when you consider all the things feminists want the government and white men to do for them. If you read such books as Melanie Phillips’ The Ascent of Woman: A History of the Suffragette Movement and the Ideas Behind it
And Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-75
What you find is a group of emotionally disturbed women who cannot even agree among themselves what they believe.
Feminism is not now, and has never been, about equality. It has always been about female supremacy; taking rights away from men and allowing women to prevail. If it had ever been about equality, then the term, “feminism,” would never have been invented. They would have called themselves egalitarians.
They have not done that.
Because I work in a library, I’ve been able to access otherwise hidden sections of websites, such as that of the Feminist Majority org. There I found some of the early works of Shulamith Firestone. I must apologize here, because due to the poor writing skills of this woman, and the things she said I had thought she was an African-American raised in poverty.
Nope. She’s one of those Jewish American Princesses my first husband, Steven Silberberg, warned me about. Whine, whine, whine. Not just a yenta, but worse.
I lived in the Detroit area for the first 38 years of my life. There is a huge A-A population there, and of course some people of color were friends of ours. Duh. You live down the street from a lady whose kids are the same age, of course they all play together and you borrow the occasional cup of sugar. We were friends and didn’t think about race. When we were changing diapers, all our babies pooped brown ;>)
So I am particularly outraged that feminists chose to piggyback on the Equal Rights Movement of the ‘60s and still do. The Black people had something concrete to attain; nobody ever tried to stop a woman from voting after 1920 and nobody ever tried to keep a woman from buying a house in an area she liked. Of course there’s more to all of it, but my point is that women have never been treated as badly as African Americans, and I find it shameful that these spoiled white girls have chosen to draw a parallel. If you read Alice Echols you find that the black women of the equal rights movement rejected feminists in the 60s, and for good reason.
Feminism has always been about bullsh*t. It is the cultural tragedy of the 21st Century.
Feminism has always been about bullshit. It is the cultural tragedy of the 21st Century
Surely you will not argue that the documented differences in pay and advancement between males and females are due to some inherent inferiority of women. There is definitely something real here. I agree that it is of lesser magnitude than the discrimination that blacks still suffer, but it's still real.
My second point is that you are tarring an entire school of thought based on the antics of its most extreme members. I could collect a set of quotes from the far right end of the Republican party and paint the party as a collection of weirdos, fanatics, and illiterate fools -- but that wouldn't be fair.
Besides, what's the point of arguing about the nut cases of any school of thought? None of them have anything useful to offer us. Why don't we instead discuss the ideas that are closer to the center, the ideas that really are worthy of discussion?
And to what extent are you generalizing about Trudy? Where in the world did she ever suggest that women are inferior to men?
What has to start first and foremost with these discussions is that you define what is and is not a feminist. Which is one thing I've noticed that a lot of so-called "feminists" refuse to do, or if they do they wind up giving wildly contradictory answers, or refusing to own up to the logical conclusions--for example, if you take the notion that "feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings equal to men" (a common trope) then of course Rush Limbaugh, Phyllis Schlafly, Pat Buchanan, and the Pope are all feminists.
By the way, a lot of people believe that the documented pay differences between men and women have to do with a lot of the FREE CHOICES a lot of women and men make, and have nothing whatever to do with sexism. Where would that belief fit on your feminist spectrum?
Also, I think (not 100% sure) black educated women, with no children, make more than black men.
Should the government eliminate these inequalities?
Whoaaa... Back up there... I'm confused. Where did Chris ever accuse Trudy of thinking women are inferior to men? I've reread his comment three times, and I don't see it.
I think you've read into Chris's comment something that he never said.
And Martin, you have my gratitude for pointing out the misreading.
Find me some. I don't think you can.
1. To what extent are performance differences in males and females in the sciences due to innate differences versus cultural factors?
2. Has the wage gap between men and women been reduced to its irreducible minimum?
3. The growing number of women in management positions appears to be slowing changing corporate cultures from a more hierarchical style to a more collegial style. If this change really is happening, is it to the ultimate benefit of corporations?
4. Will this trend also serve to increase the participation of women in management?
5. We have now established several decades of experience with day care centers for working women, and we have determined that the expenditures for these day care centers are cost-effective in some but not all cases. Can we refine the provision of day-care to increase its cost-effectiveness?
6. What are the best approaches to eliminating the residual sexism that still impedes our society?
How's that for a start?
2. The "wage gap" is a nebulous term, depending upon the person making the definition. I would like to see an equality of wages where it is equal pay for equal work, or equal salary for equal experience. Are we there? I honestly have no idea.
3. Recently a local news station did a story on the "management gap" of several major companies, contrasting the ones that had few or none with those who had many. The problem I had with this story is that it pointed out Apple Inc. as a company with no women in upper management, and wasn't it a shame. My problem was that I happen to know that there has been very little turnover in the very narrow upper echelons of that company, and many of them have been with the company since its inception. So... do you fire somebody who does a job provably well just to hire a female for the same position? (I also happen to know a woman *in* upper management in that company— but she's also a nun. Her salary goes straight to her order, so they might have missed it.)
As far as "collegial" goes, from what I have seen that can be a very accurate term. There are good colleges out there that offer true learning experiences, and there are those which basically teach new ways to act like twits. I would imagine that corporations will get the same spread of benefits or detriments if they change their management styles.
6. I think the best way to deal with the residual sexism in our society is to treat men and women as people, honestly, on their own merits, and act towards those who treat them differently as though their manners are unspeakably gauche. I encountered very little racism (secondhand, since I'm white) when I was growing up, though my parents reported the casually racist things they were surrounded by as they grew up. In a large part, that was because it was no longer polite to be racist by the time I was born.
