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Prodigal
 
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| Hmm, Matt beat me to a comment about the definition of misogyny. I'd be very interested to see how on earth you can claim to be misogynist and feminist at the same time. I'd also be interested in your definition of treating women with respect, is it actually anything women might recognise as respect? Increased education of women is linked with the decreasing birth rate is it? Good. I happen to think this planet has too many people anyway (and I know Matt disagrees, lets not get into this one on this thread). Sex education actually reduces the teenage pregnancy rate, which most people agree is a good thing.
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Wag
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Marios (3/9/2007)
Case in point - I'd say calling women 'morally similar to racists' if they don't buy into your ideology is pretty anti-female.
Nice misquote... My point, which I am sure you could have chosen to read, was intended at men as well as women. But it sounds so much more vindictive if you pretend it was aimed soley at women.
I can't help noticing that that is the second time that I have expressed my views about feminism and political beliefs and you have taken them to indicate views about women. I can't claim to be "gender blind" but I do like to kid myself that I try. If this continues I may have to report you to the suede/denim secret police.
The suggestion that they are feminists really, they're just too ignorant or confused to accept it is only slightly less offensive.
I never said that! If someone says they think people should be discriminated against on the grounds of gender, I'm quite happy to take their word for it.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Wag
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Sarah (3/10/2007)
Personally I despise all-women shortlists. I find them to be obnoxious and as anti-woman as they are anti-men. Personally I have always seen an implication in them that women cant compete with men. And no, I know thats not the intention but thats how they make me feel.[/qupte]
One of the problems of positive discrimination is that it is patronising towards the benefit group. I liked the women-only shortlist policy. I think it was effective in increasing female representation in parliament. Being the only man in the room to support it (even the national rep sent down to sell the policy didn't support it) was also effective in ensuring I was never invited back to our local labour party meetings... Probably for the best, I was not cut out for a career in politics. 
[quote]Marios - you want one example of casual anti-female sexism, eh? Only one? Sure - average pay for women is still lower than for men doing the same job, even if you take into account that some women take time out of work for babies.
It's important to be careful when arguing with Marios, all you're doing here is giving him free ammunition...
It's extremely difficult to prove gender discrimination using these kinds of statistical examples. The same studies that show that women tend to get paid less than men also tend to show that women are less likely to do overtime, less likely to work late in the office and express attitudes that show that they are less committed to their job. All of which could easily affect remuneration levels. If women and men were functionally identical, than your evidence would be rock solid proof, but we have no reason to imagine that they are functionally identical and every reason to assume that they aren't.
I personally have little interest in "50/50" treatment of men and women. If less women than men become engineers it may be because the system is biased against men and it may be because women don't like engineering and men do... I don't doubt that women are discriminated against on pay terms, if only because of the slow decline of historic attitudes about women and work, but prooving it is much harder than your example shows.
The insurance industry discriminates against anything it can identify as a group - old people, young people, fat people,men, etc, etc.
More ammunition for Marios I fear. Women get lower premiums than men because they have less accidents. This is discrimination, but it's also the logical consequence of a statistical approach. The insurance industry also takes into account your personal record (that's what no-claims bonuses are about) but if you smoke you are more likely to get lung cancer so your critical illness insurance is four times as expensive.
Should life assurance be the same price for a 60 year old man as a 16 year old man? I'm not clear that it should. Should health insurance be the same for a heavy drinker as for a teetotaller?
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Prodigal
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| Maybe the all <insert identifiable group here> shortlists did serve a purpose, but they make me feel uncomfortable.
As for wage inequality; not all women have children. Many women dont have children, some by choice, others not by choice. The women who dont have children dont take time out to raise them, but some of them are still getting paid less than men doing the same or equivalent jobs. I've never been on the receiving end of gender based wage inequality (not to my knowledge anyway) but it does happen. My mother in law is currently participating in a class action suit against the LEA she worked for for exactly this issue. She worked as a dinner lady on a certain pay grade, and men on the exact same pay grade were being paid more per hour.
