You might want to read that article again. It said nothing about behavior or the influence of differing gray and white (lol) matter on behavior. Like totally nothing. It mentioned processing ability but those studies aren't meant to be interpreted more than "Oh that is neat."
Why don't you think the paragraph on processing is relevant?
This, according to Rex Jung, a UNM neuropsychologist and co-author of the study, may help to explain why men tend to excel in tasks requiring more local processing (like mathematics), while women tend to excel at integrating and assimilating information from distributed gray-matter regions in the brain, such as required for language facility. These two very different neurological pathways and activity centers, however, result in equivalent overall performance on broad measures of cognitive ability, such as those found on intelligence tests.
It doesn't give us definitive proof of anything but I still think it's relevant. You don't? Or are you just writing this off because it disputes what you just said?
You might want to read that article again. It said nothing about behavior or the influence of differing gray and white (lol) matter on behavior. Like totally nothing. It mentioned processing ability but those studies aren't meant to be interpreted more than "Oh that is neat."
Why don't you think the paragraph on processing is relevant?
This, according to Rex Jung, a UNM neuropsychologist and co-author of the study, may help to explain why men tend to excel in tasks requiring more local processing (like mathematics), while women tend to excel at integrating and assimilating information from distributed gray-matter regions in the brain, such as required for language facility. These two very different neurological pathways and activity centers, however, result in equivalent overall performance on broad measures of cognitive ability, such as those found on intelligence tests.
It doesn't give us definitive proof of anything but I still think it's relevant. You don't? Or are you just writing this off because it disputes what you just said?
Actually I should clarify that. It proves two things. It proves that brain biology is relevant and it's not just "hormones".
It also proves that what you posted was not entirely accurate.
You cited one interpretation of a scientific article by a layperson. Remove the hormones and all that is left is nurture. Gender is a socially imposed idea.
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HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
edited January 2008
Remember, people:
Sex: defined sexual characteristics
Gender: displayed sexual characteristics
If you can't grasp this, you probably shouldn't be talking about "pink collar" jobs.
If you can't grasp this, you probably shouldn't be talking about "pink collar" jobs.
And that part where the concept of gender roles can vary widely among different cultures.
Seriously, Kevin, everything you've said about sex and biology in this thread has been horribly stupid and misinformed. We have multicultural studies for a reason: they prove dipshit fatalists like you wrong.
You cited one interpretation of a scientific article by a layperson. Remove the hormones and all that is left is nurture. Gender is a socially imposed idea.
Hormones can be nurture, too.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Those are interesting theories. Perhaps women were paid less because they could afford to be, since many were married to men who chose to subsidize them.
Female teachers were no longer allowed to work once married. Same went for any working woman back then. marriage meant that your effective employment choices were restricted to such things as taking in laundry, and doing those tasks was an open sign to the community that your family was near-destitute. It would be frickin' peachy if you'd read like one history book before posting on this topic again. Fuck, hell with that. Read Little House on the Goddamned Prairie.
Of course, you might not even be able to read well enough to be making these posts without the money we took from those other people for your education.
Actually, I was homeschooled so the best part of my education was not paid for by other people. :P
emotional fulfilment, fencing! We women are all about that shit. Its why we let our intimate partners hit us! Why would we do that if we weren't getting what we wanted?
You have to be joking, right? I take it you've never heard of the term "pink collar". Or the studies showing that when they send out resumes that are the same other than the name, the men get called in more often? And that's just considering employment issues. When you look at legal issues, health issues, etc., it's pretty damn clear women are still getting the short end of the stick. (If you don't think so, then answer me this - why the fuck are we still having a discussion over abortion?)
Yeah, it's going to be fun watching Cat have her way with your argument.
Well gee, your employment example might possibly be because employers recognise that women are 100% more likely than men to get pregnant and take time off work. This affects some businesses more than other, say where contacts are personal or one works on a project for years. It is neither unfair nor unreasonable of businesses to make this judgement, they aren't obliged to hire the best person, they are obliged to hire the best person for the job. If the difference is: likely to be more reliably worked to death, then that's an edge. It isn't fair on women either, but that is a bias of biology, not society - this is something I mentioned, but you ignored.
I would also point out that this situation is changing rapidly. Employment law in the west is consistently trying to find ways of balancing these conflicts & find a fair resolution, and as the previous generation of women reach senior management positions, and a new generation increasingly level out gender in entry or mid-level jobs. So the second of my points you ignored is: change takes time. You cannot instantly force it (or it is very unwise to do so). Change is happening, and quite rapidly. My charge is that yelling "disenfrancisement!" has a negative effect as well as the potential benefit of prompting change. I believe that most people see enough equality, and a fast enough pace of change, that cries of disenfranchisement increasingly have more of a negative effect than benefit: to many people it reeks of victim culture. Whether this is entirely fair is debatable, but whether it is or not, you are still doing more damage than good, and thus hindering your goal.
[There are exceptions to this of course. If you want a great example of real institutional bias against women, go yell at the Army, and I would support you, as I did collegues in the past. Women in at least the British Army often outperform men, but are held to an increasingly nonsensical set of rules - ie no front line - and often judged on male characteristics, with little regard for the fact that say, women officers, tend to offer different & often better ways of dealing with situations when not forced into a gung-ho male mentality. Moreover, the thing I really liked about them is that they would most likely tell you to do one, because the idea of generic disenfranchisement & bias was one they simply didn't tolerate. Many would challenge specific instances of unfair treatment, but suggest that they should get institutional leg-ups and you'd lose something dear to you]
...and olol, abortion. Great scapegoat. I do believe, however, that unless you are relentlessly blinkered, most pro-choice people recognise that the other side of the abortion debate aren't primarily concerned about disenfranchising women, but about promoting their own religious views. The side-effect is disenfranchising women, but please don't wank on pretending that all teh ebil fundies want to specifically beat wimminz back into the kitchen. Also, "we" aren't having this discussion, the US is. Most of the rest of the west got over it a long time ago.