As to unconscious sexism, I don't believe in thought police— if you can prove problems, deal with them, but as long as people remain polite to my face I don't care if they're such an idiot to believe preconceptions in the privacy of their own thoughts.
There's also been a well-documented trend for a couple of decades now, which is that women are far more likely to either quit their jobs or accept lesser positions simply because they're *rather* spend more time with their kids, but which tends to sniff and scoff at men who stay home with their kids.
So how does any of that square with the concept that the problem is enteirely or mostly sexism? We don't even have to go to domestic violence issues to understand that the picture is far more complex than the image of the helpless female in a brutal male-dominated world (which, if you think about it, is really a pretty offensive point of view).
Chris, could you please identify for me one -- just one -- issue of wrongful discrimination against males that has been commonly and generally characterized by feminists as a feminist issue?
Just one, Chris.
Just one.
On point #3, the management gap at some companies, I don't think it means much to look at a few cases. We need to look at the big picture, examining statistical evidence from many different sources. Apple's example doesn't mean much, because it's just one company.
In point of fact, it turns out that in some major metropolitan areas, women now average *better* pay than men.
Dean, I'd really like to know the specifics on that. Is it all job categories (seems doubtful to me), some job categories, some income levels, does it apply to particular types of cities -- what are the specifics?
And we also still live in a society where the majority of college graduates are women and the majority of dropouts are men.
This was certainly not the case not too many years ago, when men greatly outnumbered women in college. In any case, the decision to drop out seems more voluntary.
So how does any of that square with the concept that the problem is enteirely or mostly sexism?
I don't know; ask somebody who thinks that's the case. I myself am certain that sexism remains a real issue, and that it is negatively impacting society, but I don't have much precision on the magnitude of the problem.
Chris, could you please identify for me one -- just one -- issue of wrongful discrimination against males that has been commonly and generally characterized by feminists as a feminist issue?
Since I'm not defending the radical feminists, I see no need to respond to this. Take it up with them.
There are lots of gender-based differences in our culture, some of which are based on innate factors and some of which are cultural. Men don't live as long as women. We can't change the innate factors but we can do something to reduce the remanent sexism in our culture that continues to obstruct our economic and social progress.
So again, Chris: please identify for us one -- just one -- issue of wrongful discrimination against males that has been commonly and generally characterized by feminists as a feminist issue?
Just one, Chris.
Just one.
And remember, it doesn't matter whether it's a case of can't or won't on your part; either one is more than sufficient to prove you wrong.
No.
I would argue that the differences in pay and advancement were lied about rather than documented.
That horseshit about women being paid 76 cents for every dollar men are paid is still being peddled, even though it wasn't true when it was first cited and it certainly isn't true today.
When women make the same choices about career that men make, they're generally paid a little *more* than men, not less. This was true even in the 1970s.
Chris, there have been studies that have documented differences. Many of those studies have been roundly refuted. So for us to really discuss differences here, we need to know which studies you're relying on: the refuted studies many of us have seen, or more rigorous studies we may have missed. (My take: if you see the phrase "comparable worth" in a study, you can throw it in the trash. "Comparable worth" is in the eyes of one or a handful of assessors, usually the people preparing the study. That's too easy to manipulate to fit an agenda. Market worth is determined by the market, an aggregate intelligence that is much smarter than any team of researchers.)
mariner, if you're going to say that women are paid more if they make the same career choices, again, we'll need to know where those stats come from, and how researchers determined "the same career choices".
I'm not saying meaningful data isn't possible here; but the topic is so agenda laden that we can't rely on conclusions drawn from the data. We need the data itself.
And the whole equal pay discussion is a massive digression from Trudy's point. Her point -- her consistent point, if you check the archives -- is that programs driven by self-declared feminists tend to be far more anti-male than pro-female. Chris, you really won't be able to have a meaningful discussion with Trudy on this until you check the archives and at least skim some of her past material. Whether she's pressed for time or just in a foul mood, or maybe some other reason, her recent posts have been more conclusion-oriented than data-oriented. In the past, she has cited plenty of studies and plenty of stories that all form a backdrop for her anger here. You may not agree with her; but if you know her past writings, you'll understand that these posts are the latest, consistent steps in a long chain of argument.
I know the new guy always hates to be told "Read the archives"; but on certain topics, this blog essentially has a long, ongoing discussion thread across comments and posts and years.
mariner, there's tons of research documenting the wage gap. I did a quick Google search and came up with something like half a million hits. I perused some of the top hits and here's a quick list of links to studies that seem worth looking at:
general overview with partial breakdowns
Some Congressional Testimony
I found a page that argues the case that the gender gap is due to career choices made by women. It's here. It also provides a long list of links providing more detailed data. Salient quote: "No one seriously disputes the existence of a gender wage differential. The disagreement primarily focuses on the cause of the wage differential."
There seems to be broad agreement that the factors that contributed to the gender gap (women terminating their careers to have children) are waning. This would suggest that the gender gap should be diminishing, but that does not appear to be the case. On the other hand, some studies indicate that the gender gap is smaller for younger workers than for older workers -- which tends to support this hypothesis.
However, there is one study that really drove home, without any question, that sexism is alive and well. Somebody studied the prices of avatars for the MMORPG "World of Warcraft" and came up with the fascinating discovery that female avatars with exactly the same attributes as male avatars sold for about 10% less. I can't find the link -- I'm pretty sure that I read it in the Economist but I can't find it there. I'll keep looking.
Her point -- her consistent point, if you check the archives -- is that programs driven by self-declared feminists tend to be far more anti-male than pro-female.
You certainly won't get any argument from me on the point that the further out you go on the wing of feminism, the more anti-male they become. My quibble is that there remain plenty of pragmatic feminists whose only interest lies in making sure that they're competing with men on a level playing field.
Certainly.
