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Author Topic: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée  (Read 1571180 times)

sluissa

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Re: Donald J. Trump's Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams 2016 Megathread
« Reply #13965 on: March 09, 2016, 12:08:28 pm »

mainiacNews: Fair and Balanced
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mainiac

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Re: Donald J. Trump's Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams 2016 Megathread
« Reply #13966 on: March 09, 2016, 12:11:10 pm »

I do try, thanks.
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Helgoland

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Re: Donald J. Trump's Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams 2016 Megathread
« Reply #13967 on: March 09, 2016, 12:35:18 pm »

No, the real problem is that someone pointing out evidence that your views are wrong is labeled as misleading.
Maybe we just have a disconnect here: What do you think are my/our beliefs? We probably agree on the issues, but you're snapping at my phrasing because it is also employed by people who disagree with you.

You are now agreeing with the radical feminists that you said were the problem before.
Never claimed that the radical feminists were the problem - just their unfortunate way of communicating certain issues, and the incorrect contextualisation of these issues that some of them put forward. Big difference.

And Helgoland, keep in mind that society wide problems happen both ways.  For instance women enter college at a higher rate.  So maybe the bias is bigger then that 17%, maybe it's actually 25%, including 8% to balance out the biases that are making men underperform in highschool.  So now not only is that an even bigger bias against women that is weighing down our society but also a bias against men.  So that 23 cent figure is in fact soft selling the case.
Ah, two can play at that game. What fields do women enter, and what fields are dominated by men? And you're still contextualizing this as an economic issue, as an income inequality issue, when really we ought to be asking ourselves what mechanisms lead to the various statistical effects we can observe. Why do more women than men enter college? Why do they underperform in the job market? To what degree is it individual discrimination by employers, to what degree is it reproductive issues, to what degree society's expectations towards women, etc etc?

Of course our society has absurdly decided to call the position of stating the facts as the far left position so there isn't even a label for what I just said.
Ah, keep in mind: There is no 'our society' here. You're talking with a European, so check your Culture-Imperial Privilege and don't blindly assume that I align with your culture's political lines! ;)
Seriously though, you sound like you're mostly snapping at imbalances in US public discourse. US public discourse admittedly is a load of shit, but please keep in mind that you're not talking to the US public.

I'd call that position 'holistic', by the way - and it is one I very much agree with. Take in all data availible, see what happens where and why - and then formulate an answer. I like the approach very much - in fact my whole issue with the 77 cents thing is that it is often used to obstruct such a holistic approach.

Which is exactly the sort of radicalism I expect from the zealots in the anti 77 cent camp.  After all, you are the guys who reject neutral statistics in favor of assuming that anything about your position not proven to be wrong is correct.
I think you're fighting windmills here. Nobody here claimed that the 77 cents statistic was wrong - just that it is often used in a misleading way and has thus become, how shall I put it, tainted in the eyes of many and thus is no longer too good an instrument to fight for equality.
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Morrigi

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Re: Donald J. Trump's Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams 2016 Megathread
« Reply #13968 on: March 09, 2016, 12:41:49 pm »

And people wonder why we call her Shillary...

http://www.fair.org/static/bernie-static.html
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Donald J. Trump's Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams 2016 Megathread
« Reply #13969 on: March 09, 2016, 12:49:07 pm »

Obama depended on Clinton. Clinton screwed up and got fired and now Obama depends on Kerry.
To be fair the Libyan war could have ended in success, when Clinton pushed for the US intervention in the Libyan war it was because the crisis had turned into such a situation where war was in likelihood inevitable and the best thing to do was to end it as quickly as possible and replace it with a democratic government that wouldn't be taken over my Islamists or make its dissidents disappear. To that end the war was won, it was successful, then everyone left before reconstruction had begun and Tobruk and Tripoli split the country up whilst their allies who promised support disappeared. It was a dismal failure but Clinton's competency in leadership was proven, if proven at doing well for the wrong thing.

