orpheus wrote:

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:Dude hatred amongst feminists is no more prevalent than baby eating amongst atheists.

That's literally true? Wow!

In about the same way that ebola isn't any more common than spontaneously transforming into a unicorn, sure.

tolman wrote:
But even if someone was, it simply doesn't follow that 'equal pay for equal work' necessitates 'unequal pay for unequal work'.

Nothing quite like an example to see if your proposition is sound.

Let's apply both of these principles together and if we can do it without logical contradiction. Note political contradiction is of course possible and quite common even when logical contradiction exists.

Let's select an event like womens netball and apply the principle of equal reward for equal merit. 8 teams of women enter, compete through a knockout process culminating in finals and playoff to get a placing of first to eight based upon merit in this event. By applying the principle of equal reward for equal merit we see that no team displayed equal merit in this event because the knockout and placing ensured we could rank them all on lesser or greater merit. If there were a tie for any place we could pay equally any teams that tied, however the knockout process is constructed to ensure clear rankings. Since there are no equal first, we apply the principle of equal reward for equal merit by paying the winning women's team the most $, we pay the 2nd place less, and do the same all the way to place 8 reducing the reward as we move down the rankings. This is effectively paying/rewarding unequally for unequal merit. As long as relatively we pay more to higher placings and less to lower placings we are not violating the principle of equal pay for equal merit, which can only be supported by a principle of unequal reward for unequal merit. You will probably strawman here by arguing that its not possible to pay rewards exactly proportional to merit because we have no exact mechanism to measure this, and you would be correct, however that does not invalidate the equal reward/equal merit, unequal reward/unequal merit we are discussing.

Now let's try and overlay the principle of equal pay for unequal merit, so we look for a unequal merit scenario, say 1st and 8th place and because they are unequal (in the absence of any specified degree of inequality, let's assume any merit inequality qualifies for equal reward.

So we should now pay equal reward to all groups simply because they are unequal in merit. Since we have now removed any incentive to excel, anyone can now enter competition knowing they can get equal reward for less, little and even for no merit all.

How does the above work with the equal pay for equal merit principle? Since we are paying equal reward for unequal merit, let's try and pay equal reward for equal merit at the same time, by constructing the event to get a tie for first place. This makes no difference whatever because by being unequal everyone gets equal reward anyway.

Lets fit the model to current women's tennis, and pay everyone in the women's draw equally even when they have unequal merit, so we pay Serena Williams, the winning woman, the same as we pay the bottom woman in the draw and all the ones in between. By removing incentive to seek merit from the system, and because we have to share the reward equally among all the players, they all get very little, so the lack of incentive removes quality and audiences are no longer willing to pay money, so the system collapses.

The only way to make the two principles operate without contradiction is to create an unequal merit events, for women, for children, for disabled, for the aged and so on, and prevent anyone belonging to the top merit group – ie. Open men. But still retain the equal reward for equal merit within each protected group.
This means that in order to qualify for the group, one has to use the basis of unequal merit to select the group, based upon gender, age or disability. So for masters, over 30 years is a common line to draw, where people younger than 30 are barred. One for women, where males are barred. One for children under 18 or 19, where open competitors are barred. For disability a complex range of criteria operate within the group, however able bodied athletes are barred, but Oscar Pistorius fought successfully to be allowed to compete with able bodied athletes, but the reverse is not allowed.

If we apply the equal reward for unequal performance more broadly, in business for example, we would pay the company MD and everyone them in the company below, regardless of their merit, exactly the same. Once we start imposing boundaries on the inequality, the equal pay for equal merit starts coming back as its the only system that can be effectively implemented as it is the basis of the capitalist system, which appears to work better than the communist model.
Within the capitalist system, we allow modifications to pure merit only so that people of lesser merit have a degree of protection, and partly effective mechanisms are imposed here so the system is not exploited to the extent the economy collapses.