Many women choose to be teachers because they want to not because society tells them it's the only job they are suited for.
I think you're assuming some amount of untethering from society that simply doesn't exist. Our environment has a massive influence on how we develop and what our desires are. You seem to assume otherwise.
Many women "want to" because it has been fed to them since they were old enough to think that women had a unique and important attachment to classrooms.
You have to be joking, right? I take it you've never heard of the term "pink collar". Or the studies showing that when they send out resumes that are the same other than the name, the men get called in more often? And that's just considering employment issues. When you look at legal issues, health issues, etc., it's pretty damn clear women are still getting the short end of the stick. (If you don't think so, then answer me this - why the fuck are we still having a discussion over abortion?)
Yeah, it's going to be fun watching Cat have her way with your argument.
Well gee, your employment example might possibly be because employers recognise that women are 100% more likely than men to get pregnant and take time off work. This affects some businesses more than other, say where contacts are personal or one works on a project for years. It is neither unfair nor unreasonable of businesses to make this judgement, they aren't obliged to hire the best person, they are obliged to hire the best person for the job. If the difference is: likely to be more reliably worked to death, then that's an edge. It isn't fair on women either, but that is a bias of biology, not society - this is something I mentioned, but you ignored.
I would also point out that this situation is changing rapidly. Employment law in the west is consistently trying to find ways of balancing these conflicts & find a fair resolution, and as the previous generation of women reach senior management positions, and a new generation increasingly level out gender in entry or mid-level jobs. So the second of my points you ignored is: change takes time. You cannot instantly force it (or it is very unwise to do so). Change is happening, and quite rapidly. My charge is that yelling "disenfrancisement!" has a negative effect as well as the potential benefit of prompting change. I believe that most people see enough equality, and a fast enough pace of change, that cries of disenfranchisement increasingly have more of a negative effect than benefit: to many people it reeks of victim culture. Whether this is entirely fair is debatable, but whether it is or not, you are still doing more damage than good, and thus hindering your goal.
[There are exceptions to this of course. If you want a great example of real institutional bias against women, go yell at the Army, and I would support you, as I did collegues in the past. Women in at least the British Army often outperform men, but are held to an increasingly nonsensical set of rules - ie no front line - and often judged on male characteristics, with little regard for the fact that say, women officers, tend to offer different & often better ways of dealing with situations when not forced into a gung-ho male mentality. Moreover, the thing I really liked about them is that they would most likely tell you to do one, because the idea of generic disenfranchisement & bias was one they simply didn't tolerate. Many would challenge specific instances of unfair treatment, but suggest that they should get institutional leg-ups and you'd lose something dear to you]
...and olol, abortion. Great scapegoat. I do believe, however, that unless you are relentlessly blinkered, most pro-choice people recognise that the other side of the abortion debate aren't primarily concerned about disenfranchising women, but about promoting their own religious views. The side-effect is disenfranchising women, but please don't wank on pretending that all teh ebil fundies want to specifically beat wimminz back into the kitchen. Also, "we" aren't having this discussion, the US is. Most of the rest of the west got over it a long time ago.
I'm pretty much with you (with the caveat that a lot of businesses throw completely unnecessary blocks up in front of parents in general and mothers in particular in the belief that the only important thing in the world is profit margin), but not on that last paragraph. Fundies are horrible, scary people and I don't think you quite appreciate just how fucked up their view of gender roles is.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
edited January 2008
I'm throwing my hat in the ring with The Cat (and AngelHedgie) here.
If you've never had a conversation with a fundie that hasn't rolled around to what amounts to the need to punish sluts, then you're ill-equipped to make any judgements upon the nature of fundies and their horrific views on abortion.
Well gee, your employment example might possibly be because employers recognise that women are 100% more likely than men to get pregnant and take time off work. This affects some businesses more than other, say where contacts are personal or one works on a project for years. It is neither unfair nor unreasonable of businesses to make this judgement, they aren't obliged to hire the best person, they are obliged to hire the best person for the job. If the difference is: likely to be more reliably worked to death, then that's an edge. It isn't fair on women either, but that is a bias of biology, not society - this is something I mentioned, but you ignored.
You bring up an interesting point, Not Sarastro. It seems to me that if you are correct about women being naturally (that is, biologically) disadvantaged as workers, that means one of two things. Either you believe that women are justifiably second-class citizens because of this biological disadvantage - that they are inherently inferior and that this state of affairs is just, or you believe that some sort of intervention is necessary to right this wrong.
Also, I should point out that I'm pretty sure most employers may not use potential pregnancy as a consideration in hiring in the United States, by law. I don't think they can even ask whether you'd take time off or not.
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HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
Of course, you might not even be able to read well enough to be making these posts without the money we took from those other people for your education.
Actually, I was homeschooled so the best part of my education was not paid for by other people. :P
And again we come to the typical libertarian mindset of "because it worked for me, it can work for everyone!"
Also, I should point out that I'm pretty sure most employers may not use potential pregnancy as a consideration in hiring in the United States, by law. I don't think they can even ask whether you'd take time off or not.
Well, that would be because they'd never ask that of a male, despite males ostensibly being expected to participate in a family with some degree of equality. It also protects both genders from being asked similarly intrusive questions about their private lives, such as 'how much do you drink', 'do you exercise regularly', do you drive carefully', 'do you stay up late playing games a lot on weeknights', or 'have you ever or do you plan on participating in an 'extreme' sport while under our employ' - things involving similar risk of generally lowered productivity, extended time off etc. Its not special treatment, although many people think it is.
