I was thinking to myself that despotic governments in poor countries probably don’t care too much about an accurate census. Undercounting is to the advantage of those who need oppress, and strip of human dignity, and in extreme cases purge. You can’t trim your population by a few percent in a short period of time if you’re keeping track of your population count. People would notice.
It made me reflect on Trump’s desire to put a citizenship question on the census. Many illegal immigrants are too afraid to fill out a census anyway, this would ensure that none did. Why count them right? Trump and his party would like to think of them as thieves in the night, sneaking across the southern desert, looking to rob some rich Americans in their new life. Yet most of them came here legally, many were brought as children, many were born here and love and need their parents as much as you did. Most are doing jobs that you and I wouldn’t do, and if we would, we’d want a lot more money to do it. Whether one wants to be an absolutist about the rule of law, they count and are part of the fabric of our society. Whether it’s costly or beneficial, they are still human beings. I suspect if Republicans could see them that way, they wouldn’t be absolutists about immigration law.
But I imagine even in the best of times undercounting is always going to be the case. And I began to wonder ‘Who else aren’t we counting in our society?’
I just want everyone to know that you count. And then you tell it to other people who aren’t reading my blog. Which is quite a lot. But even those people count and they need to know too.
I was pondering the other day about biological differences between men and women. While I am certain there are average differences in many categories, as I explained previously, a difference in mean does not imply that we can make any a priori assumptions about the individual nature of any woman or man we might meet.
But it is often been a common argument from men who aren’t interested in gender equality to say that a patriarchy is simply because of the difference in the nature of men and women. The world is as it should be at the women must accept their place and not interfere with the nature of things. In thinking about history and the state of the world today, I thought, if this were in fact true, the conclusion one must arrive at if we are to at least acknowledge the humanity of women is that men are a serious threat to safety and well-being.
From a purely statistical view point, the damage done by men in this world is astounding. Let’s look at political leadership. In 2017 only 8 women held the highest political office in their country. This is a drop from the highest number which was 17. That’s less than 10%, at our best, of all the countries in the world. Only 22.8% of elected offices are held by women. This is up from 11.3% in 1995. The picture gets bleaker the further back you go. Through war and bloodshed, throughout human history there is one commonality among these stories. Men. Male leaders, male generals, male soldiers. Now I am not saying you won’t find some women scattered in there, but the percentage is overwhelmingly low.
The picture doesn’t get much better when you look at religions. Most deities are men, most males play prominent roles in religious stories, and women are usually the troublemakers, tempting men to their end and punishing us all in kind. Clergy are largely men from Brahmans to Pastors. And yes things have got a bit better, but research shows that currently in the U.S. only 10% of congregations are led by a female. And again it gets worse if you go back into the past. So if you’re looking at a history of religious persecution and oppression, the cloistering of education and literacy which typically only happened at religious institutions where women weren’t allowed, the common denominator is once again men.
Let’s now go down in scale, away from the level of nations and large institutions. About 90% of murders are committed by men. Like all those stories about mass shooters? You know what they have in common? It isn’t jihad or domestic terrorism…it’s…you guessed it. Men. About 75 percent of all legal felonies are committed by men and 96% of domestic violence convictions are of men. Before you say that there are men being physically abused too by spouses and aren’t being believed, let’s just call it a wash with other women who are being physically abused in similar situations and can’t report because they are too afraid, are not being believed, or lived in a culture that supports men’s right to beat their wives. When it comes to rape, 1 and 6 women report being a victim of rape. Compare that to about 1 in 33 of men report being a victim of rape. And at least half of those rape victims are being raped by other men.
Now if any MRA members are reading all this, I’m sure you are getting ready to weaponize yourself with facts on the under-reporting of the bad women out there. Again, I don’t doubt that there are, but any claim that the proportions are anywhere close to equal, you are simply going to lose that battle. Once again, the proportion of under-reporting for violence committed against females is still very high. From a percentage standpoint, you aren’t going to gain much ground.
Based on history and present day, it would seem the best thing to do, for the protection of all people is to cloister men. Keep them at home, doing house chores to occupy their time. Their obsession with power mixed with apparently too much free time seems to have terribly violent ends. Perhaps spending more time with children will help them understand why all the excessive killing is harmful. I have no doubt there are some good men out there and this seems really unfair to them but I think when you really look at the violence that has been perpetrated by men to women and even other men, leaving the house is something you should probably ask permission for from a female. And you should probably only be out with a female so they can keep an eye on you to make sure you don’t pull out any weapons, or try to rape somebody. I’d say you’d need a female boss or foreman at work, but the jobs men should get are very limited owing that having too many men in public seems to be extremely dangerous. When out, men should stay in well lit areas, and perhaps some sort of secure undergarment so you don’t whip it out casually in hopes that a random woman on the street will want to see it. Curfews and modesty are the key I think. If it’s true that we recognize women as humans this seems like sensible policy. I suspect that the long history of dehumanizing women is the reason why this hasn’t happened.
Is it true that given equal education a woman could have just as easily come up with the First Law of Thermodynamics or the Universal Law of Gravitation? This seems likely, but I’m not sure that our world of violence isn’t largely the cause of men. You may say this isn’t true, and you may be right, but I for one am happy to give women the reins (and reigns) for awhile and give them a chance to see if they can do it as badly as men. Only then can we have an honest conversation about the true nature of men and women and who is fit for power, rather than just who has power.
“Novelist Margaret Atwood writes that when she asked a male friend why men feel threatened by women, he answered, “They are afraid women will laugh at them.” When she asked a group of women why they feel threatened by men, they said, “We’re afraid of being killed.”
Topics are building up in my head faster than I have time to write them, and so despite the fact that I swore I was going to write about numerous other topics, particularly in the area of psychology a Facebook conversation has led me down a different path.
