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> I think it is hard to disagree that historically, women who wished to live a life outside of the cultural norm at the time were oppressed I absolutely agree
by weberc2 9y ago
> I think it is hard to disagree that historically, women who wished to live a life outside of the cultural norm at the time were oppressed
I absolutely agree (especially that beauty standards have nothing to do with oppression); however, our culture seems to take this as proof that women as a class are oppressed (optionally oppressed by men, depending on who you talk to). Of course, this is trivially refuted--life is difficult for men who wish to live outside the norm as well; however, despite being clearly false, the myth has a strong hold over our culture.
On the subject of beauty standards, it's particularly hard to make the case that they're used to oppress women given that they equally oppress men, and while I think that 'beauty' affects women more than men, it's important to note that (1) there are lots of other social factors that impact men more strongly than women and (2) this also means above-average beauty affords women more social capital than it does men.
The folks who claim that women are oppressed almost exclusively sample poorly--they focus exclusively on criteria that favor men over women or they focus on the top 10% of a distribution such that men appear favored favored for their disproportionate representation, failing to note that men are even more represented in the bottom 10%. If they're not sampling wrongly, they're looking at criteria like 'beauty' and double-dipping: beautiful women and homely women are both wronged while beautiful men and homely men are both privileged. It's hard not to conclude that the folks who hold these positions are acting in bad faith.
- jm__87 9y agoAh I don't want to comment on most of that, but I do think there is good reason to ask if women as a class are oppressed today, as they certainly were in the past. This means looking for and removing any biases in the hiring practices of our institutions, our education system, and so forth. You will never get rid of inequalities as men and women are just too different, but you can definitely make the system as fair as possible.
- weberc2 9y agoThe problem is how we make the determination. For whatever reason, many well-educated, powerful people (university faculty and journalists come to mind) are content to conclude that women are oppressed today based on C-suite or STEM demographics while ignoring mining, garbage collection, construction, forestry, oil rigging, and other hazardous or otherwise undesirable occupations. Or serial assault vs literally any other kind of assault. Not to mention the myriad criteria for which men are clearly disadvantaged (health/longevity, judicial prejudice, homeless, mental illness, public resources, education, etc). I don't know how we can hope to answer your question with such a blatantly biased approach.
- greglindahl 9y agoSo you're saying that everyone who disagrees with you isn't paying attention to the evidence, which you find totally convincing. Somehow I suspect that is not the case. BTW, my aunt went to welding school and then had to sue the union in order to be able to get an actual job. Is a study of that sort of discrimination a sufficient counter-example to welders being overwhelmingly male, or is it just that most women don't want to be welders? It's totally true that my aunt is an unusual woman. Not only did she want to be a welder, but she was willing to sue.