How Feminism Hurts Men

[SilentFutility]

For the sake of argument, pretend every STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) worker gets payed exactly the same, and every pre-college teacher gets payed the same (as every other pre-college teacher). If we looked at STEM employed women, they would get payed the same as STEM employed men, and teacher employed women would get payed the same as teaching employed men.

However, STEM jobs pays good salaries and teaching pays like crap. STEM  jobs tend to be dominated by men (roughly 80% men in some specialties) and women are over-represented in pre-college teaching. So if we look at men vs women based only on age group (which, based on what you posted, is what the Swedish study did) then men would out earn women, even if everything else were the same, because men make up a larger percentage of well payed STEM workers and a lower percentage of low payed teachers then women do.

How do you propose making STEM subjects more attractive to women?  I'd love to see more women in my profession but it's a total sausagefest out here.

Same here. I'm a final year student and my course has a single-digit number of women compared to hundreds of men.
However, film studies et al are 80:20 girls to boys or thereabouts.

This is despite masses of money and large amounts of time being devoted to "women in engineering" grants, advertisements, lectures, funds, talks etc.

In the UK more girls to to university than boys, however the aforementioned distribution across subjects makes far more of these girls have trouble finding unemployment than the male students. Of all the female students that I personally know who graduated last year, the majority did degrees with limited application in the real world (and all of them reported being on courses with a huge female to male bias) and are now working admin jobs and other jobs that do not require a university education. Many male graduates are having to do the same, however I cannot for the life of me see it as unfair that someone who did an easy course like this is getting paid less than someone who did something really difficult and gained skills which are in demand, and regardless of fairness, that is how the economy works: employers will only pay people for skills they need, and watching movies is unfortunately not usually one of them. This then begs the question: is the overall pay gap indicative of women being paid less for the same work, or is it indicative of women not taking up lucrative careers? Perhaps both?

Perhaps more could be done to encourage women to take up these subjects, but on the other hand, it strikes me that on average, fewer women are interested in them in general. I'm sure there are environmental influences on this, but perhaps it is worth considering that women are less predisposed to find subjects like this interesting on average?

How do you propose making STEM subjects more attractive to women? I'd love to see more women in my profession but it's a total sausagefest out here.

Step one would be a cultural shift where people don't tell their daughters "don't touch that, it's dangerous, why don't you play with dolls instead?"

It's ridiculous how many parents treat their daughters like vulnerable little dolls and their sons like indestructable machines.

But good luck with that. It's going to take a long time, especially when grandparents get involved. (I should know <<)

Not forcing your children to play how you feel they should play, and not forcing interests on them, and letting them develop their own is definitely something every parent should be trying to do. I fully agree that effort should be made not to force children into gender roles by essentially saying "you shouldn't like machines and cars, you're a girl" etc. However, I can't help but think that even without being forced not to want to do STEM subjects, a majority of girls simply don't want to do them anyway.

[Poison Tree]

For the sake of argument, pretend every STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) worker gets payed exactly the same, and every pre-college teacher gets payed the same (as every other pre-college teacher). If we looked at STEM employed women, they would get payed the same as STEM employed men, and teacher employed women would get payed the same as teaching employed men.

However, STEM jobs pays good salaries and teaching pays like crap. STEM  jobs tend to be dominated by men (roughly 80% men in some specialties) and women are over-represented in pre-college teaching. So if we look at men vs women based only on age group (which, based on what you posted, is what the Swedish study did) then men would out earn women, even if everything else were the same, because men make up a larger percentage of well payed STEM workers and a lower percentage of low payed teachers then women do.

How do you propose making STEM subjects more attractive to women?  I'd love to see more women in my profession but it's a total sausagefest out here.

Same here. I'm a final year student and my course has a single-digit number of women compared to hundreds of men.
Likewise, film studies et al are 80:20 girls to boys or thereabouts.

This is despite masses of money and large amounts of time being devoted to "women in engineering" grants, advertisements, lectures, funds, talks etc.

Perhaps more could be done to encourage women to take up these subjects, but on the other hand, it strikes me that on average, fewer women are interested in them in general. I'm sure there are environmental influences on this, but perhaps it is worth considering that women are less predisposed to find subjects like this interesting on average?

I'm fully open to the possibility that women and men will never be interested in every job at an equal rate. To slightly modify a Michael Shermer quote, "A variance from perfect demographic symmetry does not necessarily correspond to [sexist] attitudes. It just means that the world is not perfectly divided up according to population demographics, and people have different interests and causes"

I don't think the male/female ratio we have now is ideal, but would have no idea what ratio to aim for, which obviously makes identifying success difficult. I certainly don't think we should just slap a 50/50 (or 40/60 or any) quota system forcing a certain percentage of STEM jobs/students to be female.

