I talked earlier about people who criticize those who don’t respond positively to cruel and dehumanizing humour as not ‘getting it’.
What’s the matter? You don’t think that this is funny? Why, just because it’s all based on the abuse of oppressed people? Because it’s cruel and deeply offensive? Because the jokes are built upon an edifice that manifests itself in deeply un-funny ways that result in the suffering and sometimes death of your fellow human beings?
My point was that people who don’t laugh at racist/misogynistic/ableist/whatever jokes don’t suffer from some deficit of humour. It’s not that we simply lack understanding of why an asshole would find it funny to humiliate or otherwise insult a class of people based on an unfair power structure – it’s that we understand the harm those kinds of jokes cause.
That being said, there are definitely some things I don’t ‘get’, and this ad from the GOP is one of them:
I am sincerely baffled by this ad, for reasons I will go into after I provide some important context. At last night’s debate, Mitt Romney answered a question about addressing the gender wage gap by relating an anecdote about when he was the governor of Massachusetts:
An important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men. And I — and I went to my staff, and I said, “How come all the people for these jobs are — are all men.” They said, “Well, these are the people that have the qualifications.” And I said, “Well, gosh, can’t we — can’t we find some — some women that are also qualified?”
And — and so we — we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women’s groups and said, “Can you help us find folks,” and they brought us whole binders full of women.
I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my Cabinet and my senior staff, that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states, and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America. Now one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort.
Of course, like everything Mitt Romney says, it’s completely untrue and the opposite is actually what happened:
What actually happened was that in 2002 — prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration — a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.
They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.
I have written about this before, in various contexts; tonight I’ve checked with several people directly involved in the MassGAP effort who confirm that this history as I’ve just presented it is correct — and that Romney’s claim tonight, that he asked for such a study, is false.
(snip)
Secondly, a UMass-Boston study found that the percentage of senior-level appointed positions held by women actually declined throughout the Romney administration, from 30.0% prior to his taking office, to 29.7% in July 2004, to 27.6% near the end of his term in November 2006. (It then began rapidly rising when Deval Patrick took office.)
Third, note that in Romney’s story as he tells it, this man who had led and consulted for businesses for 25 years didn’t know any qualified women, or know where to find any qualified women. So what does that say?
Facts aside*, the image of “binders full of women”, as awkward a phrase as it is, immediately captured the imagination of the internet. Mitt’s comment, completely 180 degrees from true (and sprinting) as it may be, took on a life of its own, catapulting “binders full of women” into full meme status.
In response, the GOP has decided to hit back with an ad featuring an empty binder. This leaves me with a bunch of seriously unanswered questions.
1. Whose fucking idea was this?
I’m trying to imagine some Republican strategist walking into a room and saying “the word ‘binders’ is blowing up on the internet right now. We’ve got to press an ad into service immediately!”
“But wait, why is it trending?”
“Fuck context. This is our chance to prove once and for all that Republicans aren’t horribly out of the loop when it comes to the internet. Kick around some ideas with binders in them, I’m going to go masturbate into one of my bank statements, and then I want to hear your pitches. 5 minutes people!”
I am honestly baffled. Is this an act of completely uncharacteristic (and brilliant) self-parody on behalf of Republicans, or are they genuinely this clueless about what things mean?
2. What is it supposed to mean?
Assuming for a moment that they understand the basics about the ‘binders’ comment, this ad suggests that the sinister plan the President has will… I guess… involve letting women out of the binders? And Mitt Romney would ensure that no woman ever went binder-less? That we can’t afford four more years of women who aren’t in binders? I seriously don’t get the ad’s… hole-punch-line**.
3. Do you even listen to your own propaganda?
Even if this ad had been released without the context of the ‘binders’ comment, perhaps in a fit of political serendipity so outrageous that it might make someone question the non-existence of a greater intelligence than humanity’s, it still wouldn’t make the slightest bit of coherent sense. The NRA is raising buckets full of money on the premise that Barack Obama is waiting for re-election so that he can socialize their guns or something. The idea that Obama, unfettered by the need to run for re-election, will turn into a left-wing monster is a mainstay of the Republican belief structure.
And yet he has no plan? And yet he hasn’t done anything in the past 4 years? And yet every single thing he did was an affront to the Constitution?
Forget the fact that this ad doesn’t comport with reality, it doesn’t even comport with the Republicans’ own carefully-constructed alternate reality.
I am seriously confused by the political strategy at play here. Part of me wishes that their site was hacked by an evil genius or something, but there’s no way anyone could have painted the Republicans are more cluelessly out of step with the conversation than they seem to be doing all by themselves.
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*Perhaps worth noting is the fact that ‘hiring more women’ doesn’t shrink the wage gap at all, so he gave a stupid Achilles-heel answer that didn’t even address the question being asked.
**Also… 4-hole punch? Is that even a thing that exists?
EDIT: commenter besomyka makes a point so true that I feel it needs to be repeated where everyone can see it:
There was SO much more wrong with his answer.
There was the explanation that all it takes is for the rich white man in charge to make the change. Never mind that, even in the best case, all that’d affect is his immediate surroundings. It wouldn’t change for anyone else.
He was talking about jobs instead of wages, as you mentioned.
There was the assumption that professional women — the sorts of accomplished people that would qualify for cabinet positions, high level advisory positions, and leadership roles in various governmental departments, would still need to get home to make dinner. Is he assuming all professional women are single? If not, why don’t the men in his administration ALSO need to get home early to make dinner?
Then there’s the meat of his solution: job creation. Create SO MANY JOBS that employers will have no choice but to hire women! We’re so unhireable, we can’t compete if there isn’t a surplus.
Uh, Mitt, that says more about the fucked-up HR people, and fucked up society that you’re reinforcing, than it does about women.
He answered the wrong question in just about the worst way he could.
The punchline of the ad is that Obama doesn’t have a plan for his second term. This is a right-wing talking point being bandied about a lot lately. The appearance in a binder might be a coincidence or some conservative’s idea of a ‘Take That!’ added on top of the main propaganda.
I think they’re trying to take control of the “binder” narrative and make it something positive for them, rather than be seen as just sitting back and being made fun of (as they richly deserve).
But in a way that DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE! It’s seriously like they only know that people are talking about binders, so let’s get some binder talk going!
Right, but as I explain, even then it stands in stark opposition to one of their MAJOR campaign ideas: that Barack Obama has a secret and terrifying Marxist agenda for his second term. He can’t have both “no plan” and “a complex evil plot”.
Just to add that we should remember that the Republican playbook emphasizes turning negatives into positives, like trying to turn Kerry’s military service (a negative for the opposition) into a joke, and hence a positive for the Republicans. You take control of the narrative, “frame” it in the way you want (e.g., we’re not anti anything, we’re pro-life!), and it’s supposed to make a negative into a positive. The question is whether the other consequence–that of making them look like lying assholes–is intended or not.
There was SO much more wrong with his answer.
There was the explanation that all it takes is for the rich white man in charge to make the change. Never mind that, even in the best case, all that’d affect is his immediate surroundings. It wouldn’t change for anyone else.
He was talking about jobs instead of wages, as you mentioned.
There was the assumption that professional women — the sorts of accomplished people that would qualify for cabinet positions, high level advisory positions, and leadership roles in various governmental departments, would still need to get home to make dinner. Is he assuming all professional women are single? If not, why don’t the men in his administration ALSO need to get home early to make dinner?
Then there’s the meat of his solution: job creation. Create SO MANY JOBS that employers will have no choice but to hire women! We’re so unhireable, we can’t compete if there isn’t a surplus.
Uh, Mitt, that says more about the fucked-up HR people, and fucked up society that you’re reinforcing, than it does about women.
He answered the wrong question in just about the worst way he could.
I get that, but this isn’t ‘framing’ as I understand it. It’s a complete failure to engage with the point of why the concept of ‘binders’ is significant. It’s just completely divorced from any and all context. Republican reframing would be to accuse the President of not appointing enough women to his cabinet or somesuch. This is just word repetition, and it doesn’t make them look like ‘liars’ so much as it makes them look like they have no fucking idea what’s happening in the Tubes.
Source needed for the quote beginning, “What actually happened …”.
What Romney needs – I’d rather not say, okay?
Right, we all get what the message(*) is intended to be, but the point is that it makes no sense. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard “there’s no plan” used as a criticism of Obama, but it’s definitely been deployed against Romney, which makes this whole thing super-ultra-double-reverse braindead.
* I refuse to call it a punchline, since there isn’t any level on which it’s funny, unless “LOL REFERENCE TO CULTURAL TREND” is default funny. It’s synthetic polymer-based humor substitute, at best.
It’s the same source as the previous pull-quote.
This is so fractally true that I have pulled it out as a post-scriptum to the OP.
Also, what Mitt was describing already has a name: affirmative action. His party is staunchly opposed to the idea. So yeah… worst way possible.
You underestimate the power of conservative cognitive dissonance! *insert remark about secret Al Qaeda commie atheist fascist here*
I think it is more a matter of which piece of propaganda they want to pound into peoples’ heads now. The GOP does this sort of rhetorical tactic by repeating things until attention is completely focused on what they want it to be focused on. This is how they avoid responsibility for their voting record, attack the president/democrats for things they do themselves, and steer the conversation towards their agenda.
I think I get why they did this. It’s intentional obfuscation of what the binder issue is. They also need a place holder for the right wing media bubble that includes the word “binder”. The two elements are for different audiences. For the MSM(media not men), they are pushing to get equal time or for the coverage of the “binder of women” meme to ‘be balanced’ and have something (even non-poll tested stuff) out there. The in-group element is different. FOX will only (or predominately) carry the republican binder. The foxbots then who overhear other folks talk about ‘binders’ will be inoculated against picking up the instant and awesome meme that sprang up overnight.
I agree with you, however, that the ad-(R) is downright baffling as to what it could even mean let alone why it’s a good idea to put it out there. I think I see why they tried but the (R) effort on this one is a political fail.
There are, in fact, 4-ring binders. They are not an American standard, however, best I can tell. They appear to be popular in China.
Maybe they’re Mitt’s preferred style?
Romney actually didn’t address the pay gap at all. What % of women were in senior cabinet positions when he was governor is totally unrelated to the pay gap that exists between men and women who are actually working in jobs right now.
His point seems to be that if we have ‘more jobs’ then more women will be hired. True perhaps, but what will they be hired for and at what levels of pay? I mean, we could have explosive job growth and women could still be concentrated in low-wage work or be hitting the glass ceiling. There are millions of women already working (yay for raw numbers) but if they’re all getting screwed, this is hardly a success story.