Misconception number 1a: You attack me for claiming to want wealth redistribtution. All taxation is a form of wealth redistribution, attempts to classify it as something else is pure folly. I learned that in economics 101. Its taking money from one person to give to another(even when its spent on goverment services like the millitary). Accept it and move on.
No, all taxation is not a form of wealth redistribution. All taxation is a form of funding necessary services. All progressive taxation is a form of wealth redistribution. It is once again disturbingly ill-educated that you conflate the two. Whoever taught your economics 101 class wasn't doing a very good job, because "wealth redistribution" has a specific economic meaning, and it does not cover any transfer of capital. Is buying food "wealth redistribution"? No, because you are making a trade for something else of value. Paying for essential services is similarly paying for a service which is valuable to you. Paying for a service which is valuable for someone else is charity. Being compelled to pay for a service which is valuable to someone else is, in this case of taxation, wealth redistribution.
Go educate your teacher.
What is important about taxation is who we tax and for what purpose. I have no problem taxing the rich and succsesful more than the poor and destitute. The reason is that they can probably weather the loss of income better that the poor. While it punishes their merit a little bit, the money can then be spent to help people overcome their disadvantages and problems. This is a worthwile investment in my opinon. We equalise people a bit to create a more worthwile society.
Neither do I. But yet again, the questions are "how" and "how much"?
You ask where the bar for welfare should be set. If it wasn't Fucking obvious in my previous post I wil spell it out for the hard of thinking: WHEN PEOPLE CAN NO LONGER SURVIVE WITHOUT THE HELP OF AN OUTSIDE AGENCY! got that? Good. When people are starving they shouldn't have to hope that you are feeling charitable. They shouldn't have to beg for their survival, in a civilised socitey their right to do so is a given. I did not claim that they should have life of luxury and I fail to see how you can imply that I did.
Kickass. So since Shinto's female co-worker was clearly surviving without outside aid, she doesn't qualify right? Didn't seem to be what you were saying before. Plenty of black people survive while being discriminated against, therefore they don't deserve help, correct?
Of course, the slight flaw there is that she is surviving with the help of an outside agency, we all are. I use public roads, the NHS, recieve tax breaks currently as a student, and so on. Everyone but a hermit relies to some extent on the help or teamwork of outside agencies.
Your definitions are so vague as to be worthless. The life of luxury comparison was to illustrate that you totally fail to propose how we should work redistribution, which is the real question - only the extremely naive or self-centered propose no public help at all. You have still failed to give a decent answer to 'how'.
We have an obligation to help them, not out of kindness, but out of duty. Charity is a kindness while Welfare is a duty, do not mistake the two. Charity is when you give out of the goodness of your heart. Welfare is when you make sure that people don't die because they can't afford food or medicine.
As long as we have a society where some people fall through the cracks, we will always need welfare. Not only because people at the bottom deserve it, but also because the people at the top might fail.
Well, charity also encompasses your definition of welfare. You aren't making much of a consistent case here. Why do we have a duty of welfare? You said previously that it was because there is social inequality. But above, you said that we should only help people when they cannot help themselves at all. That leaves a massive chasm inbetween of people who are presumably treated prejudicially but, because they can survive relatively self-sufficiently nonetheless, don't automatically deserve help? Perhaps we are agreeing after all!
You mention how unfair it is that you are not as rich as Paris Hilton. Well Paris could lose her money become a pennyless crackwhore. you might be in a car accident that leaves you a paraplegic. Should we let people die just because they had a run of bad luck? That is just stupid. And since bad luck can happen to anyone it can happen to you(and probably will). Wellfare is a safety net and social insurance.
But that isn't what you were arguing before. You weren't arguing for welfare as a form of social insurance, you were arguing that we have a redistributive duty because it is society's fault that people are poor / black / female [/sarcasm], because they are treated unequally. So, add social insurance in there too. Your list of people who deserve social welfare is ever expanding, but your plan for how to effect & pay for all this is still elusive.
Back to Shinto's example: She had the bad luck of being born a stupid woman fifty-odd years ago. Its not her fault that this happend, so why are you so hellbent on punishing her for it? Hell, a X cromosone with a couple of bad genes and she could be you. Would you have done so much better?
Yes, we've done this. One, a couple of bad genes can mean the difference between Einstein and a stillborne child. That's a pretty large range. Two, your prescription above doesn't say how you would help her either.
My point was more that polling demonstrates there is a significant majority in the US who are anti-abortion, and not all of them are rabid fundies. I'm quite happy to concede that there do exist rabid fundies with medieval views about women, but I'm skeptical of people who characterise anyone in the anti-abortion debate along the same lines. I suspect they are making a lazy characterisation based on the fact that the fundies hijacked the 'pro-life' agenda.
For example, there are dwindling but still significant numbers of anti-abortionists in Europe who take a much more reasonable stance - mostly in Catholic countries, but even in heavily matriarchal societies like Italy where there are plenty of women in kitchens, but to suggest they are male dominated is utterly wrong - and common sense suggests there are in the US too.
If you can't grasp this, you probably shouldn't be talking about "pink collar" jobs.
And that part where the concept of gender roles can vary widely among different cultures.
Seriously, Kevin, everything you've said about sex and biology in this thread has been horribly stupid and misinformed. We have multicultural studies for a reason: they prove dipshit fatalists like you wrong.
Once again the Wonder Hippie chimes in with a post devoid of substance and simply rides on the backs of everyone else in the thread with a "me too!"
Seriously do you have an original thought of your own? Do you have ANYTHING to contribute here?
Did you bother reading the scientific study I linked to?
