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Men and women are not identical; inescapably, the mean value contributed by each will material differ in at least some contexts. If a society equally values th

Men and women are not identical; inescapably, the mean value contributed by each will material differ in at least some contexts. If a society equally values the contributions of men and women in all contexts, then, by definition, it must be using an inequitable metric to ascribe value to their contributions.

pwinnski 4y ago
People aren't abstract mathematical concepts. No two people are identical, and the range of difference between the two most extreme men almost certainly exceeds the range of difference between the most woman-like men and the most man-like women. Given the obvious differences between humans, nobody expects that every single person will contribute identical value, or should be valued identically. However, there is a very, very, very long history of the inverse. In nearly every area of life, the activities and contributions most commonly fulfilled by women are under-valued, while the activities and contributions most commonly fulfilled by men are over-valued. This can be seen historically, as the primary occupants of careers shifted from one sex to the other. The early computer programmers (women) were treated as doing secretarial work, while modern computer programmers (mostly men) are compensated like rock stars. Conversely, early school teachers were highly respected and well-compensated when they were mostly men, and respect and compensation both dropped relative to other careers as teachers became more likely to be women. These are systemic biases so ingrained that we don't think about them. People are lining up to respond to this comment to helpfully explain to me that those earlier programmers weren't the same, or that modern teachers are every bit as respected and well-compensated as they should be, or whatever. The Venn diagram of all men and all women is not a circle, because of course there are differences. But there is much overlap between the two circles, and women are mostly not valued equally where the circles overlap, and the non-overlapping areas of each circle are valued completely differently as well. When you see it, it's clear as day. When you don't or won't, it sounds silly. Feel free to dig in to the truth of it, or dismiss it as folklore.
- fleddr 4y ago
  Cherry-picked examples. I could easily do the same and claim that men are undervalued. They are sacrificed in wars, make up the main portion of the homeless and they do the hardest and dirtiest work to provide the modern infrastructure of the world. They have no support structure, can't fail and are constantly pissed on in culture and media. Neither of us is telling the whole story.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    At some level, humans are undervalued, seen only as grist for the mill, to be ground up and their value extracted, then discarded. Soldiers, homeless people, food service workers, child care workers, teachers, oil rig workers, and on and on and on. That is universal and a larger issue. My point was to focus on the center of the venn diagram, where men and women do the same or similar jobs, especially jobs in which the balance has shifted over time, so that we can see that even in the midst of a general undervaluing of humans, separate from the extreme undervaluing that happens at the edges, women are undervalued even more than usual. For some reason, many people find it hard to understand this.
gallopingcomp 4y ago
No, it would mean not attributing innate value to maleness or femaleness, so to speak,, but to the relevant metrics. One can still compute a mean afterward and potentially find that it differs, but that is no judgment of inherent value / not a causative factor for the value judgment being made. And even then, there might sometimes be benefit to treating people more equally than they are on some metrics. Maximizing efficiency often means sacrificing resiliency, after all.
- catiopatio 4y ago
  Given that there is clearly a difference in relative value produced across a non-trivial number of (often incomparable!) contexts, men and women cannot be equal, and the fiction that they are would not survive an afternoon spent watching the Olympics, or a brief visit to a maternity ward. In my opinion, the only thing we should do with that information is accept that (1) men and women are different, (2) disparity of outcome may be the result of those differences, as opposed to systemic bias, and (3) insisting on equality of outcome will, invariably, produce grossly inequitable results in some contexts.
  - gallopingcomp 4y ago
    Alas, I see that we (you and I and great-grandparent) are talking past each other.

pwinnski 4y ago

People aren't abstract mathematical concepts. No two people are identical, and the range of difference between the two most extreme men almost certainly exceeds the range of difference between the most woman-like men and the most man-like women. Given the obvious differences between humans, nobody expects that every single person will contribute identical value, or should be valued identically. However, there is a very, very, very long history of the inverse. In nearly every area of life, the activities and contributions most commonly fulfilled by women are under-valued, while the activities and contributions most commonly fulfilled by men are over-valued. This can be seen historically, as the primary occupants of careers shifted from one sex to the other. The early computer programmers (women) were treated as doing secretarial work, while modern computer programmers (mostly men) are compensated like rock stars. Conversely, early school teachers were highly respected and well-compensated when they were mostly men, and respect and compensation both dropped relative to other careers as teachers became more likely to be women. These are systemic biases so ingrained that we don't think about them. People are lining up to respond to this comment to helpfully explain to me that those earlier programmers weren't the same, or that modern teachers are every bit as respected and well-compensated as they should be, or whatever. The Venn diagram of all men and all women is not a circle, because of course there are differences. But there is much overlap between the two circles, and women are mostly not valued equally where the circles overlap, and the non-overlapping areas of each circle are valued completely differently as well. When you see it, it's clear as day. When you don't or won't, it sounds silly. Feel free to dig in to the truth of it, or dismiss it as folklore.

fleddr 4y ago
Cherry-picked examples. I could easily do the same and claim that men are undervalued. They are sacrificed in wars, make up the main portion of the homeless and they do the hardest and dirtiest work to provide the modern infrastructure of the world. They have no support structure, can't fail and are constantly pissed on in culture and media. Neither of us is telling the whole story.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pwinnski 4y ago
  At some level, humans are undervalued, seen only as grist for the mill, to be ground up and their value extracted, then discarded. Soldiers, homeless people, food service workers, child care workers, teachers, oil rig workers, and on and on and on. That is universal and a larger issue. My point was to focus on the center of the venn diagram, where men and women do the same or similar jobs, especially jobs in which the balance has shifted over time, so that we can see that even in the midst of a general undervaluing of humans, separate from the extreme undervaluing that happens at the edges, women are undervalued even more than usual. For some reason, many people find it hard to understand this.

gallopingcomp 4y ago

No, it would mean not attributing innate value to maleness or femaleness, so to speak,, but to the relevant metrics. One can still compute a mean afterward and potentially find that it differs, but that is no judgment of inherent value / not a causative factor for the value judgment being made. And even then, there might sometimes be benefit to treating people more equally than they are on some metrics. Maximizing efficiency often means sacrificing resiliency, after all.

catiopatio 4y ago
Given that there is clearly a difference in relative value produced across a non-trivial number of (often incomparable!) contexts, men and women cannot be equal, and the fiction that they are would not survive an afternoon spent watching the Olympics, or a brief visit to a maternity ward. In my opinion, the only thing we should do with that information is accept that (1) men and women are different, (2) disparity of outcome may be the result of those differences, as opposed to systemic bias, and (3) insisting on equality of outcome will, invariably, produce grossly inequitable results in some contexts.
- gallopingcomp 4y ago
  Alas, I see that we (you and I and great-grandparent) are talking past each other.