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Saturday, January 19, 2013

Raw Sewage and Gender Equality

I've been enjoying discussions on a wide range of topics with my 16-year-old daughter.  I've probably poisoned her ability to ever be an unthinking person of the Left.  Sure, she goes to a California high school and is surrounded by Leftists (even though it's a private school) and as a result she still leans towards various ideologies like catastrophic global warmenism, but I've sown enough of a seed of doubt in such topics that she'll never be able to buy it hook, line, and sinker and will be easily able to reject it one day.  She has developed an impossible to completely suppress healthy skepticism of most topics.

Lately, she's been studying various gender and racial topics and she's been suffering from some cognitive dissonance. Things like, "there should be full gender equality but if they bring back the military draft, women shouldn't get drafted."  She knows that there's something not quite right about that statement, but she just can't bring herself to buy into the concept that men and women are different.  Yet.

Our drains backed up this morning.  I'm guessing that in this situation, a male deals with the drains and the associative disgusting raw sewage at least 95% of the time.  I mopped up the pools of backed up water, got the powered drain snake out, ran it through various clean outs, and cleared the blockages (roots of course, what else?).  As I was snaking the drains my daughter was getting ready to go shopping.  I called out, "You remember that discussion we were having about gender equality the other day?  As long as it's always guys who deal with the disgusting stuff like this, the concept of complete gender equality is nothing more than a giant load of stinking BS, much like I'm finding in these drains!"

She just smiled and walked out the door, but I think the point got through.

9 comments:

erp said...

Smart girl. Why should she settle for equality when we've always been the superior sex.

Heavy lifting is for those with the larger muscle mass.

Hey Skipper said...

... there should be full gender equality ...

Equality of what, exactly; opportunity, or outcome?

If the former, then helllloooo parity errors. The latter, welcome to your re-education camp.

Bret said...

The problem as far as the big picture is concerned, it's too complicated to fit in the neat boxes of "equality of opportunity" vs. "equality of outcome".

A woman and a man are hired by the same company to perform the same tasks. The woman and the man have identical educational and experience backgrounds. Should the company offer them the identical starting salary?

If so, would that be equality of opportunity?

Because then, the man goes home and cleans out the drains and the woman goes shopping. Still equality of opportunity?

Because then, the woman gets pregnant and starts working less, then gives birth, takes extended maternity leave and when she comes back, works even less. The man keeps working very full time. Still equality of opportunity?

Because then, the woman leaves the man, gets full custody of the children and a large alimony payment. Still equality of opportunity?

I think that equality of opportunity is a wonderful concept if you're in a preferred group and you can pick and choose which things you want to be equal and which things you want to be preferred. However, from any sort of objective viewpoint, if you look at the whole picture, there's no such thing.

Anonymous said...

Heh, erp. My daughter thinks the proper order of gender relations is "boys have to do boy stuff but I can do girl stuff *or* boy stuff".

erp said...

Another smart girl! Too bad she'll find that boys do do girl stuff and it ain't pretty.

Hey Skipper said...

The problem as far as the big picture is concerned, it's too complicated to fit in the neat boxes of "equality of opportunity" vs. "equality of outcome"

Admittedly, I was thinking of opportunity v. outcome in the most simplistic possible way; i.e., removing de jure impediments.

Which, as far as matters, has already happened. Moreover, society has pretty much taken the notion fully on board. So, what remains "unequal" is either the residue of custom, or the outcome of preference. Either way, further "improvement" imposed upon us by our intellectual "betters" is either pointless, or worse. (Scare quotes around "betters" because if they were smart enough to take this on board — Amanda Marcotte, for just one particularly obnoxious example — they would find something else to do. They aren't and haven't. Therefore, are in fact worsers. QED.

A woman and a man are hired by the same company to perform the same tasks. The woman and the man have identical educational and experience backgrounds. Should the company offer them the identical starting salary?

Funny you should ask.

At the link, there is angsting about an at least plausible study that concludes there is a pervasive and unconscious bias on university campuses that favors male science students over their female counterparts. The result is fewer women in scientific professions. And as a recent Sunday Review article pointed out, it’s not just in science where women are underrepresented, electrical engineering, a huge growth industry, is dominated by men.

The study notes that both men and women (apparently) discriminate against female applicants.

Okay, take that as given. None of the links even touches on the possibility of proxy merit-linked discrimination. That is, all of the people making hiring decisions have experience with those already employed in technical fields. It may well be based upon their experience, for all manner of reasons, they would rather hire a male than a female. And every one of those reasons could be merit based.

So, to rephrase the question your daughter should be asking just a little: "Should the company be forced to offer them the identical salary?"

Because then, the man goes home and cleans out the drains and the woman goes shopping. Still equality of opportunity?

Reminds me of this, a University of Michigan "study" proving that men don't do their share of housework.

They got to that conclusion by excluding every task men do that women don't, won't, or can't. Studies like this, which are so typical of the collectivist social "sciences", conclusively demonstrate (I'm going all meta here) all the forms of collectivism — in this case, feminism — are religions, and all their claims should be viewed in that light.

About that "… or can't". It is uncomfortable to say, but it bears saying nonetheless. There are two things in life that women can do that men can't, and one of them isn't essential.

The list of things that women can't do could go on for pages. Add won't do, and the list turns into a book.

Now let's revisit that whole "equality" thing.

Anonymous said...


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erp said...

This question of women in math and science hits home. In my youth, we weren't allowed in and in fact, I was insulted and ridiculed and asked to withdraw from a math class in high school.

That changed when I managed to get the highest mark on the Regents exam. I still couldn't get a job as anything other than as a high school teacher or a human computer doing actuarial statistics (before computers) which I declined opting for marriage and children.

This fall, my granddaughter who as a high school sophomore scored in the 99th percentile on the PSAT's has been beseiged by emails from major colleges and universities begging her to consider them.

At this point, she's leaning toward a career in the performing arts and that's fine with her family.

Let's all follow our own inclinations. We need to stop chopping and dicing ourselves into smaller and smaller sections.

Q. What difference does it make what percentage of engineers or any other profession are women or black or gay or whatever other designation the left can dream up?

A. Absolutelty none.

Hey Skipper said...

My son is studying Electrical Engineering. He took a picture of the department office. In it there was a rack with back issues of two magazines: Minority Engineer, and Woman Engineer.

In his classes, there are, despite strenuous recruitment to the contrary, no women or minorities.

Unless Asians count, which, being minorities, they should, but don't.