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To understand conversations about gender bias in professions, you have to understand that the American academy (and by extension, America's educated class) oper
by newnewnew 13y ago
To understand conversations about gender bias in professions, you have to understand that the American academy (and by extension, America's educated class) operates from a Marxist ideology. This casts the world in light of class conflict. In the branch of this ideology which deals with sex relations (called "feminism"), men are the oppressor class and women are the oppressed. Thus, male overrepresentation in the suicide or prison population is not a problem (men cannot be oppressed, they are the over-class). But male overrepresentation in tech is a problem, or at least it has become a problem as tech work has gained in prestige.
Male underrepresentation in traditionally female fields is not considered a problem, again because males cannot be oppressed as a class. It is true that men have fared worse than women in the recession[1], and that men have fallen behind women in educational attainment, so that an influx of men into these fields might have strong, positive effects for society. But as long as the "patriarchy" remains, it will not be a concern.
[1] http://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea10.htm http://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea10.htm
- shardling 13y agoThis is an insultingly simple rendering of some pretty complex topics.
- adamnemecek 13y agoWell good thing that your comment points out those shortcomings so specifically.
- shardling 13y agoThe shortcoming is that it is insulting simple. Seriously. :P
- newnewnew 13y agoMarxists get insulted when you call them Marxist. They prefer to operate by euphemism.
- shardling 13y agoHeh, you seriously think that's why I had a problem with your post? I am once again staggered by the brilliant insights into human nature I learn here on HN... Bye y'all!
- mildtrepidation 13y agoAll the absolutes in here make it very hard to get on board. Americans are not Marxist automatons any more than American culture is something so well-defined that you can reason about it reliably with generalizations like this. I'm not a cultural anthropologist, so I'm not going to bother suggesting this Marxist origin theory is wrong or even not a large contributor, but I will certainly point out that you're reducing something very large and very complex involving a whole lot of vastly different people with different motivations, backgrounds, and goals to a simple, homogeneous, no-moving-parts summary that's so burdened with subjective assumptions as to be unsupportable.
- spindritf 13y agoThe point is not whether it's wrong. The point is that a particular perspective dominates. And observation does seem to confirm that. Also, when did simplification become a bad word? Simplification is great. Half of (university) physics is just a collection of really clever simplifications.
- ThomPete 13y agoMen are found at the very top and the very bottom of society, even in very even societies like the Scandinavian countries. So if anything men are both the most oppressing and most oppressed class of society. Furthermore woman normally marry upwards which makes it even harder for those already at the bottom to find a life companion and escape their situation.
- betterunix 13y agoWomen are also found at the top and at the bottom, even here in America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_pelosi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_pelosi http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/07/homeless-woman-stabs-subway-6-train.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/07/homeless-woman-...
- guard-of-terra 13y agoMen tend to be violent especially when at bottom of society, by which they make rallying around their problems difficult.
- ThomPete 13y agoYou have any stats on that? Would be interesting to see som numbers. My guess is that it wont be that obvious.
- nickthemagicman 13y agoI like this point. I read an facinating article about men being both at the top and bottom of society a year or so ago. I wish I could remember what it was called I would link it to you.
- jamesaguilar 13y agoI would say that's about right as someone who basically espouses this way of looking at class dynamics (though I'm not sure it's really a solely Marxist view, as I am still a fan of capitalism, etc.). One nuance that might be missing from your comment is that folks who believe this still agree that individual men can be oppressed. And some groups of men can be oppressed too -- black males come to mind. But generally, when talking about oppression, they/we are talking about systemic oppression, and would generally agree that men as a whole are not systemically oppressed, although they theoretically could be if women ever became the dominant gender.
- newnewnew 13y agoMarxist analysis is even more often used in discussion of race than of sex. You will often see the claim that there is no such thing as racism against white people, because racism equals power + privilege and white people are privileged. A person shouting ethnic slurs as they beat up a white person is not acting in a "racist" manner, since white people are the privileged group.
- jamesaguilar 13y agoActually, I have seen and agree with that too. According to my politics, you can be "racially discriminatory" against white people, and you can perform a "racially motivated" crime against a white person, but you cannot be racist-as-in-racism against white people. Incidentally, this is why the slur "cracker" carries essentially no sting. (BTW, I am not trying to own the definition of "racism." I understand that other people prefer to use the word to label a different concept than those who share my politics. I'm just trying to explain what I think people mean when they say, "You can't be racist against white people." They mean that there is no systemic oppression of white people.)
