5 ms·

I hate the sexism of these stories. More women are taking more responsibility, but plenty of dads are too. The result of articles like this one is that Dads be

I hate the sexism of these stories. More women are taking more responsibility, but plenty of dads are too. The result of articles like this one is that Dads becoming primary caretakers during learn-from-home face a triple-whammy. It discourages exactly the kind of behavior it pretends to want to see. Dads are disadvantaged in the same way Moms are, but then they're screwed over at work more (since expectations are set by articles like this one that it's the mom's duty). They're screwed over a third time in custody battles, when thanks to stereotypes like these, they will invariably get the short stick on custody. Best a Dad primary caretaker can hope for, unless the Mom is a drunk psychotic, is 50/50. Typical is Mom gets custody. It's perfectly possible to write an article like this in neutral terms "primary caretaker," and point out the majority are women, and there's a disparate gender impact. It's an article about primary caretakers. By implying by correlation that it's 100% women, it does a ton of harm. As a footnote, that problem is pretty common. We don't have domestic violence laws. We have a "violence against women act." I'm not even sure how that's constitutional, but the result is that law enforcement ignores domestic violence against men. That's not to speak of the whole LGBTQ community, whom the author thinks it's okay to f- over by assuming a family is a husband and a wife.

xwdv 6y ago
I come to the same conclusions you do about this, but I always find it hard to discuss these sort of details without getting my observations written off as toxic what-aboutism. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if your comment began to accumulate downvotes very quickly, so here’s my upvote if it means anything. I have a female friend who would back me into a corner and force me to answer for all the wrongs men have done against women throughout history if I tried to raise the points you made with her. Not sure what to do.
- s5300 6y ago
  I would start by no longer being their friend. Who needs such toxicity in their life?
  - xwdv 6y ago
    First I must win the argument, and then I can have the satisfaction of leaving on a high note.
- refulgentis 6y ago
  There's a way to talk about this stuff that isn't a series of assertions - I'm sure OP is hurt, and I'm sure you were too. I have been as well. It's odd to see that twisted into justification for claiming men are the one injured by sexism, especially when it's a series of things that are, at their face, false.
  - musingsole 6y ago
    > claiming men are the one injured by sexism Weird that it can be only one or other that's injured and not both. Which is what both parents are referring to. GP even points to the asymmetry of the injuries done to various groups, but the point remains that every conceivable group is harmed by sexism in a variety of ways.
    - refulgentis 6y ago
      "asymmetry of injuries" is just anodyne enough of a phrase to seem obvious and fine, but it doesn't follow at all from GPs post. GPs post is about how men face _symmetrical_ injury, thus it is unfair to say it's an _asymmetric_ issue and only females are affected (if you need convincing on this, note their invocation of how unfair it is to LGBTQ people that the debate is reduced to gender...the opposite of your claim...)
      - musingsole 6y ago
        >> It's perfectly possible to write an article like this in neutral terms "primary caretaker," and point out the majority are women, and there's a disparate gender impact. > GPs post is about how men face _symmetrical_ injury, thus it is unfair to say it's an _asymmetric_ issue and only females are affected Point out to me what part of GP is claiming that the harms of a sexist society are felt symmetrically by the groups involved? There is a claim in GPs post that the men who have stepped out of the stereotypical role and into that primary care giver role are punched twice 1) by the traditional culture this article is railing against and 2) by the culture produced by articles like this that will ignore the men who do not fit into their power narrative.
refulgentis 6y ago
Lots to unpack here: > It discourages exactly the kind of behavior it pretends to want to see Assuming cartoonish levels of bad faith and asserting a contradiction in terms becomes the foundation for a lot of what follows > Dads are disadvantaged in the same way Moms are, but then they're screwed over at work more (since expectations are set by articles like this one that it's the mom's duty). As you noted above, the article advocates for the opposite of what you're asserting here. > They're screwed over a third time in custody battles, when thanks to stereotypes like these, they will invariably get the short stick on custody. Best a Dad primary caretaker can hope for, unless the Mom is a drunk psychotic, is 50/50. Typical is Mom gets custody. This simply isn't true, 2 of the 3 cases I know the dad got 80/20, primarily because he had a more stable situation, such as a full time job as a nurse, and/or owning a house. > It's perfectly possible to write an article like this in neutral terms "primary caretaker," and point out the majority are women, and there's a disparate gender impact. It's an article about primary caretakers. By implying by correlation that it's 100% women, it does a ton of harm. As you noted, you believe this was _implied_ - as a neutral reader, I'm not inclined to just agree with your assertion that it was implied, you actively threw away that opportunity by opening strong with the claim that the article is "pretending" to "want to see" things - you can intro people with a strong take, in fact, I need to do that more in my writing. But, you can't be three paragraphs in reasserting your strong claim, at this point we should have some discussion of evidence. > As a footnote, that problem is pretty common. We don't have domestic violence laws. We have a "violence against women act." I'm not even sure how that's constitutional, but the result is that law enforcement ignores domestic violence against men. You are asserting that the marketing name for one piece of legislation 24 years ago means that everyone only uses violence against women against preferring the general neutral. There's plenty of laws against "domestic violence" specifically, that's how it's referred to in law, and domestic violence is used _much_ more frequently - 22x as many, in fact. > That's not to speak of the whole LGBTQ community, whom the author thinks it's okay to f- over by assuming a family is a husband and a wife. All of your observations through this point were about how men are unfairly treated compared to women. This gives the reader absolute whiplash, because now you're claiming it's offensive to _talk about gender at all_ in relation to this.
