ballzac
-
Content count
4,109 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
23
Posts posted by ballzac
-
-
Maybe every time a new woman checks out the site she sees 'I hate women' on the front page and thinks 'fuck these cunts'
Or it could be just another example of patriarchal oppression subjugating the female demographic. Think about it. We have a patriarch who has handpicked a band of male mods. There would be more women on here, but we've tricked them into spending their time making sandwiches for the male members. It has nothing to do with the different choices made by individuals.
Oh dear. I blame you for bringing up that thread, chilli
I will shut up now. 
-
3
-
-
I find it interesting that the rise of life forms involves a reduction or reversal of entropy. It's been lurking and threatening to derail the second law of thermodynamics for nearly 150 years now.
Not at all. The second law of thermodynamics says that entropy never decreases in an isolated system. The Earth is not an isolated system, nor is the environment that life emerged in.
Imagine a simple example of a decrease in entropy: A box that contains air that is decreasing in temperature. We call this box a refrigerator. The way we make it work is to plug it into a power source (a low entropy system such as a battery). The compressor reduces the entropy inside the box, but increases the entropy of the system of a whole by turning the potential energy of the battery into heat in the coils at the back of the refrigerator. As a whole, the entropy of the isolated system of fridge, battery, and surrounding air is increasing, but the entropy of the air inside the fridge is decreasing (which is fine because it's not isolated).
-
where tha girls at??
The title isn't exactly gender neutral, which might have put some off, but then again there must be some girls here who think of their friends' girlfriends/wives
. I've always suspected that the main reason my girlfriend prefers it when I shave. Feeling facial hair down there must break the illusion 
Plus, I've seen her porn collection 
-
2
-
-
read the article the rest of youse and make your own decision
In fact, read as much as you can on the issue. Read the report that was prepared for the U.S. Federal Government in in 2009 that collated the results of 53 peer-reviewed economics papers and found that about 5 percent of the gap was unaccounted for in the controls typically used.
Although additional research in this area is clearly needed, this study leads to the unambiguous
conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a
multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify
corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be
almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers.
http://www.consad.co...al%20Report.pdf
and be aware that even though this report was completed almost four years ago, just a week before he was sworn in, Obama continues to use the 77 cents statistic in his propaganda aimed at appeasing a society that has been influenced by a certain dogmatic movement.
Read this article published in the national review, because it is a great summary of this issue and how dogmatic the presidential candidates chose to be in addressing this issue in order not to lose votes:
-
My main point is that discrimination has not been proven. You can say that women earn 77% of what men do, and say "ha, the other 23% is discrimination, there's your proof". But then a paper will come out that shows that some of this gap shrinks when you control for a certain factor. And then people say, "ha, so there's 12% that is discrimination". But wait, another paper comes out that controls for something else, and it turns out that only 8% is left, and people will say, "ha, there's your discrimination". This has been going on for a long time, and is basically identical to the God of the gaps argument which, if anyone is unfamiliar with it, is when a person claim that we can't explain a certain physical phenomenon, therefore God must have done it. But then when that phenomenon is explained with science, the apologist says "well, here's this other thing we can't explain, God must have done it". In the words of Neil deGrasse Tyson:
If that’s how you want to invoke your evidence for God, then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on - so just be ready for that to happen, if that’s how you want to come at the problem.
So, basically, your discrimination is an ever-receding pocket of economic ignorance. Yet today the point is really moot anyway, because there are plenty of peer-reviewed papers today, the findings of which are that the gap can be eliminated completely by controlling for enough variables. If someone is claiming discrimination, then I want to see research that actually shows that some of the gap is due to discrimination, not just that they have failed to account for some amount of the gap.
i think i understood his point, and i think he understood mine, but we disagree on what constitutes a just rationale for wage differences between men and women.
I think he was referring to the fact that we can't agree on what the actual paper you quoted is about or what its findings are. Neither of us seem to be able to understand how the other can be reading the same words and getting almost opposite meanings from it.
-
1
-
-
she does it for me in the sack and it is pretty hard to think of someone else
when im with her .
There's also the fact that the actual visual experience is a large part of sex, so it's kind of pointless to close your eyes and think of someone else when you can actually open your eyes and watch your favourite person put your bits in their mouth
-
5
-
-
Its important to be with the partner your with.
In what sense do you mean "important"? Some might argue that it's more fulfilling for the individual to be 'present' in everything they do in life, including sex. As far as ethics go though, if everyone's cool with everything, then I don't see a problem with any of it.
-
1
-
-
I think fantasizing about others when you're in the throws isn't a big deal unless you are calling your parter the wrong name or telling them after the fact "oh by the way, I was thinkin about defiling your best friend's ass, what do you think about that?"
Calling out the wrong name would be awkward unless you'd agreed on roleplay beforehand, but I have no problem letting my girlfriend know who I was thinking about, if she asks. I think the only problem may be when you're getting blowjobs, or other 'favours', because your partner is putting in all the hard work and someone else is getting the credit
-
1
-
-
Interesting. I was discussing this exact topic with my girlfriend the other day. For me, it is not so much about respect. It just personally seems weird to me to think about the partner of a friend like that. It depends on who I am closer to though. If I have been friends with a guy for a while and then they meet a woman who they introduce to me, I do not even feel the slightest attraction to them, not even involuntarily. But I have had plenty of female friends who I've been attracted to, and if they meet a man and I become chummy with him, it will not bother me to still think about her sexually.
