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Discrimination against Men
- Thread starter The Plant
- Start date
I've always thought that that was actually a stupid phrase - it's essentially meaningless. I mean, unless you specify exactly how much respect is due, it could mean anything. Maybe no respect is due - it's still all due respect. ANYWAY,
First and foremost, I think that society takes advantage of men as much if not more than it takes advantage of women. The feminist tendency is to take the men sitting high atop society (those listed in Forbes magazine, political leaders, CEOs, justices of the peace, etc.) and juxtapose the figure with the number of women in similar positions. However, I think it's also necessary to look at the bottom of the barrel of society - in the areas of homelessness, work-related deaths, war-related deaths, men outnumber women by scores. Interestingly, this is a recurring and commonly overlooked phenomenon in a lot of the data collected pertaining to statistical comparisons between men and women.
If we look to the issue of IQs, this point is further bolstered. Although there are many, many studies that attest that men and women have, on average, the same IQs, there are still a lot more men in the fields of science, mathematics, literature, and acadaemia in general than there are women - a statistic for which a strong correlation with IQ can be argued - many feminists point to this fact, and accuse the institutions of education of being patriarchal and discriminatory. However, a closer examination of the data in these studies provides a different, and in my estimation, a much more defensible and compelling argument.
There are more men than women that have extremely high IQs; however, there are also more men than women that have extremely low IQs. Men have a higher propensity to appear at either end of the bell curve than women do; and so, the average IQ, while being the same, does not necessarily tell the full story. This definitely puts things in some perspective - for instance, a small anecdotal argument because they seem to be so popular in this thread: in the gifted program that was run at my school, the average male to female ratio over six separate classes that I surveyed was just under 7 : 2.
I simply think that this is a really interesting concept whose applications run incredibly deep. In the scales of most things, men tend toward extremes far more than women. I first read about this in an essay I was linked to (I believe from this forum, actually!) If I can find the essay, I will post it happily, and you will find out that what I've posted here is effectively plagiarism. The views expressed in the essay are so on-point and well-argued, as well as (obviously) possessing a marked synchronicity with my own thoughts that if I could remember its address I would gladly post simply the link instead of composing my own post.
ok im just going to make a brief appearance in this thread to mention that this is one of the most ignorant and offensive things i've ever read
if you actually believe this, you have a very, very poor grasp on the world around you. i sincerely hope you're exaggerating here because reading that shit made me gag in a way normally reserved for deck knight posts.
Incidentally, what kind of life can one expect to have after several years in prison? If they're going to struggle to achieve any semi-decent quality of life (subjective term I know) then, arguably, the only difference between being sent to prison and being raped is that the amount of emotional shit involved is much greater in the latter, and that alone does not make being raped far worse than being imprisoned. Worse, yes, but not by a massive amount as is being implied or stated. If, on the other hand, one can do their time in prison and then just have a regular life as if it never happened, then being sent to prison is nowhere near as bad as being raped.
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm
- FUCKING RAD ESSAY. READ THAT SHIT, EDUCATE YOURSELVES!!!
- FUCKING RAD ESSAY. READ THAT SHIT, EDUCATE YOURSELVES!!!
I'm pretty sure that's with the added moniker of being falsely imprisoned for rape. He said this right after:
Which is agreeable because being falsely imprisoned for rape is in my opinion far worse than rape because not only will you be raped multiple times in prison but someone has effectively ruined your life for their own gain and you have to live with that (despite being completely innocent--the very definition of injustice). Rape is horrible (and I don't think Plant thinks otherwise) but an isolated incident is not as bad as rape multiple times and all the other pleasantries of prison life, however terrible that isolated incident may be (bear in mind, also, that I'm not trying to trivialize this isolated incident).
So either you stopped reading at that sentence or you are seriously being totally unreasonable and perhaps you should reevaluate your grasp of the world.
You're HORRIBLY trivializing and under representing "emotional shit" here if you think that. I'd argue the "emotional shit" of being raped alone is one of the worst things that can happen to any human being.
