The two types of Feminism

[ruby sparks]

Based on that list, feminism includes...........(see extensive list). What doesn't it include?

Male feminism?

 

[Arctish]

From Wikipedia:

Feminist views on transgender topics

Feminist views on transgender topics range from critical to accepting. Some feminists such as Janice Raymond and Sheila Jeffreys believe that transgender and transsexual people uphold and reinforce sexist gender roles and the gender binary, while other feminists, such as Judith Butler and Jack Halberstam, believe that transgender and transsexual people challenge repressive gender norms and that transgender politics are fully compatible with feminism. Additionally, some transgender and transsexual people, such as Julia Serano and Jacob Anderson-Minshall, identify as transfeminists. Some feminists object to the acronym "TERF" (short for trans-exclusionary radical feminist)[1] and have called it a slur or even hate speech

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_views_on_transgender_topics

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Since women have attained formal equality in law in quite a number of countries, it has become obvious that they are still disadvantaged in many ways. Two examples: 1) After controls have been made for experience, competence, years of service and other variables women are still paid less than man for doing the exact same job. They are also less likely to get the same job they are equally qualified for if they are competing for it against men.

The feminists repeatedly allege the former but it's not proven. You say "and other variables"--but that's not the case. To prove discrimination you need to deal with all variables--and there are some that I have yet to even see an attempt to measure--and how do you even know if you have them all?

What we do know is that if you control for actual experience (not age!), hours worked (no "full time"!) and exact position (no "doctor"!) more than 90% of the gap has been closed. However, what other factors are there? Off the top of my head:

Experience: You have two people with 10 years of experience. The man has worked the last 10 years, the woman has worked 5, taken 5 off for childrearing and worked another 5. Unless you have a basically static field the employer is going to consider the former to be the better employee as the latter's training and half their experience is more out of date. I'm not aware of any attempt to address this. (And note it gets even worse if she worked 10 and then took 5 off--that means everything she knows is at least 5 years out of date.)

Negotiating: Is there nothing to the widespread belief that men are more aggressive at negotiating salary?

Working conditions: Consider high-travel and remote jobs. Fathers are much more likely to accept such a position than mothers.

Personally, the fact that more than 90% of the gap is closed by simple factors says to me that it's unlikely there's actual widespread discrimination.

 

[bilby]

TERFs. They are of the opinion that people who are trans have male privilege and don't deserve the respect or help of feminists.

Meh. Sounds like just another TERF war.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Wait, so you can get all the benefits of male privilege just by saying that you're male?

Shit, that kind of undercuts the entire rationale of the women's rights movement and they could have saved themselves a century of hard work and strife just by changing the noun they use to describe themselves. Guess that's what the little ladies get by not starting off by asking a man how they should run things.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Actually, I think they hate those who are born men and identify as women.

Of course you're right, though. Since you are what you identify as, even unto race or age, then you can access any privilege you want simply by identifying that way.

 

[Arctish]

Wait, so you can get all the benefits of male privilege just by saying that you're male?

Shit, that kind of undercuts the entire rationale of the women's rights movement and they could have saved themselves a century of hard work and strife just by changing the noun they use to describe themselves. Guess that's what the little ladies get by not starting off by asking a man how they should run things.

Actually, I think they hate those who are born men and identify as women.

Of course you're right, though. Since you are what you identify as, even unto race or age, then you can access any privilege you want simply by identifying that way.

The downside is you have to use the Men's restroom, which anyone who's ever had to clean one knows is disgusting.

 

[Juma]

Since women have attained formal equality in law in quite a number of countries, it has become obvious that they are still disadvantaged in many ways. Two examples: 1) After controls have been made for experience, competence, years of service and other variables women are still paid less than man for doing the exact same job. They are also less likely to get the same job they are equally qualified for if they are competing for it against men.

The feminists repeatedly allege the former but it's not proven. You say "and other variables"--but that's not the case. To prove discrimination you need to deal with all variables--and there are some that I have yet to even see an attempt to measure--and how do you even know if you have them all?