I said there was a biological difference between how men and women think and I said it might have something to do with the jobs they choose to take. So far nobody has proved me wrong. All I've heard is someone talking about hormones and a few other people insisting that women go into teaching because men force them too.
My point was more that polling demonstrates there is a significant majority in the US who are anti-abortion, and not all of them are rabid fundies. I'm quite happy to concede that there do exist rabid fundies with medieval views about women, but I'm skeptical of people who characterise anyone in the anti-abortion debate along the same lines. I suspect they are making a lazy characterisation based on the fact that the fundies hijacked the 'pro-life' agenda.
For example, there are dwindling but still significant numbers of anti-abortionists in Europe who take a much more reasonable stance - mostly in Catholic countries, but even in heavily matriarchal societies like Italy where there are plenty of women in kitchens, but to suggest they are male dominated is utterly wrong - and common sense suggests there are in the US too.
Who said anything about male-dominated? Society breeds women who punish women just as much as anyone else in this regard.
As for polling - I'm not convinced that the polls asked the right questions - while both The Cat and I reference fundies, our position on the fundamentally anti-women agenda of the abortion debacle is not wedded to the fundamentalist aspect*. However, in my experience it doesn't matter whether they're a fundie or a relative moderate. It always, eventually falls back to punishng sluts and consequences for having sex. In fact, you're more likely to hear that sooner, the more moderate they are.
* Which isn't to say that moderates opposed to abortion aren't horrible people either - they are. Nor is it to say that the only thing making fundies horrible poeple is their opposition to abortion.
its cute how you refuse to address anyone's statements but the one you think you can challenge on the grounds of it being too meta for your taste. Its almost like you're trolling.
Hey kev. You're wrong about everything you've claimed about female employment in the west in the last hundred plus years. The reason no-one is bothering to school your ass is because we find it impossible that any human who can work a keyboard is actually that ignorant. Go read something. Learn. Refrain from comment on things you know nothing about. I manage to keep out of threads about physics and obscure foreign sports, this shouldn't be a challenge.
You bring up an interesting point, Not Sarastro. It seems to me that if you are correct about women being naturally (that is, biologically) disadvantaged as workers, that means one of two things. Either you believe that women are justifiably second-class citizens because of this biological disadvantage - that they are inherently inferior and that this state of affairs is just, or you believe that some sort of intervention is necessary to right this wrong.
God, overextrapolating a bit there.
I think women aren't as well suited to an economic environment that demands 100% workload & little to no time off because of the 'biological disadvantage' (cough) of pregnancy. This is neither a judgement on the worth of women, or the worth of that business ethic. It is a statement of fact.
I think that generally women are biologically disadvantaged at some things (generic example time, heavy lifting), just as generally men are at others (generic example time, compromise negotiation). Neither of these things means there do not exist women stronger than most men, or men better at diplomacy than women. Thus we should not institutionalise biases towards each, but it is fair to make general assumptions that, say, a random team of women will lift less heavy things over an hour than a random team of men.
That is what businesses are doing when they judge men & women in different ways. If for some reason they had a medical report as part of the application which showed a women applicant had a hysterectomy, however, that would be a specific example which would negate the general assumption.
Finally, I'm rarely much bothered by the question of whether intervention is justified or not, I usually skip straight to: is it practically possible to do, and by what solution? Once someone has answered that question (the difficult one) I'll judge whether it is justified based on the merits of the solution presented. The moral question simply just doesn't interest me that much. Opinions, arseholes, etc.
Also, I should point out that I'm pretty sure most employers may not use potential pregnancy as a consideration in hiring in the United States, by law. I don't think they can even ask whether you'd take time off or not.
Well, that would be because they'd never ask that of a male, despite males ostensibly being expected to participate in a family with some degree of equality. It also protects both genders from being asked similarly intrusive questions about their private lives, such as 'how much do you drink', 'do you exercise regularly', do you drive carefully', 'do you stay up late playing games a lot on weeknights', or 'have you ever or do you plan on participating in an 'extreme' sport while under our employ' - things involving similar risk of generally lowered productivity, extended time off etc. Its not special treatment, although many people think it is.
Sports teams have contracts that limit the players regarding what kind of physical activities they are permitted to do as a means to prevent injury and therefore having them lose time off work.
If you can't grasp this, you probably shouldn't be talking about "pink collar" jobs.
And that part where the concept of gender roles can vary widely among different cultures.
Seriously, Kevin, everything you've said about sex and biology in this thread has been horribly stupid and misinformed. We have multicultural studies for a reason: they prove dipshit fatalists like you wrong.
Once again the Wonder Hippie chimes in with a post devoid of substance and simply rides on the backs of everyone else in the thread with a "me too!"
Seriously do you have an original thought of your own? Do you have ANYTHING to contribute here?
Did you bother reading the scientific study I linked to?
I said there was a biological difference between how men and women think and I said it might have something to do with the jobs they choose to take. So far nobody has proved me wrong. All I've heard is someone talking about hormones and a few other people insisting that women go into teaching because men force them too.
It's actually irrelevant which jobs women want or don't want to take. The pay is what matters for our purposes. It's simply unreasonable for us to expect that by some mysterious coincidence the jobs that women prefer are all paid much less than the jobs men prefer and that that coincidence explains away the vast disparity in income.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
edited January 2008
@ KevinNash : Your analogy is like a dead accountant. It doesn't add up!
Who said anything about male-dominated? Society breeds women who punish women just as much as anyone else in this regard.
Go spend some time in Italy, then come back and tell me the wimminz are oppressed.
As for polling - I'm not convinced that the polls asked the right questions - while both The Cat and I reference fundies, our position on the fundamentally anti-women agenda of the abortion debacle is not wedded to the fundamentalist aspect*. However, in my experience it doesn't matter whether they're a fundie or a relative moderate. It always, eventually falls back to punishng sluts and consequences for having sex. In fact, you're more likely to hear that sooner, the more moderate they are.