I was actually expecting this thread to be about the ethics of thinking about others when you're having sex with your partner, which I think most people do. I definitely do that, but it doesn't diminish the attraction I feel towards my girlfriend. One of our friend's in particular I've wanted to root since we met her, and thoughts of her have provided plenty of 'help' over the past few years
In fact, I have offered my services many times but she has always declined, though I did get her to show me her tits one time.ETA: They were really nice
-
Okay raketemensch. It's seems like we're almost speaking different languages and you're right that it's probably best to let the article speak for itself.
But, if there's really something I'm missing here, can someone else please explain it to me? I'm not being facetious. If I'm simply not understanding the paper or that paragraph in particular, I would really like someone to explain it to me. Maybe someone who speaks my language but has not been on my side in this thread would be good...I'm looking at you SYNeR
-
1
-
-
Fuck it. This one was too good to ignore...
However, by age 30 there remains a substantial unexplained gap: women who have continuous full-time employment, have had no children and express no desire to have them, earn about 8 log points less than equivalent men after 10 years in the labour market.
There you go, ballzac, discrimination.
It's interesting that you chose to terminate your quote at that point. What was the problem with including the full paragraph?
However, by age 30 there remains a substantial unexplained gap: women who have
continuous full-time employment, have had no children and express no desire to have them, earn
about 8 log points less than equivalent men after 10 years in the labour market. Manning and
Swaffield then investigate the role of psychological variables in explaining this, focusing on risk
attitudes, competitiveness, self-esteem, ‘other-regarding’, and career-orientation. The
psychological variables are found to explain an ‘upper-bound’ of 4.5 log points of the gender
wage gap.
...or even finishing off the section
Some of these survey-based measures of psychological factors are rather indirect.
Moreover it is not easy to find measures of psychological factors that are genuinely
predetermined or that do not change over time. It is therefore of great interest to see if alternative
methods of data collection can shed light on whether or not there are significant gender
differences in psychological factors that could explain gender pay gaps and glass ceilings.
You are quote-mining. It is so completely dishonest. You brought up this paper. I am happy to discuss the actual content of the article, but if you're going to take a sentence out of context so it can look like she's saying that discrimination accounts for a large amount of the pay gap, then how can we actually have an adult discussion. The entire paper is about the psychological factors of the women that influence their behaviour in a way that causes them to earn less than men. If anything, you're making my point for me, because I didn't even know that factors like this contributed to the pay gap. Perhaps this was another honest mistake? You seem to be making a lot of them lately.
You're also trying to muddy the waters of discussion by avoiding the facts the paper presents and trying to make it seem as if the paper is explaining that women are paid lower because of bad work-related decisions. It isn't. At all.
Am I going nuts? I can understand that we may argue about what the results of research mean, but are we really arguing about what the paper is about? It seems clear as day to me. How can we even begin to discuss the details of research like this if we can't even agree on what the paper is about?
I've already posted the conclusion in it's entirety. I don't expect many people here to bother reading the full document because of its length. I've noted that the abstract was a little vague so I wasn't going to quote it, but here it is:
In almost all European Union countries, the gender wage gap is increasing across the
wages distribution. In this lecture I briefly survey some recent studies aiming to
explain why apparently identical women and men receive such different returns and
focus especially on those incorporating psychological factors as an explanation of the
gender gap. Research areas with high potential returns to further analysis are
identified. Several examples from my own recent experimental work with Patrick
Nolen are also presented. These try to distinguish between the role of nature and
nurture in affecting behavioural differences between men and women that might lead
to gender wage gaps
And let's look at the claim analogically.
(1) Women are paid less because they don't make decisions which maximise their wage possibilities.
(2) Women are raped because they don't dress appropriately when they go out.
(3) Women are killed because they make choices that dishonour their family.
See a trend here? It's called blaming the victim, and it happens to women alllll the time
Wow. Just wow. Do you actually want me to address this 'point'?
-
I wasn't talking about Booth's paper.
But I have also posted stuff that is very specific to refute opinions held by members here. Several pages back you said that one needs to make certain assumptions in order claim that the wage gap is due to the different choices women make rather than workplace discrimination. I provided what I believe to be pretty strong evidence these assumptions need not be made. Specifically, that never married, childless women earn more than never married, childless men. (I don't see how this could be the case if women are paid less because they are women. Here is the exact data again:
GRAPH
Yet you chose to opt out of the discussion at that point rather than accept that you were wrong or provide an alternative explanation as to how this could be the case if women are paid less because of their gender
I can, of course, throw statistics back at you showing that women earn less than men, let's have a go:
GRAPH
As I've already stated, I'm dubious about the usefulness of throwing stats back and forth on the net, and I think the problem is much more complex than wage disparity.
Now you come back with "Men, on average, earn more than women" again, rather than addressing the last point.
In case you're still unclear on what I'm saying here, the data you provide is entirely consistent with point of view, but you have not shown how my data is consistent with yours.
Actually, the conversation went on to my showing some other statistics that show women earning less, along with a criticism of the claim that age, education, marriage, and children are enough to evaluate lifestyles as identical. I can think of one biggie: homosexuality. I can think of another: race. These are not factored in the study, so I'm arguing that stats aren't complex enough an explanation for the problems we're talking about. Fit the method to the problem, my friend.