- musingsole 6y ago
JKCalhoun 6y ago
It's an interview. I'm not sure if you're having a problem with the interviewer, or the interviewee.
- woofie11 6y ago
  Interviewee. Same problem in the papers cited.
nostromo 6y ago
I agree with the general idea that women in the US are often expected to do lots of unpaid, under-appreciated work at home and beyond, but her framing of it as a problem with the US, capitalism, and white supremacy is pretty ridiculous. Anyone who has been to several less capitalistic countries, or non-white countries, or just beyond the US in general can tell you that women still do a lot more work at home in most countries -- and in fact I'm hard pressed to think of non-white country that does a better job than several capitalist, predominantly white, western countries in allowing women the cultural freedom to do what they like with their lives. I think it's gotten to the point that people in the social sciences just throw out these terms about any topic. But they shouldn't, because this is a real issue that she's undermining by stretching the argument so thin to try and make it about white supremacy.
Spivak 6y ago
You’re making a valid point but it ignores the historical context that as a group this work is shouldered on women, is extremely undervalued, and puts women in an extremely vulnerable position. I can’t explain it any better than Elizabeth Warren in The Double Income Trap. The entire book talks about women as the social safety net and the really shitty dynamics at play. There also has to be some care to treat separately the class of women from individual women. Since we’re on HN class Woman != Set<Woman>. This doesn’t imply that no men take on this role or feel pressured to. And it doesn’t imply that literally all women do either. Nor does it imply that our patriarchal system doesn’t do serious harm to men in the ways you described and more. Footnotes: * The US has domestic violence laws. Like almost all criminal code they exist at the state level. * Law enforcement absolutely does not ignore domestic violence against men. They ignore domestic violence entirely! Even with the act! The story of police not taking the claims seriously and one, leaving them with their abuser and two, removing the threat of police involvement as a deterrent to that abuse happens again and again. * I’m not at all offended as a gay women because I know this article isn’t about me as an individual but about a complex social dynamic that the case studies serve as examples of.
- woofie11 6y ago
  The solution to sexism isn't sexism. There's a bizarre belief in some darker corners of feminism that if a group is disadvantaged, you want to address that by advantaging them in other ways, rather than by pushing for equality. There are times for that, but that's the exception, not the rule. 1) It perpetuates or changes the problem, but it doesn't fix it. It's not too dissimilar from gender relations in Islam or Mormonism, where you try to compensate from giving men power by placing women on a pedestal, and giving them protections. It's not effective. 2) It makes a lot of potential allies into enemies too. I'm pretty convinced Trump beat Clinton because of divorced dads, and some particularly sexist comments she made. Divorced dads make up a big portion of the electorate, are a disadvantaged population, and have private support groups. They hated Trumps sexism and racism, but hated Clinton's sexism too, and won't vote against their own interests. I'll mention many of those same dads supported Warren in the primary, who is a far more effective feminist than Clinton (actually, a far more effective everything), in part because she's a feminist and NOT a sexist, where Clinton was a sexist but not much of a feminist. I can see the case for things like affirmative action, where there is no other solution, but in this case, the point could have been made just as well, if not better, if the articles didn't talk about husbands and wives but used neutral language. If you make it gendered, you get into a gender/race/ethnicity war. If you make it neutral, everyone gets behind you, but the same change comes out the other end. Actually, usually a better change, since it treats people as equal individuals, and removes a systemic barrier that disproportionately impacts some, rather than as stereotypes. Footnotes: * Many state laws are named in gendered terms as well. VAWA in abstract applies to both genders, but doesn't in practice. It perpetuates the stereotype that violence against men is uncommon. It turns out that physical abuse is similar in both directions. There's a perception that it's a 99/1 split, but it's more like a 60/40 split. Women are somewhat more likely to be seriously injured, due to size/strength differences, but even that's not as extreme as made out. A knife, bat, or frying pan overcomes a lot of those differences. In most cases (in both directions) the partner doesn't fight back. The studies to look at are broad surveys (researcher calls thousands of people, and asks structured questions). * There are studies on police response too. In the best study I saw, literally zero domestic violence calls placed by men led to resolution, and in 12% of cases, the male victim was arrested themselves. Women didn't have a perfect success rate, but it was far better.
kaitai 6y ago
Quitting your job because your spouse won't and someone's got to take care of the kids isn't "taking responsibility", exactly. It's just taking the short end of the stick, as we can play out the statistics and note that it is women who are leaving the workforce at higher levels and women who end up in poverty far more often after divorce. If you're a guy who is shouldering his part of the childcare during this pandemic and sacrificing his career, congrats, I guess. We need more guys who do step up, as I see plenty who don't.