You're doing a pretty good job of it. You think rape victims don't have ruined lives? You think rape victims don't have to live with what happened to them?
Regardless, yes, if you're falsely imprisoned and raped there, then of course that's worse than rape alone. I wholeheartedly oppose false imprisonment and taking every person at their word no matter how unsubstantiated.
Huh? Are you kidding me? Since when did I ever claim rape victims do not have ruined lives? way to jump the gun on that one. just because I never explicitly said "rape victims have ruined lives" does not mean I believe in the opposite; that's a serious error of reasoning.
And i mean it's not like I said rape is horrible or added a disclaimer about how I don't mean to trivialize the traumas of rape victims. Oh wait I did but apparently that's not enough.
Then the next paragraph you agree with the actual point I was trying to make, but not before you bash me for reasons beyond my understanding. Shit like that pisses me off. This is a sensitive issue I understand that but don't accuse me of being offensive and insensitive because of maybe the bluntness with which I articulated my point. I made a reasonable and objective as possible conjecture and that's all it was.
I have only read the first page of the thread, so forgive me if someone covered this stuff, but I have things to say :)
A lot of the gender-related pay inequalities is because women are less likely to negotiate when compared to men.
In places where there are more men than women, it is more likely that women will be given less money, as explained in the example below:
Where my mother works, co-workers and her boss evaluate her performance for doling out raises, and the majority of the people that work there are male. male-female friendships are rarely as deep as same-sex friendships,and the men have gotten to know each other more intimately than they know my mom. This means that she needs to work much harder to recieve the same compensation as the men, who already know each other and are likely to give each other good performance reviews. In this way, areas where women are outnumbered not because of racism, but for social reasons (sorry if that didn't make any sense).
As far as the fact that there are fields where men are hired in greater numbers (such as engineering), there are jobs where there are much more women, such as elementary and middle school teachers (admittedly, there are probably more men in high school-level and college level teaching jobs), and the fact that more men are hired has to do with the number of women that become engineers as well. Women are supposedly inately less analytic and are worse at conceptualizing some technical ideas, but they make up for this via increased communication skills among other things. It never-the-less affects which areas they want to study. You could also argue that this is effected by pre-existing gender stereotypes that sub-consciously propagate themselves. Of course, wherever you have a field where men ounumber women the compensation will be unequal for the reasons I mentioned or similar ones.
Ih, another thing that affects salaries is that women get maternity leave and men don't (obviously I am fine with this), which means that you potentially lose a worker that you have trained. Liabilities like this also may contribute to their lower overall compensation.
I hope that I brought up some points that weren't touched upon already :)
A lot of the gender-related pay inequalities is because women are less likely to negotiate when compared to men.
In places where there are more men than women, it is more likely that women will be given less money, as explained in the example below:
Where my mother works, co-workers and her boss evaluate her performance for doling out raises, and the majority of the people that work there are male. male-female friendships are rarely as deep as same-sex friendships,and the men have gotten to know each other more intimately than they know my mom. This means that she needs to work much harder to recieve the same compensation as the men, who already know each other and are likely to give each other good performance reviews. In this way, areas where women are outnumbered not because of racism, but for social reasons (sorry if that didn't make any sense).
As far as the fact that there are fields where men are hired in greater numbers (such as engineering), there are jobs where there are much more women, such as elementary and middle school teachers (admittedly, there are probably more men in high school-level and college level teaching jobs), and the fact that more men are hired has to do with the number of women that become engineers as well. Women are supposedly inately less analytic and are worse at conceptualizing some technical ideas, but they make up for this via increased communication skills among other things. It never-the-less affects which areas they want to study. You could also argue that this is effected by pre-existing gender stereotypes that sub-consciously propagate themselves. Of course, wherever you have a field where men ounumber women the compensation will be unequal for the reasons I mentioned or similar ones.
Ih, another thing that affects salaries is that women get maternity leave and men don't (obviously I am fine with this), which means that you potentially lose a worker that you have trained. Liabilities like this also may contribute to their lower overall compensation.