* Which isn't to say that moderates opposed to abortion aren't horrible people either - they are. Nor is it to say that the only thing making fundies horrible poeple is their opposition to abortion.
Well, I can't really argue with anecdotal evidence, but then you can't really claim it's representative, so I guess we're done.
I think that generally women are biologically disadvantaged at some things (generic example time, heavy lifting), just as generally men are at others (generic example time, compromise negotiation). Neither of these things means there do not exist women stronger than most men, or men better at diplomacy than women. Thus we should not institutionalise biases towards each, but it is fair to make general assumptions that, say, a random team of women will lift less heavy things over an hour than a random team of men.
Then why are most diplomats, linguists, psychologists, marketers, and HR types men?
OHWAIT
also, you're wrong about the strength thing. Due to the aforementioned difference-within-groups-outweighing-difference-between thing, you'd have to cherry pick your teams pretty carefully to generate that effect. Your theory also fails to explain why the nightfill team I worked in for most of college was primarily made up of mums...
Also, I should point out that I'm pretty sure most employers may not use potential pregnancy as a consideration in hiring in the United States, by law. I don't think they can even ask whether you'd take time off or not.
Well, that would be because they'd never ask that of a male, despite males ostensibly being expected to participate in a family with some degree of equality. It also protects both genders from being asked similarly intrusive questions about their private lives, such as 'how much do you drink', 'do you exercise regularly', do you drive carefully', 'do you stay up late playing games a lot on weeknights', or 'have you ever or do you plan on participating in an 'extreme' sport while under our employ' - things involving similar risk of generally lowered productivity, extended time off etc. Its not special treatment, although many people think it is.
Sports teams have contracts that limit the players regarding what kind of physical activities they are permitted to do as a means to prevent injury and therefore having them lose time off work.
If I go to work drunk I'm liable to get fired.
If a woman shows up pregnant not so much.
So you're saying that pregnant women are automatically incompetent
i see
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clownfoodpacket pusherin the wallsRegistered Userregular
Also, I should point out that I'm pretty sure most employers may not use potential pregnancy as a consideration in hiring in the United States, by law. I don't think they can even ask whether you'd take time off or not.
Well, that would be because they'd never ask that of a male, despite males ostensibly being expected to participate in a family with some degree of equality. It also protects both genders from being asked similarly intrusive questions about their private lives, such as 'how much do you drink', 'do you exercise regularly', do you drive carefully', 'do you stay up late playing games a lot on weeknights', or 'have you ever or do you plan on participating in an 'extreme' sport while under our employ' - things involving similar risk of generally lowered productivity, extended time off etc. Its not special treatment, although many people think it is.
Sports teams have contracts that limit the players regarding what kind of physical activities they are permitted to do as a means to prevent injury and therefore having them lose time off work.
If I go to work drunk I'm liable to get fired.
If a woman shows up pregnant not so much.
So you're saying that pregnant women are automatically incompetent
i see
I am not sure he meant incompetent as much as a liability.
I think women aren't as well suited to an economic environment that demands 100% workload & little to no time off because of the 'biological disadvantage' (cough) of pregnancy. This is neither a judgement on the worth of women, or the worth of that business ethic. It is a statement of fact.
That means that women are less competitive in the workplace. This makes them less desirable workers, which, by extension, implies that they should be paid less for doing the same work as men, because of the risk of a future pregnancy. That makes them second-class citizens. I think the logic flows pretty clearly.
I think that generally women are biologically disadvantaged at some things (generic example time, heavy lifting), just as generally men are at others (generic example time, compromise negotiation). Neither of these things means there do not exist women stronger than most men, or men better at diplomacy than women. Thus we should not institutionalise biases towards each, but it is fair to make general assumptions that, say, a random team of women will lift less heavy things over an hour than a random team of men.
That is what businesses are doing when they judge men & women in different ways. If for some reason they had a medical report as part of the application which showed a women applicant had a hysterectomy, however, that would be a specific example which would negate the general assumption.
Finally, I'm rarely much bothered by the question of whether intervention is justified or not, I usually skip straight to: is it practically possible to do, and by what solution? Once someone has answered that question (the difficult one) I'll judge whether it is justified based on the merits of the solution presented. The moral question simply just doesn't interest me that much. Opinions, arseholes, etc.
Funny you should ask. In the United States, we've actually already intervened in this situation.
which is really an extension of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in hiring on the basis of sex.
It's actually illegal in this country to consider sex in hiring. That's one potential solution, laid whole at your doorstep for inspection. What do you think?
I think that generally women are biologically disadvantaged at some things (generic example time, heavy lifting), just as generally men are at others (generic example time, compromise negotiation). Neither of these things means there do not exist women stronger than most men, or men better at diplomacy than women. Thus we should not institutionalise biases towards each, but it is fair to make general assumptions that, say, a random team of women will lift less heavy things over an hour than a random team of men.
Then why are most diplomats, linguists, psychologists, marketers, and HR types men?
OHWAIT
also, you're wrong about the strength thing. Due to the aforementioned difference-within-groups-outweighing-difference-between thing, you'd have to cherry pick your teams pretty carefully to generate that effect. Your theory also fails to explain why the nightfill team I worked in for most of college was primarily made up of mums...
Oh good God. Next you're gonna tell us that Soccer is a real sport.
I'm gonna die 10 years before my wife does JUST BECAUSE I'm a man and God fucking hates me.
I've come to terms with this reality. I'm gonna die earlier than my spouse. You get to carry around a nutrient sapping organism in your uterus for 9 months. At least you have a choice. Sorry.