First, however, we need you to please identify for us one -- just one -- issue of wrongful discrimination against males that has been commonly and generally characterized by feminists as a feminist issue.
Just one, Chris.
Just one.
And remember, it doesn't matter whether it's a case of can't or won't on your part; either one is more than sufficient to prove you wrong.
"Surely you will not argue that the documented differences in pay and advancement between males and females are due to some inherent inferiority of women. There is definitely something real here."
Has anybody considered that if this was an apples to apples comparison, which it isn't, that the capitalist nature of corporations would cause them to fire the men, replace them with women, pay them less, and therefore save money?
Probably not.
If the gender income gap was as it's described, corporations would take advantage of it to the fullest. Just as they do with H1-B visa workers.
I myself have taken advantage of this blindness in the past by hiring women; I have found that in fact I can get great talent for less by hiring women. The fact that I can get such great talent for so little money indicates to me that the market is biased against women. But that's a personal observation with no real probative value.
No, the best way to assess the problem is to look at the overall numbers. As I pointed out earlier, there's no question that there is a gender gap in pay. The question here concerns the cause of that gender gap. We can be pretty certain that there really was gender-based discrimination decades ago. We also know that much progress has been made in reducing that discrimination. The debate now concerns how much progress has been made and the size of the remaining problem.
Let me expand on an important point: there's a lot of what I'll call "indirect discrimination". An example might be the executive who values aggressiveness in his proteges. That's not an intrinsically sexist attitude -- I'm sure he'd value an aggressive woman just as much as an aggressive man. But aggressiveness is more common among men than among women, so the indirect effect of his preference works against women. Is this unfair? At first glance, no. But then, why does he value aggressiveness? If -- and this is a big if -- he values aggressiveness because it's a tough male world out there and he wants people who can fight back against the other aggressive males, then there is an intrinsic bias against women in his preference. I don't blame him specifically -- he's just trying to do well in a male-dominated world. But he is participating in the cultural practices that result in bias against women. His approach is indirectly discriminatory against women.
This is not a problem to be solved by blaming individual executives. It's a broad cultural problem that must be solved in a broad-based fashion. I believe that the problem is slowly solving itself by the slow, slow seepage of women into higher level management positions. My wife, for example, was an ambitious, bright, energetic young engineer 30 years ago. She worked hard, proved her worth, and was promoted. Eventually she ran into the fabled "glass ceiling". She got an MBA at night school and still couldn't get promoted into upper management. She finally left the company for another company that recognized her talents, where she continued her career path. Along the way, she brought her own management style to the companies she worked for, and that management style was definitely NOT a masculine style. It's difficult to describe her system, but it really, really worked -- everywhere she went, she cleaned up problems, inspired workforces, and greatly increased productivity.
However, she tired of the ugly politics in upper management. Although she had been successful in inspiring a more cooperative, less competitive work style among her subordinates, she was of course unable to change the more dog-eat-dog style at her own level. Eventually it sapped her morale, and she left to start her own business with no employees and no politics. Of course, her subordinates are now working their way up the corporate ladder, taking some of the corporate culture she infused into them, and slowly, slowly, corporate cultures are changing. But this process will take generations. I believe that, ultimately, this will be to the good of corporations, because employees will focus more on collaboration than internal competition.
1. To what extent are performance differences in males and females in the sciences due to innate differences versus cultural factors?
I have no idea. What do you mean by "performance differences"? If you're talking about different ways men and women approach their jobs, well I'm sure everyone has their own style, but why is that important?
If you're talking about there not being "enough" women in those jobs, I don't think anyone has ever asked women if they want them. After all, Title IX did not result in droves of women suddenly participating in athletics in colleges. Rather, because resources are not infinite, the result was to take away from men's sports.
2. Has the wage gap between men and women been reduced to its irreducible minimum?
Equal pay for equal work has been the law of the land since 1964. Any employment discrimination based on gender has been illegal at the federal level since 1967.
Betty Freidan started NOW because even then, "equal opportunity" wasn't good enough. She (and feminists since) wanted equal outcome -- in other words, equal pay for equal or less work, when it is performed by women. Also government-sponsored childcare and maternity leave, and job training programs for some women. Not to mention government-provided maids to do the housework, and/or "family allowances" which seem to be about the government paying people with kids to stay home.
If you look at the NOW "Bill of Women's Rights 1968," you find it is all about the government taking responsibility for people's economic lives, but with no word on how this largesse is to be funded.
3. The growing number of women in management positions appears to be slowing changing corporate cultures from a more hierarchical style to a more collegial style. If this change really is happening, is it to the ultimate benefit of corporations?
How corporations run their businesses is their own concern, and I have no opinion on the matter.
4. Will this trend also serve to increase the participation of women in management?
From the US Dept of Labor
"Women accounted for 51% of all workers in the high-paying management, professional, and related occupations. They outnumbered men in such occupations as financial managers; human resource managers; education administrators; medical and health services managers; accountants and auditors; budget analysts; property, real estate, and social and community association managers; preschool, kindergarten, elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers; physical therapists; and registered nurses."
Considering women in management are proportionate to their number in the general population, what then, would be considered "enough" women in management? 75%? 100%?
5. We have now established several decades of experience with day care centers for working women, and we have determined that the expenditures for these day care centers are cost-effective in some but not all cases. Can we refine the provision of day-care to increase its cost-effectiveness?
Cost-effective for whom? Working parents? Taxpayers? Have we even established whether day care is a good idea or not? The experts don't seem to agree.Why do you think this is a feminist issue?
6. What are the best approaches to eliminating the residual sexism that still impedes our society?
I guess you'd first have to define what you mean by "residual sexism."
