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May 18, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
19:45
Sean Hannity vs Women's Declining Happiness
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All right, welcome back to Hannity's.
Gee, thanks, Sean.
What's going on?
So if you ask Hillary Clinton supporters why they're so hot for Hillary, well, you'll hear many of them talk about vaginas.
You know, all sorts of nonsense like her character, experience, her commitment to equality for women.
It's really weird agreeing with Sean Hannity on something.
I mean, Hillary Clinton is awful, but then so is Sean Hannity.
Well, we know that's just another Clinton hoax, but watch what happens when Clinton supporters find out that as senator, she actually paid female staffers a lot less than men.
Watch this.
I can sense a cluster fuck of misinformation coming.
As senator, Hillary Clinton paid women 72 cents for each dollar that she paid men.
Really?
Wait, she really did that?
Yeah.
I don't even know what to say right now.
I'm kind of shocked.
Yeah.
That makes no sense.
That makes no sense.
Like, why would yeah, welcome to the nonsense of the wage gap.
I'm not sure I'd vote for her for that.
That's a tough situation.
I think Hillary keeps finding herself in these awkward positions where things that she said don't always match up with the action.
Well, duh, she is a politician.
I mean, that makes her hypocritical, and that makes me less likely to vote for her.
I mean, you know what I mean?
Because it's like, why are you trying to fight for something, but you're not doing it?
That makes no sense.
Kind of, but the chances are you're still going to vote for her.
Can't wait to find out that she took money from Saudi Arabia and other countries that treat women horribly.
Yeah, she is a politician, and Hillary Clinton is awful.
Here now with Reaction, author of The Death of Cool, Gavin McGinnis, Fox News contributed, Camera is back.
There's a part of me that says, oh, I love Hillary.
I love Hillary.
Oh, yes, we can.
Obama.
There's like liberals are sort of like zombies.
They repeat what they hear and they know.
Why did they say they'll vote for somebody and know nothing about the candidate?
That infuriates me because they can cancel out my vote.
While all of that is absolutely true, they are like fucking zombies.
Let's be honest with ourselves.
Tribalism, it's not contained to the left, is it?
Why do you actually believe the Washington Free Banana Peel, whatever group that did this search on Hillary Clinton is actually true?
No, it's not true.
Yeah, did you hear that?
It's not true.
She doesn't know anything about this.
She's got no evidence, but she's declaring it not true, damn it, because it doesn't fit the narrative.
It's a far-right group that took the data and manipulated it to support their position.
By the way, Obama does the same thing.
If the three guys now get your information, Washington Free Beacon or whatever, they're the ones.
Anything that's reported Hillary Clinton did this, did that.
There's absolutely no evidence of this, and it's just not true.
It actually is true.
No, it's not.
This is amazing.
This is brilliant.
Now, the thing is, I don't know whether this is true or not, and I really can't be bothered to look it up because that's not really the thrust of this video.
This video is for mocking and making a point a little later on.
But the thing is, the chances are, I think it probably is true.
I suspect that what's happening here is this is a right-wing outlet, and they are jumping on anything they can find to use against Hillary Clinton.
And obviously, this lady just doesn't want to accept the reality of that.
I say this because I've seen it so many times with the left, not because I have any interest in defending the right.
Washington Free Banana Peel is not a legitimate.
God, would you stop saying right-winger, right-winger, right-winger?
Jesus, that's not a fucking argument, woman.
Different ways to look at the data, but the big picture here is women do earn less in America because they choose to.
He is basically correct.
I've done a video looking at this in depth that I'm confident is accurate.
And link to it in the description so you can check it out for yourself if you haven't already seen it.
But this is the reason why I don't think Hillary Clinton is actually discriminating based on sex when it comes to wages.
The chances are these are aggregate figures as they always are for some reason.
And the odds are that the men in Hillary Clinton's employ are simply working more well-paying jobs, working longer hours, taking less time off, all that sort of thing.
So in aggregate, they earn more money than the women earn.
But on a job-by-job basis, they're probably getting exactly the same.
They would rather go to their daughter's piano recital than stay all night at work working on a proposal.
What?
So they end up earning less.
They're less ambitious.
And I think this is sort of God's way.
This is nature's way.
Holy shit.
Is she outraged by this?
I mean, I'm not saying it's God's way of doing anything, but it is a fact that women do choose effectively to earn less.
They make different life choices to men, and these life choices often result with them earning less money.
Same.
Women should be at home with the kids.
They're happier there.
I hope that your viewers do not take you, sir, seriously.
It's Sean Hannity's show.
They're probably going to.
Let's be honest with ourselves, there's probably quite a lot of confirmation bias happening on both sides of the aisle here.
But again, when he comes to the earnings of women compared to men, he's not wrong.
There's a great book I read.
It's called Why Men Earn More.
And it's all about women choosing to put family over work.
And that's why they earn more.
Having a choice does not mean that you're less ambitious.
No, but it does mean that you can choose career paths that, well, frankly, are less ambitious.
And the women who choose them are probably, let's be honest with ourselves, less ambitious.