If we allow your principles to operate, we can only do it with political sleight of hand, and argue that a women's events produces equal merit, when in reality this is just an implementation of benevolent sexism that Glick and Fiske argue is just as bad as hostile sexism but in a different way. However they avoid examples like the tennis for the obvious reason it would undermine their principle of benevolent sexism and because the women benefitting from being protected as women will not be giving this up anytime soon.

tolman wrote:
It's perfectly possible to have a sporting competition (even a commercially funded one) where all qualifying competitors are paid the same attendance fee and competition is purely for glory [and increased personal sponsorship value].

That is true however glory is still a reward, money is not the only way to reward people, status, glory, medals, higher status etc. The model still operates the same way, Olympic medals are a measure of glory, gold being better than sliver being better than bronze. Women are allowed to win medals and compete in the Olympics for glory and all the ancillary financial and non financial rewards involved, yet were there no sexism at the Olympics, women would most likely be competing in just equestrian, ski jump, synchro swimming, rhythmic gymnastics and other events like gymnastic beam, uneven bars etc where they are either able to compete on merit or audiences just think they look better than males in leotards. The other 25 odd events they would be unable to qualify.

That is a weird post. Where you claim to apply the principle equal pay for equal work, you don't and where you try to debunk the lack of a principle mentioned in the text of Tolman's you quote you instead debunk something else entirely.

Nicko wrote:However, it is also being used to belittle and shame - via recourse to the same "patriarchal" stereotypes that feminists purport to fight against - people raising concerns about issues that men face as men.

If some women are using "ironic misandry" to respond to genuine concerns, as opposed to responding to misogynistic claims about what feminism stands for, then that clearly isn't "ironic" it is just misandry.

Nicko wrote:So, you'd still be making baby-eating jokes if there was some vocal atheist group advocating/committing infant cannibalism? Because people taking this meme seriously would stop the humor for me at least.

That's nice dear.

Nicko wrote:And "the other side" are overly dependent on generalisations?

In the example of theists making claims about atheism, yes, they would have to be if the baby eating meme were to have any humour behind it.

Thommo wrote:That is a weird post. Where you claim to apply the principle equal pay for equal work, you don't and where you try to debunk the lack of a principle mentioned in the text of Tolman's you quote you instead debunk something else entirely.

If you want to discuss this, you will need more than an unsubstantiated assertion. Perhaps you dont really want to discus this?

I wish that the people who did want to discuss this would start a fucking thread where it would be on topic.

epepke wrote:
About a quarter of a century ago, I was the Florida coordinator for an activist group that was trying to make custody decisions better for fathers. It shouldn't surprise anyone who knows some history to learn that the overwhelming majority of feminists hated that idea and thought of fathers as people who should stay the hell away but keep the money rolling in. However, I noticed something else going on. Women who were girlfriends and wives of the men getting chumped hated the status quo as well. They decided that they weren't being represented by all that "pro-woman" stuff and rebelled, and there were way more of them.

That caused the collapse of the innumerately-named "Second Wave" feminism around 1997. Furthermore, in my studies of feminism, I discovered that it had led to the collapse of every feminist movement back to the invention of the printing press (of which there have been way more than a couple or three).

You have raised an interesting point about the conflict created between women through the whole feminist process of trying to get more benefits for women simply because through the process of bettering some women, other women will be worse off. The simplest example is where the female partners of men are affected when feminism disadvantages the man. Because aside from the imbalance of benefit and power between the genders exists, issues of power and benefit also exists between groups, hierarchies. What you noted shows that what might be good for one women or a group of women might directly disadvantage other women. As I said it does not get discussed that much.

TMB wrote:The simplest example is where the female partners of men are affected when feminism disadvantages the man.

Do go on...

It is all a scheme to get dual taxes paid out of each household.

More workers reduces the wages, more workers increases wage taxes collected.

Sounds like a great deal for the 1%.

OlivierK wrote:

TMB wrote:The simplest example is where the female partners of men are affected when feminism disadvantages the man.

Do go on...