When I heard that phrase the first time, I paused the video to check if it had already become an internet meme. Not disappointed. 🙂
Seriously, it’s offensive. There’ll be so many jobs that employers will end up hiring women even though clearly they work less and demand special treatment. Underwhelming.
It started appearing after the last debate as a talking point and much like Romney’s “Trickle Down Government” is one of the many methods by which his side is attempting to confuse the hell out of everybody. If he gets pointed out on his lies, he attempts to make Obama out to be a liar. If Obama attacks one of his positions, he slips into a new (temporary) one. He obfuscates the hell out of the conversation and only sells what he wants to sell at the time.
Right now for the General Election, the GOP seem to want a message that Obama doesn’t have a real plan. Their allies will continue exciting the fringe with talk of socialist czars and such while the Romney campaign pushes forward more moderate points which might find traction with the easily swayed ‘Undecided Voter’. One disappointing outcome of the election was a MSNBC group of undecideds and their take on the debate. A slight majority were leaning towards Romney because “he’ll bring business experience” or “Obama had no real plan for the 2nd Term”. When asked about how she felt about Romney’s refusal to make a strong statement against unequal pay she said it didn’t matter much because he’d get to it eventually. This is the kind of crap that works and the Republicans play it well because our country unfortunately doesn’t hold them accountable for these outrageous tactics. It’s practically encouraged to be the sleeziest scumbag you can be in politics.
Aha – thanks. I’d thought the first source was a “debate” transcript, period.
Several of the Repub spinmeisters I’ve read quoted about this are consistently using the phrase “empty binder“, thus quietly getting those pesky women out of the way and replacing them with the R&R agenda for women’s concerns.
I hadn’t thought of the affirmative action side, but that’s a really good point. I have a feeling that the big difference in his head is his own good will. He wanted it, so it was okay*.
Also, I’m flattered that you thought I had a good comment. Still pissed at Romney, though.
In a way I see his comments like the 47% video: unintentionally revealing. This time he was couching it in terms that were more palatable to the public, but all his solutions and stories revealed the form of his true thoughts. A window opened up into his perception of the world, and it turns out to be Leave it to Beaver.
And it wasn’t just the atrocious comments that did it. It was little things like even the necessity OF that list to begin with. Why didn’t they have any women in the initial list?
The truth is probably mundane: they honestly couldn’t think of any. There weren’t any female partners at Bane, for whatever reason, so there’s no old business relationships to rely on. His executive staff didn’t have any women, so there’s no old political relationships to fall back on.
So going into his governorship, we’re supposed to believe that he’s suddenly surprised there are no female candidates for positions in his administration? I didn’t think he was surprised. I thought that was a lie.
Today, I’m reading that I was right: there was no binder, and he did not ask for it. It was prepared before the election and handed to him unprompted.
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/17/the_truth_about_romneys_binders_full_of_women/
It’s also the European standard (I guess it works better with the slightly longer than letter A4 paper).
If I thought the GOP put any kind of planning into this I would suggest they want to imply Obama prefers Chinese or socialist European stationary to good, red-blooded American products.
But they didn’t. It’s probably just the first picture of an open binder they found.
If you engage someone else’s point, you are letting them set the terms of the debate. A question to you is just an opening to talk about what YOU want to talk about. It’s all about being in control of the conversation, not anything substantive. For Republicans, so much is about pure ego and pride; foreign policy is “don’t look weak!” and “we’re special!”, social issues are about “everyone must live like I do!” and “those bitches are out of my control!” It all boils down to being seen as “strong” and “a winner.” If you’re looking for substantive, you’re not going to find it.
I say we make “binder” the official collective noun for “women”.
I think the best part of the ad is that the binder is open, as if Obama is about to put his agenda into it or the photographers pulled out his agenda and forget to close the clips before taking the picture.
This my point: there is literally NOTHING about the ad that makes sense. It is at a nadir of coherence. It lives at a mathematical minimum of intelligence. A picture of a shirtless Paul Ryan sodomizing a stuffed moose with an empty chair would make more sense than this ad does.
Actually, Mitt’s support of flextime policies was one of the only things he got right in his answer, from a feminist-workplace-policies perspective. While it’s certainly not the case that all women (and no men) have to have flexible hours to take care of domestic tasks, as things presently stand, women are disproportionately burdened with domestic work (the expectation that they will take care of it; also, there are far more female-headed single-parent families than male-headed ones), which frequently impacts their abilities to hold full-time (and especially more-than-full-time, like many executive/management positions) jobs that do not also accommodate workers who provide caretaking for family members (usually young children or elderly parents). My Women and the Workplace course (taught by Ellen Bravo, who helped found the Milwaukee chapter of 9to5 and wrote an excellent book analyzing gendered workplace dynamics) examined flextime policies as a major concrete step that can be taken to make things better for women doing paid labor RIGHT NOW.
The flexibility allows women (who are, again, disproportionately saddled with caretaking duties) to hold full-time jobs when they otherwise might not be able to do so such that they can either keep their jobs instead of being fired for having to pick a sick child up from school (one co-worker of a classmate had actually been fired for going to the hospital during her shift when she went into labor – this wasn’t illegal under anti-discrimination legislation because businesses smaller than a certain size are exempted from most federal civil rights laws, even though pregnancy is a protected class) or don’t have to take part-time jobs in order to accommodate caretaking schedules (a greater proportion of women than men work part-time instead of full-time, which is a major factor in ongoing wage discrimination, since part-time positions are often paid lower wages and receive fewer or no benefits compared to full-time positions at the same company).
So, this was actually both the only part where Mitt wasn’t lying and where he was addressing the question asked. I’m not sure if he was actually aware of this, though given his background as a corporate executive, he may actually have been aware of it. The implication of Mitt’s statement about flextime sounds sexist because the reality of extant social dynamics around unpaid domestic labor are sexist, and policies have to address the current reality. I don’t like the guy, and I have every reason to believe he doesn’t give a flying fuck about gender equality in the workplace or anywhere else, but credit where it’s due. For the record, flextime policies benefit men plenty, too, but they benefit women more, relative to women’s present statuses in the paid workforce.
But even when you control for things like time taken off for child-care, you find that women are consistently paid less than men for the same work. It’s simply not the case that flex time is an appropriate or sufficient method of addressing the gender gap.
Romney seems to have outsourced his campaign management, too.
The ad seems straightfoward to me. People are mocking Mitt Romney because he made a laughable statement involving binders, now he has an ad featuring a binder. It’s funny and relatable, because jokes.
It’s very much like the “Rush Limbaugh is doing satire” angle.
Crom, no, it *is* appropriate. I do agree that it’s very very far from being sufficient in itself. But it’s very important to change workplaces to handle the fact that workers are not robots but people who have family responsibilities. Flextime is excellent for that, and of course both men and women can use it. It helps men be more involved with the kids, too.
/groan
Well played, sir.
My point isn’t that flex time is a bad plan, I’m saying that as a method of changing the wage gap, it assumes that it is WOMEN who need the time rather than recognizing the fact that the disproportionate burden on women is itself a PROBLEM.
Well, it SHOULD be appropriate. But it’s not. That’s the problem. You get a situation where people who use it are punished for using it via lower raises.
There are two places where a wage differential can enter into the system. First, you have initial on-hire wages. And second, you have raises and bonuses. Seems obvious enough, right? So let’s focus on the second here. Let’s assume that everybody enters the system at the same wage (which often doesn’t happen, especially at higher wage levels), but for simplicity sake, let’s assume that.
So…why would men get higher raises than women? The problem that things such as flex time would acknowledge, is that the job shouldn’t be the #1 priority in someone’s life. Yet raises often go out to reward that very attitude. See the problem? Because it’s less socially acceptable for women to put their job before everything else, they don’t do that (for what it’s worth I think that putting the job before everything else is socially destructive) and as such are punished financially for it. Or wait. They’re just not “rewarded” as much. (As if there’s a difference)
It’s actually a massive cultural problem that has its roots in the “work ethic” concept of modern Western society, where sacrifice means more than actual productivity. And to be honest? Why wouldn’t it? Productivity is often difficult to measure in this increasingly interconnected age. Sacrifice is EASY to measure. How many hours are logged?
The linked article mentions the Fair Pay act, and I’ll put this bluntly. Any attempt to fix the article that leaves personal “merit” up to judge WILL result in discrepancy. It’s worthless. Strangely enough, the other bill mentioned, the Paycheck Fairness Act, I do think would do some good, in terms of encouraging employers to embrace flat pay levels in order to prevent conflict in the company.
One final thing. The concept of flex time is classist in and of itself. I’m not saying that as an attack, or saying that it’s a bad idea (I don’t really like the concept of “tear down” social justice, to be honest), but you have to realize that increasingly that it is basically impossible to do for any sort of public-facing service job. It’s basically a privilege. I wish we could give it to everybody, but the reality is that the way the economy is run right now, especially in the service economy, it’s never going to happen. I’ll literally say that wages could double, and you would see employers able to pay that out before they could do flex time.
There are no women in Obama’s binder.
Have I told you lately that I love you?
http://bindersfullofwomen.com/
This actually makes some kind of sense. They’re creating a bubble for the conservative “binder” hits so that they don’t encounter the “women in binders” meme.
going just by the image, I at first thought that was what they were going for (i.e. , Obama having an “empty” woman-binder); switch out the headline, and it would be standard “no, you!” Republican strategy. With the line as it is, it’s incoherent.
One of my own design: http://memegenerator.net/instance/28548635
I suspect you are over-analyzing the ad.
Having worked on some campaigns, and watching how issues which arise during this campaign have been addressed by Romney’s managers, I submit that the blank binder advertisement has been in the works for weeks, possibly months.
It’s a standard attack ad, implying that Obama has done nothing for the past four years and has no plans for the next four.
This sort of advertisement is surprisingly effective because it feeds into any number of narratives that their constituents want to believe.
Should the narrative of the moment be who to assign credit to actions by the federal government during the last four years it can be used to deny credit to Obama. Any claims that are made that “Obama did X” can easily be countered with a claim of, “What about this person who was an integral part of X? You are denying them the accolades they deserve!”
Or, should it feed into the narrative of the moment better, the empty binder can be used to argue that Obama did nothing to help the American People during his first four years. The argument is made that everything Obama did hurt the people. Not at all true, but it’s a different narrative that their supporters will believe.
