If you've ever been divorced, have kids, a crazy ex, and a penis

[Bard]

QUOTE (RenegadePeon @ Jun 13 2011, 10:01 AM) Sgt is hilarious. A stupid bigot, but funny nonetheless.

Small-minded racists, bigots, homophobes, misogynists, misandrists, and other such filth are never funny.

[link120]

neither are nerds like you bard

[BackTrak]

This is yet another case under which much angst could have been spared by the judicious use of a single door stop.

[Raveen]

QUOTE (girlyboy @ Jun 11 2011, 07:45 PM) Meanwhile, women in the U.S. on average still earn $0.77 for every dollar men earn. They have it way too good!

There are quite valid reasons for this of course that are not necessarily related to ingrained sexism (although that's certainly a factor). For example more women than men choose to be housewives (or is it home-makers these days?) or work part time to better look after the kids. What you need to look at is wages in the same jobs and access to jobs. In all honesty I don't know what that would show, and you could probably spin the numbers whichever way you wanted.

QUOTE (BackTrak @ Jun 13 2011, 10:31 PM) This is yet another case under which much angst could have been spared by the judicious use of a single door stop.

I would honestly love to hear of more of these cases

[BackTrak]

QUOTE I would honestly love to hear of more of these cases [/quote]













Door stops: At $0.99, you just can't discount them.

[Makida]

QUOTE (Raveen @ Jun 14 2011, 03:27 AM) There are quite valid reasons for this of course that are not necessarily related to ingrained sexism (although that's certainly a factor). For example more women than men choose to be housewives (or is it home-makers these days?) or work part time to better look after the kids. What you need to look at is wages in the same jobs and access to jobs. In all honesty I don't know what that would show, and you could probably spin the numbers whichever way you wanted.

Stay-at-home wives wouldn't be included in the numbers, since they don't earn a wage. Also the number is based on full-time, year-round workers, so women and men who work part-time also aren't included. One imagines that if they were, the gap would be even bigger.

Yes, I'm sure you could argue there's reasons for it aside from sexism, just like you could argue there's perfectly fair, non-sexist reasons for why men tend to do worse in divorce settlements. In reality, both are caused by the different ways our culture sees, and treats, men and women. I think it's a problem that needs to be solved.

I think people tend to rush very quickly to looking for "non-sexist" reasons whenever issues like the wage gap are brought up. But yet there's a panic over, say, the way boys tend to do worse in school than girls. No-one is seriously suggesting that it's not a problem because maybe boys just choose to do worse than girls because they have different priorities, and that we should respect this gender difference instead of finding ways to fix it...

[takingarms1]

QUOTE (Raveen @ Jun 14 2011, 03:27 AM) There are quite valid reasons for this of course that are not necessarily related to ingrained sexism (although that's certainly a factor). For example more women than men choose to be housewives (or is it home-makers these days?) or work part time to better look after the kids. What you need to look at is wages in the same jobs and access to jobs. In all honesty I don't know what that would show, and you could probably spin the numbers whichever way you wanted.

In some ways there is now reverse disrimination. In my field, attractive young females grads have a much better shot at getting a job than men or less attractive females. Upon my graduation, the top 20 or so folks all got jobs, but the guys had maybe 1 job offer each, while the attractive females had about 5 job offers each. In my current law firm, about half of the lower-level associates are females.

On the flip side, only 2 of 8 partners are female. Mostly, that is because the females choose family over firm, and refuse to work the long hours and/or do what it takes to make partner. The two that did make partner do not have children. Call that gender discrimination if you want, but I call it lifestyle discrimination. Employers reward the people who basically sacrifice their personal lives to help make the company more money. It has nothing to do with gender, other than the fact that women are generally far less likely to want to make the sacrifices required.

[Makida]

^ Men who have a wife at home (or working part-time) who does the lion's share of the housework and child-rearing are more likely to be able to make such a "sacrifice". Women rarely have a stay-at-home husband (or even just a husband willing to do a bigger share of the housework) filling that support role for them, because both men and women still tend to think of housework and child-rearing as primarily women's work. You could say it's a choice that women won't sacrifice their personal lives as much for work, but it would also be accurate to say that there's a lot of cultural pressure that makes it a lot easier for men to make that sacrifice than for women, and that tends to give men a better chance of having a partner who will support them with housework and the like and make it easier for them to balance work and life.

That's still a form of sexism -- not the kind of sexism where an evil sexist boss consciously discriminates against women (though I'm sure that still exists out there too), but a kind of ingrained cultural sexism that conditions us to treat men and women differently in ways that ultimately lead to unfair gaps like this. (Not to mention that it's also unfair that there's a lot of cultural pressure against men who want to prioritize their domestic life more).

But while I disagree that it "has nothing to do with gender" (it has a lot to do with gender), it's definitely true that you could call it "lifestyle discrimination" as well, and it definitely sucks that most employers don't pay more attention to work-life balance issues. It's just that because of gender issues, this tends to impact women's careers more than men's.

[Cadillac]

So I take it that you are a proponent of men and women being treated exactly the same?

[Makida]

Er, yes? Why wouldn't I be? What are you a proponent of? Or are you just trolling? Is there a speech about how gender differences are good and should be respected and stuff coming up?

People should be treated like people. Pressuring them to fit into one of two narrow categories based on what bits they were born with just sucks. In case I'm about to hear the standard socially conservative talking point about how feminism would make men and women exactly the same and thus make life boring or something, I'd point out it's really about giving all people, regardless of gender, more freedom to be themselves, which leads to more diversity, not less -- it's the cultural status quo that tends to pressure all men towards being same-ish, and all women towards being same-ish.

Edit: Maybe I just get trolled too easily.