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Nov. 10, 2014 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
29:17
This Week in Stupid (10⧸11⧸2014)
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Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 9th of November 2014.
I really did try to find topics that weren't related to feminism, but compared to what feminists are doing and saying, they seem to pale in comparison.
Jessica is back with a vengeance.
A radical fix to the world's wage gap.
Why not pay women more and pay men less?
Fucking, why didn't we think of that?
Why did nobody just think, why did we just pay men less?
For being men?
At the going rate, we won't see workplace gender justice for another 81 years.
Perhaps it's time to tip the scales.
What if the boldest solution for the wage gap isn't about raising women's salaries at all?
What if we paid men less?
Is there anyone left with any doubt that this is actually some kind of social Marxist program that Valenti is proposing here?
Over the weekend, former New York Times executive editor Jill Abrahamson, fired in part, she says, over conversations about pay disparity, told a reporter that the best way for newsroom readers with a limited budget to fix salary inequalities is to bring the guys down and give a little more to the girls.
Seriously, at what point are these idiots going to get sectioned?
I did that at the Times.
No one's happy to get a cut, but too bad.
No one's happy to be discriminated against on the basis of their gender in violation of the Equal Pay Act of 1963.
But too bad indeed.
The Washington Post masthead is about to become all male.
Oh Jesus, it's probably the patriarchy, isn't it, Jessica?
The US wage gap has barely moved in a decade.
Politicians here are deriding new equal pay laws in midterm campaign ads.
And the UK and elsewhere aren't faring much better, even though they do have such laws.
Yes, Jessica, it turns out that people get paid for the work that they do.
The statistics show us that women tend to work less than men.
Unsurprisingly, they therefore earn less money.
But apparently, given the sad status of women and work lately, what sad status?
What exactly is wrong?
It may be a little, I don't fucking care if you like it, is exactly what gender equality needs right now.
That's right, just go full totalitarian.
Some men's antipathy towards feminism comes from a fear that levelling the playing field will mean taking away from men's existing power.
And for a long time, feminists have been sensitive to that concern.
Insisting that equality is not a zero-sum game and that there's enough money, jobs, and quote-unquote justice to go around.
Jessica, are you part of Ingsock?
That is full-on crazy, Jessica.
You have just asked to have men's salaries reduced and that money and have that money given to women.
For just being women because men are men.
Sometimes there's a budget to stick to, or a hiring freeze.
In those cases, should leaders really throw their hands up and put equality aside until it's more convenient?
Sometimes the deck has been stacked so overwhelmingly in one direction that it necessitates extreme action to undo the damage.
We're more than happy to fund study after study about why women make less money, or share think pieces on work-life balance.
So why not put our money where our mouth is?
Fucking hell.
Are you associating leaders with men?
Are you just saying that all leaders are men or all men are leaders?
I mean, sometimes the deck has been stacked so overwhelmingly in one direction.
It necessitates extreme action.
Yeah, sometimes you've got women writing in national newspapers how men should have their salary docked just because they were born into the wrong gender.
And when you say, so why not put our money where our mouth is?
Is it your money that you're trying to put somewhere, Jessica?
Or is it someone else's money?
You raging communist.
Thank God for Fatima Gus Graves, vice president of education and employment at the National Women's Law Center.
Because she tells Jessica that in the same way an employer can't point to tough economic times to justify paying women less, lowering wages for men to make up for pay discrimination would be a violation of the Equal Pay Act.
Which, in that sentence, says everything you need to know about the concept of pay, quote-unquote, discrimination.
Put simply, we're looking at the consequences of free choices in a free society.
Women are choosing not to work as much as men on average.
Unsurprisingly, this leads women in aggregate to get paid less.
There is no violation of any Equal Pay Act here.
This is completely normal.
I could see coming into an organization and recognizing that salaries are completely out of whack, but you can't fix it by lowering men's salaries.
To which Jessica presumably replied, oh fooey.
No, she says, bummer, because the alternatives sure don't seem to be working.
Jessica, you're like some sort of psychotic social justice robot.
It doesn't matter how many people you hurt in your quest to make sure that at the end of the month, those numbers are equal.
There are no limits to how many men can be discriminated against.
How many men can literally have money taken out of their pockets based on their genitals and given to women based on their genitals alone?
That is the only reason you have for this.
And it's just like, bummer, I can't do that because it's fucking illegal.
Heidi Hartman, president of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, which tells you everything you need to know.
There is an Institute for Women's Policy Research.
