Tag: feminism

Categories
general freedom ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies The Draft U.S. Constitution

Equal or Free?

draft, conscription, women, servitude, military, illustration

On Tuesday, the Senate voted to force American women, in their early years, to register for the draft.

Just like men have been required to do since 1980.

The White House threatens to veto the bill, though perhaps on other grounds, since the bill also, in the words of Richard Lardner (AP), “authorizes $602 billion in military spending, bars shuttering the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and denies the Pentagon’s bid to start a new round of military base closings.”

The Senate’s social conservative ranks made the whole process leading up to the vote difficult for the mainliners, like Sen. John “Maverick” McCain, who is enthusiastic about registering women. Sen. Ted Cruz expressed alarm at the direction “sexual equality” is taking, and didn’t want to see “girls drafted onto the front lines.”

Decades ago, the Supreme Court had nixed a challenge to draft registration on discrimination lines, reasoning that since women weren’t allowed onto the front lines, there was no cause to force them to register for military conscription.

But now there are women in combat positions. So the old ruling no longer applies. If draft registration isn’t expanded to women, it’s likely to be struck down for men.

We have no draft, we are reminded, mere registration — which our government keeps in place mainly to remind men that they may be drafted.

In the House version of the bill, there’s no draft registration amendment. So there will be negotiations. Maybe a compromise can be reached where neither young men nor women face a military draft* or, likewise, signing up for one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* For more on why to oppose the draft, see my essay “The Draft Is Slavery” in J. Neil Schulman, The Rainbow Cadenza, pulpless.com edition (1999).

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draft, conscription, women, servitude, military, illustration

 

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Misleading Metric

pay gap, gender, legislation, justice, fairness, hypocrisy, Sen. Susan Lee

Yesterday’s Washington Post clarified how the “gender pay gap” is calculated:

This metric does not take into account the different types of jobs, varying levels of experience and education, or women who lose seniority and promotion opportunities when they leave the workforce temporarily to care for children, which they do in larger numbers than men. Still, it is widely used as a measuring stick.

The Post informed readers that the gap isn’t what it appears, that it doesn’t actually measure discrimination against women. Nonetheless, the paper justifies promoting this misleading statistic with the claim that it is “widely used.”

Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Post’s story was sparked by legislation in Maryland to purportedly mandate “equal-pay” between men and women. Yet, the bill specifically authorizes unequal pay for any “bona fide factor other than sex or gender identity.”

It’s already against the law for employers to pay women less for the same job or to deny equal opportunity for advancement. This legislation, on the other hand, seems designed to create full-employment for lawyers. If passed, employees could sue their employer for “assigning work less likely to lead to promotion or future opportunities.”

Sen. Susan Lee, the bill’s sponsor, proclaims that, “Any gap is unequal and unacceptable.”

What about the gender pay gap in the Maryland Legislature? Using the same misleading metric, female legislative employees make less than what males make.

Unacceptable!

So, why don’t legislators fix their own pay discrepancy before they dictate to everyone else?

Or better yet, they could simply stop peddling a divisive non-solution for this dishonestly hyped “problem.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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pay gap, gender, legislation, justice, fairness, hypocrisy, Sen. Susan Lee

 

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Categories
Common Sense folly media and media people responsibility

Who Are the Bigots Now?

political, editorial, collage, photomontage, illustration, gender, rape, Rolling Stone, women's studies, campus, violence

“Why did Rolling Stone . . . so massively screw up” in “falsely accusing a University of Virginia frat of gang-raping a freshman girl?” asks Alex Griswold of The Daily Caller. “[I]f you work for liberal magazine The New Republic, the answer is that they were too right-wing.”

Most of my online friends are with Griswold, excoriating and ridiculing TNR’s Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig’s questionable analysis of the piece in question. Before I pile on, let me just say what is right about her analysis in “Rolling Stone’s Rape Article Failed Because It Used Rightwing Tactics to Make a Leftist Point…”

She ably summarizes a world view.

“The left tends to view oppression as something that operates within systems, sometimes in clearly identifiable structural biases” while the “right,” she insists, “tends to understand politics on the individual level,” which she imputes to “a general obsession with the capital-i Individual.”

That, she thinks, is why “the right” pokes at “specific details of high-profile cases like those of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.” If the leftist critique doesn’t apply there, she thinks “rightwingers” hope, they thereby disprove the left’s systemic oppression thesis.

Note how she just assumes the accuracy of the left’s approach; she just ignores how often lefty journalists get actual “big-picture” stats wrong. For example, on the subject of “rape culture,” they routinely suppress discussion of accurate stats on false rape charges by women against men.

Worse yet, she honestly does not see how her “leftwing” media comrades have prejudged coverage of recent race-based and rape-involved cases, doing injustice to individuals.

Is this mere media bias?

No. It’s the very definition of prejudice. It’s bigotry.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Upside Down World View

 

Categories
folly ideological culture nannyism

The Problem of No Problem

A scientist has a problem: no problem.

Sounds like a Zen riddle, but it’s really about the riddle of victimhood-worship.

Emily Yoffe writes an advice column called Dear Prudence. A female reader reported a problem pertaining to workplace bias against women. Although she works in a “very masculine scientific field . . . I have never really suffered from sexism.”

Hmmm. Why not? “Maybe I’m just awesome at playing the man’s game (or in denial and don’t have an eye for sexism?).”

It is probably not denial. It is pretty easy to detect abusive treatment when you’re on the receiving end and not rationalizing it away. The bigger problem, though, is that “even quite reasonable and pleasant women” of her acquaintance get nasty when she can’t “contribute to their list of crimes committed by the patriarchy.”

What to do? She dislikes unpleasantness, but doesn’t want to lie.

One thing to do is recognize it’s not up to you to make unreasonable people reasonable. When no discussion is possible, take your conversation elsewhere. I also advise skipping gratuitous self-doubt.

Happily, Ms. Prudence and I are on the same wavelength.

“My general advice,” she writes, “is that it’s best not to engage with unpleasant people. . . . But if you feel like it, you can also counterpunch by saying something like, ‘It’s funny, but the only people who try to bully me are women who aren’t in my profession.’ ”

Commonsensical minds think alike, I guess. Ask me for advice any time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.