re: Libya, there were a lot of people (myself included) cheering for the Libyan rebels. And while there were a few voices saying "Umm, what's going to fill the void?" it was difficult to elaborate on that point without sounding like an apologist for Qaddafi and being opposed to ordinary people fighting back with everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) at their disposal. It was hard not to cheer for them.
That's because most of the folks asking 'Who will fill that void?' were heavily implying 'We need Qaddafi to stay, a couple thousand Libyans or not.' They were apologists in the truest sense of the word: 'Yes, he's doing bad things, buuuuuuuuut...'
The question itself is valid, of course, and still deserves an answer - why the hell are we not supporting the Tobruk government more heavily? - but it can only be asked in the context of Qaddafi not being an option.
Who knows why we stopped supporting

Public opinion? Makes little sense really, spending all that money to help them win and just leave

Spoiler: europol invasion (click to show/hide)

And people wonder why we call her Shillary...

http://www.fair.org/static/bernie-static.html
I DID IT ALL FOR FREE
« Last Edit: March 09, 2016, 12:51:43 pm by Loud Whispers »
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Willfor

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Re: Donald J. Trump's Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams 2016 Megathread
« Reply #13970 on: March 09, 2016, 12:51:30 pm »

Ah, keep in mind: There is no 'our society' here. You're talking with a European, so check your Culture-Imperial Privilege and don't blindly assume that I align with your culture's political lines! ;)
Seriously though, you sound like you're mostly snapping at imbalances in US public discourse. US public discourse admittedly is a load of shit, but please keep in mind that you're not talking to the US public.
As a Canadian, I feel like pointing out that you're the European coming into the American political discourse thread, and telling people not to assume that they're discussing American political discourse. Maybe ... maybe you should reconsider doing that?  ???
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Donald J. Trump's Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams 2016 Megathread
« Reply #13971 on: March 09, 2016, 12:52:31 pm »

Ah, keep in mind: There is no 'our society' here. You're talking with a European, so check your Culture-Imperial Privilege and don't blindly assume that I align with your culture's political lines! ;)
Seriously though, you sound like you're mostly snapping at imbalances in US public discourse. US public discourse admittedly is a load of shit, but please keep in mind that you're not talking to the US public.
As a Canadian, I feel like pointing out that you're the European coming into the American political discourse thread, and telling people not to assume that they're discussing American political discourse. Maybe ... maybe you should reconsider doing that?  ???
I'm pretty certain you've done it before too Helgo :D

Vector

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Re: Donald J. Trump's Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams 2016 Megathread
« Reply #13972 on: March 09, 2016, 12:55:18 pm »

Why does it tell us something is wrong? What's wrong with women and men having different priorities in jobs? Or more women wanting to stay at home (say, with the children) and more men wanting to work?

The problem that I have, personally, is that women are getting something like half of the STEM degrees, and maybe 20% of the STEM jobs, and the conclusion people usually draw is:

Women don't like STEM, are ill-suited to it due to physical and emotional weakness, and would rather have babies, which is their natural inclination.

As opposed to what women in STEM will tell you, which is:

The discrimination was so intense that I decided to leave, because I was being sexually harassed to the point where I didn't feel safe coming to work and my skills were being undervalued and there was zero probability of being promoted when guys kept being credited for my work, so I decided to go into a different field despite years and years and years of professional training, because it was just that bad.

Usually people hear this and think:

Women sure are weak and complain a lot over nothing.

Why?

Well, usually because sexists know how to say this stuff while nobody else is watching, which makes it a real problem because you have to believe what women (who are conniving, manipulative, dishonest, etc.) say about their own lives, rather than listening to somebody more objective, like a man, or perhaps a panel of men.

A man would never leave a job just because he's not going to be promoted and the work environment is toxic, and he could have a better career somewhere else. Right?

But if a woman stays under those career-damaging conditions, then she's making yet another one of those bad decisions women make where they don't take risks, they stick with what's familiar, and so on.

All you need to do is to harass women to the point where it's not rational for them to stay in a rationally intensive career, and you've proven through damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't tactics that they are intrinsically irrational and should stick to babby.