Really? This study drove it home without question? First, I don't think the social outcasts that make up much of the online gaming community are entirely representative of the rest of the population. Second, given that the game involves physical combat, it's seems kind of rational to assume that the male characters are better (as they would be in the real world), even if in the game itself they are not. Personally, I wouldn't read much into a study like this. I don't deny that some sexism still exists (I think some variety of playful sexism will always exist), but that study seems fairly meaningless to me.
If you're talking about there not being "enough" women in those jobs, I don't think anyone has ever asked women if they want them.
The data on this is clear: the percentage of women in the sciences steadily falls as you go from undergraduate to graduate to postdoc and through the various academic levels. Women definitely want to be working in the sciences. They don't appear to be succeeding.
Your comments on the wage gap do not address the question I asked, which is, has the wage gap been reduced to its irreducible minimum. I really don't care what NOW thinks.
You have no opinion regarding how corporations operate, and I certainly am not proposing that we intrude into their operations, but let me remind you that social benefit is the point and purpose of most of our freedoms. We protect freedom of expression because that's what keeps the government honest. I earlier pointed out that we can't blame any individual corporation for subtle or indirect sexism. However, whatever sexism remains is retarding economic performance and thus hurting everybody. Any such sexism is a cultural-level problem that needs to be attacked at the cultural level.
Your comments on Point #4 (percentage of women in management) are all based on a misunderstanding of the information you quote. Go back and re-read it. It states that women occupy 51% of the positions in "management, professional, and related occupations". I'm talking about management positions, and you're providing data on a set that includes management positions as a subset. The management positions are the crucial ones that set the corporate culture. And I don't think I need to provide data showing that the percentage of women in upper management is way below 50% -- that's universally agreed upon.
On the merits of day care, the link you provide clearly states that day care is cognitively beneficial. However, it addresses only day care in poor communities. Again, I think we've established the benefits of day care. As to the scope of cost-effectiveness, I'm of course referring to society as a whole. Merely shuffling costs around to mask a net loss is no solution to anything. We know that society is, all in all, better off with some day care. Can we further refine this to optimize the benefits of day care? And I do consider this a feminist issue because women are the immediate beneficiaries of day care (although society as a whole is also a beneficiary).
You ask me to define "residual sexism". I'll define it as sexism that continues to obstruct women's full participation in the economy.
Such as...
Also, what do you mean by the "undeniable problems with sexism"? Is sexism the problem itself, or only as it pertains to other things, such as, in the case of corporations, profits? I don't doubt that sexism within a corporation can lead to problems, but that doesn't address how much sexism there really is, for example. And, what is the "perception of women in the corporate world"? Just asking. I'm not in the corporate world, and I rarely see much sexism in practice (well, except for the anti-male variety), so I'm not sure what it's like out there.
It depends on what you mean by, "want?"
I'm not trying to be cute; (Ooooh, semicolon)They may want it - in the abstract - or, they might think it's neat, or (likely) something they really S-H-0-U-L-D want, until they get to the point where the rubber hits the road, and then decide that that "want" was weaker than they suspected.
What I gather from these statistics is simply that women don't want it as bad as men do in the final analysis, or (don't kill me), maybe there is a (cough), well...(ahem)...
...what I am trying to say is.
(This is awkward)
...there just might be some sort of built in aptitude gap type deal.
not to put too fine a point on it, but it seems to me you must be seeking out these negative interactions if they are the sum total of your interactions with feminists. Kelly hosted a discussion with feminists that you linked some time ago that I found anything but close-minded man-hating.
Would you describe yourself as anti-feminist? Would you consider anti-feminists to be universally any one thing besides self-described anti-feminists?
Silicon Valley
indirect reference (original not available)
second-hand report, original requires payment
Seattle Times
this one is particularly revealing
I suspect this was referred to earlier but it's not quite as represented
I find those citations relatively unconvincing. First, several use CEO data. Fine, but I've never been particularly moved by this tactic. If CEO data is the best you've got to "prove" sexism, then sexism isn't much of a problem. Might as well compare the income of players in the WNBA to those in the NBA to "prove" sexism. Second, the ABC News article, was somewhat intriguing, but most of it was anecdotal. For example, they cite the "who did she sleep with" comment when women get promotions. Sure, that happens in movies and sitcoms, but how much does that happen in the real world? And how much of it is done by other women? Finally, the last citation brought a tear to my eye. Must be tough being both wealthy and successful in the dating world.
So, where do you get this idea? Is there evidence of increased numbers of women applying for these positions and being denied on the basis of their sex?
Again, I will say -- nobody has ever asked women if they want these jobs. Just because they aren't in them in the numbers some would like is no evidence of discrimination.
Your comments on the wage gap do not address the question I asked, which is, has the wage gap been reduced to its irreducible minimum. I really don't care what NOW thinks.
OK, I'll put it another way. I don't believe in the wage gap story. I don't know how you could reduce something that doesn't exist. As this is a discussion of feminism, one would think the basis of some of the points of this "philosophy" would be important, which is why I included it. Mea culpa.
And I don't think I need to provide data showing that the percentage of women in upper management is way below 50% -- that's universally agreed upon.
Yes, you need to provide that data, since you don't like mine. I don't know what universe that agreement comes from, or who's doing the agreeing.
...but let me remind you that social benefit is the point and purpose of most of our freedoms. We protect freedom of expression because that's what keeps the government honest. I earlier pointed out that we can't blame any individual corporation for subtle or indirect sexism.
Governments are not corporations, and corporations are not governments. The two things have nothing to do with each other.
On the merits of day care, the link you provide clearly states that day care is cognitively beneficial. However, it addresses only day care in poor communities. Again, I think we've established the benefits of day care.
Further down on the page is more information.
But there is more here too.