There's nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with people deciding, you know what, I actually don't want to become the CEO of a fucking company.
How much work is it?
I personally don't want to become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
And your comments are absolutely deplorable.
Are they, though, or are they the truth?
You know, I really suspect it's not so much about what he's saying.
It's more the way he's saying it.
Well, Sean, I would like you to be ambitious in the way that you're going to be able to do it.
I would like you to adjust.
I mean, you're a father.
You have a daughter.
If you were a real feminist, you would support housewives and see them as the heroes.
You support them.
And women are at work wasting their time.
Yeah, unfortunately, that's not the case.
In fact, that's pretty much the opposite of feminism.
I mean, at best, I think what you're describing could be termed as choice feminism, but then you've got a whole school of feminist thought that thinks that women's individual choices are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things for feminism.
In fact, a woman's individual choices, quote, if she can make patriarchy work for her, then she's just hurting other women by reinforcing the patriarchy.
So, no, that's actually, that is prohibited.
Under certain rather popular strains of feminist thought, choice feminism seems to be on the retreat.
You said that women are less ambitious.
On average, but it's not a character flaw.
You have also said that women are better suited in the home.
Yeah, you're losing me now, man.
I mean, it probably is the case on average, but individuals are going to vary.
Yes.
You've also said that, let's see, that women are emotional.
Well, they are.
And women shouldn't run for public office.
All of these things that just have to be a lot of fun.
I've never said women shouldn't run for public office.
We're talking about 50% of the population.
Generally, out of this 250 million people or 150 million people, most women are happier at home.
They are pretending that they like working.
Yeah, but who doesn't hate their job?
Seriously, if you like your job, then you are a lucky motherfucker.
And yes, I am well aware that I am a lucky motherfucker.
And they're not making money because they don't stay all night at the office.
They don't go the extra miles.
They don't work all weekend.
That's a fucking good question.
Why are you sitting there?
What are you doing?
How's he supposed to answer that?
You're not doing overtime, are you?
You're not pushing the envelope.
You're not, you know, making sacrifices.
This is your fucking day job.
And it's not a very difficult job.
You sat there having a discussion with some guy.
You're hardly pushing the boat out here.
I'm making a mistake.
You would be much happier at home with a husband.
Objection.
She looks like the kind of miserable bitch who's never happy.
And children.
Oh, boy.
Okay, this is amazing.
I'm really trying not to laugh.
But even Sean Hannity's like, okay, man, you're going too far.
Oh.
I mean, I'm literally.
You just said you're.
Oh, come on.
You're literally shaking.
Grow up.
He's just saying something.
You don't like what he's saying.
It's not a threat.
You're saying you don't have a boyfriend.
You're what you're saying.
Is it?
Yeah, look, you're miserable.
You would be so much happier with kids around you tonight.
Alright, man.
For the record, this is where you lose everyone.
You don't know that she's miserable.
Just because she seems miserable doesn't mean that you know that she's miserable.
Some people are only happy when they're miserable.
Imagine coming home, mommy's home.
You're funny, aren't you?
You know what, Gavin?
You're not funny.
Then why is everyone laughing?
Checkmate feminists.
You're not what you do not get anything.
I'm trying to make you happy.
You do not do anything for the better.
Sean, this is what you just.
Okay, maybe not everyone is laughing, but seriously, love, this is pretty funny.
Feminism has made women miserable.
Women were much happier when housewives were glorified.
Okay, so really here we've come to the crux of the issue is women's happiness.
So let's have a look to see what we can find.
There is a very famous study that was done in 2009 called The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness by Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers.
This study seems to have been received as legitimate by feminist websites such as the Huffington Post, Jezebel, etc.
So I don't see any problem with referencing it here.
And there was another study done in 2013 that basically said the same thing.
Men are happier than women are.
So as a general overview, every year since 1972, the United States General Social Survey has asked men and women, how happy are you on a scale of one to three, with three being very happy and one being not too happy.
The survey includes a representative sample of men and women of all ages, all education levels, income levels, and marital status.
1,500 people per year for a total of almost 50,000 individuals thus far.
And so it gives us a most reliable picture of what's happened to men and women's happiness over the last few decades.
So some of the important points are as follows.
Women's happiness decreased relative to men's over the period of 1972 to 2006.
And the proportion of women reporting that they are very happy falls by 0.15 percentage points a year relative to men.
So over the 34 years of the study, that'd be just over 5%.
It's not a colossal figure, but it's definitely a trend.
Women were more likely to report being unhappy.
Women were one percentage point less likely than men to say that they were not too happy at the beginning of the sample.
And by 2006, they were one percentage point more likely to report being in this category.
The decline in women's happiness could be comparable to the negative effects of decline in the US economy.
The relative decline in women's well-being of the past 35 years is equivalent to a fallen GDP of 0.32 log points.
Now, I am the first to admit I am by no means some sort of expert statistician, but I would wonder why it was falling relative to men if that was the case.
So the paper concludes by saying, by most objective measures, the lives of women in the United States have improved dramatically over the past 35 years.