My comment about insurance companies was flippant, probably inappropriately so. Yes, its about risk, but from the outside it can look like discrimination. Its a very sensible way to run that particular business (for example, there is no way I should pay the same for private medical insurance as someone who is fat, fifty, with hardening arteries and type 2 diabetes, I am a lower risk) but I can understand why someone like Marios would claim it was discrimination.
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Wag
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Sarah (3/10/2007)
Maybe the all <insert identifiable group here> shortlists did serve a purpose, but they make me feel uncomfortable.
*shrug* Like I said, positive discrimination is a difficult issue. I'm unimpressed by calls to achieve 50% representation in fields of endavour like engineering or whatever. Who cares what gender the plumber is? Not me... But I think positive discrimination has an additional benefit in politics because it can help to ensure that minority groups are adequately represented. 51% of the population may be female, but the number of female MPs is still very low. I do think it's important to take steps to ensure that the views of 51% of the populace are represented, which is an additional benefit besides ensuring that women who want to be involved in politics face less discrimination.
As for wage inequality; not all women have children. Many women dont have children, some by choice, others not by choice. The women who dont have children dont take time out to raise them, but some of them are still getting paid less than men doing the same or equivalent jobs.I've never been on the receiving end of gender based wage inequality (not to my knowledge anyway) but it does happen.
It does, but it's very difficult to prove and crude statistics of these sort DON'T prove it. A number of studies have shown that the more compounding factors you remove, the smaller the wage gap becomes. A crude average of women's wages assumes that women's performance is identical to mens. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I don't know, nor do I care. I'm interested in finding ways to prevent an individuals gender being a factor in their treatment, not in ensuring that all men are treated the same as all women.
My comment about insurance companies was flippant, probably inappropriately so. Yes, its about risk, but from the outside it can look like discrimination. Its a very sensible way to run that particular business (for example, there is no way I should pay the same for private medical insurance as someone who is fat, fifty, with hardening arteries and type 2 diabetes, I am a lower risk) but I can understand why someone like Marios would claim it was discrimination.
I think his claim would probably be that it isn't discrimination. I dunno.
I would define discrimination as differentiation between individuals on the basis on a single trait rather than on an estimation of their individual capabilities. It's not sexism to say that men are taller than women, and even the craziest french philosophers don't claim that men are taller than women because women are socialised to see themselves as smaller than men (although it wouldn't surprise me to find they have claimed this).
But if I have a job that requires a tall person (ladder attendant!), I should look for a tall person, not for a man. Some men are shorter than some women. If I reject any CV from a woman without looking at the individual details that are relevant to this application then that is prejudice, that is discrimination. The fact that women are shorter than man *on average* is not important when looking for an *individual* for a job.
Insurance companies DO discriminate against people. They do so actively and deliberately. They take a set of traits which apply to a category *on average* and they use them to calculate the risk associated with an individual from that category. They do this, because any attempt to use individual criteria would be hugely expensive and probably counter-productive. We could have driving tests every time we applied for car insurance to assess our safety but it would cost a fortune. It would be nice to do that, but it's not something that is worth us spending a fortune on right now, given the limited impact it has.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Prodigal
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As you say, the most important thing does need to be the qualifications for the job. If someone needs a surgeon with a specific specialism then they shouldnt care whether they are pink, black, yellow, male, female, young or old. The important thing is whether they are competent.
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Wag
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Matt Pennington (3/10/2007)
Bah, I compared you to a racist and the best you can come up with is a fundamentalist?
Not me, unless you think I'm liking to get the chop. If it were only me you compared to a racist I don't think I'd find it so risible.
Matt Pennington (3/10/2007)
I wouldn't consider going out with a woman who wasn't a feminist, it would feel like I was dating a racist.
I assume that applies to all women, regardless of whether you'd be inclined/likely to go out with them (I imagine it also applies to men, but I like the irony of believing yourself to be supporting women's right by saying that non-adherent women are like racists).