Nobody has established any clear benefits of daycare. I was a stay-at-home mom, and my daughter-in-law is as well. Neither of us have or had any government funding to do so. We both agree that children are better off at home under the care of a parent, in a family that includes both a mother and a father. This is actually the first time in years I've heard anybody talk about daycare as anything other than a necessary evil. So I'm rusty in that area.
You ask me to define "residual sexism". I'll define it as sexism that continues to obstruct women's full participation in the economy.
Well, maybe you could provide some examples, since I'm still not 100% sure what you're talking about. What in your view would be women's full participation? Every woman at a high-level job and all the kids in day care? What about the men? Where do they fit in this scenario?
And yes, the ABC article did describe a study, but who were these "volunteers" the study used? Undergraduate psychology majors? John and Jane Doe off the street? Human resource managers who have been beaten down with diversity and sexual harassment seminars, as well as been instructed to give "special consideration" to female applicants in their day to day jobs? The article doesn't say.
Hard facts on the crucial stages of a woman's career in science are fragmentary, but mounting evidence and anecdotal reports tend to agree. Those remaining in science often face discrimination, being employed on a less secure footing and receiving lower grants than their male colleagues10,21-25. Meanwhile, women that leave science for alternative careers can fare little better26. Although there may be only a handful of studies, they increasingly lend weight to the suggestion that gender bias is still alive and well, and indeed kicking!
BTW, this item is from 1999, so I'm sure there's better data now.
I don't believe in the wage gap story.
The existence of the wage gap has been irrefutably demonstrated, and the support data for it was provided in one of the links I presented. The only question concerns the causes of the wage gap.
Yes, you need to provide that data,
...which I did in my post of 1:23 PM. Please read those links for compelling evidence that women occupy a small fraction of the seats on boards of directors.
Governments are not corporations, and corporations are not governments. The two things have nothing to do with each other.
Indeed they aren't. What does this have to do with any of my statements? I have not been advocating any government programs. I have been defending my claim that there exists some remanent sexism which continues to impede the careers of women.
You assert that there's no evidence that daycare is beneficial. I Googled ("day care" benefits) and got 1,280,000 hits. Many of those hits are irrelevant to our discussion, but there seems to be a lot evidence out there in favor of day care. The items I read that talk about problems of day care seemed to be comparing it to home care, and I would suspect it to be obvious that day care is not as good as a mother staying at home with her kids -- but that prevents her working. So the real question is not the relative value of day care, but whether it provides adequate care for children.
You ask me to provide examples of residual sexism to clarify my meaning. What I mean here is the continuing tendency for people to prefer the male of two otherwise identical candidates for a job.
Jason, if you don't think that the lack of women on boards of directors is indicative of a problem, then we have no common basis for further discussion. You poke a bit at the ABC study, and I agree that the presentation in that story is incomplete, but it does provide some evidence, however, thin, of sexism. I know that there have been a lot more studies like this -- but having already dug up a bunch of links only to have them rejected out of hand, I'm not interested in any more wild goose chases.
We used to think Japanese people produced cheap junk. Racism had something to do with that perception, I'm sure.
We know longer believe that, and it's not because of some government program to retrain our racist brains.
It's because the Japanese showed us what they could do, and our racism, shriveled up like you-know-what in cold water.
snippet asks:
B. Durbin asks:
I asks, now for the fourth time:
Chris Crawford:
Aaaaaaaaaand what, exactly, if anything, have those plenty of pragmatic feminists done about discontinuities in those playing fields that disadvantage men?
Chris Crawford:
So IYO there is no meaningful amount of sexism against males that obstructs their full participation in the economy (schoolteaching nursing, secretarial, etc.)?
Done.
Over.
Finished.
"I think you're assuming an inferiority that doesn't exist."
Would you lay out how you know that there
are no fundamental differences between men and woman which incline the former as a gender toward scientific pursuits or give them an edge in them more than the latter.
Are you assuming that there are none, placing the burden of proof on he or she who wishes to claim that there is?
Because if you are making the assumption mentioned
in the forgoing paragraph, and I"m not saying you are, you are limiting the of range of possible answers explaining(even partially) male\female discrepancies in those types of fields.
I understand that attacking an assertion is easier
than defending one, but I would like to know the current support for this modern conventional wisdom.
This is precisely why feminism as a philosphy is invalid, ultimately meaning nothing. If there was anything but self-serving gibberish behind it, the meaning and intentions of the thing wouldn't change with each proponent.
The only commonality I've found is the intention of reducing everyone to numbers, and getting government (or somebody, anybody else) to take responsiblilty for some women's choices. And the name-calling that ultimately ensues when somebody doesn't agree that feminism has any value. The true misogynists are the feminists, who long ago stopped valuing the rights of women to their own lives and choices, and replaced that with a political philosphy that is repugnant to many, both male and female.
Over time, feminism has become equally as oppressive as the patriarchy they're always whining about. Every day, I see the damage that feminists do to men, children, and families -- often their own children and families -- due to their arrogance and selfishness. Fortunately for all of us, feminism is dying out because it is being destroyed from within.
The end of feminism cannot happen soon enough, because the men it is killing and the children it is permanently damaging are too high a price to pay for the benefits of a handful of girls who refuse to mature, and experience the hazards of life along with everybody else. For that reason, I will NOT "shut the f*ck up," no matter how many names I am called or threats I get.
Wait, I thought feminism was supposed to be about fighting the silencing and censorship of women's voices, rather than engaging in it.
Me all confuseled now. Help, jonny!
Let's establish where we stand: my 'facts'
1) It is fairly noncontroversial to say that, roughly a generation ago (1970, maybe), women were routinely discriminated against in the workplace, in all areas from hiring to promotion to salary to just general treatment.