Who said anything about male-dominated? Society breeds women who punish women just as much as anyone else in this regard.
Go spend some time in Italy, then come back and tell me the wimminz are oppressed.
You're right in that I have not spent time in Italy. For all I know women might be in a position of power - given I have no reason to believe this is not the case, I will stipulate to this fact. However, the fact that it is women who enforce fundamentally anti-woman moral strictures in no way makes the moral strictures any less anti-women.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
I think that generally women are biologically disadvantaged at some things (generic example time, heavy lifting), just as generally men are at others (generic example time, compromise negotiation). Neither of these things means there do not exist women stronger than most men, or men better at diplomacy than women. Thus we should not institutionalise biases towards each, but it is fair to make general assumptions that, say, a random team of women will lift less heavy things over an hour than a random team of men.
Then why are most diplomats, linguists, psychologists, marketers, and HR types men?
OHWAIT
also, you're wrong about the strength thing. Due to the aforementioned difference-within-groups-outweighing-difference-between thing, you'd have to cherry pick your teams pretty carefully to generate that effect. Your theory also fails to explain why the nightfill team I worked in for most of college was primarily made up of mums...
Oh good God. Next you're gonna tell us that Soccer is a real sport.
I'm gonna die 10 years before my wife does JUST BECAUSE I'm a man and God fucking hates me.
I've come to terms with this reality. I'm gonna die earlier than my spouse. You get to carry around a nutrient sapping organism in your uterus for 9 months. At least you have a choice. Sorry.
Are you terrible at humour or just heavily retarded?
I think that generally women are biologically disadvantaged at some things (generic example time, heavy lifting), just as generally men are at others (generic example time, compromise negotiation). Neither of these things means there do not exist women stronger than most men, or men better at diplomacy than women. Thus we should not institutionalise biases towards each, but it is fair to make general assumptions that, say, a random team of women will lift less heavy things over an hour than a random team of men.
Then why are most diplomats, linguists, psychologists, marketers, and HR types men?
OHWAIT
also, you're wrong about the strength thing. Due to the aforementioned difference-within-groups-outweighing-difference-between thing, you'd have to cherry pick your teams pretty carefully to generate that effect. Your theory also fails to explain why the nightfill team I worked in for most of college was primarily made up of mums...
Yes, I know they weren't great examples, but that's why I prefaced them with 'generic'. If we can agree that there are general biological differences between men & women (often totally overstated, but some exist nonetheless), then that's my point really.
Also, though I'm sure that most diplomats are men because of the bias of traditional institutions, I'd debate that linguistics, psychology and marketing are primarily concerned with negotiation & diplomacy, and in my experience HR types are almost exclusively women. This coming from the fact that my flatmate is in HR, the London HR recruitment pool seems to be very incestuous, I've met a ton of people she knows through it from various companies around the city, and out of 50+ people, there have been...2 men that I can remember.
& strength thing should have really referred to absolute strength as in one very heavy thing, rather than endurance strength of lifting heavy things over a period of time.
Oh good God. Next you're gonna tell us that Soccer is a real sport.
I'm gonna die 10 years before my wife does JUST BECAUSE I'm a man and God fucking hates me.
I've come to terms with this reality. I'm gonna die earlier than my spouse. You get to carry around a nutrient sapping organism in your uterus for 9 months. At least you have a choice. Sorry.
Men only die on average earlier because they refuse to go to doctors and think that injecting steak soup into their veins makes them tough. Quit yer bitchin'.
And also your trollin' because good god at this point you cannot possibly be serious
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Actually I should clarify that. It proves two things. It proves that brain biology is relevant and it's not just "hormones".
It also proves that what you posted was not entirely accurate.
Sex: defined sexual characteristics
Gender: displayed sexual characteristics
If you can't grasp this, you probably shouldn't be talking about "pink collar" jobs.
And that part where the concept of gender roles can vary widely among different cultures.
Seriously, Kevin, everything you've said about sex and biology in this thread has been horribly stupid and misinformed. We have multicultural studies for a reason: they prove dipshit fatalists like you wrong.
Hormones can be nurture, too.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
M i rite.
Guys m i rite.
I would argue it is my problem because you are my fellow man and we live in a society, hell you could be the next Mozart/Picasso/etc. for all we know.
what's funny is that you're basically quoting KevinNash without the weasel words.
Well gee, your employment example might possibly be because employers recognise that women are 100% more likely than men to get pregnant and take time off work. This affects some businesses more than other, say where contacts are personal or one works on a project for years. It is neither unfair nor unreasonable of businesses to make this judgement, they aren't obliged to hire the best person, they are obliged to hire the best person for the job. If the difference is: likely to be more reliably worked to death, then that's an edge. It isn't fair on women either, but that is a bias of biology, not society - this is something I mentioned, but you ignored.
I would also point out that this situation is changing rapidly. Employment law in the west is consistently trying to find ways of balancing these conflicts & find a fair resolution, and as the previous generation of women reach senior management positions, and a new generation increasingly level out gender in entry or mid-level jobs. So the second of my points you ignored is: change takes time. You cannot instantly force it (or it is very unwise to do so). Change is happening, and quite rapidly. My charge is that yelling "disenfrancisement!" has a negative effect as well as the potential benefit of prompting change. I believe that most people see enough equality, and a fast enough pace of change, that cries of disenfranchisement increasingly have more of a negative effect than benefit: to many people it reeks of victim culture. Whether this is entirely fair is debatable, but whether it is or not, you are still doing more damage than good, and thus hindering your goal.