What we do know is that if you control for actual experience (not age!), hours worked (no "full time"!) and exact position (no "doctor"!) more than 90% of the gap has been closed. However, what other factors are there? Off the top of my head:

Experience: You have two people with 10 years of experience. The man has worked the last 10 years, the woman has worked 5, taken 5 off for childrearing and worked another 5. Unless you have a basically static field the employer is going to consider the former to be the better employee as the latter's training and half their experience is more out of date. I'm not aware of any attempt to address this. (And note it gets even worse if she worked 10 and then took 5 off--that means everything she knows is at least 5 years out of date.)

Negotiating: Is there nothing to the widespread belief that men are more aggressive at negotiating salary?

Working conditions: Consider high-travel and remote jobs. Fathers are much more likely to accept such a position than mothers.

Personally, the fact that more than 90% of the gap is closed by simple factors says to me that it's unlikely there's actual widespread discrimination.

So when research shows a 10% difference then Loren concludes ”no difference”. Which shows exactly how biased loren is...

 

[Hermit]

Since women have attained formal equality in law in quite a number of countries, it has become obvious that they are still disadvantaged in many ways. Two examples: 1) After controls have been made for experience, competence, years of service and other variables women are still paid less than man for doing the exact same job. They are also less likely to get the same job they are equally qualified for if they are competing for it against men.

The feminists repeatedly allege the former but it's not proven. You say "and other variables"--but that's not the case. To prove discrimination you need to deal with all variables--and there are some that I have yet to even see an attempt to measure--and how do you even know if you have them all?

What we do know is that if you control for actual experience (not age!), hours worked (no "full time"!) and exact position (no "doctor"!) more than 90% of the gap has been closed. However, what other factors are there? Off the top of my head:

Experience: You have two people with 10 years of experience. The man has worked the last 10 years, the woman has worked 5, taken 5 off for childrearing and worked another 5. Unless you have a basically static field the employer is going to consider the former to be the better employee as the latter's training and half their experience is more out of date. I'm not aware of any attempt to address this. (And note it gets even worse if she worked 10 and then took 5 off--that means everything she knows is at least 5 years out of date.)

Negotiating: Is there nothing to the widespread belief that men are more aggressive at negotiating salary?

Working conditions: Consider high-travel and remote jobs. Fathers are much more likely to accept such a position than mothers.

Personally, the fact that more than 90% of the gap is closed by simple factors says to me that it's unlikely there's actual widespread discrimination.

So when research shows a 10% difference then Loren concludes ”no difference”. Which shows exactly how biased loren is...

Yabbut, Pechtel's rationalisations explain exactly why in 2014 male CEOs among the top 1000 highest earning US companies outnumber females by 18.6 to 1, don'tcha know? Just waiting for him to add that if women did not keep interrupting their careers by getting preggers, they'd be doing much better.

 

[ruby sparks]

Imo the oft-cited gender pay gap is routinely overstated in percentage terms and in terms of discriminatory causes. In reaction to this, many men (not all) swing in the other direction and understate the extent of the discriminatory problem, or in some extreme cases deny its existence.

We humans seem to need this kind of oppositional sparring to happen before anything gets done or changed.

In an ideal world, advocates (eg feminists) would say that there was, on average, a 5%* (or thereabouts) pay gap due to discrimination and that would be addressed. We might also be able to do something about the factors affecting the remainder of the pay gap after we've agreed it's not necessarily due to discrimination. And/or, we might be able to do more about the particular, specific instances and situations where the gap is more than 5% due to discrimination, since that figure would just be a supposed average.

In the real world, it seems that men generally have to be coerced about such things, and using inflated percentages as an opening bid probably works, even if a few eggs have to be broken to make the omelette.

I'm talking about 'developed', 'western' countries nowadays. I'd guess that the discriminatory pay gap is wider in other places.

Personally, I'd like to do something about the pay gap between nurses (of any sex or gender) and some other more lucrative jobs. Which I think brings up the valid point about certain jobs, often the jobs that many women are more likely to want to do and enjoy doing, being undervalued, even if, as in the case of nursing, the job is often literally life-saving (or at least health-enhancing, and yet we often blithely say that there's nothing more important than our health). Compare that to the 'value' of playing in a premiership football game for instance. That's money. You can't easily roll up a £100 note and do a tracheostomy on someone in an emergency.


*Based on studies I've read. Note that this would mean that only 70% of the gap would be closed. If anyone thinks that even that is too much, I may be prepared to haggle.