2) It is accurate to say that, even if the overt 'rules' have changed to make women more-or-less equal to men, there are a lot of older men, who grew up in the 'old' system and have 'old', sexist attitudes toward women, in positions of power.
3) It is still socially unacceptable in some circles for a woman to make more than her husband.
4) The 'enforcers' who overtly oppose feminist equality are, in practice, female. By this, I mean for example the mothers-in-law who snipe about the perceived domestic weaknesses of their daughters-in-law, advocates of domesticity as a preferred lifestyle choice for women, critics of day-care relative to what they call a 'full time' mother as a caretaker. Many appeals to the interests of children are actually in practice appeals to push women into a more domestic, and less work-oriented, role. Such pre-defined 'gender roles' are sexist. (Also on this list are the wives of men who work late - they are much more likely to be hostile if they are working late with a woman than a man. The fear is reasonable, but the effect is discriminatory - it makes men less likely to be willing to work late on projects involving female coworkers.)
5) Covert sexism is fairly proven. By this I refer to studies which demonstrate that employment processes which are gender-blind tend to result in more women being hired than ones which are handled in a non-gender-blind way. Do a search on gender and orchestra auditions, for example.
6) This survey is clear evidence that at least 28% of the population is sexist, and is confident enough to at least semi-anonymously declare so. At least some of these people make hiring, promotion, etc. decisions.
From the same survey, about half of people believe that those around them are sexist. In general, asking people about the attitudes and beliefs of those around them is a good way to get at their own covert attitudes. (For example, ask a person whether they believe their coworkers steal office supplies at work. There is a strong positive correlation between people who say "yes" about their colleagues and people who actually steal.)
OTOH -
1) Economists predict 10 out of 5 recessions. Likewise, feminists identify about 2 incidents of sexism for every one that actually happened. (Same for racism.)
2) It isn't sexist to genuinely hire the most qualified candidate, even if the reason the man IS the most qualified candidate is because someone 20 years ago was sexist and hired him/admitted him to a better grad school/whatever, or the woman stayed home for a few years to raise a kid because of social pressures.
3) At least some of the gender wage gap is explained by lifestyle choices by women which, though possibly personally healthier than those made by men, are less lucrative to the employer. (For example, women are more likely than men to use medical leave, take extended leaves of absence for family reasons, enter lower-stress careers, insist on working 40 hours per week and not more.) Some of these decisions are driven by sexist cultural expectations (e.g. if the kid is sick, and both parents work, it is the mom who routinely stays home with it), but some are inherent and permanent(e.g. no matter how non-sexist we get, dad can't take a pregnancy leave instead of mom.)
4) There may be real performance differences between men and women in certain jobs. Some of these are driven by sexism, but can't be helped by the employer (the relative success of male vs. female sales personnel, esp. in B-to-B markets), some are inherent (all the consciousness raising in the world isn't going to make a world where the same number of women are going to be qualified to be a longshoreman or coal miner as there are men for that job). Since high-strength jobs are also high risk and higher paid than similar mental-difficulty positions, there will always be a gender discrepancy in blue-collar wages taken as a whole. Even within categories, some (say) coal mining jobs are 'harder' than others, and those things that make them harder tend to be things involving strength, which means that in many professions men will always be paid more, even with equal pay for truly equal work.
5) In science and engineering, there may be inherent differences in the number of men and women potentially comfortable with the mathematically rigorous nature of many of the jobs. OTOOH, these are also realms where a disproportionate number of men working there (not all, not most, just more than in other fields) react with either misogynistic hostility, or poorly concealed lust, or both, at the presence of a woman in 'their' labs. Since these fields are 'mentor' driven and collegial, (colleague, not college - success comes from working with others and/or convincing others of the worth of your work) this hostile work environment (being hit on every time you need to talk to a certain colleague is hostile to getting things done) tends to drive women out.
6) Americans are closer to true equality than virtually anyone else, Europeans included. Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America are further away. Most things pointed to as examples of more equality in other countries either simply aren't (like less prudish attitudes in Europe toward nudity resulting in more acceptance of female toplessness, or the presence of more women in European legislatures than in ours reflecting the effects of political calculation on party lists rather than inherently better attitudes toward women) or are actually examples of sexism (the "asian women control the finances" stuff still reflects the 'men work, women do domestic stuff' paradigm, it is just that some cultures view household finances as a domestic, thus woman's, function).
Yes,
>> I hope not,
Why?
>> because I think you're assuming an inferiority that doesn't exist. Please clarify your meaning.
I am assuming an inferiority in scientific aptitude, yet not committing myself (quite yet) to any ONE explanation for it.
It could be lack of interest.
1) Innate - no cure short of genetic modification.
2) Cultural - curable.
It could - cold hard facts won't let us rule this out - be dearth of ability in the whole "linear/masculine/ratio-logical/right-angles/sharp edges/unfuzzy wuzzy" way of approaching the acquisition of knowledge about the natural world.
But first, three digressions:
1. Naftali, your post of 11:23 PM began with a badly worded question that distorted the issues so egregiously that I sense some sarcastic intent. Would you please rephrase that question in a manner reflecting intellectual good faith?
2. Definition of intellectual good faith: a willingness to accept reasonable assertions opposed to your own position, in a desire to concentrate on the substance of the discussion rather than quibble over insignificant technicalities. Remove intellectual good faith from a discussion and it descends to a debate.
3. I strongly condemn johnny's gross rudeness towards Trudy. We each have a responsibility to help maintain the productiveness of this discussion, and so I am doing my part by demanding that johnny apologize to Trudy.
Now, on to rvman's excellent comments:
I'll quibble on your point #3 by suggesting that the problem with a woman earning more than a man more commonly arises from the man himself rather than the social circle -- although I admit that the man's feelings may merely reflect his perception of the attitudes of his social circle.