[There are exceptions to this of course. If you want a great example of real institutional bias against women, go yell at the Army, and I would support you, as I did collegues in the past. Women in at least the British Army often outperform men, but are held to an increasingly nonsensical set of rules - ie no front line - and often judged on male characteristics, with little regard for the fact that say, women officers, tend to offer different & often better ways of dealing with situations when not forced into a gung-ho male mentality. Moreover, the thing I really liked about them is that they would most likely tell you to do one, because the idea of generic disenfranchisement & bias was one they simply didn't tolerate. Many would challenge specific instances of unfair treatment, but suggest that they should get institutional leg-ups and you'd lose something dear to you]
...and olol, abortion. Great scapegoat. I do believe, however, that unless you are relentlessly blinkered, most pro-choice people recognise that the other side of the abortion debate aren't primarily concerned about disenfranchising women, but about promoting their own religious views. The side-effect is disenfranchising women, but please don't wank on pretending that all teh ebil fundies want to specifically beat wimminz back into the kitchen. Also, "we" aren't having this discussion, the US is. Most of the rest of the west got over it a long time ago.
I think you're assuming some amount of untethering from society that simply doesn't exist. Our environment has a massive influence on how we develop and what our desires are. You seem to assume otherwise.
Many women "want to" because it has been fed to them since they were old enough to think that women had a unique and important attachment to classrooms.
I'm pretty much with you (with the caveat that a lot of businesses throw completely unnecessary blocks up in front of parents in general and mothers in particular in the belief that the only important thing in the world is profit margin), but not on that last paragraph. Fundies are horrible, scary people and I don't think you quite appreciate just how fucked up their view of gender roles is.
If you've never had a conversation with a fundie that hasn't rolled around to what amounts to the need to punish sluts, then you're ill-equipped to make any judgements upon the nature of fundies and their horrific views on abortion.
You bring up an interesting point, Not Sarastro. It seems to me that if you are correct about women being naturally (that is, biologically) disadvantaged as workers, that means one of two things. Either you believe that women are justifiably second-class citizens because of this biological disadvantage - that they are inherently inferior and that this state of affairs is just, or you believe that some sort of intervention is necessary to right this wrong.
Also, I should point out that I'm pretty sure most employers may not use potential pregnancy as a consideration in hiring in the United States, by law. I don't think they can even ask whether you'd take time off or not.
Well, that would be because they'd never ask that of a male, despite males ostensibly being expected to participate in a family with some degree of equality. It also protects both genders from being asked similarly intrusive questions about their private lives, such as 'how much do you drink', 'do you exercise regularly', do you drive carefully', 'do you stay up late playing games a lot on weeknights', or 'have you ever or do you plan on participating in an 'extreme' sport while under our employ' - things involving similar risk of generally lowered productivity, extended time off etc. Its not special treatment, although many people think it is.
No, all taxation is not a form of wealth redistribution. All taxation is a form of funding necessary services. All progressive taxation is a form of wealth redistribution. It is once again disturbingly ill-educated that you conflate the two. Whoever taught your economics 101 class wasn't doing a very good job, because "wealth redistribution" has a specific economic meaning, and it does not cover any transfer of capital. Is buying food "wealth redistribution"? No, because you are making a trade for something else of value. Paying for essential services is similarly paying for a service which is valuable to you. Paying for a service which is valuable for someone else is charity. Being compelled to pay for a service which is valuable to someone else is, in this case of taxation, wealth redistribution.
Go educate your teacher.
Neither do I. But yet again, the questions are "how" and "how much"?
Kickass. So since Shinto's female co-worker was clearly surviving without outside aid, she doesn't qualify right? Didn't seem to be what you were saying before. Plenty of black people survive while being discriminated against, therefore they don't deserve help, correct?
Of course, the slight flaw there is that she is surviving with the help of an outside agency, we all are. I use public roads, the NHS, recieve tax breaks currently as a student, and so on. Everyone but a hermit relies to some extent on the help or teamwork of outside agencies.
Your definitions are so vague as to be worthless. The life of luxury comparison was to illustrate that you totally fail to propose how we should work redistribution, which is the real question - only the extremely naive or self-centered propose no public help at all. You have still failed to give a decent answer to 'how'.
Well, charity also encompasses your definition of welfare. You aren't making much of a consistent case here. Why do we have a duty of welfare? You said previously that it was because there is social inequality. But above, you said that we should only help people when they cannot help themselves at all. That leaves a massive chasm inbetween of people who are presumably treated prejudicially but, because they can survive relatively self-sufficiently nonetheless, don't automatically deserve help? Perhaps we are agreeing after all!
But that isn't what you were arguing before. You weren't arguing for welfare as a form of social insurance, you were arguing that we have a redistributive duty because it is society's fault that people are poor / black / female [/sarcasm], because they are treated unequally. So, add social insurance in there too. Your list of people who deserve social welfare is ever expanding, but your plan for how to effect & pay for all this is still elusive.
Yes, we've done this. One, a couple of bad genes can mean the difference between Einstein and a stillborne child. That's a pretty large range. Two, your prescription above doesn't say how you would help her either.
My point was more that polling demonstrates there is a significant majority in the US who are anti-abortion, and not all of them are rabid fundies. I'm quite happy to concede that there do exist rabid fundies with medieval views about women, but I'm skeptical of people who characterise anyone in the anti-abortion debate along the same lines. I suspect they are making a lazy characterisation based on the fact that the fundies hijacked the 'pro-life' agenda.
For example, there are dwindling but still significant numbers of anti-abortionists in Europe who take a much more reasonable stance - mostly in Catholic countries, but even in heavily matriarchal societies like Italy where there are plenty of women in kitchens, but to suggest they are male dominated is utterly wrong - and common sense suggests there are in the US too.
Once again the Wonder Hippie chimes in with a post devoid of substance and simply rides on the backs of everyone else in the thread with a "me too!"