Why would such a thing exist?
But they tell them that the most common way to address the pay gap in companies is to give larger raises to the underpaid group and much smaller, even no raises to the group that is seen as overpaid for the work being performed.
Which is a really fancy way of saying, just fucking do it and ignore the law.
When you are not giving certain people raises based on their gender, that there is a clear-cut case of discrimination.
Especially when you base it on shit like, oh, well, the group that is seen as overpaid.
Oh, well, fuck me.
I could see a lot of things any way I wanted, you fuck nuts.
Jesus, these people are just awful.
And they don't seem to realize it.
They willfully commit these words to paper in a national newspaper.
I would be like, shit, if that was my name attached to it, I'd be like, please take it down.
I don't know why I wrote that.
I was fucking crazy.
Elsewhere she says, it appears that Jill Abrahamson believed that women's salaries were unfairly low for the work they did.
And she addressed that directly.
This is all so subjective and it seems to be pretty damn arbitrary.
It's just like, well, I just believe that they do so much work they earn more.
Why?
Well, they've got vaginas.
Men don't have vaginas and they're oppressive.
And they earn more money because patriarchy.
So men should have a wage cut.
Definitely.
Addressing gender balance directly.
Imagine that.
No hemming and whoring about how the problem started or what women need to do to fix it.
Management fixed it, as they should have.
Fucking just.
That's as they should have, Jessica.
As they should.
They just.
Now, I never thought I'd find myself arguing against something from the US Equal Pay Act.
Stop you there, Jessica.
That is where, that should be a warning signal.
That should be a big red flag where you say, hey, why am I arguing against the Equal Pay Act?
Doesn't that make me a sexist?
And I understand that men may not exactly love the idea of taking pay cuts.
Why would they?
Why would they love the idea of working really hard?
Because you don't get white guy scholarships.
And seeing the potential list of places available for you personally shrinking because you were born into the wrong demographic.
And then you get through that.
You go through university.
It's really hard.
You work for any.
You work your ass off.
You have a part-time job.
You make sure the bills are paid and that you do your work.
And after, I don't know, four to six years, however long it takes, you get your degree.
And then you spend a couple of years working.
You finally get a job where they're like, yep, they're going to hire you.
It's a good, good salary.
And then they're like, by the way, we're going to pay 25% less.
And you'd be like, why?
Why?
I've earned this.
And they'll say, yes, but you were born with a penis and testicles, weren't you?
And you'll be like, oh, sorry.
I didn't even think.
Didn't even think.
I've been oppressing women my whole life.
I am so sorry.
But anyway, she says, they may not love the idea of taking pay cuts or giving up power more broadly.
Why is it about power?
And even then, yes, that's power that they have earned legitimately.
They did the work.
They deserve it.
In the name of gender justice.
I tell you what, there are going to be some amazing phrases that come out of all of this.
And gender justice is going to be the first.
But the scales have been tipped towards men for too long.
Yes, the scales that say, if you work hard, you will earn lots of money or you earn what you achieve.
And if fixing huge systemic inequality means that some guys' paychecks might need to take a hit, I'm always okay with privileging the marginalized.
Jesus fucking Christ.
It's like she doesn't know what the word she's saying means.
She's okay hurting some men who haven't done anything wrong because some women don't really work very hard.
She's literally saying, I'm happy to marginalize those currently privileged to privilege those currently marginalized.
She's mad.
And this kind of progressiveness at the workplace is not about giving women special treatment or punishing men.
You just fucking said you want to privilege the marginalized.
That is special treatment, Valenti, you crazy person!
And I'm pretty sure that giving men a fucking pay cut will count as a punishment for being born the wrong gender.
We need to put a final end to long-standing quote-unquote injustice and redress an unmoving wrong.
It may take radical action, but it's not a radical idea.
Actually, wrong.
It's a fucking radical idea.
It's radically insane.
Along with being radically fucking Marxist.
I never knew how much of a capitalist I was until feminism.
Given the legal roadblocks, cutting men's salaries to offer women more may not be a realistic vision for pay fairness.
Do you think it might be because it would be fundamentally unfair?
But the World Economic Forum just reported that we won't see worldwide gender inequality until approximately the year 2095.
At this rate, the women will be riding around on hoverboards before they're making the same amount as their male counterparts.
So I'll take a temporarily unrealistic solution over an unfixed problem any day of the week.
Well, we've already established that there isn't an actual problem here.
This is just a consequence of choices.
But what you're suggesting is stupid on so many levels, Jessica.