[I'm not saying that anyone here holds this point of view, but I have had this conversation too many times, so I'm reproducing it here.]


I think people think about the pay gap and they're thinking about blue-collar discrimination vs. pink-collar discrimination, but what folks are usually talking about is discrimination within white-collar fields. At any given point, assume you're talking about upper-middle-class white people.

That said, I'm not sure that the massive undervaluing of pink-collar jobs compared to blue-collar jobs is exactly fair. Some blue-collar jobs are more dangerous. Others are not. I think that there is an assumption that pink-collar jobs don't require the development of any particular skills, because women are just good at that nurturing thing naturally, as opposed to blue-collar jobs, which require the development of technical proficiencies.

Something to remember is that factory workers used to be overwhelmingly female (or children, or disabled men), and that was before any kind of safety standards appeared. Computer programmers used to be overwhelmingly female.

There's a pattern. First they say "women are unusually suited to these really shitty jobs because they are docile and we wouldn't want to have to hire a man for this terrible work. We'll give them a little extra money here or there to help them support their families." "Programming is as easy as setting your oven!" Then once women start making serious bank and developing their expertise, men come in, push the women out by explaining why women were unsuited to that profession and men ought to be the only ones working it, and the profession becomes male-dominated. Because now it's a profession, not just a shitty job. Now it's valuable.

This doesn't always happen. But it is a real thing that really happens.

Most recently, this happened with computer science. Programmers used to be something like 80% female and 20% male in the 80s. Now it's the other way around. I don't have the statistics exactly right in my head, but you can look them up online and read the story. It's all over the place.

Also, there is that general expectation that women will just work for free out of the goodness of their heart, which I have experienced personally in jobs where I had more than 10 years of experience, and needed to volunteer anyway because it would open up job interviews later. And in dudes who within the first couple hours of meeting me asked me to tutor them through The Calculus for free (so they wouldn't have to pay about 10k to get a real professional to teach them). And so on, and so forth. That's the fundamental problem with pink-collar work. "Women are naturally disposed to this kind of labor, so we need not pay them for it because they will do it whether we pay them or not, especially because we will bully the snot out of them if they don't do it for free."


Saying "women and men are generally suited for different types of work" is one thing, and I really don't feel able to argue that point. I've been declared an "honorary man" so many times that I would feel very weird arguing about it, because I seem to be positioned as an exception to the rule somehow.

But the root belief that women being naturally better at nurturing and men naturally better at physical work therefore implying that

1. Female labor is intrinsically intuitive and unskilled
2. But male labor is cognitive and professional
3. Yet male rationality is equally intrinsic to them
4. Hence women cannot attain the same achievements, and are not worth teaching as you would a man
5. So feminine labor is intrinsically inferior
6. Thus women should not be paid equally or considered for promotion

Actually comes direct from the Victorian era's point of view on gender as intrinsic and immutable, in which women are soft little doves given to transports of the imagination and flights of fancy, who must have a little baby of her own in accordance with her Womanly Purpose, fragile and emotional as she is. Women are Animal, Men are Rational. Therefore everything women do is intrinsically, unchangeably Animal, and everything that men do is intrinsically, unchangeably rational. We don't pay animals for being animals, do we? Then why the fuck should we pay women for being animals?

This is not the sexism that we have historically had. This is not the perception of women that we have historically had. This is not even the perception of women in other cultures with strict gender roles fairly in alignment with our own, like, say, China.

This is, unfortunately, partially the inheritance of the Western Enlightenment era (I am looking at you, Descartes, and your mind/body thing) and of the cult of Pythagoras, which decided that men are women but, like, with souls and brains. Fortunately this point of view upheld the prevailing perception that men could and should fuck young men, but not men of the same age, because treating a man of the same social status like you would treat a woman (i.e. as a semen depository) would be demeaning of his status as a man.

Historical homophobia! It was different from modern homophobia!

This of course led to Nietzsche's argument that women exist solely in order to give birth to men and were otherwise essentially lower animals, because Nietzsche follows every point of view held in western culture to its greatest possible extent.