Or, should it feed into the narrative of the moment better, the empty binder ad can be used to argue that Obama is in the thrall of his Communist-Islamic-Fascist-Godless masters and doesn’t have a single original thought of his own. Again, this is patently untrue, but it is what some people want to believe.
Objectively, as a political advertisement, it is rather good. It can be used, like any blank slate, to re-enforce the viewer’s already held beliefs while at the same time appearing to be relevant to the moment.
However, because of Romney’s own goal (again), the ad is now irretrievably associated with his remark about binders and hiring women.
Those who do try to make a connection between Romney’s comment about binders and this ad are going to be very, very confused.
This advertisement should have been pulled by the RNC before distribution. The fact that it wasn’t is yet another indicator that Romney’s campaign team is ineffectual and unable to keep up with current events. In other words, for them, this is business as usual.
But here’s the thing: EVEN under the circumstances you describe, the ad runs directly counter to another of their major campaign thrusts – that Obama has a secret plan to take away Americans’ freedom. They’re undercutting their own propaganda.
The RNC has not campaigned on the idea that Obama has a secret plan to take away freedoms. I’m not saying that other groups haven’t been, but I haven’t seen anything from the RNC about it.
from the RNC Platform:
The RNC’s position is that Obama has been ineffectual and if his policies had passed they would have been detrimental, which ties well into the message they are trying to project with the binder.
This ad once again reveals the disarray of the republican party.
I don’t they need to be coherent. Their propaganda isn’t meant to change your mind, but to re-enforce what you believe. The people he is trying to reach believe that Obama is a Black liberation Christian, a muslim, and an atheist all at the same time. They know that Obama is a fascist and a communist. They are convince that he is both a Kenyan and that his real father was the american communist Frank Marshall Davis. They have no problem in believe that Obama is a weak, do-nothing president, who is trying to become an all powerful dictator. If Obama was a paint color, these people would have no problem believing that Obama was 100% red and 100% green at the same time. It doesn’t matter what the story is, or if it contradicts any other story, but if they can associate Obama with something bad, that’s what they’ll do.
I think they’re trying to do want Bush in 04 did. The undecideds don’t really matter anymore. It’s not about getting the most voters to think that you are right, it is about getting the most people who think you are already right to vote. It’s all about which side can get their base energized to vote. Fear and anger, no matter how insane, are the best tools for that.
nollidge says:
The Republicans have a single election strategy. Whatever the criticisms of Romney are, they just turn around and claim the same thing about Obama. It’s simple projection.
Republican polices hurt women? Nonsense, the GOP are the real defenders of women!
Romney is a wealthy elitist? Yeah, well Obama is such an elitist he went to Harvard! (Never mind that Romney also attended Harvard but for a longer period.)
Romney doesn’t have a plan? Yeah, well he doesn’t need a plan. Plus, Obama is really the one who doesn’t have a plan!
These sorts of claims don’t have to make actual sense. They’re just a smokescreen used to blur the distinction between the candidates. Republican leaders already know their base will believe whatever they tell them to believe. All they have to do is put the misinformation out there and it quickly becomes a conservative truth.
Whoever said the Republicans make sense. They can’t add and subtract (budget). They can’t reason (see binder ad). As Professor Higgens noted: “Why is logic never even tried?”
What Mitt Romney doesn’t know about women could fill a binder.
Holytape seems to have nailed the idea behind the ad; it’s not about the truth, it’s about appealing to the doublethink-addled Republican base and the stupider undecided voters. While all of the criticisms made about the ad are valid, they’re irrelevant to the actual audience of the ad.
As a side note, there’s something horribly wrong in the world when you can run two contradictory campaign messages that are both provably wrong and still be taken seriously as a presidential candidate.
“Then there’s the meat of his solution: job creation. Create SO MANY JOBS that employers will have no choice but to hire women! We’re so unhireable, we can’t compete if there isn’t a surplus.”
That was the part that appalled me the most about Rmoney’s answer and I’ve been disappointed that so many people seem to have overlooked it amidst the binders kerfuffle. Probably his solution for jobs for minorities as well: just make sure all the white males are employed and the employers will have to settle for hiring women and minorities.
“They’re undercutting their own propaganda.”
That’s assuming that the propaganda is aimed at people who bother to connect dots …
I’m wondering if anybody is going to talk about the pink elephant in the room:
the fact that the pay gap is made up of avg numbers and that studies show that when you drill down and control for choices that when women make the same choices men do, they make as much or more.
There is no pay gap via direct system gender discrimination of lesser pay for same work. Employers persistently reward people for putting the company first in things like safety (95% of on-the-job deaths are men), working on sight (think oil rig worker) and many other decisions (which are overwhelmingly made by men).
The relevant factor in women being “burdened” by child care is women exerting their influence for their mates to be the primary breadwinner. In other words it’s a two-way street of women enforcing expectations upon men, and men forcing expectations upon women, not a one-way street of men making women have lesser careers and spend more child-minding time.
Let’s please admit the basic reality that in this day and age in western countries that women contribute to the culture nearly equally, and that the enforced expectation of men to do a great deal more of the paid work also has negative consequences (in health, safety, longevity and stress among others).
No they don’t.
I should also point out that John D is capable of devoting hours and hours of his time in appearing in the comments section of this blog, throwing out broad assertions, and then refusing to engage honestly with people who point out his mendacity. This will continue forever, because his well of “man about the menz” rage seemingly hath no bottom. I do not censor comments here (except under extreme circumstances), but I would just like to warn anyone who wishes to engage with John, I hope you have your Friday scheduled cleared (and a strong drink close at hand).
Another link supporting the assertion that women’s choices are NOT the reason for the gender pay gap.
http://www.womensmedia.com/money/178-blaming-womens-choices-for-the-gender-pay-gap.html
I think particularly interesting is the chart showing what impact the decision to have children has on men vs women. Same choice, different gender, different outcome.
Really Crommunist?
Because the last time I debated people here, I HAD to spend hours and hours arguing against what observers HOPED the CDC report said about female on male rape.
After dozens of posts from like 4 different members it was determined even by some of your faithful that they were wrong and I was right.
Of course I have to spend hours when everybody is assuming I have misinterpreted the data and made other broad generalizations.
“Had to”.
See, when it’s about women being rewarded less than men, being regarded as less than men, being listened to less than men, that’s because of women’s “choices”. But when you spend hours recycling MRA arguments and deploying one bullshit argument after another, it’s because you HAD TO.
I see you, John. I know what you’re doing. I’m just giving others the information I have so that they can make an informed decision about how much time they want to waste trying to disabuse you of your crusade.
@ dsmccoy:
Yes, different outcomes. Where you are confused is the assumption that this is entirely or mostly due to coercion upon women, rather than by women’s choices.
@ Crommunist #3:
had to, chose to. Are you saying that somebody is being ________ for simply being unwilling to let a lie stand?
@John D
You are the one confused, because you didn’t actually read the data, now did you, because the data factors out the choices.
Ok, I’ve better things to do than spar with a troll who doesn’t actually listen. Buh bye.
Crommunist says:
“when women make the same choices men do, they make as much or more.
No they don’t.”
Actually, they do:
ht tp://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.ht ml
Women outearning men
ht tp://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/6622521/Harriet-Harmans-costly-Equality-Bill-wont-do-anything-for-women.ht ml
UK wage gap also caused by women’s choices
ht tp://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=4292
Nice take down of Judith Warner’s article which states that rather than deconstructing the wage gap and displaying it to be down to women’s choices, we should center on urging (taking away?) women’s choices so that they are more like mens. She calls any deconstruction of the wage gap as that analyzes women’s choices as “moralistic bombast”.
How would you like colleges forcing women to take degrees in fields they had no interest in due to fulfilling equality of outcome feminists are concerned with????
ht tp://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pd f
The largest ever analysis of the wage gaps shows that the
actual gap not attributable to women’s choices is at most a few
percentage points. The analysis also shows that, if a more detailed report were done analyzing whether women more often took non-pay compensation (like health care or daycare) the portion of the gender gap that cannot be explained by women’s choices might well be zero.
ht tp://www.freakonomics.com/2008/05/01/robert-reich-answers-your-labor-questions/
Even former sec of labor (under Clinton) Robert Reich states
that the pay gap attributable to direct gender discrimination is at most 5%.
ht tp://www.abajournal.com/weekly/many_women_lawyers_with_kids_do_as_well_as_the_men_researcher_says
This study by the American Bar on University of Michigan law
school grads find it’s not gender, but an attorney’s willingness to put their job first which determines pay.
ht tp://fairmodel.econ.yale.edu/ec483/katz.pd f
This study was done on the MBA graduates at the University
of Chicago. It shows gender does not hold women back. Only the choices of individuals does. Women tend to take more career interruptions and work shorter hours.
ht tp://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1983185,00.ht ml
Here is a Time article which quotes a 2004 Women’s Policy
Research 15year study of college grads. It shows 52% of women go through at least one full calendar year with no earnings compared with 16% of men. Fewer than half of women had earnings in all 15 years compared with 84% of men. One third of women had no earnings in 4 years compared with 5% of men.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/11/07/us-boardroom-women-idUSN0752118220071107?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews&rpc=22&sp=true
Here is a Reuters story regarding a study of 25,000
corporate bosses stating female CEO’s out-earn male CEO’s despite being an 8 to 1 minority. This article was not picked up in any U.S. news organizations.
ht tp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101026111731.ht m
Here is an article which reports on several studies on girls
and women in STEM fields. These studies show there is no gender discrimination of any kind. (Links to the right)
And thrown in for good measure, here is a Reuter’s article on a London study reviewing all paid work and work around the house by gender. These debunk the myth that women have a 2nd shift when they come home (and men don’t).
ht tp://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/05/us-work-couples-productivity-idUSTRE6744A620100805
This coincides with the U.S. Dept of Labor’s time use survey which states the following:
ht tp://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.ht m
“On the days that they worked, employed men worked 47 minutes more than employed women. This difference partly reflects women’s greater likelihood of working part time. However, even among full-time workers (those usually working 35 hours or more per week), men worked longer than women–8.3 hours compared with 7.8 hours. (See table 4.)”
“On the days that they did household activities, women spent an average of 2.6 hours on such activities, while men spent 2.1hours.
(See table 1.)”
So we see that the split between paid work and work around the house is different, but the total time is about the same.
Additionally, regarding the coercion of women to push men into an approved role (just as the reverse is standardly talked about in most feminist circles):
ht tp://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/mothers-hanker-for-husbands-of-wealth/story-fn6t2xlc-1225985339082
This article on twin studies of mothers in UK and Australia
state that “if finances permitted, most would choose to be full-time mothers”. In other words, what your fans determine to be a forced oppression of women (caring for her own kids), many women think to be a treasure.