It's illegal because it would be discrimination based on gender.
It's going to be bloody hard to police.
But not only that, it's actually going to make men more employable than women.
In the same way that this gender pay gap is a logical fallacy of its own.
Why would anyone employ women if men are 25% cheaper?
This isn't going to solve any problems.
It's just going to perpetuate them and make everyone poorer at the same time.
So Mozilla hosts a site called Open Standard where people can submit articles to be presented there.
And this was an anti-Gamergate one that was presented on there.
I just want to stress that I don't think that this actually is endorsed by Mozilla.
But the person claims that hashtag Gamergate is an ed tech issue.
What message does it send to the world about the treatment of women in the predominantly male tech sphere?
Well, none.
As everyone in Gamergate keeps explaining to you, it's a consumer revolt against corruption.
Why are you defending corruption?
So the author of this article insists that this is an education technology issue, and they received some pushback on Twitter last night from men go figure.
And they can't understand why Anita Sarkeesian isn't the topic of ed tech publications.
She says that it's an education technology issue in part because of the expectations that we are all supposed to interact online for professional, personal and academic purposes.
What?
You can't just tell us not to read the comments when the threats against us escalate.
Us, is it?
So that's the context when they then go on to say, it's an education technology issue because we must address the culture of meritocracy misogyny that permeates so much of the technology industry.
I have no idea what this means, but it really seems that they are arguing that meritocracies are misogynistic.
Especially when they say, particularly as we bring more and more of its products, services, engineers, entrepreneurs and ideology into education.
That so many men in EdTech continue to minimize experiences and harassment and violence against women in ed tech is pretty telling about those values and whose risks are being hard-coded into the infrastructure.
What are you talking about, you maniac?
Seriously, I mean, I assume I'm reading this wrong.
The culture of meritocracy misogyny.
I mean, that's not correct, but I think, I really think they're trying to say that meritocracies are misogynistic.
Which also seems to be what Jessica Valenti's saying.
Ladies, are you fucking offended yet?
Because I would be.
And just grab from the comments here.
It's sad to see that Mozilla endorses blatant misinformation and propaganda.
As a self-proclaimed feminist myself, you should frankly be ashamed at culping the populist definition of feminism to refer only to the interests of white middle-class hipsters.
Sorry, educators.
To which a real feminist, I presume, has said, to Aris, I urge you to unproclaim yourself, since your comment loudly proclaims you as an anti-feminist.
And you seem to have missed the point entirely of the above article.
It has little to do with feminism and everything to do with misogyny and violence against women.
How can you say that that has nothing to do with feminism?
That's all feminism fucking talks about.
And Aris says, this is exactly what I'm talking about.
So because I question the demonization of large groups of people by disingenuous opportunists, apparently I'm not a feminist, right?
This is of course ignoring the fundamental disagreements between pro-sex and anti-sex feminists, equity and separatist feminists, etc.
All the various sects of feminism.
If the writer is going to imply that the majority of GameGate people are comprised of nothing more than raving misogynists and harassers, I don't think it's too much to ask for some evidence to that effect, rather than hand-waving it as just another unquestioned truism.
Ah, Aris, that sounds very much like meritocratic misogyny.
I'm afraid you are no longer a real feminist, because facts and reason are anti-feminist.
You need to start listening and believing.
Next up from the female supremacist movement.
We should stop putting women in jail for anything.
By Patricia O'Brien.
Just a coincidence that Patricia happens to be a woman and that she would benefit from this initiative.
And what a surprise, she's some kind of professor of social justice at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
It sounds like a radical idea.
What doesn't?
Does feminism have any non-radical ideas left?
Stop incarcerating women and close down women's prisons?
No.
But in Britain, there is a growing movement sponsored by a peer in the House of Lords to do just that.
Well, that is the argument against the House of Lords.
Thank you.
The argument is actually quite straightforward.
There are far fewer women in prison than men to start with.
Women make up just 7% of the prison population.
And yet they don't commit 7% of the crimes, do they?
This means that women are disproportionately affected by a system designed for men.
No, it doesn't!
It means they are disproportionately unaffected by a system designed for people.
They are disproportionately unaffected, you fucking maniacs!
Fucking hell!
But could women's prisons actually be eliminated in the United States, where the rate of women's incarceration has risen by 646% in the past 30 years.
The context is different, but many of the arguments are the same.
Well, that's brilliant, because they were wrong in context, and they're bound to be even more wrong out of context.