Women were relatively less burdened during the Dark Ages, were more likely to hold property, more able to participate in social life, and so on... and so forth. That's right: Women are slightly better off under Catholic Sexism than under Greek Wisdom Sexism.

Usually people argue here, "then why have women never done X, Y, or Z? Arguing from statistics, we can demonstrate that therefore women are not capable of doing X, or Y, or Z."

And we are not talking about "weightlifting with your cock" here, we're talking about "drawing" or "killing people" or "cuisine" or "understanding psychology" or "thinking" or literally everything other than Gestating Babies. Literally. Everything. Because that's how the Victorians thought and wrote of us, but not how the medieval writers did--just take a look at Chaucer, for heaven's sake.

(Cuz you know, in the modern era... for any given pink-collar job, you're proooooobably better off hiring a gay dude. Because they're better at "being women" than women.

For a historical argument in a different context, male kabuki actors who portrayed female roles were partially found acceptable because they could teach women how to be feminine more than another woman could. Men were better at everything, including femininity. Source: Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan)

Well, often they have done X Y or Z, but it is shuffled under the rug as "it doesn't count," so nobody told you (like how Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper and Hedy Lamarr don't count and Emmy Noethur doesn't exist and Sophie Germain was just Gauss's Protege and Sonya Kabalevskaya is just plain overrated, and most of these women probably had men engineering their results anyway. Forget that Newton's papers were littered with arguments about "exterminating X's" and his notation fucking sucked, he had a nervous breakdown after college and went home to mother, and he wasted most of his life doing his "real research" on Aryanism, inherited a lot of wisdom from the Middle East (so are his results engineered by Arabs, who deserve the credit?), and finally became a hanging judge at the national mint); and sometimes there just wasn't the opportunity, and people assume that women aren't worth wasting the opportunity on, so they continue to not furnish the opportunities and we never get to find out whether women are capable of something or not.

And sometimes women do things in different ways than men, and we decide that that means that they didn't Really Do the Thing, and it Wasn't Very Good After All, because it's female writing or female art or female whatever, and it's about the Feminine Condition rather than the Human Condition, which is what the thing is when men do it.

And it's not good unless women do it exactly the same as men (Jane Austen in the company of Homer? Never!), (toy problems? all mathematics must be muscular and seminal!) but it's also not good if women do it exactly the same way as men, because then it's derivative. An inferior copy. It's Adam's Rib, but we wanted the full Adam.

A women speaking about the female experience is pandering, is special interest. A man speaking about the male experience speaks to the quintessential, to the intrinsic, to the human condition. This is because we have already decided that to be human rather than animal is to be rational, and to be male rather than female is also to be rational. Therefore to be male is to be human; to be female is to be animal.

So male genius is masculine greatness, and feminine genius is an unhappy accident contrary to one's true purpose of populating the earth with more men.

Joan of Arc was just one woman, but she was a fourteen-year-old wearing full plate who successfully drove the English out of New Orleans after 100 years of occupation, and I think that that's a reasonable emotional argument that some women can do a man's job when the stars align.


I am no longer an Angry Feminist because I have realized that this viewpoint is so fucking entrenched that it's borderline impossible to just think your way out of (for me, too). But, it really does seem that people think this way. And if you do think that way deep down, I'm not going to tell you to stop thinking that way because hell, it kind of feels right, but I'd like you to consider what I've said and see if anything new seems right in light of the evidence I've brought up.

And yeah, I've just sketched an argument because TBH I'm going to go study geometry in a few minutes and I'd rather do that, and this is all an argument about income inequality that I've been writing for an hour or so that may be off-topic for this thread now. So fill in the holes, dudes; I didn't mean to say that this was all somehow ironclad. Just, here's a thing to think about. Maybe you agree. Maybe you don't.
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mainiac

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Re: Donald J. Trump's Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams 2016 Megathread
« Reply #13973 on: March 09, 2016, 01:13:35 pm »

Ah, two can play at that game. What fields do women enter, and what fields are dominated by men? And you're still contextualizing this as an economic issue, as an income inequality issue, when really we ought to be asking ourselves what mechanisms lead to the various statistical effects we can observe. Why do more women than men enter college? Why do they underperform in the job market? To what degree is it individual discrimination by employers, to what degree is it reproductive issues, to what degree society's expectations towards women, etc etc?