Sure let me know what you are thinking and I will respond. Baiting hooks without committing anything from your side is common practice so in the interests of transparency, why not lay your cards on the table? After all, you have already cherry picked my post. The meaning behind that comment will lose something now you have stripped the context, however its not a difficult statement to understand.

OlivierK wrote:

TMB wrote:The simplest example is where the female partners of men are affected when feminism disadvantages the man.

Do go on...

If I had to guess, I'd say he was talking about things like alimony and the unfair extremes of various child support payment structures. Which is of course a rather more complex issue than "feminists dunnit".

I just want some examples of when feminism disadvantages men. I'm aware, of course, that there are areas of male disadvantage, but whether any of those are caused by feminism is less clear. I'm curious what TMB thinks such examples are.

OlivierK wrote:I just want some examples of when feminism disadvantages men. I'm aware, of course, that there are areas of male disadvantage, but whether any of those are caused by feminism is less clear. I'm curious what TMB thinks such examples are.

Since men dominate leadership positions in business and politics and in most cases they have female spouses who benefit from the salaries these positions usually carry. The advent of women coming into these positions, especially in the case of affirmative action, replacing these men with women. The women gaining these positions will be rewarded both with the responsibility and remuneration offered by the positions. The (mostly) female spouses of the displaced men, who were carrying very little of the responsibility, will also lose the benefits of the status and salary from the roles.

Its possible that some male spouses will benefit if their female partners are in these positions, but generally the male partners of high achieving women are also high achieving. In general the female partners of high achieving males are lower achievers.

It just means the female recipients of 'benevolent sexism' do achieve genuine benefits, and if benevolent sexism were eliminated by the feminist lobby, they would lose these benefits. Its not much different from the Wimbledon scenario. This is a clear case of benevolent sexism where women are seen as needing protection from men because they are less capable. In this case they reap benefits because of this. Read Glick and Fiskes work on this.

TMB wrote:

Thommo wrote:That is a weird post. Where you claim to apply the principle equal pay for equal work, you don't and where you try to debunk the lack of a principle mentioned in the text of Tolman's you quote you instead debunk something else entirely.

If you want to discuss this, you will need more than an unsubstantiated assertion. Perhaps you dont really want to discus this?

It's not unsubstantiated. The text substantiates it - you can read what you wrote about equal pay and find the error very easily, in fact it's incredibly trivial but I can spell it out in painful detail if you like:-

Since there are no equal first, we apply the principle of equal reward for equal merit by paying the winning women's team the most $, we pay the 2nd place less, and do the same all the way to place 8 reducing the reward as we move down the rankings.

This is wrong, it does not apply the principle of equal pay for equal merit. You do not award here equal pay to people with equal merit, you award unequal pay to people of unequal merit. You can easily observe this by noticing that the "merit" and "pay" are not equal, which is shall we say, "not rocket science".

Wallowing in further triviality: the principle of Tolman's you quote is:-

tolman wrote:But even if someone was, it simply doesn't follow that 'equal pay for equal work' necessitates 'unequal pay for unequal work'.

Which says we do not have to uphold a principle "unequal pay for unequal work", or to put it another way "you can pay equal amounts for unequal work (but you don't have to)".

Whereas you specifically name the principle you attack:-

Now let's try and overlay the principle of equal pay for unequal merit

Which is very obviously not the same. It disallows paying different amounts for people of unequal merit, something Tolman does not do.

Despite Tolman's sentence being short and easy to understand your post completely fails to address it. Hence "weird".

Anyway, no I don't really want to discuss it, this is off topic and boring, but having made the effort to read your post I felt obliged to point out how inaccurate it was.

I've requested a split.

TMB wrote:

OlivierK wrote:I just want some examples of when feminism disadvantages men. I'm aware, of course, that there are areas of male disadvantage, but whether any of those are caused by feminism is less clear. I'm curious what TMB thinks such examples are.