Essentially, the case for closing women's prisons is the same for the case for imprisoning fewer men.
It is a case against the prison industrial complex and for community-based treatment where it works better than incarceration.
Now, I'm all for the argument against the prison industrial complex.
And I do think that in the majority of cases, in non-violent cases, I imagine community-based treatments would probably work better than incarceration.
But I am absolutely not for treating one gender differently than another.
So what's the alternative to jailing women at the rate we do?
Why would we need one?
If we agree that jail is the appropriate punishment for certain criminal offences, and they are committing these criminal offences, there is no reason we would need to reduce the number of women going to prison.
What we would like to do, ideally, I would have thought, is try and reduce the incentive to commit crimes.
But in Britain, advocates propose community sentences for non-violent offenders and housing violent offenders in small custodial centres near their families.
Yeah, that's...
Why don't we just get them a job?
You know, that way they can get paid more than a man.
And, you know, merit doesn't matter because that's misogynist.
What the fuck kind of future do you people think you're building?
There is evidence that these approaches can work in the United States.
I'm sure they work great for the people that are going through them.
And I'm even totally open to the argument that people in general shouldn't be imprisoned.
But I'm not totally open to this fucking argument of it only being for women.
But why am I surprised by this bigotry anymore?
Why am I surprised?
Because opportunities to test alternatives to prison are increasing across the states and some have demonstrated beneficial results for the women who participated, which is really good for them.
Even as we learn about promising diversion programmes for women, are we really ready to shut down women's prisons?
If we think of abolition as a citizen's effort and believe that women should be allowed to jump the queue for transport along the path to recovery and healing, there are steps that must be taken from a feminist perspective.
Well, I never.
Because we really need to understand the harm embedded in the current prison system and explore what alternative responses already exist.
For example, Susan Burton, the founder of A New Way of Life, a group of transition homes for women exiting Los Angeles prisons, indicates that an abolitionist perspective transforms the lives of former prisoners.
And if there's one thing we want, it's for women prisoners to have their lives transformed.
It doesn't surprise me at all that they try to use the word abolitionist when talking about prisons.
Fucking ridiculous.
But it doesn't surprise me.
Because, you know, putting women in prison when they've done something wrong is pretty much the same thing, from a feminist perspective.
The systemic production of mass incarceration cannot be solved simply by assisting troubled and troubling individual women.
I would really rather the troubling ones be put in jail, actually.
But another step to abolition, because this is so similar to slavery, requires that taking the discussion beyond the individuals and the communities most directly harmed, controlled and erased by the prison industrial complex to the public sphere that has passively accepted it.
Put simply, we need to stop seeing prisons as an inevitable part of life.
Well, I don't see prison as inevitable, but I also think that sometimes I can be in the wrong.
If we can't close down women's prisons, we can at least slow down their expansion.
Efforts to isolate women from their communities must be identified and opposed.
What?
It's this kind of absolutist thinking that is driving this shit.
Wait a minute, this is a woman being isolated from her community.
Yes, but with good reason because she's a fucking criminal who's murdered children or something.
Yes, but that's isolating a woman from her community and I oppose that.
But should you oppose that?
Is it sometimes that it's justified?
The case for closing women's prisons is built on the experiences of formerly incarcerated women and activists who recognise that women who are mothers and community builders can find their way forward when they are respected and supported.
It's actually when they respected and supported because again, like all of these articles, it's like being written by a fucking child.
But what a surprise that women who have been in prison and presumably didn't enjoy it and activists who are concerned solely about their genitalia would want these closed.
I mean it is possible to imagine a future without women's prisons.
Whether it's achievable will require a bigger shift in thinking or lack thereof.
Thing is, men do have a place in feminism and that place is to be paid less if they're lucky enough to get a job because we're not going to be in a meritocracy anymore.
Do some jail time if required and finally tell women how fucking brilliant they are all the fucking time.
What was I thinking about?
Actions speak louder than words.
Because it's pretty simple to say you're a feminist, but it takes a bit more to actually be one.
Joss Whedon has always known this.
After 20 years of creating Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he still fields questions about why he writes strong female characters, which sounds like exactly the kind of crap feminists would ask him.
But men don't need critical acclaim or a blockbuster budget to practice feminism, but I'm sure it helps.
Action is the best way to say anything.
A guy who goes around saying, I'm a feminist, usually has an agenda that is not feminist.
Fucking hell, he sounds like feminist Jesus.
Well, this sounds like something that will be quoted in the feminist Bible, something like Whedon 315.