Jeremy Adam Smith states in his book “Daddy Shift” “Studies consistently show that 80 percent to 90 percent of mothers still expect fathers to serve as primary breadwinners (and very few will consider supporting a stay-at-home dad). At work, only 7 percent of American men have access to paid parental leave, among other structural limitations.”
In other words, men do less at home, but women EXERCISE THEIR AGENCY to opt out
of less paid work.
ht tp://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7088747&page=1#.UIHDpcVG8o9
IN this story, a mom who becomes breadwinner, feels
disrespect for her husband taking on the mother’s role. If the caring role is the LARGER sacrifice in families, then why did she lose respect for her husband? Shouldn’t she be PROUD of him?
ht tp://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3318366/Wealth-is-key-for-marriage-study-claims.ht ml
According to this study, women place a premium on men’s
wealth.
In summation:
It’s time to stop chasing our tails and admit some truths no matter how unpalatable they may be:
A) that women exert coercion and pressure upon men and place (possibly) just as many constraints upon male behavior as the reverse and
B) that this can be and often is just as harmful to men as the reverse is to women. When the cost of the work/life balance choices is measured in early loss of life, stress, lifetime ailments (blacklung, asbestos poisoning etc..), debilitating injuries rather than using **ONLY** $$$$$ as the only metric, it is demonstrably PROVEN that men lose out too by being pigeonholed (largely by women’s feeling of entitlement of having somebody else earn the money).
C) the 23% wage gap (defined as being wholly or almost entirely due to systemic anti-female discrimination) is a hoax.
It’s a device by radical feminists to enrage the faithful and get new recruits–nothing more.
DSM:
The AAUW’s own study shows that the unexplained gap is at most 5%. That’s a hell of a big difference from 23%.
The consad report I posted below shows an unexplained gap of only a few %, and honestly mentions it’s limitations due to the raw data. The authors mention things like women possibly choosing non-pay compensation (like better health care or on sight child care) into their decisions of which jobs to take.
This is just a myth to create the idea of male perfidy everywhere. Which is ridiculous as 70% of HR managers are women.
Also Crommunist regarding the single study you posted “debunking” critics of the wage gap, here is a quote from the GAO study:
While our analysis used what we consider to be the most appropriate methods and data set available for our purposes, our analysis has both data and methodological limitations that should be noted. Specifically, although the PSID has many advantages over alternative data sets, like any data set, it did not include certain data elements that would have allowed us to further define reasons for earnings differences. For example, until recently, the PSID did not contain data on fringe benefits—most importantly, health insurance and pension coverage. Because data on fringe benefits were not available for each year that we studied, we did not include it for any year. If more women than men worked in jobs that offered a greater percentage of total compensation in the form of fringe benefits, part of the remaining gender earnings difference could be explained by differences in the receipt of fringe benefits. Similarly, the PSID does not contain data on job characteristics such as flexibility that men and women may value differently.
So, the study didn’t review non-pay compensation, or flexibility of the various positions (flextime, vacation/sick time, indoors/outdoors).
Most of this *IS* covered in the Consad report, and that report states the *unexplained* gap (with today’s data sets) is at most a few % points.
Additionally, just because 5% of the wage gap is unexplained, does not *prove* that it is defaultly due to discrimination.
As the limitation statements in both the Consad and GAO reports mention, the data sets do not include non-pay compensation. Therefore it may be possible that the unexplained gap would be zero if a study were able to review women’s and men’s choices to elect jobs due to expanded health care or child care (but less pay).
Karl Rove 101. Identify your weaknesses and project them onto your opponent. For example, paint a Vietnam evader like Bush as a super patriot and give a war hero like Kerry the old swift boat treatment. Repeat.
THANK YOU!
This is the most well put together factually driven comment I have seen on this issue.
My entire life I have never even thought about gender discrimination I never gave it a second thought. It seemed to me men and women made about the same. In knowing the people I’ve worked with, when they were working similar positions, men and women made about the same. There wasn’t a conspiracy on offering lesser pay to women.
But that is just my experience.
However I am so sick and tired about women being the victim anymore. It’s politically incorrect to even stick up for my own gender anymore without being called a misogynist.
This gender wage gap thing is JUNK SCIENCE! There are so many different intangibles that go into trying to figure out how much a group of people make in comparison to another group that it is completely laughable to throw up some percentage number and simply state “WOMEN MAKE LESS THAN MEN”.
You can’t simply throw culture, type of job, area where they live, family leave due to children, and throw it all into a blender and spit out a number and just claim “GENDER DISCRIMINATION”. Give me a break. There are thousands upon thousands of reasons that are an offshoot of another thousand reasons why women might seem to make less than men. The reasons really are exponential and it would take a freaking massive study with some highly intelligent economists to come to the answers.
And yeah maybe gender discrimination does play a factor. As a matter of fact I’m sure it does to some degree. But there are MANY other reasons many of which play a much larger factor than gender discrimination.
Anyone who has taken a rudimentary statistics course or a college level economics course would tell you to just blurt out in a nation of 300,000,000 people that “WOMEN MAKE 23% LESS THAN MEN” and blame it entirely on gender discrimination. And then continue to tell me we need the government to get involved in fixing that? They’d laugh at you.
Lastly I’m wondering, what about Barack Obama’s war on men? I’m a single father raising a 10 year old girl entirely by myself. And I’ve done so since she was 2. I won’t even get into the gender discrimination I’ve been subjected to in regards to the family law system that is a whole other topic for another day. But I went to the white house website the other day to see about this health care thing and how it affects me and my family. They listed 6 groups of people under “RELIEF FOR YOU”. And I figured “YOU” as in “me” as in “myself the single unemployed father who started grad school because he couldn’t find a job who has a daughter who just got bronchitis”. I figured every american would be listed on here somewhere, right?
Here is who the white house apparently is targeting and who the white house cares about:
#1. women and children
#2 young adults
#3 seniors
#4 employers
#5 health care providers
#6 people with disabilities
I got news for you, I’m not on the entitlement list there. And guess what? Neither is my daughter because she’s not paired up with a woman. Unless I fake a disability like millions of other people I know (who are living great on PERMANENT disability, I’ve met plenty believe me), then I’m not on the god damn list. I’m 34, I’m male, I’m not young, I’m not old, I certainly am not an employer and for fuck sake can you kick a dog while it’s down, HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS are on the list. But I’m not.
This little list actually is very foretelling of Obama’s entire campaign this election. Obama loves to give out free money and to increase the entitlement problem in America. He concentrates on women and freely dismisses men like we’re non-existent.
I’m sick and tired of women whining and moaning and complaining about everything. Women have come a LONG way since 1908 pal. We live in a feminist culture and this blog is pretty much dead-on with the status quo.
How about EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL PEOPLE? Women (the feminists in particular) want to have their cake and eat it too. Gone are the days of when men could be men without feeling shame of even saying the phrase “I’m a man”. It’s disgusting how engrossed we are in this feminist culture.
Obama is fighting a war on men bud. And Romney is no better. Actually they are both the same vote essentially. If you really want to help this country and stop concentrating on the wrong things, go pick out a presidential candidate who actually represents YOU and YOUR FAMILY and not any of these two buffoons. Your choice doesn’t have to be limited to 2.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform/relief-for-americans-and-businesses#healthcare-menu
It’s even worse than that.
Quite frankly, the BIG LIE that constantly goes unchallenged is the concept that Republicans want to create jobs. They don’t. Creating jobs raises inflation which means that people are worse off. This is actually a “well-meaining” in it’s own way line of thought ideology, even if it is entirely wrong.
The reality is that standard movement conservative economics are actually a really good argument for communism, I.E. the free market is entirely ineffective at setting prices and the only thing that works is a corporate-driven “command” economy.
That’s the subtext underneath all the talk about this.
And for what it’s worth? On the concept alone, Romney is actually right. Full employment really would help with the gender gap. It really would. Full employment helps with a LOT of these types of issues, from everything from pay equality to workplace safety.
I don’t know what to tell you cashdollar. I don’t really like dems or gop either. They both suck. I haven’t heard either party with a plan to remove tax breaks for companies exporting jobs.
Obama’s health care package mentions women 173 times almost all of which are provisions for things that should be covered for women with no copay. Men are mentioned twice.
The Obama health care package is highly sexist against men–it covers men and women completely differently for very similar issues.
VAWA is also highly sexist against men. The STOP (violence) funding statutes specifically state that funds will not be made available for DV services for men, nor will they be made available to children excepting that these children are attached to a DV claim for services by an adult women.
In other words, VAWA is setup to refuse help to 50% of children who see violence in the home all because the victim failed the pecker-check.
The problem is that privilege between men and women works a hell of a lot differently than it does between whites and minorities (not that you could tell on boards like this).
Women contribute nearly equally to a culture that coerces men and enforces expectations upon men, just as the culture does upon women. This is a fact that you won’t see many people admit to.
The problem is that most people see men as agents and women as the acted upon. Men are typically divided into two classes: beast and savior. This leaves out a third role: victim.
Society rejects men as victim, because the male role involves being utilizable to others. If a man no longer stoically masks his pain and tries to claim victim status then he is typically mocked and scorned (look to the many images of violence against men as comedy–particularly violence done by women). His lack of making himself a utility has reduced him to “not a real man status”.
Look at this heart-wrenching story from Anthony Griffin about having to perform on Johnny Carson (as a comedian) while his daughter was slowly dying of cancer. (I dare you not to cry)
ht tp://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qdBJ1X33rXM
To the objective observer who has thrown off the rose-tinted glasses that says men cannot be victims this man’s story seems to be nearly equal parts black misery and *MALE* misery.
The comedian mentions that in the black community that he could not seek counseling.
I would challenge two things:
Firstly, I **HIGHLY** doubt that anybody would challenge this guy’s wife for seeking counseling over a TWO YEAR OLD dying of cancer. So, right there you are talking about the cultural enforcement of black men (not black women) to keep silent their pain.
Second, therapy isn’t that much more well received in the blue collar white community (which is like 80% of all whites).
So, the cultural expectation to bury pain and make oneself *useful* to others is not a black male oppression, but a MALE oppression.
If you want to talk more openly about male oppression there are much better forums for doing so.
Genderratic and the good men project and owningyourshitblog are three webpages that come to mind. Look for videos on youtube by girl writes what and man woman myth.