 

[SimpleDon]

I see two very different groups claiming the "Feminist" name. I strongly support the one and strongly oppose the other, but I don't know what label to call each of them to distinguish them.

First there is the notion that women should have all of the legal rights that men should have and should not be discriminated against because of gender. This is about equality of opportunity for all, regardless of gender. This is the notion that women can work, or stay home and be housewives, or be the sole breadwinner with house husbands, can have casual sex to whatever degree they wish or remain virgins forever, and can go wear hijab or go topless if they like. It is about freedom. I can get 100% behind this kind of feminism. Women should not be discriminated against for being a woman. There should be no barriers to women becoming doctors, lawyers, C.E.O.s and any other job they seek and win by merit. And they should not be patronized or treated paternally. Nor should their agency be taken from them or should they be held less responsible due to their gender. Women are to be treated as individuals with their gender being irrelevant when it comes to anything not specifically tied to it (issues such as abortion, etc).

This sort of feminism/egalitarianism is what I consider basic human fairness, but is lacking in much of the world to various extents, and political battles need to be won to win it. Usually but not always the enemy is religion. Sometimes, ironically, the enemy is the second type of feminism's demanding attention be drawn away from this.

The second of feminism, that is very much the opposite of the above, pushes for rather than against gender bias and double standards. It doesn't push for individuals to be treated equally regardless of gender, but instead for people to be treated according to the gender group they are identified with. It is paternalistic towards women, treating them as fragile and demanding they be seen through a lense of victimhood, and in many situations as without having equal agency. Yet ironically it rails against "the patriarchy". This ties into the marxist ideas of oppressor group (here all men) and oppressed group (here all women).

I believe the second type of feminism gives the word "feminism" a bad connotation. So I would like to clearly distinguish between the two types and I don't know the labels to do that. What do you call the first type? What do you call the second type? And how can I show support for the first but opposition to the second in just a few words?

I agree with you.

Any social and political movement can be taken too far to make a rational goal irrational. It is the curse of extremism, which is our main problem today. That the extremists in feminism consider women to all be victims of all of the men doesn't diminish the fact that women are still today routinely disadvantaged by men in business, are still routinely physically abused by men, are still routinely mentally abused by men and are still routinely subjected to unwanted sexual advances and harassment from men.

Concentrating on the extremists in any movement whether it is feminism, black lives matter, the dreamers or the pro- or the anti-abortion movements is an invitation to indulge in a form of extremism ourselves, to risk dismissing the entire movement because some carry it to an extreme.

I think that this is another example of how we are being served poorly by our news media. They are in competition with one another to improve their viewership and they empathize the extremes in a kind of social "if it bleeds it's the lede".

You are correct to call out the extremists in the feminist movement and to warn against them. But please, always balance it with the observation that the extremists are few in number and don't represent the vast majority of women in the movement. I would suggest that we call the vast majority "feminists" and we pretty much ignore the extremists, except to occasionally laugh at them.

I would add that the extremists go too far when they try to shame those women who want a more traditional woman's role in life.

 

[southernhybrid]

Since you mentioned nurses, and I retired from that profession less than two months ago, let me point out that male nurses make quite a bit more money than female nurses, even when they work in the same areas of nursing.

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2015/03/124266/male-registered-nurses-make-thousands-more-salary-female-counterparts

Male registered nurses (RNs) make more than $5,000 per year than their female counterparts across most settings, specialty areas and positions, according to a UC San Francisco-led study, and this earnings gap has not improved over the last three decades.

The analysis will be published as a “Research Letter” in the March 24/31 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“The roles of RNs are expanding with implementation of the Affordable Care Act and emphasis on team-based care delivery,” said lead author Ulrike Muench, PhD, assistant professor of social and behavioral sciences in the UCSF School of Nursing. “These results may motivate nurse employers, including physicians, to examine their pay structures and act to eliminate inequities.”

Salary Gap Has Closed in Other Fields
From the research letter background, while the male-female salary gap has narrowed in many occupations since the Equal Pay Act of 1963, it persists in fields such as medicine and nursing. Predominately female, nursing is the largest health care occupation, with salary differences by gender affecting about 2.5 million women, according to the researchers.