On your point #4, I have mixed feelings here, because I have difficulty disentangling the roles played by different actors here. Yes, there's the gender-role-enforcing mother-in-law, but there's also the lecherous supervisor and the misogynist co-worker.
On your OTOH point #5, I agree that there may be some intrinsic gender differences at work here. I'll add one other factor that could be at work: gender-based differences in social intelligence. Men are generally weaker than women in social intelligence, and my personal observation is that male scientists are especially weak in social intelligence. I suspect that even male scientists who mean well nevertheless unintentionally insult or deride women. A few months ago I saw a classic case of this behavior. I took the young woman aside and advised her not to let such obtuse behavior get under her skin -- which, unfortunately, is easier for obtuse males than socially intelligent females.
I said:
Chris:
"I think you're assuming an inferiority that doesn't exist."
Would you lay out how you know that there
are no fundamental differences between men and woman which incline the former as a gender toward scientific pursuits or give them an edge in them more than the latter.
Are you assuming that there are none, placing the burden of proof on he or she who wishes to claim that there is?
Because if you are making the assumption mentioned
in the forgoing paragraph, and I"m not saying you are, you are limiting the of range of possible answers explaining(even partially) male\female discrepancies in those types of fields.
I understand that attacking an assertion is easier
than defending one, but I would like to know the current support for this modern conventional wisdom.
You reply:
"Naftali, your post of 11:23 PM began with a badly worded question that distorted the issues so egregiously that I sense some sarcastic intent. Would you please rephrase that question in a manner reflecting intellectual good faith?"
I respond:
Frankly, It's a first for me, your accusation, I deny it. Agree to disagree, the reader will decide.
Naftali
By "overt" I meant the people who take unapologistically sexist stances. I agree that letches and misogynists in the workplace play a role in the issues - I noted them in 5 - but I think normally they do their dirty work more covertly and obliquely than the female anti-feminists.
The 'social circle' may well be a guy's bowling buddies. You are right, though, that at the end of the day it is his attitudes which are the biggest issue.
I do acknowledge that the sciences tend to draw a disproportionate share of the obtuse; I think this runs both ways gender-wise. The obtuseness, though, is only a big gender problem because of the sexism - the obtuse egalitarian is just as likely to insult his male coworkers and underlings as his female ones, absent his perception of his need to respond to the existing sexism. (Many of the unintended insults tend to take a form analagous to the old joke where your friend says "So-and-so said you weren't fit to slop pigs. I stood up for you, though - I said you were just the man for the job!")
When women start doing science at the same level as men, the gap will go away.
There was a time when Jews were not well represented in the sciences and the arts.
That time is gone. Very very VERY gone.
Maybe a cultural nudge will help, but -
at this juncture - I think we're beyond that.
Also, with due respect, I have gotten a bit weary of the way the word, "subtle" gets thrown around in this sort of discussion. It seems like the more obvious it is that this, that, or the other "gap" is NOT the result of some sort of conspiracy, the more "subtle" the sexism/racism/fill-in-the-blank-ism is believed to be.
There is very UNSUBTLE discrimination against ethnic Chinese in Malaysia. The message that this is supposed to cause chronic underperformance has not yet made it to the ethnic Chinese of Malaysia, however.
anecdotal information, to be sure, but in my department many of the women are from china where there is more emphasis on scientific learning and more direction of college students into scientific/engineering careers. They are routinely among the very smartest people in the program (already a self-selecting population of smart people). There may still be a difference biologically between men and women in their inherent aptitude for the sciences, but we are talking about distributions with broad tails and means that are not far apart. Therefore, the EXTREME dearth of female participation at the highest levels of scientific work is not explainable by biological differences alone. It is really very extremely lopsided. Self-selection may be part of it, but all of the evidence I've seen suggests that it is cultural and not inherent. Again, this is my anecdotal experience, YMMV and if it does I'd like to hear about it.
Interesting. Chinese men AND women outperform a lot of people in the real (Sorry, I mean...what do we call real science these days? I've lost track - The patriarchy-dominated thought structures designed to keep women barefoot and pregnent in the kitchen?) Sorry...anyway, Chinese men and women are all over the har.. the whatever sciences. That may be cultural, or...(ahem)...well....it could JUST POSSIBLY be [CENSORED].
Also, if American women are victims of a culture that is not giving them enough encouragement, fine, ecourage away. Go nuts. I have a daughter. I'd love to see her be a scientist (if she wants to be), and to the extent that feminism focuses on this sort of thing - an honest, sincere, realistic, effort to find talent hidden inside a culturally-stifled female mind, then more power to it.
Maybe when they stop whining about what jerks men are, they can get around to this.
A few months back, I participated in a scientific mission on board an aircraft. This aircraft had some table seating, and I was assigned a place at a table across from a female undergraduate intern. Her experiment required her to set up and operate some cameras through a good window. During slow periods, I had some time to chat with the young woman, and she impressed me as extremely bright. While I was setting up, I watched her working on her camera setup. Her first attempt didn't work, and I resisted the urge to show her how to do it, figuring that she'd learn more by figuring it out herself. She tried another layout and that wasn't stable enough, either. Finally she hit upon a scheme that was stable, accessible, and workable. So she settled down with her computer to start testing the camera performance.
A few minutes later the PI (Principal Investigator, the scientist running the show) came through our section of the aircraft to check our work. He looked at her layout and told her she had gotten it all wrong, that she had to lay it out like so -- at which point he described exactly what she had attempted in her first try. She started to protest, but he cut her off. So she just sat quietly and said "Yes, sir". As soon as he left, she started disassembling her rig. I started to intervene, but then decided that she didn't need a confrontation with her boss. I did discuss it with her later and confirmed the overall wisdom of her choice. As it happened, the images she was getting were not crucial and the fact that the PIs lousy instructions lowered their quality was not particularly injurious to the overall project. However, I told her to stand up for herself more vigorously in the future.