Actually, pretty often I've responded with hard data to demonstrate that you can easily find stats that prove things either way.
I showed you that for every statistic you could produce showing that women have it better than men, I could present you with one "proving" the opposite.
Actually, that's the order the discussion occurred in prior to you ever posting anything about the work by Booth, and the point I was making was that your data was consistent with my position. What you did when you then started talking about Booth's discussion paper is called moving the goal posts. You never actually addressed my point that you hadn't proven your point that anyone can throw statistics up to make their point. Now you might be conceding that the original graph you posted is consistent with my position? I'm not really sure. You still haven't addressed it. Are we done with that? Or do we still disagree. I'd like you to adress my point with clarity and honesty before quote-mining a thirty page document and expecting me to address it. I'm happy to discuss this rationally, but you need to put the work in to address my points if you expect me to give you the same courtesy.
-
^just when I thought you were out of ad homs
-
What was your position again? I thought it was that (at this point) if women earn less than men it is due to lifestyle choices that women consistently make that men do not make (i.e. they deserve lower pay for making bad choices, not that they are valued differently in the workplace). If so, the data sets I've presented are definitely not consistent with your view.
It only controls for "major occupational group". It does not even count whether they are full time or part time, let alone things like whether it's day shift or night shift, and it's not clear whether a "major group" like construction would include the receptionist for a construction company or whether they would be included in the "office" group. But construction would definitely group someone doing low skilled and low danger work in with someone doing more skilled and more dangerous work. There are many other things that could be controlled for, like how long the person has been employed in the company, how many breaks they've had in their career and for how long, their educational level...
These are all things that depend on the choices one makes in life. It's not even that they are necessarily "bad choices" as you put it. It depends on what you want out of life. And considering it's mostly when women are married with kids that they earn less than men, they're also spending the majority of the household earnings. So I don't think they're bad choices at all. Choosing less stressful, less dangerous jobs for lower pay when your husband is raking in the money is not necessarily a bad choice, just a different one. But that data you posted is entirely consistent with my contention that the pay gap is not due to workplace discrimination. You say this is "definitely not consistent with (my) view". Can you explain why you say this in light of my explanation I've given...please?
Male corridors of power. Women being paid lower for the same labour. Poorer position in the labour market. etc. I believe my point is proven.
Yep, picking out a few 'buzzwords' rather than actually addressing the fact that there was no mention of any proof of discrimination in the discussion paper whatsoever. I'm hoping anyone who is following this discussion actually reads the paper, because it is about the choices women make that affect their employment opportunities. It is about a different aspect to the ones I've mostly been addressing. Namely, she is looking at the negotiation skills and competitiveness of women in the workplace, rather than what jobs women choose based on whether they want to raise children or not, which is more what I have been addressing. But there is nothing whatsoever in that article that provides any proof of discrimination in the workplace.
-
1
-
-
First you would have to convince him of his error.
If the answer is not "A", and the last couple of posts haven't convinced him that it's "B", then I'm afraid that would sway me towards "C"
-
If the answer is "B", then I hope Raketmensch apologises for calling whitewind a misogynist
Takes a while for her to get to her main point, but I think it's interesting to here this perspective coming from an African American woman.
-
You know perfectly well that racketemensch just made a mistake. This would have been a great opportunity to gently point out his error and move on with the discussion. Instead, you decide to misintepret his post as wilful obfuscation just so you can argue.
;) 
It's a somewhat plausible hypothesis. I actually had three hypotheses and decided to only address one of them.
A. deliberate misinterpretation
B. honest mistake
C. moron
I decided to go the middle ground.
-
Part of the problem is that in our culture men aren't "allowed" to be victims - or this makes them weak, useless, pathetic. Whereas, women are considered natural victims, yet somehow this isn't allowed to make them pathetic or useless (but weak, yes, and that's fine). It's all about perception.
You know perfectly well that whitewind was expressing what he sees as the typical attitude of society in general, and not expressing this view himself. This, in fact, shows that both you, whitewind, and I, are dissatisfied with these gender stereotypes. This would have been a great opportunity to acknowledge a point of agreement from which we can then discuss who is more negatively affected by these stereotypes and how they can be overcome (points we disagree on). Instead, you decide to misinterpret his post so you can just argue.
-
This thread hasn't been going anywhere for pages, it's just been you and whitewind venting frustrations.
I may have vented frustrations from time to time, but I'm more interested in having a rational discussion about the issues. That is seeming to be increasingly difficult.
Once again, I have used statistics in my posts to show the futility of throwing them around a forum discussion, not because I'm happy to use them for my own purposes, but as a response to your insistence on them. I showed you that for every statistic you could produce showing that women have it better than men, I could present you with one "proving" the opposite.
I'm aware of why you posted the those stats. It is along the line of "for every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD", which is the way lawyers describe the fact that any good attorney can find a specialist who will testify to agree with their side. But in order to make this point well, you would need to provide data that in not consistent with what I am saying. You don't seem to understand that. I even put it in bold in one of my posts, but you have not addressed it. Here it is again: both sets of data are consistent with my position, but only the set you provided is consistent with yours. This means that you completely didn't prove your point. In order to prove your point, you need to find data that is inconsistent with my position. You haven't done that.