I hope that I brought up some points that weren't touched upon already :)
Just as an initial note akuchi, the Women's Center operators were like crazy, crazy feminists. They make you look like Michelle Duggar. We're talking balls to the wall feminist theory imbibers, of which I was more than happy to aggravate on a regular basis, naturally :D. Their office was right next to The Archway Office, where I was assistant opinion editor.
Nothing is more dangerous to status quo, control-freak style groupthink than a little chaos, which I'm always happy to provide.
I hereby challenge you to a duel! *throws gauntlets* I will be shirts and you will be skins.
They're not sexist they're British! There's a difference. (Ok not really.) It goes both ways, although I'm surprised you applied for a job at a bookie's office to begin with. Do you like the races?
I'm all for maximum liberty, but my beef with a lot of the "combativeness" of feminism is the sort of lopsided way they address that liberty. On the one hand they seem to want to micromanage workplace gender balances and payscales, but abortion is supposed to be entirely unregulated, and yet publicly subsidized, but rarely discussed in a serious fashion. Despite the fact I find little to be liberating about it, its a choice that should never have to be made in a civilized society in my opinion. The first wave feminists were in fact pro-life.
It's because you are so short :( (I jest. I'm hardly qualified to be making short cracks)
My advice is to drop the slacker. He'd have more money to take you on dates if he wern't so busy making himself look lovely. Tell him the prototypical Ugly American psuedo-Thatcherite is busting his dating chops, that'll motivate him.
Dirty sexy or dirty ugly? There I go mocking the British again.
Deadbeat dads have zero respect. Zero. It's about the only status convicted child rapist is below in the Popular Official Patriarchal Conspiracy Respect Assignment Pyramid (POPCRAP). What I don't like though is societal systems wherin even non-deadbeat (but otherwise money-poor) dads are replaced by government checks. That is an overreaction to a serious problem that leads to more social dysfunction than it seeks to cure.
The main point behind the statistic akuchi is that it uses the same myopic standard of all deaths over all jobs to make a ridiculous political point. Men aren't dying all over the law office or at Burger King, the statistic includes stupidly dangerous stuff like deep-sea fishing, coal mining, skyscraper construction, etc. [ie jobs where possible death is an explicitly listed job hazard.] Just like the "Equal Pay Day" perennial statistic does not account for the lifestyle differences, job details, and personal choices that women and men make in employment. I only bring it up because it uses the same absurd logic and overreach. OSHA can't do a damn thing about the inherent dangers of these jobs. As they say, shit happens.
Some men have terrible judgment and ridiculous expectations. "Tit for that" is not an axiom most mature men ascribe to, though what male college students expect (based on what some female college students deliver...) may be entirely different.
I didn't have terrible experiences so much as it just seemed like such a fabricated load of feminist theory gone wild. You saw the hatorade I got for my Vagina Monologues column, heh.
Innocence of youth is so easily dashed, earlier and earlier it seems. Based solely on what you've mentioned on Smogon I certainly don't discount your experiences, but I still believe there is value in trying to keep innocence around longer than what the oversexed culture realistically allows in modern times. I worry about people being degraded to their base physical parts, which is the definition of objectification. I'd much rather have a woman with qualms about being called a lady than embracing the term "cunt," as one of The Monologues suggested. I have difficulty reconciling feminist rhetoric/art/critique with stated feminist goals, in other words. Which has always been my main beef, its just you won't fill an opinion section with statements as qualified as that one.
I think that's true for most people who aren't activists about it. I have flights of fancy about activism, but I personally think I'm a much better rhetorician than a boots-on-the-ground activist. I was terrible that one time I tried phone-banking for a candidate. I prefer setting up signs, looking over policy positions, forming a coherent, powerful, punchy message, etc.
Most of how men are taught politeness is in the context of behavior rather than words. Address your elders and superiors as "Sir" or "Ma'am." Give up your seat for the elderly or a woman, because they are possibly more infirmed/have a baby/are pregnant etc. It's not about thinking you are superior physically as it is a rote that you go through to be a decent human being, which for men generally means having a set standard of behaviors designed to be respectful and earn respect.