Seriously do you have an original thought of your own? Do you have ANYTHING to contribute here?
Did you bother reading the scientific study I linked to?
I said there was a biological difference between how men and women think and I said it might have something to do with the jobs they choose to take. So far nobody has proved me wrong. All I've heard is someone talking about hormones and a few other people insisting that women go into teaching because men force them too.
Who said anything about male-dominated? Society breeds women who punish women just as much as anyone else in this regard.
As for polling - I'm not convinced that the polls asked the right questions - while both The Cat and I reference fundies, our position on the fundamentally anti-women agenda of the abortion debacle is not wedded to the fundamentalist aspect*. However, in my experience it doesn't matter whether they're a fundie or a relative moderate. It always, eventually falls back to punishng sluts and consequences for having sex. In fact, you're more likely to hear that sooner, the more moderate they are.
* Which isn't to say that moderates opposed to abortion aren't horrible people either - they are. Nor is it to say that the only thing making fundies horrible poeple is their opposition to abortion.
Hey kev. You're wrong about everything you've claimed about female employment in the west in the last hundred plus years. The reason no-one is bothering to school your ass is because we find it impossible that any human who can work a keyboard is actually that ignorant. Go read something. Learn. Refrain from comment on things you know nothing about. I manage to keep out of threads about physics and obscure foreign sports, this shouldn't be a challenge.
God, overextrapolating a bit there.
I think women aren't as well suited to an economic environment that demands 100% workload & little to no time off because of the 'biological disadvantage' (cough) of pregnancy. This is neither a judgement on the worth of women, or the worth of that business ethic. It is a statement of fact.
I think that generally women are biologically disadvantaged at some things (generic example time, heavy lifting), just as generally men are at others (generic example time, compromise negotiation). Neither of these things means there do not exist women stronger than most men, or men better at diplomacy than women. Thus we should not institutionalise biases towards each, but it is fair to make general assumptions that, say, a random team of women will lift less heavy things over an hour than a random team of men.
That is what businesses are doing when they judge men & women in different ways. If for some reason they had a medical report as part of the application which showed a women applicant had a hysterectomy, however, that would be a specific example which would negate the general assumption.
Finally, I'm rarely much bothered by the question of whether intervention is justified or not, I usually skip straight to: is it practically possible to do, and by what solution? Once someone has answered that question (the difficult one) I'll judge whether it is justified based on the merits of the solution presented. The moral question simply just doesn't interest me that much. Opinions, arseholes, etc.
Sports teams have contracts that limit the players regarding what kind of physical activities they are permitted to do as a means to prevent injury and therefore having them lose time off work.
If I go to work drunk I'm liable to get fired.
If a woman shows up pregnant not so much.
It's actually irrelevant which jobs women want or don't want to take. The pay is what matters for our purposes. It's simply unreasonable for us to expect that by some mysterious coincidence the jobs that women prefer are all paid much less than the jobs men prefer and that that coincidence explains away the vast disparity in income.
Of course you do you're a girl.
Go spend some time in Italy, then come back and tell me the wimminz are oppressed.
Well, I can't really argue with anecdotal evidence, but then you can't really claim it's representative, so I guess we're done.
Then why are most diplomats, linguists, psychologists, marketers, and HR types men?
OHWAIT
also, you're wrong about the strength thing. Due to the aforementioned difference-within-groups-outweighing-difference-between thing, you'd have to cherry pick your teams pretty carefully to generate that effect. Your theory also fails to explain why the nightfill team I worked in for most of college was primarily made up of mums...
So you're saying that pregnant women are automatically incompetent
i see
I am not sure he meant incompetent as much as a liability.
That means that women are less competitive in the workplace. This makes them less desirable workers, which, by extension, implies that they should be paid less for doing the same work as men, because of the risk of a future pregnancy. That makes them second-class citizens. I think the logic flows pretty clearly.
Funny you should ask. In the United States, we've actually already intervened in this situation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_Discrimination_Act
which is really an extension of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in hiring on the basis of sex.
It's actually illegal in this country to consider sex in hiring. That's one potential solution, laid whole at your doorstep for inspection. What do you think?
Oh good God. Next you're gonna tell us that Soccer is a real sport.
I'm gonna die 10 years before my wife does JUST BECAUSE I'm a man and God fucking hates me.
I've come to terms with this reality. I'm gonna die earlier than my spouse. You get to carry around a nutrient sapping organism in your uterus for 9 months. At least you have a choice. Sorry.
You're right in that I have not spent time in Italy. For all I know women might be in a position of power - given I have no reason to believe this is not the case, I will stipulate to this fact. However, the fact that it is women who enforce fundamentally anti-woman moral strictures in no way makes the moral strictures any less anti-women.
Are you terrible at humour or just heavily retarded?
I don't know which is better.
Yes, I know they weren't great examples, but that's why I prefaced them with 'generic'. If we can agree that there are general biological differences between men & women (often totally overstated, but some exist nonetheless), then that's my point really.
Also, though I'm sure that most diplomats are men because of the bias of traditional institutions, I'd debate that linguistics, psychology and marketing are primarily concerned with negotiation & diplomacy, and in my experience HR types are almost exclusively women. This coming from the fact that my flatmate is in HR, the London HR recruitment pool seems to be very incestuous, I've met a ton of people she knows through it from various companies around the city, and out of 50+ people, there have been...2 men that I can remember.
& strength thing should have really referred to absolute strength as in one very heavy thing, rather than endurance strength of lifting heavy things over a period of time.
Men only die on average earlier because they refuse to go to doctors and think that injecting steak soup into their veins makes them tough. Quit yer bitchin'.
And also your trollin' because good god at this point you cannot possibly be serious