I have been a consistent supporter of the idea that women should be regarded as the moral, legal, and political equals of men. In general, I have based this support on the principle of relevant difference: people can (morally) be treated differently only the the basis of a (morally) relevant difference between them. So, while it would be acceptable to pay someone who has more education more than another person, it would not be acceptable to pay someone less simply because she happens to be a woman (or he happens to be a man). I first learned of this principle as an undergraduate during a class on feminism. This class had a lasting impact on me, including an interest in gender issues that persists to this day.
As time marched on from my undergraduate days, I was pleased to see various unjust aspects of American society change. Women had ever increasing opportunities in business, education, sports and in many other areas as well. This trend continued, with the occasional specific set back, until some feminists went so far as to claim that feminism had grown stale or even that there was no longer a need for feminism in America.
While I was pleased with the trend towards equality, another trend that has stood out is what could be called the “yes, but…” trend. I first noticed this when I was doing research for some essays on men, women, and higher education (which appeared in my book). I found that the although the majority of undergraduates were women, there seemed to be almost no concern about this new gender inequality. This initially struck me as odd. After all, feminists and their allies had always been very quick to point out gender disparities that were not in favor of women and endeavored to rectify such imbalances. When I would bring up my concerns about the male decline in higher education, I would most often by the phrase “yes, but…” where the “but” would be followed by some area where men still exceeded women, such as in physics or the highest levels of the corporate world. Watching the occasional news report that mentioned gender issues, I noticed a similar pattern: it would be pointed out that women exceeded men in some area, but this would be followed by pointing out some area (like income) where women were said to lag behind men.
I most recently noticed this in a Newsweek article, “Born Again Feminism“, by Kathleen Parker. She writes:
As a group, we are worse at some things, but better at others—the very “others,” it also turns out, that happen to be driving today’s economy and that of the future.
Consequently, in the U.S. today, women hold a majority of the jobs, and dominate in colleges and professional schools. They also hold a majority of managerial and professional positions, and about half of all accounting, banking, and insurance jobs.
These socioeconomic facts don’t mean that women have achieved perfect parity with men, who still dominate at the highest levels of business.
As a side point before getting back to the main issue, it is interesting to note that Parker also makes use of a common device in today’s discussion of gender issues: men and women are different, but women are better than men in terms of what is needed today. This, in many ways, is a distorted echo what might be called the old sexism in which men and women were seen as different, but men were regarded as being better than women in the ways that mattered economically, politically and so on. Given this similarity, this sort of thing should be a point of concern among those who are worried about sexism.
Getting back to the main point, this nicely illustrates the “yes, but…”approach. Parker notes that women hold the majority of American jobs, classrooms, managerial positions and have parity in accounting, banking and insurance. But, they have not “achieved perfect parity with men.”
One obvious response is that she is quite right. In America, women have not achieved perfect parity because they are the majority in the areas she mentioned. Perfect parity would require that no gender dominates in any area-even if the dominate gender is female.
I always find it interesting how quickly certain people can transition from saying how women dominate in so many areas to criticizing the fact that there are still areas dominated by men. What is most interesting about this is that the arguments used to argue for equality in the areas still dominated by men would certainly seem to apply to the areas that are now dominated by women. As such, it would seem that the concern about the remaining male dominated areas should also apply to those areas where women now dominate. After all, if gender inequality is unjust when it favors men over women, it would seem to be unjust when it favors women over men. However, this concern often seems to be lacking and it might be suspected that there is a certain moral inconsistency at play in some cases.
This is not to say that there are not areas where the inequality does not unjustly favor men nor is it to say that there are no longer any valid problems left in the area of women’s rights. When people use the “yes, but…” approach they often do point out legitimate problems that need to be addressed. However, they all too often seem to miss the legitimate concerns in regards to areas in which women dominate.
Naturally, I am open to the idea that cases of gender inequality need not be cases of injustice. For example, in my book I consider that the gender disparities in higher education might be due to free choices on the part of men and women and not the result of any form of sexism. However, I am also careful to consider (as I learned from the feminists) that gender disparities could be the result of injustice. Those who use the “yes, but…” approach should be careful to apply a consistent set of principles to both sorts of situations, those in which men dominate and those in which women dominate. After all, we surely do not want to trade one form of sexism for another.
I thought your closing paragraph was particularly apt; this strikes me as the ideal perspective qua gender and race issues.