For news articles and more info on how men are mistreated visit mensactivism dot org.
For information and to join in advocacy to help restore fathers parental rights go to http://www.fathersandfamilies.org
Men are more and more turning to advocacy as it seems that even when men destroy their health and work in hazardous environments to provide materially for their families the main stream media and both parties turn around and claim male perfidy EVERYWHERE and offer up as evidence the fact women make much less (aka the wage gap).
It’s truly sickening to behold the mental gymnastics these people perform to convince themselves (and the public) that men are evil and not to be trusted, when the plain truth is that the overwhelming majority of men sacrifice dearly for their loved ones. It’s outright denial of men’s humanity.
A lot of these radical (and not so radical) feminists are just blinded with rage, and will not change their view no matter how high the evidence stacks up.
People on this board have acted like I’m a gun totting redneck who road hauls pot smokers and homosexuals *just for having a different opinion*.
Well, if they’re mad now, they better get ready because the men’s rights movement is growing by leaps and bounds, and it includes some very intelligent and bold brave women like girl writes what whos arguments can’t be dismissed because she “doesn’t understand the female condition”.
Because women are the ones discriminated against by insurance companies =.=
Blatant lies, both points. CONSAD eliminates everything except actual pay, and it found 12%, not ‘a few % points’ EVEN AFTER going well out of its way to crush every kind of worker into a blender, and deliberately stripping away everything that might say ‘dudes make more money’.
CONSAD is actually quite explicit in not counting non-pay compensation, so I’m not sure where this even came from.
“Because women are the ones discriminated against by insurance companies =.=”
How do you figure? That’s a pretty big statement considering that our new healthcare bill, of which (healthcare) was largely the #1 discussed topic of the 2008 presidential campaign (or top 3, but I think I recall it being the #1 most discussed topic), and then 3 years later the entire thing coming into fruition and the whole thing basically ignores me and my daughter and empowers women? Empowers them where? I’m assuming over me. Because they sure as hell have been pretty damn “empowered” over me over the the ol’ family court house. So when you use the word “empowered” (which the white house website does to describe women in regards to Obamacare) one must conclude that they are empowered over the other half of the population, namely me and my child who just happens to be paired up with a man and not a woman. Sucks to be her. I guess she doesn’t need to get mentioned in the healthcare reform package because I’m lacking a pair of breasts?
But let’s forget that for a minute. Let’s go ahead and assume all 150 million+ women in America were women somehow were discriminated against in how they received healthcare. Is the answer to that to openly and blatantly discriminate against someone else? Namely – again – me and my family? My daughter in the other room sure won’t like to hear that in order for her to even get mentioned with healthcare she has to grow up and start a family.
Feminism is largely about double standards and oppression of men. Or that’s been my experience anyhow. Just look no further than the Obama campaign who is practically buying their way into the white house by way of the women’s vote. Any man (especially men with families) who vote for this clown and his extremist feminists campaign organizers is a FOOL!
Dude. That doesn’t actually contradict what I said. The insurance companies are not the healthcare bill. They frequently ignore any opportunity to pay for things because they’re ‘women’s health’, not regular health.
You want to talk about ‘buying votes’ without actual currency…
I want to live in the alternate reality you fools do where the vast feminist conspiracy has nearly won.
Rutee says:
“Blatant lies, both points. CONSAD eliminates everything except actual pay, and it found 12%, not ‘a few % points’”
From the Consad conclusions in the first several paragraphs:
“There are observable differences in the attributes of men and women that account for most of the
wage gap. Statistical analysis that includes those variables has produced results that collectively
account for between 65.1 and 76.4 percent of a raw gender wage gap of 20.4 percent, and
thereby leave an adjusted gender wage gap that is between 4.8 and 7.1 percent.”
Where in the world did you get 12%?
Also, in the limitations statement from consad:
“Research also suggests that differences not incorporated into the model due to data limitations
may account for part of the remaining gap. Specifically, CONSAD’s model and much of the
literature, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics Highlights of Women’s Earnings, focus on
wages rather than total compensation. Research indicates that women may value non-wage
benefits more than men do, and as a result prefer to take a greater portion of their compensation
in the form of health insurance and other fringe benefits.
In principle, more of the raw wage gap could be explained by including some additional
variables within a single comprehensive analysis that considers all of the factors simultaneously;
however, such an analysis is not feasible to conduct with available data bases.”
From the limitations statement of the GAO report the SINGLE STUDY Crommunist used to “debunk” critics of the wage gap:
“While our analysis used what we consider to be the most appropriate methods and data set available for our purposes, our analysis has both data and methodological limitations that should be noted. Specifically, although the PSID has many advantages over alternative data sets, like any data set, it did not include certain data elements that would have allowed us to further define reasons for earnings differences.
For example, until recently, the PSID did not contain data on fringe benefits—most importantly, health insurance and pension coverage. Because data on fringe benefits were not available for each year that we studied, we did not include it for any year. If more women than men worked in jobs that offered a greater percentage of total compensation in the form of fringe benefits, part of the remaining gender earnings difference could be explained by differences in the receipt of fringe benefits. Similarly, the PSID does not contain data on job characteristics such as flexibility that men and women may value differently.”
Like the Consad report the GAO report (crommunist tried in a major fail to use to show *even with controlling for choices* the wage-gap stands at 20%) states that since they cannot control for non-wage compensation decisions their results are limited.
Further the GAO report DOESN’T EVEN CONTROL FOR WORK CONDITIONS. So, somebody who works outdoors on-sight, managing others, in eminent danger, against strong deadlines say a foreman at an off-shore drill platform will be compared against an office manager in a safe air-conditioned environment.
If a study doesn’t control for work conditions (outdoors, near danger, work on-sight, or relocate, mandatory overtime) OF COURSE women will be shown to make less money. But, in the score of studies I linked it is DEMONSTRABLY proven that **WHEN WOMEN MAKE THE SAME CHOICES, THEY GET THE SAME PAY**
Contrary to your opinion the consad report doesn’t “mash workers together”–that’s the studies you and Cromm are trying to pass of as valid evidence.
The Consad report splits many different environments and factors as no other study has done and found that the pay disparity is 4.8 to 7.1% not 23% as the GAO study claims which is fraught with issues.
When we stop measuring the affects of work/life balance choices EXCLUSIVELY in $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ and look instead to early loss of life, quality of life destroying ailments from exposure issues (like blacklung and asbestos poisoning), debilitating injuries, life-killing stress and other factors it can be DEMONSTRABLY shown that men pay a steep price for being pigeonholed BY WOMEN to be the earners.
Like women never exert pressure and expectations upon men:
ht tp://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/mothers-hanker-for-husbands-of-wealth/story-fn6t2xlc-1225985339082
This article on twin studies of mothers in UK and Australia
state that “if finances permitted, most would choose to be full-time mothers”.
ht tp://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7088747&page=1#.UIHDpcVG8o9
IN this story, a mom who becomes breadwinner, feels
resentment for her husband taking on the mother’s role.
ht tp://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3318366/Wealth-is-key-for-marriage-study-claims.ht ml
According to this study, women place a premium on men’s
wealth.
Like women never exert pressure and expectations upon men:
ht tp://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/mothers-hanker-for-husbands-of-wealth/story-fn6t2xlc-1225985339082
This article on twin studies of mothers in UK and Australia
state that “if finances permitted, most would choose to be full-time mothers”.
ht tp://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7088747&page=1#.UIHDpcVG8o9
IN this story, a mom who becomes breadwinner, feels
resentment for her husband taking on the mother’s role.
ht tp://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3318366/Wealth-is-key-for-marriage-study-claims.ht ml
According to this study, women place a premium on men’s
wealth.
Do women coerce men and enforce societal expectations of men? You BET they do!
ht tp://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/mothers-hanker-for-husbands-of-wealth/story-fn6t2xlc-1225985339082
This article on twin studies of mothers in UK and Australia
state that “if finances permitted, most would choose to be full-time mothers”. Meaning that they look for men to earn the money (no matter the cost to him) to afford her this privilege (burden to you) to stay home w/her own kids.
ht tp://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7088747&page=1#.UIHDpcVG8o9
IN this story, a mom who becomes breadwinner, feels
resentment and contempt for her laid-off husband taking on the mother’s role.
ht tp://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3318366/Wealth-is-key-for-marriage-study-claims.ht ml
According to this study, women place a premium on men’s
wealth.
Rutee, it’s time to stop letting hate lead you around by the nose and admit that men have specific gender oppression too, and these are not just the results of toxic masculinity pushed by other men, but are largely the result of women pushing standard gender roles upon men.
Read the bill Rutee.
Obamacare is a monumental batch of male hatred which includes:
“1) Establishes the Office of Women’s Health within the Department of Health and Human Services., currently headed by Wanda K. Jones.
2) “There is established within the Office of the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an office to be known as the Office of Women’s Health ,” currenlty headed by Yvonne Green.
3) “Establishing within the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration an Office of Women’s Health .”
4) “There is established within the Office of the Director, an Office of Women’s Health and Gender Based Research, currently headed by Rosaly Correa-de-Araujo (called the Agency for healthcare research and quality).
5) “The Secretary shall establish within the Office of the Administration of the Health Resources and Services Administration, an office to be known as the Office on Women’s Health ,” currently headed by Sabrina Matoff-Stepp.
6) Establishes the Office of Women’s Health in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
7) Establishes the Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) within the National Institutes of Health., currently headed by Vivian W. Pinn.
These seven institutes advise the central authority in Obamacare, the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). The USPSTF determines which health coverage insurance companies must offer free of charge (“A” recommendation), which treatments must be offered with a copayment (“B” recommendation), which treatments are optional (“C” recommendation), and which treatments are not covered (“D” recommendation).
The USPSTF has been busy doing its job, extending perks to women, and denying essential services to men. Some highlights:
1) Free birth control for women, but NOT for men.
2) Free tubal ligation for women, but NO vasectomy for men.
3) Free anti-cancer vaccination for girls, but NOT for boys.
4) Free smoking cessation for women, but NOT for men.
5) Free STD treatment for women, but NOT for men.
6) Breast health for women, but NO prostate health for men.
7) Violence prevention for women, but NOT for men.
Recently, the USPSTF noticed men for the first time. They changed the recommendation for PSA testing to detect prostate cancer in men from a “B” to a “D”, to save money. This effectively makes PSA insurance coverage unobtainable in the United States.
Here is the graph from one of the papers quoted by the USPSTF. It compares survivors who are treated with those who are not:
Here is the executive summary:
“This means that 1410 men would need to be screened … to prevent one death from prostate cancer.”