xwdv 6y ago

I come to the same conclusions you do about this, but I always find it hard to discuss these sort of details without getting my observations written off as toxic what-aboutism. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if your comment began to accumulate downvotes very quickly, so here’s my upvote if it means anything. I have a female friend who would back me into a corner and force me to answer for all the wrongs men have done against women throughout history if I tried to raise the points you made with her. Not sure what to do.

s5300 6y ago
I would start by no longer being their friend. Who needs such toxicity in their life?
- xwdv 6y ago
  First I must win the argument, and then I can have the satisfaction of leaving on a high note.
refulgentis 6y ago
There's a way to talk about this stuff that isn't a series of assertions - I'm sure OP is hurt, and I'm sure you were too. I have been as well. It's odd to see that twisted into justification for claiming men are the one injured by sexism, especially when it's a series of things that are, at their face, false.
- musingsole 6y ago
  > claiming men are the one injured by sexism Weird that it can be only one or other that's injured and not both. Which is what both parents are referring to. GP even points to the asymmetry of the injuries done to various groups, but the point remains that every conceivable group is harmed by sexism in a variety of ways.
  - refulgentis 6y ago
    "asymmetry of injuries" is just anodyne enough of a phrase to seem obvious and fine, but it doesn't follow at all from GPs post. GPs post is about how men face _symmetrical_ injury, thus it is unfair to say it's an _asymmetric_ issue and only females are affected (if you need convincing on this, note their invocation of how unfair it is to LGBTQ people that the debate is reduced to gender...the opposite of your claim...)
    - musingsole 6y ago
      >> It's perfectly possible to write an article like this in neutral terms "primary caretaker," and point out the majority are women, and there's a disparate gender impact. > GPs post is about how men face _symmetrical_ injury, thus it is unfair to say it's an _asymmetric_ issue and only females are affected Point out to me what part of GP is claiming that the harms of a sexist society are felt symmetrically by the groups involved? There is a claim in GPs post that the men who have stepped out of the stereotypical role and into that primary care giver role are punched twice 1) by the traditional culture this article is railing against and 2) by the culture produced by articles like this that will ignore the men who do not fit into their power narrative.

refulgentis 6y ago

Lots to unpack here: > It discourages exactly the kind of behavior it pretends to want to see Assuming cartoonish levels of bad faith and asserting a contradiction in terms becomes the foundation for a lot of what follows > Dads are disadvantaged in the same way Moms are, but then they're screwed over at work more (since expectations are set by articles like this one that it's the mom's duty). As you noted above, the article advocates for the opposite of what you're asserting here. > They're screwed over a third time in custody battles, when thanks to stereotypes like these, they will invariably get the short stick on custody. Best a Dad primary caretaker can hope for, unless the Mom is a drunk psychotic, is 50/50. Typical is Mom gets custody. This simply isn't true, 2 of the 3 cases I know the dad got 80/20, primarily because he had a more stable situation, such as a full time job as a nurse, and/or owning a house. > It's perfectly possible to write an article like this in neutral terms "primary caretaker," and point out the majority are women, and there's a disparate gender impact. It's an article about primary caretakers. By implying by correlation that it's 100% women, it does a ton of harm. As you noted, you believe this was _implied_ - as a neutral reader, I'm not inclined to just agree with your assertion that it was implied, you actively threw away that opportunity by opening strong with the claim that the article is "pretending" to "want to see" things - you can intro people with a strong take, in fact, I need to do that more in my writing. But, you can't be three paragraphs in reasserting your strong claim, at this point we should have some discussion of evidence. > As a footnote, that problem is pretty common. We don't have domestic violence laws. We have a "violence against women act." I'm not even sure how that's constitutional, but the result is that law enforcement ignores domestic violence against men. You are asserting that the marketing name for one piece of legislation 24 years ago means that everyone only uses violence against women against preferring the general neutral. There's plenty of laws against "domestic violence" specifically, that's how it's referred to in law, and domestic violence is used _much_ more frequently - 22x as many, in fact. > That's not to speak of the whole LGBTQ community, whom the author thinks it's okay to f- over by assuming a family is a husband and a wife. All of your observations through this point were about how men are unfairly treated compared to women. This gives the reader absolute whiplash, because now you're claiming it's offensive to _talk about gender at all_ in relation to this.