BTW, the PI also told me to change something for the worse, and I stood up to him, ignored his attempt to interrupt me, and stated my case. He backed down, but that may have been because we've worked together before and he trusts my judgement.
If you want to keep positing biological factors that's fine. I think open investigation into these questions is a good thing. HOWEVER, it clearly is not the most obvious effect. Chinese education is skewed heavily towards math, science, and business, and children are encouraged into those professions. Therefore, their propensity to end up in those fields is not surprising.
Maybe when they stop whining about what jerks men are, they can get around to this.
this attitude is the whole reason that Trudy's writing and this post in general really turn me off. I am totally on board with the fact that both men and women are abused, and that current laws and current agencies funded by said laws are woefully unaware of this fact. I'm also very ready to believe that DV shelters and the DV establishment is suffused with radical feminists, some subset of whom are man-hating. But the broad-brushing here is just stupid. Are all Christians one thing except self-described Christians? Are all mathematicians one thing except self-described mathematicians? Are all MRA anything other than self-described MRA?
Trudy is saying that because different feminists believe different things somehow that makes feminism an empty philosophy. Is that true? Different Christians believe all sorts of different things. If Roman Catholics and the Religious Society of Friends can't get their stories straight, does that make them devoid of merit?
More importantly, where does the sound and fury get you? I mean just look through all of the comments on this thread, there is almost no substantive debate going on here. Chris took (mild) issue with Trudy's horrific over-generalization, and despite what I think are his best efforts things spiraled downward from there. Whining and ranting about how every feminist is a big bad man-hater espousing empty philosophies doesn't get anybody anywhere so why engage in it? If you have an issue with a specific thing a specific feminist or group of feminists have said, just argue that point on its merits.
To me, it demonstrates the following:
1. PIs are insufferable prigs. No, not all of them by any means; but I've run into plenty that are. They're lousy managers with lousy people skills. They get where they are due to excellence in science/bureaucracy, not due to excellence in management. They expect a strict top-down deferential hierarchy, regardless of gender. Their superior experience and knowledge entitles them to that deference, for the most part; but some of them abuse that quite severely.
2. Young undergraduate interns are, as a group, easily bullied by superiors. They would rather be approved than be right. (What they don't realize is that PIs in the 1 category will invariably turn around and blame the interns when things go wrong, even though the interns followed their instructions.)
3. Older, more experienced researchers are well aware of 1, and will (politely) push back. They would rather be right than be approved. (My attitude: I would rather be fired for being right than for being wrong.)
I've seen all of those dynamics at work. If the intern had been male, I've still seen the exact same dynamics at work.
That being said, I'll add...
1.a. Those PIs who are officious prigs are often even more rude and dismissive toward female assistants than toward male assistants.
The man-haters stole the show, and shouted down the non-Man-haters a long time ago.
My wife got in hot water in a "women's studies" (what a God-forsaken joke of a class that was) class when she politely suggested that men are not the cause of all the world's problems.
Blame the feminazis for the perception feminism currently enjoys.
Also, China has a top-down system that coerces people in a way that I am not interested in seeing here.
i.e., 7 year old gymnasts who see their parents twice a year. Yuck.
In this country, people choose what they want to study, and women have been conspicuously NOT choosing engineering and heavy machine operating thank you very much.
Perhaps you are defining "feminist" to be "woman who hates men". My primary definition is "person who wants equal economic opportunity for women". And I know dozens of people who meet that definition, and none of them hate men.
I suppose it's all a matter of definition.
I rarely see a self-described feminist tract which does not basically require a revolutionary attitude toward modern capitalism as a prerequisite of feminism, making it (this feminism) a subcategory of socialism. One of socialism's big claims is that 'the man' (the capitalist) is the cause of all evil. Feminists convert that to 'men'. By revolutionary doctrine, since men had power, and women didn't, and all problems are attributable to those in power, men caused all problems. This could easily be interpreted as 'man-hating' by those who don't adhere to revolutionary ideology. I, and other pro-gender equity libertarians have consistently been rejected by even mainstream feminists(who are almost always liberals in the modern American use of the word) as anti-feminist simply because we are pro-capitalist. Since feminists in general, even non-radical ones, reject capitalism as an evil (necessary or not) and I do not, I'm not one of them.
(Similarly, many civil-rights type leftists define 'racism' as discriminatory attitudes and actions by those in the dominant race(or, even BEING of the dominant race and not constantly apologizing about it). Since American Blacks have never been the dominant race anywhere in America (I know, work with me), American Blacks cannot be racist.)
we're getting sidetracked here. I'm not claiming that we should be emulating the chinese model. I'm merely saying that they have cultural factors which produce scientific thinking minds that operate at a higher level than do most american minds both male and female. Therefore, to whatever extent (or non-extent) biology limits girls in the sciences, they clearly are able to function at a level high enough to outshine most of the american male minds.
Are girls here required to be scientists, of course not. If they are opting to go into other career paths then more power to them, of course. But it remains to be seen whether that is due to positive choices on the girl's part (i.e.: i just don't like it, i'd rather be an english major, whatever), or if it's due to negative choices (i just wouldn't belong, girls aren't good at science, etc.).
It's fine to blame the feminazis, I encourage it! Your wife had a bad experience in a women's studies class, that sucks and I hope she complained to the administration or gave the teacher a bad performance evaluation. The problem is not feminism, however. The problem is, as you say, radical feminazis who frame everything in terms of marxist gender analysis have permeated the upper echelons of women's studies programs, DV advocacy groups, etc. So let's focus the fire on the real problem!
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.