The conversation was about a McDonalds worker who wanted her $8/hr salary to go up to
From money.cnn.com
the living wage of $15/hr. Which is still not a terribly high wage. The conversation that ensued went as you’d expect. Most people (who are in good jobs and living comfortably) saying that working at McDonalds requires no skill and thus should be paid accordingly. Or criticizing the person for not doing more with their life and thus have no one but themselves to blame. One person did make the argument that no wage has kept pace with inflation, which is true, but minimum wage has gone up at an even slower rate.
I made numerous arguments in response, most importantly challenging the assumption that the person had all these choices in their life. Most of the people reading this blog live in a position of privilege. And it’s not your fault. Your parents probably pushed you, help educate you, made you aware of different options for your life, encouraged you to do well in school. You probably grew up in relatively safe neighborhoods. You had friends that were similar to you. You had good schools to go to, with a lot of skilled teachers. But not all neighborhoods are safe. Not all parents care enough to encourage your education.
From blog.volunteerspot.com
Not all schools are equal in the quality of education they provide. Some environments make it easier to fall into a bad crowd. Not everyone has the freedom to go for further training after they get out of high school. Maybe they have to work to take care of a sick parent who has massive bills because they couldn’t afford health insurance. There are a million scenarios that could limit the opportunities one has.
I also made the argument that I did not choose my career path as a meteorology professor because of the money. It is because I loved it. I am glad it pays well enough for me to live comfortably. But should all of a sudden a McDonalds job become available that pays more. I am not going to jump ship and say, “Yay more money, flipping burgers all day is going to be awesome!”.
An argument was made by someone that garbage men get paid a good wage so they
From nypost.com
could do that instead of working at McDonalds. Okay true. But we can’t all be sanitation workers let alone teachers, lawyers and doctors. It’s also important to remember that at one time sanitation workers didn’t get paid very much. Thanks to unions though they could organize, strike, and refuse to pick up garbage until they made a decent wage to live by. Because picking up the trash and removing waste from our streets is actually an important and necessary part of our society.
I think education and teachers are extremely important. But do I think that makes a job that doesn’t require as much knowledge and skill less important? Of course not. There is nothing inherently more valuable about my role in society than someone who picks up the garbage. In fact someone could argue that picking up the trash is perhaps more important. When trash was in the streets, things like the bubonic plague happened. Hygiene and sanitation are extremely important. So let’s go a step further. Is there anything more inherently valuable about my job than a restaurant worker? Arguably we can have a world without restaurants and everybody cooks their own food. Might not be a bad world, but that’s not ultimately our world. People like to go out to eat. There will always be restaurants. So restaurants are just as much part of the fabric of society as anything else. So should the required skill level in any job be what determines the wage. The sanitation worker, from a skill level is just as demanding as a burger flipper and yet makes more. Is that right? I would further argue that an employee earning a living wage at any job has more loyalty to the company and stays longer thus becoming better at their job. If you’ve had bad service at a McDonalds, maybe it’s because they are constantly having to train new people since the pay is so bad that people leave after a short time. The money isn’t probably worth the level of abuse they get from customers.
Now there are even more good arguments to be made about a McDonalds worker making a living wage. They would need less social programs saving the taxpayer money, they can perhaps afford to move to send their kids to a better school to break the cycle of poverty, not to mention they may now have more free time to better themselves or spend with their kids, which also helps break the cycle. However what concerns me the most is the attitude towards the poor. One commenter on this thread said that “it serves them right making a low wage for their self-inflicted wounds”. I was like wow. As I’ve just argued it is extremely judgmental to assume the wounds are self-inflicted, but basically this person is saying:
“Hey poor person, sucks about the mistakes you made in the past. You deserve now to suffer the rest of your life because of that”.
How callous is that? I wonder if that person has ever had somebody so unforgiving to their mistakes. And how should the poor person respond?
” Thank a lot Captain Hindsight. Now that I realize my mistakes I’ll go back in time and fix it.”
Furthermore we can see how materialistic our society is by people who would look down on poor people in such a way. Because where is the condemnation to the rich owner of
From socialmarketbuzz.com
McDonalds or any corporation? Why don’t we judge him just as harshly? Because he has money of course. And obviously he must be working really really hard in order to make all that money. This is of course nonsense. A single mother working two jobs to support her family is most definitely working harder than the CEO of McDonalds. And I doubt that mother is having fancy lunches on an expensive account and playing a round of golf out in the sun with business associates. But even if they were equal, why is that CEO more valuable than the person working at minimum wage jobs? The corporation itself made almost $30 billion last year in revenues. And the CEO’s take home pay is $9 million a year. Is that CEO that much more valuable than one of his employees? Is he/she that much more skilled?
And if workers should get a living wage, many argue about how much everything will cost. But there is a second option. The company could make less money. The CEO could make less money. Is that likely? Perhaps not, but in the free market there is always somebody who is going to take an advantage of an opportunity and will undercut the competition and take home only 2 million a year instead. That CEO is still living a better life than 99.99% of the people in this world. If we want to equate a monetary value to skill, a CEO still makes far beyond what his or her skill warrants.
The Great Pyramids, one of the 7 wonders of the world, was built on the backs of slave labor to entomb the rich and powerful. When I look at the vast wealth of a few, at the expense of countless millions who can barely meet their daily nutritional needs for themselves and their families, I wonder how much things have really changed. What’s clear is that by dehumanizing the poor as many do in this country it allows a system to continue that allows the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. So it saddens and sickens me when I hear people idolize wealth and abhor the poor. If the income gap continues to widen in this country I can tell you that statistically speaking one is more likely to find themselves in a poor man’s shoes. Perhaps only then will people learn.
Cloak Unfurled 