musingsole 6y ago

JKCalhoun 6y ago

It's an interview. I'm not sure if you're having a problem with the interviewer, or the interviewee.

woofie11 6y ago
Interviewee. Same problem in the papers cited.

nostromo 6y ago

I agree with the general idea that women in the US are often expected to do lots of unpaid, under-appreciated work at home and beyond, but her framing of it as a problem with the US, capitalism, and white supremacy is pretty ridiculous. Anyone who has been to several less capitalistic countries, or non-white countries, or just beyond the US in general can tell you that women still do a lot more work at home in most countries -- and in fact I'm hard pressed to think of non-white country that does a better job than several capitalist, predominantly white, western countries in allowing women the cultural freedom to do what they like with their lives. I think it's gotten to the point that people in the social sciences just throw out these terms about any topic. But they shouldn't, because this is a real issue that she's undermining by stretching the argument so thin to try and make it about white supremacy.

Spivak 6y ago

You’re making a valid point but it ignores the historical context that as a group this work is shouldered on women, is extremely undervalued, and puts women in an extremely vulnerable position. I can’t explain it any better than Elizabeth Warren in The Double Income Trap. The entire book talks about women as the social safety net and the really shitty dynamics at play. There also has to be some care to treat separately the class of women from individual women. Since we’re on HN class Woman != Set<Woman>. This doesn’t imply that no men take on this role or feel pressured to. And it doesn’t imply that literally all women do either. Nor does it imply that our patriarchal system doesn’t do serious harm to men in the ways you described and more. Footnotes: * The US has domestic violence laws. Like almost all criminal code they exist at the state level. * Law enforcement absolutely does not ignore domestic violence against men. They ignore domestic violence entirely! Even with the act! The story of police not taking the claims seriously and one, leaving them with their abuser and two, removing the threat of police involvement as a deterrent to that abuse happens again and again. * I’m not at all offended as a gay women because I know this article isn’t about me as an individual but about a complex social dynamic that the case studies serve as examples of.

woofie11 6y ago
The solution to sexism isn't sexism. There's a bizarre belief in some darker corners of feminism that if a group is disadvantaged, you want to address that by advantaging them in other ways, rather than by pushing for equality. There are times for that, but that's the exception, not the rule. 1) It perpetuates or changes the problem, but it doesn't fix it. It's not too dissimilar from gender relations in Islam or Mormonism, where you try to compensate from giving men power by placing women on a pedestal, and giving them protections. It's not effective. 2) It makes a lot of potential allies into enemies too. I'm pretty convinced Trump beat Clinton because of divorced dads, and some particularly sexist comments she made. Divorced dads make up a big portion of the electorate, are a disadvantaged population, and have private support groups. They hated Trumps sexism and racism, but hated Clinton's sexism too, and won't vote against their own interests. I'll mention many of those same dads supported Warren in the primary, who is a far more effective feminist than Clinton (actually, a far more effective everything), in part because she's a feminist and NOT a sexist, where Clinton was a sexist but not much of a feminist. I can see the case for things like affirmative action, where there is no other solution, but in this case, the point could have been made just as well, if not better, if the articles didn't talk about husbands and wives but used neutral language. If you make it gendered, you get into a gender/race/ethnicity war. If you make it neutral, everyone gets behind you, but the same change comes out the other end. Actually, usually a better change, since it treats people as equal individuals, and removes a systemic barrier that disproportionately impacts some, rather than as stereotypes. Footnotes: * Many state laws are named in gendered terms as well. VAWA in abstract applies to both genders, but doesn't in practice. It perpetuates the stereotype that violence against men is uncommon. It turns out that physical abuse is similar in both directions. There's a perception that it's a 99/1 split, but it's more like a 60/40 split. Women are somewhat more likely to be seriously injured, due to size/strength differences, but even that's not as extreme as made out. A knife, bat, or frying pan overcomes a lot of those differences. In most cases (in both directions) the partner doesn't fight back. The studies to look at are broad surveys (researcher calls thousands of people, and asks structured questions). * There are studies on police response too. In the best study I saw, literally zero domestic violence calls placed by men led to resolution, and in 12% of cases, the male victim was arrested themselves. Women didn't have a perfect success rate, but it was far better.

kaitai 6y ago

Quitting your job because your spouse won't and someone's got to take care of the kids isn't "taking responsibility", exactly. It's just taking the short end of the stick, as we can play out the statistics and note that it is women who are leaving the workforce at higher levels and women who end up in poverty far more often after divorce. If you're a guy who is shouldering his part of the childcare during this pandemic and sacrificing his career, congrats, I guess. We need more guys who do step up, as I see plenty who don't.