I think Plu is correct that it is going to be a slow cultural shift. But it shouldn't be one that simply forces more women into "men's work".  As drunkenshoe has mentioned, success for men and women are defined differently: Men need to make money and hold titles and women need to raise a family--according to society. I think there has been more of a focus (probably still not enough of one, though) on the second half of that then on the first. I'd say that a stay-at-home-dad is judged more negatively then a working-mother is. I know guys who would like to spend more time with their children but feel like they can't because they need to "be the man of the house" or "wear the pants in the family". And women who would like to stay in the workforce feel like they need to drop out to raise the kid. If men felt that they were allowed to raise their kids, not only would the ones of them who want to do that be happier, but it would create more room in the workplace for women--working mothers or not. (There is a particularly reactionary minded couple I knew where the wife quit her job because "women raise the children" even when her husband was unemployed  #-o )

Brandon Marshall actually mentioned something relevant here.

"Look at it from this standpoint," Marshall said. "Take a little boy and a little girl. A little boy falls down and the first thing we say as parents is 'Get up, shake it off. You'll be OK. Don't cry.' A little girl falls down, what do we say? 'It's going to be OK.' We validate their feelings. So right there from that moment, we're teaching our men to mask their feelings, to not show their emotions.

From an early age society is telling girls that they should be "soft" and boys that they need to be "tough". We shouldn't be surprised that nurturing jobs--like early age teaching--tend to attract people who are naturally, and have then been allowed to be, "soft"; nor that hyper-competitive--and often very well compensated--jobs are taken by people who have constantly been told about how tough they are/need to be.

I don't know how to change that (maybe force boys to listen to cat's in the cradle while girls hear eye of the tiger), except to keep up the slow job of convincing people that they each, regardless of  their gender, should be able to define success for themselves and (even more difficult) that they shouldn't judge a second person as a failure based on the first person's definition.

[stromboli]

As a stay at home dad, I guess I'm on the cutting edge of.......whatever.

Insanity?  :-D

[AllPurposeAtheist]

I never thought women were insane except for trading a little sex for passing a 10 lb blob of bone and guts through between their legs..  Now THAT'S nuts! :shock:

[Plu]

However, I can't help but think that even without being forced not to want to do STEM subjects, a majority of girls simply don't want to do them anyway.

I don't consider that a problem, really. We should let people do what they want without obstructing them on cultural or social or gender grounds. If the outcome is that girls don't like STEM subjects... great, that's their own choice. Not someone else's.

[Aletheia]

I'm tempted to comment, but this discussion has went in multiple directions at once.

I guess I'll just have to give my own perspective on the issue - it doesn't matter to me what the gender of the person who walks through the door is; no more than it matters what color their skin happens to be. The only thing that matters when a person (male or female) comes in to apply for a job is are they capable to do the job? Once they are hired, how do they compare against the backdrop of the other employees?

All too often I have seen the issue of gender come up to cloud the issue. I've seen women who were extremely lazy and incompetent rise in rank because they were more than eager to use the "feminist" card to cause chaos with herself being elevated so they could save politically correct face. I've also seen decent, hardworking, and often brilliant women overlooked because their employers happen to notice she had boobs.

The idea that forcing others to accept a person by bringing in one characteristic about that person probably isn't the best way to go. At work, a person's best attribute isn't their genitals or the color of their skin - it's their work ethic, their resilience, and how they navigate the work environment.

You want women to be accepted as equals in society? Stop bringing so much attention to the fact they are female. Let them be judged on their merits has a human being. Let the lazy and incompetent rightfully fall to the side and let the hardworking and skilled rightfully earn their place - gender be damned. Furthermore, you want to make things more equal - give men equal rights to paternity leave so that employers will have no idea which is more likely -- paternity leave or maternity leave. Then these subtle differences everyone is so fixated on will become non-issues.

[Hakurei Reimu]

I'm really sick of digging up thesis', research articles nobody reads. So let me say it very simple. The fact that Radical feminism exists in US or in Norther Europe, doesn't change a bigger scale fact that world needs feminism.

Yes. I agree. The world does need feminism. Just not the radicals.

As long as the below report is the norm, anyone with a propaganda of 'feminism is about to become male chauvinism' can fuck off.

Let me point out the obvious: you can be a feminist in the classical sense, yet think that the current feminist movement is about to turn toxic. It is precisely because the current movement is turning toxic in the US that may harm the feminist cause as a whole, by inciting a backlash against the ideals that we are actually after, as those in power start to see the radicals (and thus all feminists) as self-entitled whiners. It also tends to distance those who might be one's allies.

In short, radical feminists who screech 'YOU PATRIARCHAL ASSHOLE!' against any criticism are people serving no one, even other feminists.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The problem with feminism is that the term means too much, and that feminists refuse to deal with their radicals.

Christians are honest enough to engage in the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.  Feminists have taken it a step further and simply say "Not All Feminists Are Like That."  So is it fair or unfair to take a radical as an example of the group?  Christians say "no" while Feminists say "well, NAFALT."