I have already given you some reasons for the gap between wages for men and women being to do with gender. It is part of a complex of workplace discrimination that includes men holding more positions of power, sexual harassment being primarily against women in the workplace, etc. etc.
And I've asked you to provide evidence for this.
Lifestyle choices will affect your wage due to factors other than gender, too, but they don't explain why there is a gap in wages specifically demarcated along the lines of sex, one which has a well documented history of being fought against by feminists.
Actually, it is pretty clear that lifestyle choices do depend on gender, for whatever reason. Whether it's biological, or societal conditioning, women and men, on average, make different choices. If you can agree that lifestyle choices affect wage, then it's not too much of a stretch to see that gender may affect wage through lifestyle choice rather than by discrimination from employers.
You know that we have plenty of sources on wage discrimination if that's what this debate is about now. The problem I have with statistics, as I've said, is that throwing up a bar graph as a proof is way too reductive. We have posted a few graphs but no meta-analysis of these huge surveys. What about other factors in work experience?
Exactly my point. There are many other factors involved. I'm not claiming that never married childless women earn more than their male counterparts due to discrimination against men. I'm using that data to show that the 75c on the dollar figure is nonsense because you control for two factors, marriage and children, and the gap reverses. This suggests to me that it is those choices, and not discrimination, that is causing differences in the wages.
Now, I realise that when small sample sizes are used, you end up with conflicting results, and meta-analyses are required to work out what the actual results are for a larger sample. This happens which drug trials where a 12 patient study will find a drug to be no better than placebo, and a 20 patient study will find better than placebo. You can collate that data and work out what the actual efficacy of the drug is. But we're not talking about a small survey, nor have you shown me any data that conflicts with the data I provided, nor have you given any specific reasons as to why you think the data I posted may be flawed.
A good theory should agree with all data. If you cannot fit all data to the theory, then either your data is flawed, or your theory is flawed. When you're looking at raw census data, that is a pretty big sample that you're looking at, and it's difficult to see where things can go wrong, so unless you can give me a reason as to why the data does not fit your theory, then you will not convince me that your theory is accurate.
What do you mean "no meta-analysis of these huge surveys"? It's the smaller ones that need meta-analysis. Here you have a huge survey, with very clear data. There are not many controls, so you cannot conclude from the data I posted that men are paid less than women for the same work (and that is not my contention anyway). All you can conclude is that the data that says that women get paid less than men is bunk, because it changes drastically by controlling for even a couple of variable that involve choices made by women and men.
Alison Booth of ANU demonstrates that
One of the reasons I was posting very simplistic data is that it is a good starting point for a discussion, whereas deconstructing a huge research article or discussion paper is something that I didn't think anyone would bother with, so I thought post the bare minimum, and people can try to offer explanations. I find it odd that you are unwilling to address the results of a very simple survey (whose results should be accurate because of the large sample size) yet you post a very complicated discussion paper that I am then expected to address. But here goes:
"Alison Booth of ANU demonastrates that..." a small component of the gender wage gap is due to choices that women make in the marketplace that are probably not innate and are mostly due to sociological factors. That is basically the findings in a nutshell. Although there is some discussion of the possibilities of discrimination, discrimination is not one of her findings. So what is your point in posting this? Even in the bit you quoted, she put "discrimination" in quotes and said that this differential is "often interpreted as discrimination". How on earth does this article in any way support your contention that the gender wage gap is due to discrimination?
Being a discussion paper, you can't assume that everything discussed in the paper are actual findings of the original research, so the most important parts of the paper to actually work out what was found are the abstract and the conclusion. I found the abstract to be rather vague, but here is the conclusion in its entirety:
It is certainly the case that studies using survey-based psychological variables, as well as studies
using data generated from laboratory experiments, do find gender differences in competitive
behaviour and risk-taking. These could feed into explaining gender pay gaps and glass ceilings.
Moreover, the most recent experimental evidence indicates that these gender differences in
psychological variables are not necessarily innate, a finding that would be hard, if not
impossible, to show using survey-based evidence alone.
It is clear that these distinct empirical approaches – involving survey-based data on the
one hand and data from laboratory or field experiments on the other hand – can enrich our
understanding of gender differences in behavioural outcomes. Combining the insights from each
methodology, we now know that some small part of the gender pay gaps and glass ceilings may
be due to psychological differences between men and women. However these differences cannot
be considered innate. They can be shaped by the environment in which individuals are placed. 25
The title of this talk was ‘gender and competition’. While the competitive behaviour
investigated in the recent economics experiments relates at face value to the supply-side of the
labour market, it could also feed through to the demand side. Whether or not it transfers into the
largely male corridors of power and into the demand-side of the economy is a largely
unresearched area.
The insights from other disciplines about the formation of nepotistic or homosocial
preferences, gender identity and role incongruity would seem to offer labour economists a
potentially rewarding way forward. And for those who are interested in understanding how we
arrived at this point, so too do the political economy approaches as exemplified in the studies by,
inter alia, John Stuart Mill (1869), Lizzeri and Persico (2004) and Doepke and Tertilt (2008).
There remains much work to be done by labour economists in exploring the ways in which
gender plays out in the labour market.
In fact, the discussion paper is almost entirely about 'choices', or more accurately behavioural characteristics of women from different background, and how this affects their likelihood of getting higher-paying, or higher ranked, positions.