Matt Pennington (3/10/2007)
Obviously words mean different things to different people. I looked up feminism on dictionary.com and it said
Of all the words that mean different things to different people, 'rights' comes near the top of the list (somewhere above 'equal'). Without a definition these are just blanks
"the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other blanks of women blank to those of men."
If you think that's flippant, have a look through the various definitions of Feminism here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism
I think you could argue them all to be consistent with the above definition (with the blanks) - tricky with female supremacist ones, but I think it could be done.
Crucially, you can't do it with 'removing gender discrimination' (I've swapped 'prejudice' with 'discrimination' - prejudice is too easy to redefine at the drop of a hat (it's not prejudice, it's just true) - discrimination is a bit more objective) - it just doesn't line up with the other definitions or motivations. It's not about 'removing gender discrimination' it's about improving the lot of (some) women. Some people (male/female) think the lot of women in the West needs to be improved by legislation (i.e. efforts beyond the individuals involved). Some (male/female) don't.
Matt Pennington (3/10/2007)
Is there anyone here who doesn't think that 'positive discrimination' undermines the tenet that society should not support 'discrimination'? Me. Lots of other people I know. Positive discrimination is almost always contraversial, but quite a sizeable number of people support it's use because they think that the end product of the principle is to reduce gender/race/whatever discrimination in the long term.
Sorry - I don't agree. Everytime I've seen people argue this they useful distinction which has been put forward - agreed by both sides (which makes me think it's probably a very good distinction and useful for forwarding debate) - is "equality of opportunity" (liberal) versus "equality of fact" (socialist). A liberal opposed _unfair_ discrimination because it undermines equality of opportunity and he believes that so long as legal opportunities are equal people can (not necessarily will) make of their lives what they will, wherever they start.
A socialist says that's not enough - that it's short-sighted to merely look at the laws to see if they discriminate unfairly - that's irrelevant. The point is whether people are equal in fact. People may be equal under the law, but if we see that they are not equal in fact (20:80 gender ratio in professorships at a university, say) then we conclude that they are not equal in fact and we have to combat that. Socialists don't have a problem with discrimination (per se) because equality of opportunity in the liberal sense isn't their concern or their end goal - the end goal is society operating as they think it should operate. Hence, positive discrimination is an acceptable tool to bring about "equality of fact".
To be clear, I think these are both cohesive positions for which cases can be made in different situations. But they are clearly distinct - that's not just me, advocates on both sides view them as distinct positions
Matt Pennington (3/10/2007)
Hence we start with a fundamental goal, to reduce discrimination and we introduce a discrimanatory policy because we believe that the *net* effect will be to reduce discrimination on balance in the short term and in total in the long term.
Do we have any evidence that positive discrimination reduces discrimination in the long term? I don't think I've ever heard a coherent socialist argue that (obviously, when everything is fixed, discrimination will just fall away like a scab - but I've never heard a socialist claim that we can _directly_ reduce discrimination via positive discrimination). The point is always "equality of fact".
I think you're using discrimination in two senses - i.e. unfair discrimination in the laws of the state (positive/negative) and discrimination from members of the public. Liberals see these as distinct. If the state passes laws about miscegnation, a liberal wants an explanation of why it is that these laws are necessary and would be inclined to oppose laws that unfairly discriminate. Socialists are a bit more inclined to see legal discrimination as an engineering tool and social discrimination as a problem to be fixed with careful engineering (so they aren't opposed to discrimination anymore than a state is opposed to force).
Above, I'm talking about 'discrimination in the law' not 'discrimination in the body public'. I think there's a big difference between anti-miscegnation laws and you deciding that you don't fancy black women.
Matt Pennington (3/10/2007)
I don't see any reason why lobby groups should stop at 'equality' when they can push for more for their consitituency. You don't. I do. You believe that lobby groups are darwinian memes carving up the political landscape trying to tear the guts out of their competitors and I believe they're bodies composed of principled people seeking to improve society according to their own views.