Look even to the goodmenproject (which tries at it’s heart to be feminist friendly while still talking about male issues. They have had articles from feminists heavy hitters like Hugo and Marcotte)
http://goodmenproject.com/politics-2/men-to-feds-are-we-in-this-together-or-not/
There is no just reason to cover so many issues w/no copay for women and not provide the same for men in equal or comparative health care procedures. Are we really saying that *SEPARATE BUT (UN)EQUAL* health care for men and women is social justice?
Oh my how the worm has turned! Hatred passed off as social justice.
This is just a sad and pathetic tactic Rutee. Just stop hating.
Look at the links John D has provided. Obamacare mentions women 173 tmes and men you can count on one hand. You need to look no further than the whitehouse.gov website.
Are you seriously trying to really argue that all of the discrimination you believe was going on in reference to healthcare was all against women. So therefore we need to pass a new law, the biggest and most monumental of his entire 4 years as president, and completely leave out men entirely on it?
That would be like Abraham Lincoln during the emancipation proclamation announcing he is freeing all female Slaves with the arguement that the male slaves can’t have babies without women so slavery would eventually die out with the current males, and we could of avoided a war because slavery would just end naturally with the men dying and not procreating. Sounds like a really awesome idea doesn’t it? Except if you are a black male slave!!
Gonna save myself some time and just do most of it.
Once again, the perennial cry of the downtrodden, benighted majority: Helping the minority is the same as ‘hatred’. It’d be like the KKK declaring any effort to not be superharsh to Latin@s is hatred of whites. Which they might be doing right now, I suppose, I try not to keep too close a set of tabs on fringe hate groups. Same reason I’m not really paying attention to MRAs.
Because free condoms are an uncommon resource. And birth control pills are only used for birth control. And because, ultimately, cis men bear the same price in bodily autonomy women do for lack of access to birth control, and the same possibility of invasive surgery, or social stigma.
Just because dudes don’t get HPV vaccines doesn’t mean they can’t… *Eyeroll*
You *do* realize that men get breast cancer, right? Just because a dude’s breasts don’t turn you on doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Prostate health is also still treated under several other kinds of procedures, it just doesn’t have a special heading. Because men’s health is health, and women’s health is not.
‘tries at its heart’, except it doesn’t. It is mostly about protecting the fee-fees of dudes whenever something might make them not 100% comfortable with the reality that dudes are the oppressor class.
…Schwyzer? He’s a feminist hard-hitter?
Uo HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO
Marcotte isn’t really one either; mind, unlike Schwyzer I don’t think her primary concern is protecting her own ego from the reality of belonging to the oppressor class, and she’s hardly entirely tame, but for all MRAs pretend that she is the Final Boss of feminism, she’s not all that big, nor is she that uncomfortable to the majority; she is, at the end of the day, a middle class white person. And one who prioritized SChwyzer above women, when that particular bit came up.
No no, keep pretending you’re a real social justice movement, it’s funny. And before you quote Gandhi, let me remind you that while they laughed at Gandhi, they also laughed at William Jennings Bryant during the Scopes Trial.
Oh, some honkies want to appropriate slavery, do they? lol.
Oh, and just so we’re clear, the problem with that little analogy is that black dudes are discriminated against… for their blackness. Dudes aren’t discriminated against for dudeliness.
Actually it’s more like Lincoln saying he’s freeing the slaves and then white people in prison saying “this is BULLSHIT! Why aren’t you going to free us too? DISCRIMINATION!”
Rutee,
The mental gymnastics you will go through to rationalize your hate is astounding.
No it is not like the KKK yada yada. This is a battle cry for EQUAL SERVICES FOR A GOVERNMENT PROGRAM based upon birth characteristics.
You are supporting discriminating against those different from you–end of story.
There is systemic male oppression. The culture (which women contribute to nearly equally) oppresses men with the enforcement of the gender role to stoically mask all pain.
The funny thing is that when men do this and put themselves at much greater risk of many hazards to materially provide for their families, this male enforced role to sacrifice is then turned around and claimed to be a *privilege* because women don’t make (in aggregate) the same as men even though they (in general) are never expected to provide for an adult male.
Look at the last discussion we had in which you blithely turn a blind eye to mothers having the legal right to force fathers to become strangers to their children–then deny men have unique pressures that contribute to their greater risk of death from suicide. You don’t think robbing a man of any purpose in life is not going to crush his soul and ask what’s the point?
Male pain means nothing to you. If you are the epitome of feminist achievement, then the canard that feminism helps “all victims” is *clearly* a lie.
To borrow Cromm’s battle cry: I see you Rutee. I know what you are all about.
If you’re going to start borrowing from me, you should also consider borrowing my support for affirmative action which is, going by your definition, apparently ANTI-WHITE HATRED OMGOMGOMG!
No Cromm,
That makes no sense. Slaves are slaves for no reason of their own doing. Prisoners are (exempting arguments about injustice and lack of due process) imprisoned due to wrong-doing.
Your analogy only makes sense if you assume that just being male makes men *wrong* and deserving of being discriminated against.
This is about a GOVERNMENT PROGRAM discriminating based on BIRTH CHARACTERISTICS.
The funny thing is that the hardest hit by this will be BLACK MEN as they will lack the funds for copays or self-insurance for equivalent issues which cover women w/no copay.
Get off your high horse and admit you didn’t know the facts on something.
How can you argue for this? Seriously, dude what the fuck?
Oh I’m sure there are lots of people in prison for crimes they didn’t commit, and even more who are in because of poverty conditions that they were born into. But yeah, some guys end up in shitty positions because they fucking deserve it. And to pretend that men are these steamrollered victims in a system ruled by moustache-twirling feminists is ludicrous in the extreme. As someone else said, please transport me to the parallel universe that’s run by feminists – I’ll glad switch planets with you.
How does “not getting something extra” equal “hardest hit” in your math? You make it sound like men are being robbed of something that is being given to women at male expense (which is more or less your entire argument, which is the same kind of zero-sum bullshit I hear from “whites rights activists” which is why we’re not on the same side on this issue). Is your position that these women who suddenly have newfound access to health care will be the first wave of the jack-booted castrati or something?
I’ll tell you one issue that we probably COULD get on the same side of – that gender roles and stereotypes, as enforced by both men and women, are harmful (to both men and women) and need to be scrutinized and torn down. Most feminists I know would be right on board with that too. Where they (and I) step off and let you ride your crazy-train all the way to the end of the line is where everything that happens to address problems facing women is automatically anti-male. That’s silly. It’s similarly silly to take out the long knives for feminism simply because you don’t see yourself reflected in it, rather than saying “there are blind spots in your view here here and here”, which is ultimately a position that you’ll find very little opposition to. It may in fact be what you think you’re doing. But from this side of the padded walls it looks like a never ending “reverse sexism” rant.
Please, don’t even try to put the misandric denial of paying for life-saving procedures for men (but paying for women) into the same boat as affirmative action for impoverished and discriminated against minorities.
There is no correlation between discriminating against 49% of the population (i.e. men) with much worse health care coverage(that they have to overwhelmingly pay for) when men already have much worse health (men have 50% greater lifetime chance of cancer over women, among many other issues) and lending a helping hand to an 11% minority that still suffers the affects of generations of discrimination.
They’re not even in the same league. They’re not even the same sport. One is born of kindness and one is born of hate.
Now, you’re grasping at straws–and in vain I will add. Again–the mental gymnastics you are going through to defend discrimination is just flat out astounding.
You’re convinced that ALL MEN have it so much better that it’s social justice to deny us medical coverage?
You do realize that’s how the Nazi’s came to power right? They convinced the german people that they were VICTIMS and the nazi’s were going to get PAY BACK against the victimizers of germany!
This isn’t social justice this is a holy war.
[Herr Godwin has arrived, damen und herren! – C]
Yes Rutee. There is systemic male oppression.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG1tG7WhHXE
Imagine the conflagration of judgement this guy would get if he dared to fight back? Not being able to legally defend yourself because the attacker is presumed not to be a real threat is an oppression.
You think dysfunctional women can do this, but functional women will NEVER GUILT OR SHAME men to enforce the male gender role?
In the UK in WWI a new campaign to promote enrollment was thought up called the white feather campaign.
It consisted of women giving white feathers to men in civilian clothes as a sign of cowardice.
This was incredibly successful. Thousands of young men (many underage who lied on the entrance exam) risked death because a lady they didn’t know thought him a coward.
28,000 men (and zero women) died building the panama canal.
Can you point me to a work of construction in which nearly 30k women died?
Please don’t peddle your crap that women NEVER enforce cultural standards upon men. The facts make you out to be a liar.
Please point to where I said men were the oppressed group and it was feminists fault.
I have only said that there is both male and female oppression. Men are oppressed by the gender binary.
I’ll agree that *some* feminists fight against male oppression–but this typically doesn’t include feminism’s heavy hitting political arms like NOW and others.
If the way the male role tells men to stoically mask pain until he implodes and takes his own life because he can’t accept his own victimhood is only going to remain in feminist theory and not in feminist advocacy–then it’s not an equality-based movement.
How can you say that the system oppresses men and women, then say it’s okay to SYSTEMATICALLY deny men equal access to care?
You have no just rationalization for defending this kind of SYSTEMIC DISCRIMINATION based on BIRTH CHARACTERISTICS.
It’s just shameful for you to continue. As I mentioned the ultimate irony is that the hardest hit will be black men who will have to face the double whammy of male oppression and black oppression.
Did you know that there is an anti-male sentencing disparity almost as strong as the anti-black sentencing disparity? Why do you think black MEN dominate the bottom of the power pyramid by almost every metric available even though feminist logic says that should be black women?
There is systemic and cultural oppression of males. From my view it is vastly different but nearly as strong as the oppression of women.
Yes, women are in many ways treated like children and valued only for their bodies.
But, at least they are valued if in a maladaptive way. A female-bodied person is valued no matter her choices in life.
A male-bodied person is only valued when he *performs* manhood *appropriately* which means making himself useful to others, and if he is in pain masking it or risk derision and scorn.
A man who works himself to an early grave is considered a “good man”. Men who for whatever reason seem to lose their agency either through trauma, addiction, depression, childhood molestation, ptsd become the invisible dredges that get ignored when we talk about who is victimized.
The same metrics that show widespread black disenfranchisement (homelessness, suicide, victims of crime, incarceration, shortened lives, lower educational attainment) also show many more men fill the bottoms of the power pyramid over women when we turn them to gender.