YES!  I want to play at that game.  But the thing is that people are only playing half the game.  They discount all the things away from 77 cents to lessen the importance and dont consider anything that might point to the problem being worse.  It's the hometown sports team fallacy.  Oh sure, the Rhinos only won 40% of their games but if you look at the games they lost it was really close so it's wasn't that bad.  I bet they'll win the championship for sure!  (and meanwhile not considering that a lot of the games they won were nail biters too.)
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« Last Edit: February 10, 1988, 03:27:23 pm by UR MOM »
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Lord Shonus

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Re: Donald J. Trump's Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams 2016 Megathread
« Reply #13974 on: March 09, 2016, 01:19:36 pm »


The problem that I have, personally, is that women are getting something like half of the STEM degrees, and maybe 20% of the STEM jobs, and the conclusion people usually draw is:

Women don't like STEM, are ill-suited to it due to physical and emotional weakness, and would rather have babies, which is their natural inclination.

As opposed to what women in STEM will tell you, which is:

The discrimination was so intense that I decided to leave, because I was being sexually harassed to the point where I didn't feel safe coming to work and my skills were being undervalued and there was zero probability of being promoted when guys kept being credited for my work, so I decided to go into a different field despite years and years and years of professional training, because it was just that bad.

Most of the data I've seen strongly suggests that the major problem is applicants to the field (according to an old classmate of mine that works for a defense contractor, literally one in every thousand applicants is female), which is why I focus proposed solutions on shoring up interest.

Environments that are toxic to that extent are something that I haven't heard of, nor have I seen in my intermittent exposure to technical fields (I've been on the periphery all my life, but lack of job opportunities in the fields I'm good at and lack of aptitude for the higher mathematics for where the jobs are have diverted me into other work). Quite the contrary, the relatively few (we both agree that this is a problem) women were usually the troubleshooters for particularly difficult situations.

I'm not denying that your experiences happened, mind. I'm just wondering if there's something particular about the place(s) you worked (I have personal experience with upper management trying to make the working environment as toxic as possible, to keep anyone from getting enough recognition to supplant them, for example), the region you were in (views on women change considerably around here with just a fifteen minute drive), or such that made the problem worse.
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Helgoland

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Re: Donald J. Trump's Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams 2016 Megathread
« Reply #13975 on: March 09, 2016, 01:25:19 pm »

As a Canadian, I feel like pointing out that you're the European coming into the American political discourse thread, and telling people not to assume that they're discussing American political discourse. Maybe ... maybe you should reconsider doing that?  ???
Last time I was in the wrong, yeah. But this time it's different - I'm just telling him to listen to what I say, not to what he presumes I'm saying. Me being European is just part of pointing out where his presumptions may be coming from and why they're not applicable.
I'd do the same with any American in the Europol thread - and have, actually. Just read through the various Russia threads and you'll find a couple examples.
YES!  I want to play at that game.  But the thing is that people are only playing half the game.  They discount all the things away from 77 cents to lessen the importance and dont consider anything that might point to the problem being worse.  It's the hometown sports team fallacy.  Oh sure, the Rhinos only won 40% of their games but if you look at the games they lost it was really close so it's wasn't that bad.  I bet they'll win the championship for sure!  (and meanwhile not considering that a lot of the games they won were nail biters too.)
Who are the 'people' you are talking about? I think that's what our disagreement boils down to. You say those people are wrong - sure, I probably agree; I'm just saying that entirely different people are also wrong in some things they say. The only connection between those two sets of people is political, and therefore irrelevant to them being right or wrong.
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I'm going to do the smart thing here and disengage. This isn't a hill I paticularly care to die on.

mainiac

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Re: Donald J. Trump's Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams 2016 Megathread
« Reply #13976 on: March 09, 2016, 01:33:49 pm »

Most of the data I've seen strongly suggests that the major problem is applicants to the field

Okay now we can go interdisciplinary on this one.  Business press loves reporting skill shortages where economists will tell you it doesn't exist.  The employers will say the problem is never that the pay is bad and the benefits are non-existant, it's those damn workers fault.  People love to blame the quality of the applicants.  At the height of the great recession where more skill applicants were looking for jobs then at any point in the past twenty years, the business press was full of speculation on the growing skills shortage in the US.