-
Anyone who likes vertical scrollers and is up for a challenge needs to check this game out. I downloaded this one (Dodonpachi daioujou) and its predecessor (Dodonpachi). I prefer the older one because it's a little easier and I can actually make through the first couple of stages without dying too many times. The second one is much, much harder, and is pretty much just suicide from about half way through the first stage.
ETA: by the way, I'm using mame on xbmc, but apparently there is a ps2 port of the game.
-
2
-
-
I don't think we can go anywhere with this discussion. You're happy to use numbers if they fit with your opinions, but reject them if they don't. You keep making claims about what I have said, but have not shown me where I have said these things when I have challenged you. You have given no verifiable justification as to why you believe the gender wage gap is due to discrimination, yet claim it's not dogma or the influence of a society that seems to take the mainstream feminist perspective as fact regardless of the actual figures.
We are talking about the gender wage gap. Statistics is basically all we have, so if stats aren't good enough for you and you're not willing to actually address them and come up with explanations that fit your position on this, then there's no point in talking further.
-
1
-
-
I'm pissed that some crazy people from random forums have become your stereotype for feminists.
If you're talking about the posts from radfemhub, then it's not fair to say that is my stereotype for feminists. I have noted that there are many feminists who have valuable contributions to add to the discussion, and there are many I can agree with on many points. Then there is the bulk who are 'mainstream' and believe they are for equality, but base this on the notion that women are perpetually behind men and need to be given a helping hand to overcome oppression. Then there are your extremists who are gender separatists. I am well aware the latter are extremists. The most interesting discussions can be had between moderate MRAs and sex-positive feminists, because they are both on the reasonable ends of two opposing views of the same system. Yet society's understanding of gender sits squarely in the middle of the feminist spectrum, and most people don't even know the MRM exists.
I played the stats game for a while to show that you can find stats on both sides of any argument, but you know as well as I do that posting "wages for men/wages for women" is essentially meaningless given that we aren't discussing the particulars of the study, and we both know how easy statistics are to manipulate or even accidentally skew. For starters you're being highly selective with the data you present, and with good reason - its hard to find statistics that show things as 'objectively' better for women. You're using things like old stats from the US to "prove" generalised points about the state of the workforce and discrimination - bit of a long bow to draw. You're not going into any depth with discussing how the study was formulated, what potential problems there are with it, when taking stats from a nation that can't even hold a fair election half the time, let alone dealing with the fact that all statistical surveys are susceptible to errors (and, it could be argued, are inherently biased based on methodology). Those easy-to-access, authoritative looking graphs and graphics are little more than visual aides, they certainly don't prove your argument (unless it is that misandry exists, in which case I agree with you).
I can, of course, throw statistics back at you showing that women earn less than men, let's have a go:
As I've already stated, I'm dubious about the usefulness of throwing stats back and forth on the net, and I think the problem is much more complex than wage disparity.
It's like de ja vu.
"Why aren't there any transitional fossils?"
"Well, here's a hundred of them that show how something that looked like a modern day cow evolved into a whale through small changes."
"But why aren't there any transitional fossils?"
Here's the thing. The conversation went something like this:
You: Men, on average, earn more than women.
Me: This is because of choices not because of discrimination.
You: This requires assumptions.
Me: If that's true, then why do never married, childless women earn more than never married, childless men?
You: Silence.
Now you come back with "Men, on average, earn more than women" again, rather than addressing the last point. Getting to the bottom of an issue isn't about posting random statistics, you need to actually address the points that the statistics show. I've done that with the type of data you are showing already, but you haven't done the same for my data. Also be aware that this is not a small-sample survey, it is census data. It's pretty difficult to have poor methodology in this case, and it's pretty clear what is being compared here. If there is a reason for it other than choices, then you should be able to come up with an alternative explanation. You refer to this as a 'study' and debate how it was formulated. It is not a study, it is data. The data is plain, and we can discuss what it means. I have given you what I believe is a reasonable explanation, but you have not even attempted to do the same. The reason I have chosen this data is because the work of collating the data has already been done. I don't think I would have the time to take the most recent Australian census data and sift through it myself to work out what the equivalent here is. But considering the overall gap in the US is higher, I think the data is pretty telling.
In case you're still unclear on what I'm saying here, the data you provide is entirely consistent with point of view, but you have not shown how my data is consistent with yours. Your post is just more cop outs. If there's something wrong with the data, be specific. Say that you think this is not real census data and that maybe Warren Farrell fabricated this data. Or say that the American Census Bureau has a biased method of collecting data. Or say that there may have been one year where wage discrimination against women disappeared and that it is data from this year that Farrell selected to put in his book. This is not just a game of who can post the most graphs that look like they show something. You're not actually offering any reasonable hypothesis that will explain the data you posted as well as mine, presumably because you can't think of any. My interpretation is consistent with both sets of data. Post a hundred graphs if you want. If they are from real data, then I will show how they are consistent with my view, or I will concede that they are not and that there must be a problem with my interpretation. Likewise, I would like to see you show how the U.S. census data is consistent with your position, and if you don't want to do that, then don't complain when I get bored and start posting youtube videos of protests the week that they happen.