- mattstreet 13y agoI'm not sure what you mean by "the American academy" but modern feminism has a lot to say about the negative effects of the patriarchy on men. One major example of this is the way men are pressured to work certain jobs rather than others, or to not seek help for physical or especially emotional problems. Saying that men cannot be oppressed because they are the oppressors seems to come out mostly from MRA strawman talking points.
- fantnn 13y ago>Saying that men cannot be oppressed because they are the oppressors There is a very vocal group of feminists who claim this very thing
- jacques_chester 13y agoYou can find vocal groups advocating any old thing. This is not an invitation to sweeping generalisations.
- fantnn 13y agoWhich is exactly what the post I quoted was doing, I'm not sure what you are trying to say
- hacker789 13y agoThird-wave feminists' deliberate use of the word "patriarchy" to describe modern western culture is itself a class-conflict power grab. But to directly address your point, the OP's argument isn't a strawman. I could compile a list of fifty feminist articles, blog posts, and comics espousing minor variations of: - "Men can be oppressed, but not for their maleness" - "Misandry isn't real" - "Anything that systemically hurts men is simply their privilege backfiring" But someone will still say that those examples don't represent true feminism.
- TorbjornLunde 13y agoTalking about “true” feminism is almost meaningless (or at least very imprecise). There are several strands of feminism. Radical feminism in particular tend to have a complete disregard for men’s issues, but my experience is that there are many moderate feminist who do care about gender issues on all sides.
- lemmsjid 13y agoMaybe some people think like that, but prevailing academic feminist thought does not resemble what you're describing. Modern feminism sees gender as a continuity rather than a boundary, and looks at how social gender constructs support systems of power. For example: why are men often stigmatized for becoming grade school teachers? The modern feminist (at least one with the theoretical bent you're describing) sees this as oppression and tries to come to grips with it by looking at the social constructs of masculinity and femininity, and more specifically in this case of maternity and paternity. In a society where women are caregivers/mothers and men are builders/leaders, then individuals who do not embody those characteristics are marginalized and oppressed. And the marginalization goes both ways. In a society where men are stigmatized for embodying femininity, it will be true that women will be stigmatized for embodying masculinity. The problem is discussed in a far more multidimensional fashion than you're describing. Marxism is used as a tool for analysis, as are many other ideologies, but is certainly not the dominant force. A (good) academic paper that uses Marxism for analysis will often say, "I'm using Marxism to analyze this topic because I feel that in spite of shortcomings A, B, and C, that I can use it to tease out this subtlety..." I would go so far as to say that you are unapologetically building a caricature of what you're describing. Why? Because it's almost never the case that you can take an entire group of people, (in this case, the 'American academy') and apply such a sweeping generalization to their way of thought. In fact, the modern feminist would suggest that it's your absolutist way of arguing that perpetuates this kind of system. When you say that a certain group thinks in a certain way (especially one so easily problematized), you are promulgating the same type of thinking that leads to, "Men shouldn't be teachers." The idea is that when you look at any crowd of people, do you understand that what you're looking at is not some group entity but in fact a very complex interweaving of social dynamics--personality, class, gender, sexuality, family, culture, race, age, height, weight, and all of the intersections thereof. Or do you think you have that group 'figured out' and pigeonholed? Once you have the group pigeonholed, you've denied the individuality and agency of the people in that group.
- dragonwriter 13y agoThe kind of reductionist feminist theory that you describe (which is neither a valid generalization of the "American academy" nor a valid generalization of "Amercia's educated class", though it has no small amount of currency in each of those domains) isn't Marxist -- or even compatible with Marxism -- its an incompatible alternative to Marxism that follows a similar outline but replaces the class conflict of the Marxism with gender conflict.
- mjfl 13y agoclass Feminism extends Marxism { @override public Conflict getConflict() { Conflict genderConflict = super.getConflict(); genderConflict.setEnemy("Males"); return genderConflict; } } (I don't necessarily believe this, but I thought it was a funny joke)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]