The distinction here is that you see these as contradictory views - either we are the products of our genes/memes or we have principles - I don't see them as the least bit contradictory. You're the one arguing that genes/memes makes nature red in tooth and claw (selfish genes means that people must be selfish - I think that people sometimes aren't selfish therefore this selfish gene theory is a load of cock) - not me.
Are you really saying that we should trust in lobby groups to regulate themselves and know when to stop?
"bodies composed of principled people seeking to improve society according to their own views". Sounds like a government to me (only a democratic government has a mandate from the general public, rather than having no elected mandate and representing only one section).
Matt Pennington (3/10/2007)
So long as 'feminism' is viewed as _the_ political movement for 'removing gender prejudice' we're never going to have 'equality' because there's always going to be uneven advocacy. I find the suggestion that we can argue the case for the necessity of a feminist approach in the West by making reference to different belief systems within the West (which the adherents also view as feminist - http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/) a tad obnoxious. I'm not sure I understand what you are saying.
Sorry - I wrote out that post, then it got deleted, then I rewrote it, but I missed out some of the quotes.
The first point is just a repetition of "Feminism" is not a synonym for "removing gender prejudice" - it makes no reference to removing male gender prejudices (in fact, I think it's pretty reasonable to say that Feminism has done more to create, nourish and bolster those prejudices than any other movement). If you want to advocate "removing gender prejudice", fine, go ahead - but let's not try to pretend that that's what Feminism is (any more than we can reasonably distinguish communism as "removing political tyranny" - I'm sure it's a statement of intent that communists would have agreed with, but I don't it describes the core beliefs, let alone how things work out on the ground).
The second point was in reply to one of Sarah's points:
Matt Pennington (3/10/2007)
But looking at the US, freedoms won can also be lost (I'm talking about abortion rights, contraception, the right to be considered as a human rather than as a potential baby machine), so we need to maintain our vigilence and make sure we dont lose our freedoms.
Defining feminism as opposed to abortion rights and contraception (the third point is just pejorative - although it could probably be reworded into something that someone might agree with) rejects the right FeministMormonHousewives to define themselves as feminists and I don't see any logical reason to support that any more than the suggestion that Christians can't be feminists just because some people see the two as opposed. They fulfil the definition that you and wikipedia provide, they just have different beliefs about what constitutes a right and what equality means.
Point being, if you want to support access to abortion and contraception, there's no (non-rhetorical) point expressing that by saying "I'm a feminist" rather than saying "I support access to abortion and contraception" (or some shorter synonym) - anymore than saying "I'm a good person" (obviously, if you believe those to be the things which good people _must_ believe in, it's an meaningful and inclusive statement - just not to anyone else).
Matt Pennington (3/10/2007)
I think the whole notion of "country" exists to allow people to comfort themselves about the fact that all the awful things going on in the world only happen to people who live in other countries.
Politics, geography and history are all bunk?
Matt Pennington (3/10/2007)
Last time I checked, I wasn't advocating that britain became a woman-only state so I'm afraid I don't find your analogy valid.
You chucked in genital mutilation in a discussion about Western feminism. You can, if you want, decide that 'Feminism' is a world movement - but just look up Islamic or Chinese (?) Feminism and see if they bear much resemblance. People in the West have a tendency to declare everything to be universal or international as if it's just another synonym for 'good/modern'.
I think it's a bit disgusting when repulsion for foreign cultural practices/historical tragedies occuring to someone else is used to manufacture capital for local political advantage. I don't see anything particularly feminist about opposing female circumcision any more than opposing interpretation of the burka as tafid (as supported by Islamic feminists). In many groups which practice female circumcision, it's performed by women at the behest of their daughters - if Feminism means opposing their beliefs for the greater good clear only to educated white people, then I don't see how it differs from colonialism (except insofar as colonialism is a useful word).
Marios
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