Now, I am well aware that the data I have shown does not control for many variables. I intentionally posted this to avoid overcomplicating things. This comparison makes it pretty clear that choices, specifically the choices that men and women make respectively when they are married with children as opposed to when they are not, influences wages significantly, and that plots like yours that show that overall there is a wage gap, do not actually show that any of it is due to discrimination. So why cling to the idea that it is due to discrimination. Who says it's due to discrimination? Why do so many people believe it's due to discrimination without any evidence? The 75c on a dollar thing is quoted all the time, yet that's overall. As soon as you control for whether it's night shift or day shift, it closes a bit. Then you control for whether it's full time or part time, and it closes a bit more. Then you control for actual hours worked rather than calling anything over 35 hours full time, and it closes significantly. You control for industry, it closes a bit more. You control for danger involved in the job, it closes a bit more. You control for whether the work is physically demanding, it closes a bit more. You control for whether the person has taken significantly long periods of time out of their career, and it closes more. Eventually there is little to no gap, and many analyses come out in favour of women as the higher paid for the same work. This is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact, and is either true or false. Unlike whether war can be just or whether socialism is better than libertarianism, you can actually analyse data and find out what the facts are.
There are many articles by economists that take the raw data and control for many variables. Every variable that is controlled for closes the gap more and more. Eventually, the gap comes out at roughly zero, give or take a percent or two. Economists know this, but the version society clings to is the one taught in 'gender studies' (feminist echo-chamber) courses.
Well, my first constructive point would be that you've polarised a problem about men being victims of crime into sex terms
I'm saying that's what we should not do. We should treat all victims equally. We should have campaigns that say "Violence: Australia says no", rather than "Violence against women: Australia says no".
then blamed the sex
Where have I blamed a particular sex for anything? I have been blaming dogma, ideology, and society. Again, people seem not to be able to differentiate between feminism and women. One is an ideology and a movement, the other is a gender.
the sex that is (in your opinion) less often a victim
Um, the same data that shows that men are more often perpetrators is the same data that shows that men are more often the victims. I posted the link to data provided by the Federal Government already in this thread. Do statistics mean nothing to you?
rather than addressed the problem that the sex being (again, in your opinion) victimised more often is also the same sex that is perpetrating the vast majority of these crimes.
Again, not my opinion. Plain fact. I think the amount of violence in society is terrible full stop. If there is some way we can analyse the fact that men are more often the perpetrators (outside the DV context) in order to prevent more of this behaviour in the future, then would be great. I have no problem with acknowledging that.
You're blaming feminism for males victimising males.
Where have I done this?
we're still rehashing old points of the argument that weren't resolved.
You keep attributing statements to me that I haven't made, and when I challenge you with hard data, you dodge it. No wonder we're going round in circles.
If your point is that misandry exists and people deny it, why not just make that point without having to "kick down" on other political movements that have some of the same essential goals?
You think that the goal of feminism is to show the world that misandry exists?
-
so you dooooo tar people with the same brush? Makes u kinda dumb right? Well either that or ignorant but they are the same thing, right?
I gave a pretty comprehensive reply to this to explain why I believe that it is sometimes reasonable to use a fairly broad brush, yet rather than actually address my points - like breaking down my racial separatist analogy - you just say it makes me dumb or ignorant. I also think I made it clear that the broad brush I am painting feminists with is graduated. That is, just because I feel that the more reasonable people in the movement should take some responsibility for some of the harms caused by the movement that they freely choose to associate with, doesn't mean that I think they are the same as the extremists. If people self-identify as nazis, then I think it's fair to paint them with the nazi brush, but this still doesn't mean that I can assume that all of these people would advocate for genocide, as you may be able to find me counter-examples. If there is something seriously wrong with that reasoning, then point me to where the reasoning is wrong rather than just calling it dumb/ignorant.
You just want an argument zac that's pretty easy to see through with ur requests for opponents and shiz all through this thread. Now THATS lame.
If by "argument", you mean "reasoned discussion with people who disagree with me" then yes! If you mean "shitfight", then that's clearly not the case because it would have been pretty easy to make that happen a long time ago, and I haven't done that. My main aim here is to educate people on aspects of gender in society that they may be unaware of, namely the issues that men face in western society, and to expose modern, first-world feminism as an ideology. I would love it if some people who started off disagreeing with me changed their minds because of the facts that I've presented, but even just to get people to think about these issues, because they are rarely discussed in our society, is a decent end result in my opinion.
ballzac is really just posting evidence of hate in society filtered for stuff specifically against men.
There is some truth in this. My points has been from the start that people deny that misandry exists. Many people do not even know what it is. So to actually show that this stuff exists at all is half my point. But the stuff I have posted that is hate-filled is almost exclusively from feminists, and not all of it is from those who identify as extremists. The protest against Dr. Farrell's talk is a pretty good example, because this is the typical attitude of mainstream feminist organisations. If you don't believe me, then print out a poster that says "men have rights too", "men's rights are human rights", or "violence against men is as wrong as violence against women" and post it on a notice board at any university. See how long it lasts before it is either ripped down or defaced with a hateful comment.