It is kind of how women pressure each other on their appearance choices or how they conduct themselves at a function or all those other "ladylike" things, but men are expected to do it because they lose respect in general if they don't, and are expected to know it and not be told they are losing respect. Men aren't going to tell you if you are fucking up "being a man," as it were, because they are often your direct competition in some way. It's a strange sort of system because its based largely on internal feedback. If you don't have that feedback ingrained you become all of the bad things men become, and they don't care because they don't really know.
That shows up in some of my observations, but I'm not a woman so it isn't internalized, I'll take your word for it. Men have a very different operating definition of confrontation, since its sort of a given if you're a guy your friends are also somewhat your rivals. Not necessarily in an antagonistic way, but kind of as a benchmark for checking yourself.
What a patsy ;). Actually, my dad does the laundry for my parents (I do my own). They've worked something out since their relationship had some trouble, but all the solutions were largely internal.
Cosmo was mostly directed at being utterly pointless drivel which disgusts me on several levels, yet still deigns itself fit to give advice. Fuck off, Cosmo indeed.
Then we agree.
See, this is why I like you akuchi. You're always fun to converse with.
Nothing is more dangerous to status quo, control-freak style groupthink than a little chaos, which I'm always happy to provide.
akuchi said:
I hereby challenge you to a duel! *throws gauntlets* I will be shirts and you will be skins.
They're not sexist they're British! There's a difference. (Ok not really.) It goes both ways, although I'm surprised you applied for a job at a bookie's office to begin with. Do you like the races?
I'm all for maximum liberty, but my beef with a lot of the "combativeness" of feminism is the sort of lopsided way they address that liberty. On the one hand they seem to want to micromanage workplace gender balances and payscales, but abortion is supposed to be entirely unregulated, and yet publicly subsidized, but rarely discussed in a serious fashion. Despite the fact I find little to be liberating about it, its a choice that should never have to be made in a civilized society in my opinion. The first wave feminists were in fact pro-life.
It's because you are so short :( (I jest. I'm hardly qualified to be making short cracks)
My advice is to drop the slacker. He'd have more money to take you on dates if he wern't so busy making himself look lovely. Tell him the prototypical Ugly American psuedo-Thatcherite is busting his dating chops, that'll motivate him.
Dirty sexy or dirty ugly? There I go mocking the British again.
Deadbeat dads have zero respect. Zero. It's about the only status convicted child rapist is below in the Popular Official Patriarchal Conspiracy Respect Assignment Pyramid (POPCRAP). What I don't like though is societal systems wherin even non-deadbeat (but otherwise money-poor) dads are replaced by government checks. That is an overreaction to a serious problem that leads to more social dysfunction than it seeks to cure.
The main point behind the statistic akuchi is that it uses the same myopic standard of all deaths over all jobs to make a ridiculous political point. Men aren't dying all over the law office or at Burger King, the statistic includes stupidly dangerous stuff like deep-sea fishing, coal mining, skyscraper construction, etc. [ie jobs where possible death is an explicitly listed job hazard.] Just like the "Equal Pay Day" perennial statistic does not account for the lifestyle differences, job details, and personal choices that women and men make in employment. I only bring it up because it uses the same absurd logic and overreach. OSHA can't do a damn thing about the inherent dangers of these jobs. As they say, shit happens.
Some men have terrible judgment and ridiculous expectations. "Tit for that" is not an axiom most mature men ascribe to, though what male college students expect (based on what some female college students deliver...) may be entirely different.
I didn't have terrible experiences so much as it just seemed like such a fabricated load of feminist theory gone wild. You saw the hatorade I got for my Vagina Monologues column, heh.
Innocence of youth is so easily dashed, earlier and earlier it seems. Based solely on what you've mentioned on Smogon I certainly don't discount your experiences, but I still believe there is value in trying to keep innocence around longer than what the oversexed culture realistically allows in modern times. I worry about people being degraded to their base physical parts, which is the definition of objectification. I'd much rather have a woman with qualms about being called a lady than embracing the term "cunt," as one of The Monologues suggested. I have difficulty reconciling feminist rhetoric/art/critique with stated feminist goals, in other words. Which has always been my main beef, its just you won't fill an opinion section with statements as qualified as that one.