The belief that women almost never have agency (unless rich and white) and men always do means the social safety net is reserved almost exclusively for women.
Women may be treated like children, but the culture also says that they should be kept safe from harm and if harm is unavoidable then men should place themselves in harms way.
Men’s lives are so unimportant the culture now says that even if it’s mildly expensive we don’t want to save men’s lives. Bill Clinton cut OSHA more than Bush 1 or Reagan.
The culture does enforce expectations upon men, this does pay drastic consequences that *most women* will not understand.
How you can say you believe in oppression of men (as a class)(if that’s what you’re saying) and still support this health care bill is insanity.
Um, actually I’m not appropriating slavery, but Jim Crow language.
Please explain how “separate but equal” isn’t a fit system for racial school segregation, but it’s a-okay for gender health care segregation.
If the haters hood fits baby…….
This is a common trope of assuming equal footing between groups, assuming equal needs between groups, and then calling it “hatred” (as you have, many times) when some urgent needs in one group are addressed but not every single need in the other group is. You keep insisting that your argument is SO MUCH DIFFERENT from affirmative action, and yet you’re happy to just recycle their arguments wholesale.
Rutee says:
“Because women are the ones discriminated against by insurance companies?”
Firstly, two wrongs make a right?
Secondly, if you had bothered to read the goodmenproject link you would know that insurance companies charge women more because they use more services.
Women absorb about $1billion more in copays over men–from sheer greater usage of their health care providers. In addition to everything else bad about the Affordable Care Act it now pushes payment of women’s greater health care provider usage onto men.
Cromm says:
“This is a common trope of assuming equal footing between groups, assuming equal needs between groups”
Men and women have different needs to adequate care? Did you just really fucking claim that?
Yeah because a malignant breast tumor in a woman *needs* to come out, but a malignant prostate tumor doesn’t (or at least the man can pay thousands for it rather than it be free like the woman’s tumor).
Is that like black children didn’t need school books in the “separate but equal” doctrine?
I’m listening to you guys and all I hear is “separate but equal, separate but equal”.
I’m sure all those black hating scumbags in the south thought they had good reasons for their hatred too.
This would be hilarious if it wasn’t so heart-wrenchingly sad.
The funny part is you think you’re the enlightened ones.
Not for being men. The only form of ‘misandry’ that exists is the differently gendered (and generally lesser) oppression that exists on other axes.
“Imagine”. Because there isn’t an actual one. Sure, I can play with my imagination, but if I’m going to do so, I’d rather think about the Lovecraft Mythos.
Yes, as women still grow up in patriarchy, they will indeed enforce gender roles on men… but generally less than either gender will police women.
fyi, just because feminists correctly rail against slut-shaming or body shaming doesn’t mean all forms of shame are bad. If you could tell your little buddies this, you might make a less incoherent message.
Oh no. Women got men to enter a field that privileges them heavily. Poor, benighted Menz.
Military service is generally a class benefit to dudes, schmuck. Compared to other opportunities at the education level of front line soldiers, poor men benefit. Much like ‘dangerous jobs’, the restriction from military service that women are under is a downside in most eras, and in most places. Further, dudes get social credit for the *possibility* of serving in the military; even now, you are banking on the incredibly meager possibility that you *might* serve to extend credit to you, as a man.* There are some militaries that just aren’t beneficial to be in, but I don’t see you railing on behalf of chinese peasantry in 200 CE, so that’s not particularly relevant to your point.
Again, the problems of black (or chinese) people aren’t your own (And if you want to talk about how well off black women are, be prepared for everyone to laugh in your face). Also, the problems of merika’s colonies…
I’m going out on a limb and guessing you have no idea how many women suffer or die from any particular instance of racism or jackassery.
Heard of the Great Wall of China? or the Pyramids?
I mean, if you specify for construction, I can’t think ofa ll that many. But there’s plenty of places and ways where thousands or millions of women died where dudes didn’t, or where they did so in greater numbers than dudes (including most military conflicts, if the evidence holds true)
Are you so self-centered that you think you’re the only dumbass in this thread? Notwithstanding that Jim Crow wouldn’t be a severe improvement. Honkies need to step way the fuck away from the problems of PoC.
*Like most other instances of “WHAT ABOUT THE MILITARY MENZ” that MRAs do, there’s really no intention of doing anything but whining at ungrateful bitches.
You know, rather than indulging your persecution fantasies, I think I actually am going to go play with my imagination vis a vis the lovecraft mythos. Yay for Arkham Horror! XD
Rutee says:
“Oh no. Women got men to enter a field that privileges them heavily.”
I see, men dying and suffering ptsd and maiming is privilege.
You’ve been revealed as a true hater.
Besides, you just admitted that women have the ability to coerce male behavior.
Face it Rutee, you’ve admitted women can coerce male behavior. You’ve admitted that men have a cultural norm that WOMEN force men into. The telling thing is: you don’t care.
You simply don’t care about the oppression of men. You can keep speaking your phony balloney theories that only marginalized men are mistreated but the wage gap myth proves otherwise.
Women only settle for men with $$$$$ and men abuse their own bodies to get women a comfy living. Being in the male strait-jacket of stress and dying young is a “privilege”, and women who enjoy the money that men earn for them are the “oppressed”.
The simple fact is both men and women are oppressed with gender norms, you’ve admitted women can coerce men–you simply don’t care where or when men wind up on the shorter end of the stick, or when women face a systemic privilege.
Cromm:
In another post you acknowledge a lot more subtle forms or privilege. You stated thankfulness that you lived in a 2parent family and that both of your parents were pro-education.
That actually puts you ahead of about 80% of black men and 35% of white men in the ability to attain your dreams.
So…..when you want to post about what a standup guy you are, you’re willing to have this in depth analysis of privilege.
But, when you’re fighting for pride and refusal to deny that you are on the wrong side of the equality fence on this one you dumb it down so that: men have privilege and women don’t to argue that denying health care to men is A-OKAY!
This is the most dishonest bull shit I have ever seen you spout. You know as well as I do that there are many dozens of ways that men can lose their agency: addiction, abuse, bullying, molestation, depression, debilitating health conditions, personality disorders, homelessness.
All of the same stats which show widespread black disenfranchisement shows that men are far FAR more likely to fall under the social safety net.
What is your justification for denying health care to these millions of men who have much less privilege and support systems (when they fall down) than about 98% of women?
“Sorry buddy, but you failed the pecker-check?” You were born the wrong gender?
Separate but equal. That’s all this is–haters using clever sounding bull shit to rationalize their hate.
It is when you get paid well for it, as soldiers generally do for their education (Especially in the USA, as they get health coverage for a decent length of time, as well as the GI Bill). Further, the military is at most only ever about 2% of the population (Many of whom are women, even now, and in front line service in some countries as well), and many of that 2% is support roles as well. Yet, every dude reaps some of the prestige for soldierdom. Because ‘any dude could serve’. Even if you’re never going to, I’m supposed to respect you because ‘you could’.
FYI, these things happent o women as a result of war too. Women die more than men in most military conflicts. They just don’t get societal prestige, pay, or even basic recognition for it.
…There’s no way that’s a win for you. Either you mean “I did not contest that women convinced men to enter the military”, which flatly wasn’t coercion, or you mean “Women enforce gender roles too”, which, uh, dumbass, I *JUST SAID THEYO MORE TO WOMEN*.
‘myth’, he says, when even if CONSAD were a half-decent study (it isn’t), it stands alone. Do you have any idea how science works? And I care about the oppression of men that exists; namely, the oppression of MoC, gays, trans men, etc. That’s why I don’t pretend Honkey McStraighterson has it rough. It cheapens actual discrimination to play into your bullshit fantasies. OH NO! BEING CONSIDERED REAL PEOPLE MEANS PEOPLE ACTUALLY SOMETIMES EXPECT SOMETHING OF YOU.
I’ll be over here, with wage, hiring, and promotion gaps, constant bullshit about my ‘immigrant status’, an inability to legally marry my wife… *AND STILL HAVING THINGS EXPECTED OF ME*.
Hypergamy is actually a function of women’s decreased opportunities. In societies with more gender equality, hypergamy rates between genders approach equality. …or did you think it was seriously only women who married up?
Young? Fool, you are confusing 6 years less of life expectancy (potentially biological, as it seems to carry over to every species of animals) with actually dying young. Young would be sub 30, not at 76 or 77. That’s the average life expectancy for dudes in the USA.
Why not keep up with bullshit cultural myths? That’s all MRAs have, ultimately.
BEING TOLD YOU ARE REAL PEOPLE AND CAN DO THINGS IS NOT OPPRESSION.
Moving along, yes, men have gender roles enforced, and no, it is not all sunshine sparkles at every moment. Do you not get what privilege is? Even rich people have a nonzero amount of bullshit thrown at them. Being privileged means getting considerably less asshattery, not 0.
There aren’t any, on grounds of being women, though I do generally care about the ones that actually exist that women benefit from.
I mean, ffs, I know MRAs are illiterates of every discipline, but the reasons why the USA’s immigrants and black people clamored to joint he Union Army aren’t solely limited to anti-slavery (Which motivated a lot of the immigrants as well, to be sure). The army actually gave opportunities and, you know, money.
For a few centuries, most european farmers would join the military for a season or two, if they needed money for tools. Janissary, Mameluks, and Samurai ran their fucking countries, and Kshatriya wielded great political power, as did European nobility (the latter of whom had the only expectation to fight in every war, which is why I saved them). The only way to become a citizen of rome as a colonized person was to fight in the army, and well. A Banana Republic generally treated its soldiers well, as do the developed countries the world over.
Yeah, it’s a dangerous job, and it always has been, but it’s not much more dangerous than being a civilian in a war, and it’s generally worth it (There’s exceptions, like about half of Africa right now, or most of China historically) for the poor. And they are kind of the majority of most populations, historically speaking.
HAHA. Out of order posts.
Holy mackerel, Rutee, you’ve done yeoman’s work here. I’ll have to check back tomorrow to see if John here is still craving punishment.
No Rutee,
Your views on privilege and oppression are simplistic. You’re simply engaging in denialism and arbitrarily labeling any harm that befalls men as a privilege.
I doubt I will convince you or Cromm, considering how infantile your views on oppression are.
However, I will still give this a try(if to convince onlookers rather than you). I will state this in as simple and concise a way as possible using simple concepts and starting with language that (I hope) most reasonable observers can agree with.