But I have also posted stuff that is very specific to refute opinions held by members here. Several pages back you said that one needs to make certain assumptions in order claim that the wage gap is due to the different choices women make rather than workplace discrimination. I provided what I believe to be pretty strong evidence these assumptions need not be made. Specifically, that never married, childless women earn more than never married, childless men. (I don't see how this could be the case if women are paid less because they are women. Here is the exact data again:
Yet you chose to opt out of the discussion at that point rather than accept that you were wrong or provide an alternative explanation as to how this could be the case if women are paid less because of their gender. Now you are happy to come back into the discussion and claim that my posts are just selected "spam". Like I said, there is some truth in that, but you can't really complain about it when you had the opportunity to actually discuss specific issues that we disagree on and chose to put your fingers in your ears like a creationist or holocaust denialist rather than actually continue with the reasoned discussion on the gender wage gap. I do think this is due to feminism. Who else is spreading misinformation about the gender wage gap? And why are so many people here and in society so willing to accept the feminist 'theory' on the gender wage gap, even to the extent that it influences policy.
until the discussion includes a perspective acknowledging that men are responsible for the invention and for most of the agency in war, murder, rape, (add whatever you want), then it isn't a serious discussion.
I think that's a worthwhile discussion too, so if you have any constructive points to make regarding this, then go ahead. But the fact that men are more often the perpetrators of violence than women are does nothing to change the fact that men are also more often the victims, that men are hard done by in society, that calling a woman a "cunt" is considered misogyny, but cutting off a man's penis is not misandry, but a joke. My point all along has been more about how society, and usually reasonable people, accept the feminist perspective without question. I'm quite happy to also criticise societies that condone war-mongering and, if there are any, murder and rape.
the fact that men are victims too is not to say that feminsm is to blame, which is at the base of these arguments.
Again, my problem is more that it is so readily accepted by society, and most notably people who are well-meaning. We could debate whether a racist society created the KKK, or whether the KKK spreads racism that otherwise might not exist. In reality, it's probably a combination of both. The same goes for feminism and society.
It's not that the feminist perspective causes men to be victims of violence, it's that the feminist perspective ignores that men can be victims at the hands of women, and also blames the victim for their gender when the perpetrator is male. You are treading near that line with your reasoning here. This would not fly with race. If 80% of the victims of violence are black, then it would be considered very, very racist to say, "oh well, most of the perpetrators are black too, so we should focus on white victims".
I do not blame holocaust denialists for the fact that six-million people were killed in the holocaust, but I will still criticise them for their belief that it didn't happen. Luckily, holocaust denialism does not have the same level of influence in our society that feminism does.
But, I do blame creationists for the fact that biology is not taught properly in many states in the US, and considering that they actually do have a fairly strong influence on society and politics in those areas, if I lived there I would probably be more actively opposed to them.
I think feminism fits somewhere in-between these two camps. Falsehoods are being spread, which I believe is inherently problematic. Conjecture, or politically useful dogma, is being taught as fact. I also believe this is inherently problematic. The fact that gender studies in universities almost exclusively focus on feminist literature and rarely involve any MRA literature is disgusting, and teaching patriarchy theory, and such, as fact is the equivalent of teaching creationism.
It's funny, because I get very similar responses when discussing drug legislation with most people. Show them hard data to prove that certain drugs are not as dangerous as the media and government claims, and they will ignore it and say that I'm being selective or what-not. I'm sure many people here have experienced that.
-
1
-
-
Sorry I'm a lot dumber than zac :(/>/>/>/>/>/>
There are three ways to interpret this. When psylo said something similar to me in another thread recently, he was being sarcastic and I interpreted it as "you're being a snob and using big words does not make your argument any stronger". That's a cop out, but I don't think this is how you are meaning it at all (the difference between the eye-rolling and sad-face emoticons is the big clue
) so I won't address it from this angle.. The second option is that you don't want this to escalate into an argument, so you try to say something that you think will make me feel like I've 'won' the discussion without actually having to concede anything. The third option is that it's an easy way out. You can blame your lack of ability to come up with decent evidence and address my points on a lack of intellect rather than a lack of validity to the claims.I think in this case it is a combination of the latter two options, so I'll address those:
Don't worry about it escalating into an argument. I may be passionate about my opinions and about requiring hard evidence in discussions, but I love these sort of discussions, and while there's a bit of frustration sometimes when opinions differ, there's no ill will from me towards anyone who's posted here. This thead is six pages long. I think I've posted several times on each page, I've debated several different members over the course of the thread, and the subject matter is quite controversial/touchy, yet the thread has managed not to degenerate and end up in bitches and gripes. I think everyone who has posted in this thread cares about equality and social justice, so really we are all on the same side. What is under discussion is how exactly to go about achieving that end, and that is where opinions differ. I think everyone is aware of this, and that is why the thread has managed to remain quite civil.
And for the last aspect. Huge cop-out, and dishonest way of dealing with it. A more honest approach would be to say something like: "I had a look around to see if I could find some evidence to counter your claims, but was unable to. I'm not convinced that it's because such evidence does not exist, because I'm not very good at searching for this sort of stuff," or something like that. Of course most of us just don't say anything and pretend it will go away when we can't find evidence to refute an opposing opinion
If you really want to be as smart as me, you need to work hard at it. Your next assignment is to deconstruct a seven word sentence and analyse it using about 500 words
I apologise I deleted the post I apologise I should always have left it at your smarter than me I do apologise.
As above.
Your not a misogynist your a masculinist ;)
I'm not a big fan of most labels like this. As soon as you identify with a movement, you carry a lot of the baggage, just like if you call yourself a feminist, you need to take some responsibility for what the movement we call feminism actually does, and that includes the bad things. One of the problems is that if movements don't exist in a coordinated way, not much gets done because separate people with differing, but overlapping, opinions do not have political clout. I think this is the reason that the atheist and rationalist movements have taken so long to get off the ground, because there isn't a leader and a group of people who just blindly agree.