I think that's true for most people who aren't activists about it. I have flights of fancy about activism, but I personally think I'm a much better rhetorician than a boots-on-the-ground activist. I was terrible that one time I tried phone-banking for a candidate. I prefer setting up signs, looking over policy positions, forming a coherent, powerful, punchy message, etc.
Most of how men are taught politeness is in the context of behavior rather than words. Address your elders and superiors as "Sir" or "Ma'am." Give up your seat for the elderly or a woman, because they are possibly more infirmed/have a baby/are pregnant etc. It's not about thinking you are superior physically as it is a rote that you go through to be a decent human being, which for men generally means having a set standard of behaviors designed to be respectful and earn respect.
It is kind of how women pressure each other on their appearance choices or how they conduct themselves at a function or all those other "ladylike" things, but men are expected to do it because they lose respect in general if they don't, and are expected to know it and not be told they are losing respect. Men aren't going to tell you if you are fucking up "being a man," as it were, because they are often your direct competition in some way. It's a strange sort of system because its based largely on internal feedback. If you don't have that feedback ingrained you become all of the bad things men become, and they don't care because they don't really know.
That shows up in some of my observations, but I'm not a woman so it isn't internalized, I'll take your word for it. Men have a very different operating definition of confrontation, since its sort of a given if you're a guy your friends are also somewhat your rivals. Not necessarily in an antagonistic way, but kind of as a benchmark for checking yourself.
What a patsy ;). Actually, my dad does the laundry for my parents (I do my own). They've worked something out since their relationship had some trouble, but all the solutions were largely internal.
Cosmo was mostly directed at being utterly pointless drivel which disgusts me on several levels, yet still deigns itself fit to give advice. Fuck off, Cosmo indeed.
Then we agree.
See, this is why I like you akuchi. You're always fun to converse with.
This is a good point, something I hadn't really thought about before.
This is actually more of an issue of social conditioning than predjudice. Fields like mathematics, physics, and engineering tend not to appeal to women. This is probably due to a combination of social preconceptions (i.e. by the time people get to the point of choosing a career path, those sectors are not sold well to women and so few of them are interested in them; the reverse is true of courses like biology and psychology, as well as literature and so forth) and biological factors (men are generally more likely to have analytical brains than communicative brains, and vice-versa for women).
IQ tests are very useful in a small range, and rapidly become meaningless as you move further away from 100. An IQ of 130 puts you at the top 1.1% of the population. The first standard deviation is around 115-120 (or equivalently, 80-85), possibly even closer to 100. Anything beyond this, especially at the extremely high or low extremes is an approximation at best, and beyond about 150-160, you're not seeing anything other than shot noise.
EDIT: Here's the difference between the treatment of a rape victim and the treatment of a convicted rapist: The rapist is there because s/he chose to be. They made the conscious decision to rape someone, and the consequences of that are the sentence the court awards. The same is true of all crime, effectively.
You do realize that not everyone that goes to prison gets raped right?
Prevalence rates are uncertain, and may be fairly low. But there will likely to trends relating to the crime the victim is jailed for. Convicted paedophiles are known to be at very great risk of physical assault in prisons, to the point that they are likely to be put in solitary for their own protection.
And prison rape is probably even less reported and less convicted than other forms of rape - after all, the perpetrator's already in jail, and the victim's unlikely to receive much sympathy being a convicted criminal anyway. Some statistics have suggested there are more rapes per annum within US prisons than outside them. (Source: Wikipedia article on Prison rape)
Today I was playing some MMoRPG and in a attempt to level my character I join a party of two. As soon as I join this girl says "No, unparty him. I don't like him" and to which I reply "suck it up and lets level." The other player, a guy, says "Hey that is no way to speak to a girl!" and they unparty me.