A) dying young
B) civilian and combat deaths
C) privilege and oppression 101 the basics: choice, burden, detriment and benefit
A) Dying young. You are quite correct. The lifespan difference between men and women (81 to 75 or whatever it is) does NOT mean that 75 is “dying young”.
You schooled me, give yourself a clap on the back. (See, I admit when I make an error, unlike Cromm who states that men as a monolithic group all men everywhere are so differently situated to all women as a monolithic group that denying men health care is equality. What a laugh)
You are quite correct that dying young is true harm. Hmmmmmm
Who is being TRULY harmed by dying young? Men are 19 times more likely to die on the job. Men are also 4 times as likely to die by suicide. Men are also 80% of all homicides. Men also have 50% more lifetime risk of cancer—which equates to more untimely deaths for men.
So, as you schooled me dying young is a very real concern, does this still apply when it is demonstrably shown to be men OVERWHELMINGLY 4 to 1 or more over women having 50% or more of their natural years on this earth eliminated? Or will you make some droll remark about how (when it happens to men) it should be defined as a privilege?
B) civilian and combat deaths
Since I linked some 18 studies debunking the wage gap myth (as defined as the 23% gap being wholly or almost entirely due to discrimination), care to give a citation that women are the majority of war deaths from reliable government statistics?
This doesn’t even pass the sniff test. If men are 99% or more of combatant deaths and 50% of civilian casualties then the logical conclusion is that it is men who are most often casualties.
Regardless of whatever you may think, female harm due to war has long been seen as a catastrophe for the last 100 years or so by western standing rules of conduct for US armed forces.
Patton released a bulletin to soldiers stating that if any man was accused of raping a woman that man would be court-martialed and (if found guilty) shot.
So, you are summarily wrong.
The difference is that when society deems people MUST die to protect freedom, then it is an ACCEPTABLE LOSS if men die, but not if women die.
I’m not saying women haven’t been oppressed, but there are plusses and minuses to both gender roles. Men were allowed to lead, but men also experienced no protections from physical harm the way women were (and still are).
C) privilege and oppression 101 the basics: choice, burden, detriment and benefit:
First, let’s look at your premise that (despite shame and coercion and an enforced cultural expectation) men were advantaged (I don’t use the word privilege due to the explanation below) to be scolded (by both genders) to join the military in time of war due to higher wages.
Let’s suppose that there were indeed a sizable minority of women who felt that they would have liked the chance to decide to join the military too.
These women were being held out of the chance to choose to travel the world, learn a trade, and learn how to defend themselves and maybe they saw the risk of harm as an acceptable trade off.
Fair enough.
These women were held out of that chance, and that’s not fair.
But, I would compare this to men in the 1901’s to 1950’s who looked at their stay at home wives and thought (or said) “man! She’s on vacation!”
The reason these husbands would have said that is because he is weighing this in the perspective of himself having THE CHOICE to stay home: not to be burdened with a CULTURALLY ENFORCED EXPECTATION and *locked in* to staying home for his whole life.
The minority of UK women who may have wanted to fight for their country wanted the right for themselves to *CHOOSE* to do so (and the right of women who didn’t want to fight to say no).
What these women wouldn’t have wanted was a CULTURALLY ENFORCED EXPECTATION that ALL WOMEN WERE TO BE SHAMED into fighting (as was done with men).
The reverse side of that coin is just as there may have been women who were differently situated from the majority of women and WANTED TO FIGHT, it’s more than likely that a sizable minority or majority of men were differently situated from other men and WANTED NOT TO FIGHT, but were shamed and cajoled by BOTH SEXES.
That’s textbook gender oppression. LACK OF AGENCY AND DENIAL OF RIGHT TO CHOOSE BASED ON YOUR GENDER IS OPPRESSION.
So, RIGHT THERE you are wrong. A culturally (or legally) enforced burden is NEVER a privilege.
Now, a culturally (or legally) enforced societal expectation upon genders can *benefit* some of the people it’s laid upon and *detriment* others. This was the case for stay at home mothers in the first part of last century.
Some women (who were already dispositioned to enjoy such things) were *benefitted* by the culturally enforced expectation to be a stay at home mother.
As Betty Freidan wrote: many others were disadvantaged by this cultural expectation (which robbed women of choice and stole their agency).
These women felt *stifled* and unchallenged.
If I can accept women being *stifled* as gender oppression due to systemic gender role expectations (and believe it or not I do), than why can’t you accept men being coerced and cajoled (or drafted) into dangerous detrimental military in time of war as gender oppression?
How many times worse is being *forced* (DUE TO YOUR GENDER)into a kill or be killed environment than *being stifled*?
To me there are several axis or pivot points upon which oppression can be defined. First is lack of choice. If it is a culturally (or legally) enforced (through shame, scorn or legal action) expectation upon a singular group identifiable by birth characteristics, then that is oppression.
The only part left to define is how oppressive is it?
That next axis (to me) depends on two things:
A) how many are detrimented vs how many benefitted as a % of the group facing this expectation. B) how many people in absolute numbers were detrimented.
In other words if activity X was forced upon a birth group and 100% were detrimented, but this only totaled 4 people that wouldn’t be as big a problem as if a birth group faced an expectation of activity x and only 2% were detrimented but this netted 10,000 people.
It needs to be looked at in terms of absolute numbers and a % base.
The third pivot point is C) how harmful was it to those detrimented by the expectation?
Imagine an advantage/disadvantage meter running from 100 (essentially the sons and daughters of bill gates and Donald trump) on the advantage side to a -100 on the disadvantage side (basically being born a slave and dying at 15 from a canning).
IN World War II 10 MILLION men were drafted. 16 million US men served in the armed forces, of which 13 million served overseas.
Including army, navy & marines 400,000 US soldiers died. Can you explain to me how a LEGALLY ENFORCED GENDER EXPECTATION for 400,000 men to lose three quarters of their natural years on this earth is PRIVILEGE?
The average age of the US soldier in WWII was 19—TALK ABOUT DYING YOUNG!
Another 600,000 US soldiers were injured. That’s a 1/13 chance of being killed or injured (8%). WWII was the bloodiest war ever killing 2.5% of the world population. It’s safe to presume that possibly another 2.5 million men suffered sever ptsd or other emotional scarring.
If you were to plot this about 10% of these men would have been in the -80 disadvantage/oppression range. Maybe another 30% would have been in the -30 to -50 disadvantage/oppression range as being forced into a kill or be killed environment with bombs going off is an extreme outlier of the human condition.
Maybe a tiny portion (like 5%) would have had an advantage/privilege due to this and used this to become a congressman, or had a military career. (Trying to state the increased pay would be some kind of salve or break upon this mountain of pain would be like saying everything is okay when a 5y/o loses her whole family in a fire because the insurance agent gave her a lollipop).
The bulk of the rest would have been in the 0 to -10 range.
Where do you think being *stifled* by being forced to be a stay at home mom would rank? A -8 maybe? -15 TOPS?
The last pivot point that determines how oppressive a culturally/legally enforced expectation is upon a birth group is how deep the scorn/shame/legal entrapment is for those who resist society.
I will handily agree that women were oppressed and had their agency stolen. No doubt about it. However, there were outlier women who broke the trend.
Hetty Green made millions on Wall Street in the 20’s. If *all* women had no agency, then how did Amelia Earhart ever become an aviator?
Yes, women in the 1910’s and 20’s I’m sure were stigmatized and ridiculed for breaking gender norms. But apparently for some women the ridicule, sidelong glances and snide remarks weren’t enough to stop them.
On the flipside men get bitch-slapped and threatened with a firing line when they (wrongly in society’s eyes) try to claim victim status and be respected as human beings (Patton was famous for slapping and threatening with firing squads ptsd-suffering soldiers).
Men faced 25 years in prison when they refused to go into the WWII meat-grinder. No men escaped this fate, yet many dozens and dozens of examples are riddled through the history of last century of women who were able to overcome the much softer coercion that they faced with their gender roles.
You’re just in denial Rutee.
Women’s rights are everybody’s concern, but men’s rights certainly aren’t your concern right rutee?
I pity you Rutee. You’re a pitiable person.
And you’re so totally and completely full of shit I’m surprisee the whites of your eyes aren’t brown.
You have some deep-seated issues with men. I pity you your intense hatred that no calamity happening to men seems worthy of your attention.
Shame on you Sally for egging her on. Is this about winning arguments or about having truthful and honest discussions about privilege and oppression.
A person shouldn’t be so eager to win an argument that they stand against equality as Rutee surely does.
The vast majority of men abuse and sacrifice their bodies to provide materially for their families as the 18 or so credible studies I linked to prove.
If feminists were honest about exploring gender roles, than they would stop measuring the work/life balance choices of men and women in only $$$$$ and also measure them in the 19 men to 1 women death ratio on the job, and the many other ways men endanger or injure themselves as a loving sacrifice.
Then you have Cromm stating that all men are so differentially situated (as a singular group) from all women that discriminating against men’s health, reproductive choice, and cancer screenings(as laid out in the Affordable Care Act) is right and good.
This is sick shit Sally, and shame on you for being a part of it.
When you engaged in discussion about male rape victims (and I tracked back to your websight and I saw you mentioned a female rapist) I believed you might actually be a level headed person.
This isn’t about winning arguments by simply stating any harm against men (particularly those caused by coercion or legal force which steals men’s agency as surely as it does women’s).
This is about recognizing that men can and are coerced into detrimental acts too (often on just as large a scale and just as harmful as this is done to women). This is about recognizing that in every way a woman can lose agency, so too can men.
Men can be molested as children, be bullied, addicted, grow depressed, be the targets of violence etc… The main difference is that men are not allowed to be victims in our society.
Most of men’s life stories are about facing stigmatization and coercion and bullying (or worse) same as it is for women. But, men are instructed to wear a brave face. When that facade cracks tradcons berate these men as whinning sissies and then you have feminists of a mind with Rutee saying that men do not face systemic oppression FOR BEING MEN.
I’ve got news for you. The men’s rights people are growing by leaps and bounds. In many cases they are much more diverse than most feminists.
On genderratic you have gay men and trans women discussing men’s rights.
Youtube is EXPLODING with hundreds of women telling the truth of the double-bind that feminism puts men into.
Girl writes what’s video titled “feminism and male disposability” is well over 400k views and growing fast.
So, you guys can put your hands over your ears and shout “no, no, no FUCK YOU” all you want.
REspect for men’s humanity is coming and it is coming in many different forms.
I’d like you guys to be a part of that, but I’m not going to hold my breath, lol