They either need to embrace or reject the radicals, but they're trying to have it both ways and that can't be done.

I often say "because I believe in equality, I won't call myself a feminist."  I have a friend who says "because I believe in equality, I will call myself a feminist."  Which of us is right?

[Hakurei Reimu]

Nobody wants to talk about domestic violence against women, army rape issue with women, the sexualising of females from an early age, issues with prostitution, issues with work, wages, motherhood; Human Rights.

Including the radical feminists themselves, it seems. When was the last time you heard the likes of Rebecca Watson talk about that stuff in anything approaching a mature manner? She instead comes off as a professional victim, who uses the fact that she is harassed online to stroke her ego.

[Hakurei Reimu]

I'm sure she is not the only one. And that's surprising to you? Anyone who has to put up with typical male knee jerk reactions in every level with the minimum criticism from 'man hating cunt' to 'were you gang raped' when brought up simple documented issues sooner or later develops an unhealthy response.

Really, if you are familiar with the subject you should know the automatic male response to this in every medium. It's unavoidable. It's hostile and at times it's impossible to deal with. But if it is your first reflex to pull out some bad defence mechanism that has occurred as a result of beaten down by aggressive insult, you are either a hypocrite or don't know-care about what's going on... whichever and just chatting out of boredom.

Here, I am not talking about responsible adults addressing serious social problems in the real world connected to gender, both here and around the world. I am talking about people who act like whiny children in response to sincere criticism, like Rebecca Watson, PZ Myers and their ilk.

I would take the radical feminist rhetoric more seriously if Carrie Poppy (echoed by PZ Myers) didn't accuse Michael Shermer of rape based completely on the testimony of an unnamed and possibly nonexistent third party, instead of doing what a responsible person faced with damning evidence of such a crime and reporting it to the police, and if FTB didn't turn into an echo chamber of calls to bring Shermer down as if he had already been tried and convicted of rape. I would take their rhetoric more seriously if Rebecca Watson didn't spin an elevator incident, in which she —by her own account— was approached by someone who was courteously asking for a coffee with her, into a broad-sweeping accusation that atheist conventions are havens for sexual harassment. I would take Anita Sarkeesian more seriously with her rhetoric about how computer games are objectifying women had she addressed in her "extensive research" how sexism in video games promotes sexism in real life when violence in video games fails to do so for violent crime, and if playing computer games didn't render one's genitalia irrelevant.

These people are not addressing serious social issues found in the real world. These people are making shit up. No movement will ever be served by people who make shit up.

Feminism is the radical notion that women are people. I would like to propose an equally radical corollary: that women can be idiots, assholes, and outright liars.

[SilentFutility]

However, I can't help but think that even without being forced not to want to do STEM subjects, a majority of girls simply don't want to do them anyway.

I don't consider that a problem, really. We should let people do what they want without obstructing them on cultural or social or gender grounds. If the outcome is that girls don't like STEM subjects... great, that's their own choice. Not someone else's.

Of course it isn't a problem. The point I'm trying to make is that as a result of this, average pay for both genders absolutely will be different and the fact that it is isn't necessarily a problem, although it is very often touted as one.

The real issue is a woman getting paid less for the same work based solely on her being female which clearly isn't acceptable.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Really, Jason? You compared religious groups to radical feminist groups?

Yes.  And ... ?

I guess you want examples outside of religion that show the use of the  "No True Scotsman" fallacy.  Is that what you need?

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Let's break it down to simple terms.. Religion seeks total and utter dominance over nearly every aspect of our lives based on ancient, outdated texts they claim came straight from some invisible man in the sky.

Yeah, that's exactly the same as women wanting fair and equal treatment under law that most men enjoy..

Of course! How can you not see the similarities Shoezie? :roll: :)

[AllPurposeAtheist]

The squeaky wheel gets the grease. In the case of most of our hideous media the most outrageously stupid gets the most attention.
I'm not very good at it, but I do try to keep things on simple to understand terms because I tend to get lost in big jumbles of debates and words where people toss out all kinds of conflicting ideas and I think most people are kind of that way. The problem it seems is that with so many simplistic ideas tossed at so many simplistic minds the dumb shit seems to stick. :-/

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Let's break it down to simple terms.. Religion seeks total and utter dominance over nearly every aspect of our lives based on ancient, outdated texts they claim came straight from some invisible man in the sky.

Yeah, that's exactly the same as women wanting fair and equal treatment under law that most men enjoy..

Of course! How can you not see the similarities Shoezie? :roll: :)

*Holds her fists up. Because I am an eeviiiil man-hating-cunt-witch-bitch with an agenda to enssslave all of the men on this earth! Buuuwhahahaaa!  

Well we KNEW that.. All your posts are man hating, evil, cunt-witch-bitch posts... All except the ones where you use your eloquent words GLORIFYING men in your own humble manner.