Since men dominate leadership positions in business and politics and in most cases they have female spouses who benefit from the salaries these positions usually carry. The advent of women coming into these positions, especially in the case of affirmative action, replacing these men with women. The women gaining these positions will be rewarded both with the responsibility and remuneration offered by the positions. The (mostly) female spouses of the displaced men, who were carrying very little of the responsibility, will also lose the benefits of the status and salary from the roles.

Its possible that some male spouses will benefit if their female partners are in these positions, but generally the male partners of high achieving women are also high achieving. In general the female partners of high achieving males are lower achievers.

It just means the female recipients of 'benevolent sexism' do achieve genuine benefits, and if benevolent sexism were eliminated by the feminist lobby, they would lose these benefits. Its not much different from the Wimbledon scenario. This is a clear case of benevolent sexism where women are seen as needing protection from men because they are less capable. In this case they reap benefits because of this. Read Glick and Fiskes work on this.

Fuck this shit.

TMB, can you please stop delegitimising the idea that there actual disadvantages suffered by men by posting this horseshit?

So fucking what if some "low-achieving" women looking to "marry up" have their presumptive meal-ticket's earnings subjected to additional competition? People do not have any kind of "right" to "marry up". The issue of hypergamy is an interesting one, but the way you are using it is just silly.

As I said in my previous post, I assumed you were talking about things like the disadvantage men face in family courts - and the impact this can have on subsequent partners and "second families" - as an example of how the partners of men were being harmed by things that harm men (even though I do not think this can be laid solely at the feet of feminists).

Fallible wrote:I've requested a split.

What would you suggest as the title for the spawned thread, Fall?

I can think of several.....

I'm not bothered. I just would prefer it to not clutter up this one.

Nicko wrote:

TMB wrote:

OlivierK wrote:I just want some examples of when feminism disadvantages men. I'm aware, of course, that there are areas of male disadvantage, but whether any of those are caused by feminism is less clear. I'm curious what TMB thinks such examples are.

Since men dominate leadership positions in business and politics and in most cases they have female spouses who benefit from the salaries these positions usually carry. The advent of women coming into these positions, especially in the case of affirmative action, replacing these men with women. The women gaining these positions will be rewarded both with the responsibility and remuneration offered by the positions. The (mostly) female spouses of the displaced men, who were carrying very little of the responsibility, will also lose the benefits of the status and salary from the roles.

Its possible that some male spouses will benefit if their female partners are in these positions, but generally the male partners of high achieving women are also high achieving. In general the female partners of high achieving males are lower achievers.

It just means the female recipients of 'benevolent sexism' do achieve genuine benefits, and if benevolent sexism were eliminated by the feminist lobby, they would lose these benefits. Its not much different from the Wimbledon scenario. This is a clear case of benevolent sexism where women are seen as needing protection from men because they are less capable. In this case they reap benefits because of this. Read Glick and Fiskes work on this.

Fuck this shit.

TMB, can you please stop delegitimising the idea that there actual disadvantages suffered by men by posting this horseshit?

So fucking what if some "low-achieving" women looking to "marry up" have their presumptive meal-ticket's earnings subjected to additional competition? People do not have any kind of "right" to "marry up". The issue of hypergamy is an interesting one, but the way you are using it is just silly.

As I said in my previous post, I assumed you were talking about things like the disadvantage men face in family courts - and the impact this can have on subsequent partners and "second families" - as an example of how the partners of men were being harmed by things that harm men (even though I do not think this can be laid solely at the feet of feminists).

My initial comment was about the conflict between groups of women that arises from feminism, not about the disadvantages experienced by men throu feminism.

While you might find this unpalatable and have issues with the morality of women who take advantage of their males partners status and earning power, however this does not change it as a fact.

You appear to have the ought/is problem. I simply responded to the question based upon observed reality. The implication is that there is a lot of conflict between groups of women, as you show by your diminishing comments about the women who derive vicarious benefit from men.

You embellish your post with four letter words showing just how emotional you find the topic which leads you to make irrational statements. Good advertising for the "rational skeptics" forum.

Our last exchanges became the "didn't, did so" outcome. You need to lift your game.

Prod, prod, prod.