To better understand the current pay discrepancy between male and female nurses, researchers led by Muench used data from the last six quadrennial National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses (NSSRN) for 1988-2008. This mail, electronic and web survey selected a state-based probability sample of currently licensed RNs from data provided by state boards of nursing with a sample size of more than 30,000 RNs per year and response rate of approximately 60 percent.

The NSSRN is ideally suited for analyzing gender differences in the RN workplace because of the large amount of employment information available in this survey compared to other surveys that are typically used by social scientists to study pay differences by gender.

That study is a few years old, but I've read more recent ones that claim the same thing.

And can we stop with the idea that feminists hate men. Perhaps some do, but I assure you they are a very small minority. I've yet to meet one. I think the reason that a lot of younger women don't like to identify with the word feminism is because things are much better today than they were when I was growing up. Still, we have a long way to go. Just look at all the sexual harassment that continues to exist in the workplace. Prior to the recent movement, most men got away with it too. That is one reason why I am glad that I worked with women. Women can sometimes be their own worst enemies, but at least there was no sexual harassment to deal with from the boss.

And just yesterday, I read that less than 25% of all elected political positions in the US are held by women. It's long past time for that to change. So, please spare us the whining about those terrible feminists.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So when research shows a 10% difference then Loren concludes ”no difference”. Which shows exactly how biased loren is...

You utterly missed the point.

After controlling for three factors the difference is down to 2%. There are clearly more factors for which AFIAK nobody has figured out the effect. Those who say there is discrimination are basically saying to pay no attention to the factors which haven't been measured and they generally want to pay no attention to the factors that have been measured.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So when research shows a 10% difference then Loren concludes ”no difference”. Which shows exactly how biased loren is...

Yabbut, Pechtel's rationalisations explain exactly why in 2014 male CEOs among the top 1000 highest earning US companies outnumber females by 18.6 to 1, don'tcha know? Just waiting for him to add that if women did not keep interrupting their careers by getting preggers, they'd be doing much better.

You would expect male CEOs to outnumber female ones. Tails of distributions show a greatly magnified effect from small differences in the center of the curve. (For an extreme example, look at how black professional basketball players are. Most of that is due to a tiny difference in the average height between black and white.) CEOs are for the most part the most driven people--basically incompatible with taking time off to have children.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

So when research shows a 10% difference then Loren concludes ”no difference”. Which shows exactly how biased loren is...

Yabbut, Pechtel's rationalisations explain exactly why in 2014 male CEOs among the top 1000 highest earning US companies outnumber females by 18.6 to 1, don'tcha know? Just waiting for him to add that if women did not keep interrupting their careers by getting preggers, they'd be doing much better.

You would expect male CEOs to outnumber female ones. Tails of distributions show a greatly magnified effect from small differences in the center of the curve. (For an extreme example, look at how black professional basketball players are. Most of that is due to a tiny difference in the average height between black and white.) CEOs are for the most part the most driven people--basically incompatible with taking time off to have children.

Good point, the bell curves are different shapes and males are over-represented in both extremes. We need affirmative action until we have an equal number of female axe murderers.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Ok. I’ll fuck my wife’s sister up the ass and do my part to increase that number.

 

[whichphilosophy]

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdbD7EF4Byw[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Ok. I’ll fuck my wife’s sister up the ass and do my part to increase that number.

That's how you get lawyers, not CEOs.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Ok. I’ll fuck my wife’s sister up the ass and do my part to increase that number.

That's how you get lawyers, not CEOs.

I think Tom Sawyer was trying to up the axe murderer number for women.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So when research shows a 10% difference then Loren concludes ”no difference”. Which shows exactly how biased loren is...

Yabbut, Pechtel's rationalisations explain exactly why in 2014 male CEOs among the top 1000 highest earning US companies outnumber females by 18.6 to 1, don'tcha know? Just waiting for him to add that if women did not keep interrupting their careers by getting preggers, they'd be doing much better.

You would expect male CEOs to outnumber female ones. Tails of distributions show a greatly magnified effect from small differences in the center of the curve. (For an extreme example, look at how black professional basketball players are. Most of that is due to a tiny difference in the average height between black and white.) CEOs are for the most part the most driven people--basically incompatible with taking time off to have children.

Are they? I thought CEOs weren't responsible for the shit their companies do.