Now shifting gears, generally I show better mannerisms than that in real life. However, if I happen to make a smug comment to a girl I occasionally I get a similar response as from above.
My logic to these situations is I spoke to her just as I would of spoke to you (a guy) in that situation and yet I feel like the bad guy.
Also the divorce court is ridiculous and makes me think of Liar Liar (when that women wins custody over the kids).
Now shifting gears, generally I show better mannerisms than that in real life. However, if I happen to make a smug comment to a girl I occasionally I get a similar response as from above.
My logic to these situations is I spoke to her just as I would of spoke to you (a guy) in that situation and yet I feel like the bad guy.
Also the divorce court is ridiculous and makes me think of Liar Liar (when that women wins custody over the kids).
Though I'm not very knowledgeable on the subject, I have a little thinking question for the people in this thread:
If a girl starts a fight with me, as in, a violent fight, and I'm forced to defend myself and therefore cannot "walk away" from the fight, who's going to get into more trouble?
Will it be me, because I'm a male, or will it be the girl who actually started the fight?
This isn't a rhetorical question by the way, I actually want an answer because I don't know.
If a girl starts a fight with me, as in, a violent fight, and I'm forced to defend myself and therefore cannot "walk away" from the fight, who's going to get into more trouble?
Will it be me, because I'm a male, or will it be the girl who actually started the fight?
This isn't a rhetorical question by the way, I actually want an answer because I don't know.
If the girl had any implements of aggression, such as brass knuckles, switchblade, baseball bat, firearm, etc, the girl would be to blame. But if she was unarmed, then the police and onlookers would probably blame you, sadly. I remember watching a news channel in which they had a couple sit in a park, and the woman verbally abuse the man, occasionally striking him. No passerby's cared. When the gender roles were reversed, and the man pretended to abuse the woman emotionally and physically, many people stared.
I grant that this is true.
That aside, public consciousness is very much, not my problem. I don't feel like doing it right now, but there are plenty examples of crimes occurring right in front of people, and no one responding. I blame the media foster idea that helping = legal liability.
Correlation does not imply causation.
I shouldn't have to say that, seriously. Have you not considered that maybe women are told, pressured, or otherwise influenced away from the fields of science and math? It happens more than you think and it's certainly a lot more explainable than "well women are just dumb!"
Also, there are more women in "academia in general" than men. Nice try.
Once your IQ gets past 140 it's not a very accurate measure. Regardless of how shitty IQ is as a measure.
You mean antecdotal like "WOMEN AREN'T IN ACADEMIA"?
That's not the media, that's the truth in most common law countries. Engaging to help means you're accepting a duty of care as an aid-giver, which means that you are then liable for any damage incurred after that point (including by 'negligence', by walking away again).
IQ actually is a pretty good measuring system, that's why it's been used for so long. It's not particularly price, and it isn't a quantification of 'intelligence' perse, but it does measure something that correlates very strongly with what is recognised as intelligence (i.e. people who are generally considered to be intelligent have high IQs and vice-versa). It does become inaccurate beyond about 120-130, but only in the sense that a 135 and a 145 can't really be distiniguished from shot noise, not in the sense that a 135 and a 100 are equivalent.
University attendance leans slightly more towards women than men, and in literature it is significantly more male than female (I think it's around 2/3 women at a lower bound). However, in terms of people working in academia, I think the ratios are closer to even or swung in favour of males.
EDIT: Also, for those concerned about being sent to jail for something they didn't do and arguing it's comparable to rape, it probably is. However, the chance of convicting a rapist who DID do it is already very low compared to crimes like assault. It gets MUCH more difficult if the person didn't do it, and then the chance of it actually being accused if they did it is much lower again. The chance of it happening is so low it's really not worth considering.
It will be you who is in more trouble, but only because men created a ridiculous and sexist notion that women are dainty, helpless creatures that we must protect. Every single time I have had this sort of conversation, every other guy or nearly every other guy teams up against me with such utter conviction that a man should never hit a woman. Fucking ridiculous idiots.
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