And (seeing as I'm totes okay with sounding like a broken record) I'm going to point out that yet again in this conversation we have a case of seeing a problem and immediately jumping to say that it doesn't exist.  This is what in scientific terms is called "bias".

Who are the 'people' you are talking about? I think that's what our disagreement boils down to. You say those people are wrong - sure, I probably agree; I'm just saying that entirely different people are also wrong in some things they say. The only connection between those two sets of people is political, and therefore irrelevant to them being right or wrong.

Honestly I'm mostly just talking about you, Helgoland.  And if I said people are wrong I'm not conveying this point very well.  It is legitimate to postulate reasons for these things.  But it's not legitimate to say that statistics dont count by only considering variables that tilt your result in one direction.  The neutral statement is saying that the size of the gap is the size that it is.  The fact that the mainstream opinion is saying it's smaller is a BIG FUCKING PROBLEM.
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« Last Edit: February 10, 1988, 03:27:23 pm by UR MOM »
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Vector

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Re: Donald J. Trump's Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams 2016 Megathread
« Reply #13977 on: March 09, 2016, 01:44:25 pm »

@Lord Shonus:

I live in Silicon Valley, grew up here, and attended college here. It is an absolute toxic mess. I mean really obscene.

It may not be as bad other places, but things usually get worse as the stakes increase, in areas with more opportunity. There's not a lot of math-field sexism in the local community colleges, for example ("27-year-old single mom can do algebra" doesn't threaten the status quo very much), but the local university is a fucking nightmare and becoming notorious enough across the US that women are quietly refusing offers for the PhD program.
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sluissa

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Re: Donald J. Trump's Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams 2016 Megathread
« Reply #13978 on: March 09, 2016, 01:45:06 pm »

Why does it tell us something is wrong? What's wrong with women and men having different priorities in jobs? Or more women wanting to stay at home (say, with the children) and more men wanting to work?

The problem that I have, personally, is that women are getting something like half of the STEM degrees, and maybe 20% of the STEM jobs, and the conclusion people usually draw is:



Okay Vector, there's a lot there and I'm not nearly prepared or have the time at the moment to respond to it all, but this is flawed data to begin with.

STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, if I'm understanding correctly.

Psychology and Social Science fall under the "Science" subsection and are thus counted as STEM degrees. However both of these fields have a much higher percentage of women graduates (something like 70+% for Psychology) and much lower job prospects than the Technology or Engineering related fields.

Just saying women are getting STEM degrees but not getting STEM jobs is very much overgeneralizing because STEM is such a HUGE section of degrees offered.

There are a lot of people getting STEM degrees and there are a lot of STEM jobs out there. But not all of the STEM degrees apply for all of the STEM jobs and women seem more inclined to go for the degrees which do not offer the highest potential of getting a job.

I realize I'm being "that kid" again but it is a problem spouting out overgeneralized numbers without any context.

As for the rest of it, I can't speak much to it. I haven't worked in technology settings with female coworkers for any significant period of time, so I can't speak to their treatment elsewhere.

I will say that people will take advantage of you, whether you're male or female. Learn to say no if someone is asking too much.
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Rolan7

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Re: Donald J. Trump's Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams 2016 Megathread
« Reply #13979 on: March 09, 2016, 01:45:20 pm »

And people wonder why we call her Shillary...

http://www.fair.org/static/bernie-static.html
Uh, so why do you call her Shillary...?
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No justice: no peace.
Quote from: Fallen London, one Unthinkable Hope
This one didn't want to be who they was. On the Surface – it was a dull, unconsidered sadness. But everything changed. Which implied everything could change.
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