I have a lot of respect for some MRAs (I do not know anyone who self-identifies as a masculinist, but I'll assume for the sake of this discussion that they're pretty much the same thing). Girlwriteswhat would be one example, and I would again direct you to some of her videos on page 1 if you haven't already looked at them. She is pretty extreme, but her videos are very factual, and there are some people who are less anti-feminist who I prefer to listen to because I know they will have a more balanced opinion. Many of these people, while they identify as MRAs, are actually in strong agreement on many points with a lot of sex-positive feminists and actually work together with them, at least in theory and in attacking extremists. One example is a guy on youtube known as YesIamJames. He identifies as an MRA, but unlike many MRAs, he is willing to attack other MRAs when they use bad arguments or are basing their arguments on bigotry. He also is quite happy to note when a feminist makes a good, and reasonable point.
There are others who have a lot of factual information, but also some suspect stuff. Manwomanmyth is a youtuber who is along these lines. His videos are good to watch, but there is some stuff he has claimed that sounds like it possibly belongs in the same basket as the moon-landing, jfk, and 9/11 conspiracy theories. Most notably, he claims that feminism is conspiracy by government to get women into the workforce to increase productivity and taxes paid (or something along those lines) and I have been unable to find any evidence that these aspects are true. But, he has very comprehensive videos where he interviews many relevant people and also shows clips from the media and offers some insights into them, and I find these informative. Other people associated with the movement are simply libertarians, and they want to see things like affirmative action abolished for libertarian reasons. I respect the libertarian position immensely, and I think most libertarians have their hearts in the right place, even though I disagree strongly with them when it comes to things like health-care, but that's a whole other conversation. Then there are your MRAs who are conservatives. They oppose feminism not because they want equal opportunity, but because they want to return to 'traditional' gender roles. This is the aspect of the men's rights movement that turn me off the most.
There is plenty of misogyny within the men's rights movement (though not nearly as much as what most feminists would have you believe), along with the rational stuff like what I have been promoting in this thread, and I am not willing to identify as an MRA, though I care about men's rights. I would be more inclined to describe myself as an egalitarian in this context, because I care about equality for everyone, but even that is a loaded notion because it depends on whether you are talking about equality of opportunity, or equality of outcome, and this is where a lot of confusion arises, particularly with regards to things like how many women are in positions of power and how much money women earn. Another label that may be more appropriate would be humanist. I also consider myself a rationalist, and rationalism and egalitarianism are what drive my opinions on feminism, gay-rights, racism and transphobia. Out of those specific issues, my opinions on feminism are the only ones that deviate significantly from the common progressive, liberal, left-wing stance, and this is very much because I base these opinions on rationalism and evidence rather than simply following the same beliefs as other people who agree with me on the other issues. That would be dogmatism.
I do however think you tar feminists with the one brush. You have to give me that one.
And I guess it's really what your idea of feminism is.
I think I've covered this pretty comprehensively many times in this thread already, but I'll summarise again for you. I believe that if you align yourself with a particular ideology, then you have to take some responsibility for the movement as a whole, and if the movement as a whole is causing problems, then you need to be prepared to defend why you align yourself with that movement. So yes, I am quite happy to give you that one. But I am also willing to note when people who identify as a feminist have good points to make, and I am always willing to listen to what an individual has to say, regardless of what they call themselves. This includes listening to members of the KKK who claim that they are not racist and that they just want it to be acceptable for white people to be proud of their race the same way it is acceptable for black people to be. Haven't found one yet who hasn't slipped up and inadvertantly exposed themselves as a very clear racist though. The same is not true of all feminists I have heard speak, but I am nonetheless very hesitant to accept much of the terminology and the interpretations of some of the theory, most notably the working definitions of patriarchy that are used as a basis for evaluating the problems that relate to gender in our society. Believe it or not, there was a racial separatist who was on a Louis Theroux documentary who was not a bigot by any reasonable definition, and who was well-meaning and had a lot of interesting things to say. Theroux said something like, "If he's a racist, he's not like any racist I've ever met". I'll see if I can find a clip of it later and post it if I do. This shows that not all racial separatists are bad people, and some of them can have valuable insights to add to the discussion on race, but if you ask me what I think of racial separatists as a group, I will still tell you that I think it's horrible, and if people here were supporting it, I would tell them what I think about that. I have already mentioned some self-identified feminists who I have heard say things that I agree with. This doesn't mean that I have to agree with everything they say, but I can listen to them and agree where I think they are right and disagree where I think they are wrong. But the main issue I have is not with feminism, it is with the fact that the influence of feminism is so accepted by the progressive people in our society without question. I have a problem with lots of movements, but I'm not talking about them because they do not have the same effect on so many well meaning people. Racial separatist groups would be one good example. Very few people who care about animal rights, gay rights, trans rights and other human rights would turn out to be racial separatists, but plenty are feminists. I think these are the people who care about human rights, and whose attention needs to be brought to the facts that I have been presenting throughout this thread.
-
2
-
Do you think of your friends/friends girls/wifes when having sex with your partner or masturbating?
in Creativity, Spirituality & Philosophy
Posted
It's possibly a component, but the ratio seems very different at actual events.
I dunno. I've never done a head-count. Dare I say knitting forums?