Lo, a guy who behaveth like a feminist, who actually becometh involved in thy movement, generally speaking, in that man your trust you can invest.
And it doesn't just apply to the action that is activist, it applies to the way they treat women they work with and live with and that they see on the street.
You know, just treat women like you would treat, I don't know, 16th century French aristocracy.
Having been raised by a, quote, very strong woman, but don't you dare call her bossy, Whedon said that the ideals of feminism were instinct rather than advocacy for him.
Or pretty self-explanatory really, isn't it?
So he says that I have this goldfish idiot forgetful thinging that every time I'm confronted with true misogyny, I'm stunned.
I'm like, really?
That's like, I don't believe in airplanes.
It's like, what century are you from?
Well, it's not like anything, Joss.
It's like they weren't raised by gender ideologues.
And I can't help but question your definition of true misogyny.
From the intimidation of women online, failures to address domestic abuse and reactions to victims of sexual assault, the degree of misogyny where Okay, do we know that any of that is misogyny?
That just sounds like typical feminist talking points that are consistently and thoroughly shown not to be anything to do with sexism, and yet they ignore that and claim it's sexism.
But anyway, the degree of misogyny present in some areas of our society can be baffling.
I know, why don't they just close those women's prisons?
Why don't they just take 25% of men's salaries for being men?
Why do they have laws against that?
This whole thing is fucking baffling.
It's enough for a wave of people to say that they are feminists, but it will take practising feminism to get through the ugly chaos of 21st century misogyny.
I wonder if the poor women will make it out alive.
You don't get this kind of anger unless real change is actually happening, Whedon said.
It would be lovely to be living after the change has happened.
Let's get a hustle on this, guys.
Joss, mate, I think you've got to consider whether or not you sound like a cult leader.
You know, the same cult that's responsible for this statue?
Of two women flanking two boys and walking along with them with not a man in sight.
Two single mums, one pregnant, and their children.
That's Birmingham's £100,000 vision of the modern British family.
This sculpture was done by someone called Gillian Weiring, and her £100,000 work, representing what it means to be an ordinary family in 2014, is of two single mothers and their children.
More specifically, two single mothers raising sons.
I really don't know what I find more creepy about this.
I don't know whether it's the two lads who seem to be marching on into a world that will forever treat them as second-class citizens, or that the two women who are marching them there appear to have no thoughts in their head whatsoever.
Their vacant expressions make them look decidedly brainwashed.
Like they've been told by the high priest that these sacrifices are necessary for next year's harvest.
And so marching them to their own future exclusion from public artworks like this is normal and right.
Especially as they will be expected to pay for it.
The Lib Dem also questioned why public money was spent on such a controversial sculpture.
When the council can't afford to clear up the rubbish on the streets, £100,000 is not peanuts.
Selling those boys out of their own future by design is really depressing, though.
Let's...
I think we need to finish this with something that's a little more light-hearted.
How about the moment that probably signifies when Academia jumped the shark?
Harvard University offers students Anal Sex 101.
This is being done as part of the annual Sex Week, which is apparently a quote, week of programming that is interdisciplinary, thought-provoking, scholastic, innovative, and applicable to student experiences in order to promote a holistic understanding of sex and sexuality.
And is frankly exactly what I've come to expect.
It markets itself by saying, come learn everything about anal sex from the experts of Good Vibrations, a sex positive store located right in Brookline.
And apparently they will dispel myths about anal sex and give you insight into why people do it and how to do it well.
In what I can only imagine is a new low for Harvard.
It kind of looks like they're hosting an Anne Summers party, doesn't it?
California Exotic Novelties, the world's largest pleasure product company, according to a recent press release, will also be shipping educational materials to the event all the way from the west coast to Harvard's Cambridge, Massachusetts campus.
That's just marvellous.
It's not all smiles and sunshine in academic butt play land because one student, Molly Wharton, presumably some sort of apostate, reportedly told the College Fix website that she wasn't initially well versed in what this year's installment will involve, but added, After looking at the schedule events though, I do question the amount of time and resources that went into planning and funding these events, some of which are downright vulgar at a place like Harvard.
Well, I agree with you, but the concept of standards has long been abandoned.
I'll leave you with the internet's response to crazy, crazy stories, because DayZ is exactly as bad as New York.
Oh hey girl, what's up?
How you doing?
Hey SugarTip, where's your loot?
Holy shit, I got what?
Sam, bro, can I sell my casino with you?
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