There is, unfortunately, no real index of discrimination; the distribution of goods and the self-reports of individuals are all we have to go on, and neither are necessarily able to identity it.
This implies that it is epistemologically impossible to determine the level of discrimination within a society apart from its laws (which slightly favor women and minorities in the US); there is an ethical conclusion to be found in that: “equality” can pertain only to matters of law.
I suspect many people would find that conclusion and what it implies unpalatable, at least in today’s climate.
Those able to apply pervert and coherent kind of effects to their moralistic prevalence, will be confused with the idea of humanity. In the end , they will be ended up doing ill crepting stuff.
I think that men and masculinity have been denigrated for so long in our culture that women no longer have much respect for men or for male virtues in general.
The double standards in the media are so blatant they they go practically unrecognized.
How many times do we hear women on TV talking about testosterone driving men’s behavior? All the time.
How many time do we hear men on TV talking about PMS driving women’s behavior? Practically never.
And why does anybody think its funny to see men getting kicked in the balls on TV?
“And why does anybody think its funny to see men getting kicked in the balls on TV?”
One thing that equalizes the bullet-chewing, beer-guzzling he-man and magus’ “spaghetti-armed metro-sexual” is the fact that when you kick’em in the balls they both react the same way. That’s funny, no? A little furry sack of commonality.
”
If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh?”
“One thing that equalizes the bullet-chewing, beer-guzzling he-man and magus’ “spaghetti-armed metro-sexual” is the fact that when you kick’em in the balls they both react the same way. That’s funny, no? A little furry sack of commonality.” – I think you would be surprised to find out that they do not react the same way. One will ball like a little girl and the other has a few precious seconds to give out some serious retribution before the waves of pain come.
That’s a “tad” more general than my claim, and tinged with more than enough of magus’ “spaghetti-armed metro-sexual” bias. Here’s what I think:Put down your weapon, and I’ll give you a front snap kick to the nads. Then I’ll give a randomly chosen homosexual a kick in the nuts. Sounds like a good experiment to me. But in the end, the only thing we’d know for sure is if you, personally, are more immune to pain and/or braver than that particular homosexual.
To lend a statement like yours, or magus’ “spaghetti-armed metrosexual” streotype any credence whatsoever, we’d need some research. Tell you what. There are about 150million men in the US. About 2 percent of them admit to being homosexual. Still, a sample of 300-1000 from each group should be enough. You can kick them all in the scrota, and see which cry and which “deliver some serious retribution”. I’d happily up the sampling number, just for laughs. The percentage for each would be the determining factor. I’ll bet the million bucks that I’ll never have that we won’t find a statistically significant difference. I’ll bet another million that, assuming the kicking is continuous, your leg will be so tired before you reach 300 that you won’t have much kick left in you. You’ll be a spaghetti-legged heterosexual.:)
You’ve got to admit that “spaghetti-armed metrosexual” is a great trope.
Well. It’s right up in there with “feminazi”. Not nearly as good as “Glenn Beck has Nazi tourettes. “
Nazi is overused. “Cheese-eating surrender monkeys” is pretty good.
Tried to link/embed it, but failed. Check out today’s Get Fuzzy strip:
http://comics.com/get_fuzzy/2011-03-15/
Overused.
Oh, I agree. Tell that to Rush and his ilk. Unfortunately, sometimes the only way crap like that comes back and bites the speaker in the ass and shows him the ignorance of his ways is if the other side uses it, too. But once this unholy ball starts rolling, it never stops. There’s no way to argue with the finger-pointing primary school “logic” of “But teacher, he started it!”
Can we officially identify the precise point in time when a party used Nazi references to unfairly criticize the opposition?
Hey.
You should Google “spaghetti armed metrosexual”! I just did. Right at the top of a very long list is my use of the term in response to magus (see the last paragraph of my Aug 9 2010 2:57pm entry—currently the last entry for that article)
My words there:”You’re free to do it, but it says more about you than about me. It’s the path of the name caller, who flings ‘spaghetti-armed metrosexual’ crap-balls.” That image of “fling[ing]”spaghetti-armed metrosexual crap-balls” is pretty effective, no? The image clings to the mind, like ‘crap-balls’ cling to a wall —dontcha think? Apparently it takes more than callous intention to bring the attention of readers to a supposedly “great trope” :).
I’m certain magus shows up somewhere among those 122000+ results.