Moreover, women believe that their lives are better.
Four in five adults state that the overall status of women in the US has gotten better, and the remaining respondents break 2 for 1 towards stayed the same over worse.
And additionally, the 1999 Virginia Slims poll found that 72% of women believe that women having more choices in society gives women more opportunities to be happy, while only 39% thought having more choices makes life more complicated for women.
Finally, women today are more likely than men to believe that their opportunities to succeed exceed those of their parents.
So on the surface of it, women are looking at the world and generally saying, yes, this is all great, we like it this way.
The study says that there may be other important socio-economic forces that have made women worse off.
A number of important macro trends have been documented.
Decreased social cohesion, increased anxiety and neuroticism, and increased household risk.
While each of these trends has an impact on both men and women, it's possible for even apparently gender-neutral traits to have gender-biased impacts if men and women respond differently to these forces, and that seems fair enough to me.
The study goes on to say that the second possibility is that broad shifts such as those brought on by the changing role of women in society fundamentally alter what measures of subjective well-being are capturing.
Over time, it's likely that women are aggregating satisfaction over an increasingly larger domain set.
For example, life satisfaction may previously have meant satisfaction at home.
Um, possibly.
I'm not sure I agree so much with this one because it's a common misconception that women just didn't work.
No, some women didn't work, but they were reasonably well-off women.
People who weren't well-off had to work.
But basically, now they think it may mean a combination of satisfaction at home and satisfaction at work, and there may be averaging over these domains.
But they say that data limitations prevent us from fully exploring this theory, and I'm rather more dubious about this one, to be honest.
They go into detail about how being happy is obviously subjective, and people in objectively better conditions could find themselves saying reporting that they are subjectively less happy, whereas people who are physically worse off than others could often declare themselves to be more happy, but probably because they appreciate what they've got more.
The final point they make is, I think, one of the most important.
They say, finally, the changes brought through the women's movement may have decreased women's happiness.
Increased opportunity to succeed in many dimensions may have led to an increased likelihood of believing one's life is not measuring up.
Similarly, many women now compare their lives to a broader group, including men, and find their lives are more likely to come up short in this assessment.
Or women may simply find the complexity and increased pressure in their modern lives to have come at the cost of happiness.
Going back to the 2013 study, it seems that men and women are made happy by different things.
Research suggests that men are made happy by salary, career prospects, current body shape and weight, appearance, how other people see you, your finances overall, and job security, which are all, well, kind of stereotypical things for men to be happy about.
And the things that made women happy are all quite stereotypical as well.
Women were made happy by love life, family life, sex life, health, and living location.
Basically, women seem to be more fulfilled by their relationships rather than their activities.
And there are a lot of reasons why marriage rates in the US are on the decline, but there is no doubt that they are on the decline.
A decline which is hastened by growing numbers of men who are quote giving up on women and checking out of society.
And I agree.
There is a burgeoning manosphere of people who are just tired of being mistreated by society.
That's how they perceive it.
And why wouldn't they?
Not even taking into account the obvious and categorical advantages that women enjoy, such as shorter custodial sentences or scholarships for colleges.
We're talking really about the fact that if a man says he has a problem, nobody fucking listens.
And after feminism has helped propel women to the very top, there are women coming back saying, listen, we have to be realistic.
You can't have it all.
Unsurprisingly, the pressure of trying to be a wife, a mother, a homemaker, and a career lady is too much for almost anyone.
You never see anyone saying men can have it all.
Nobody says that.
Nobody thinks that because it's a lot of fucking work.
And yet, women, for some reason, will still listen to professional feminists.
Women in whose best interest it is to keep you thinking that you can have it all.
But interestingly, these die-hard feminists will actually even concede that it could be true that women report more unhappiness since feminism's gains of the 60s and 70s.
And what's her solution to this?
Just be unhappy.
Just deal with it.
Buy into Valenti's bullshit so she can keep writing crappy Guardian articles and then going on holiday with her.
I bathe in male tears shirt on the fucking beach while you, the average woman, is trapped in an office that you don't really want to be in, growing more and more miserable Because women like this have damaged relationships between men and women.
For a very small minority of women, I think feminism has been very good.
For the majority of women, I think it has made them more miserable.
I had a choice to be married and I chose not to.
I have a choice.
I'll give you the last word, go ahead.
I think that your guest here is doing a disservice to all of the viewers and to doing a disservice to America by saying that women, that I need to be married, that I would be happier in home, that you're what miserably married just because just having a race.
I'm trying to share my joy.
You should see my little.
Not everybody has the same life pattern as you okay, and not everybody wants to marry somebody in a bootleg steer sucker suit and go home to that.
I don't want to go home to that.
You don't have to go home to me.
Go home to a hunk.
Oh Gosh Jesus, this is absolutely disgusting and Sean, you should actually speak up for the viewers today and let them know that.
So this is basically my point.
I don't agree with this guy's attitude, his demeanor.
He's being condescending and he isn't taking into account other people's agency.
There are definitely, definitely women, like our lady on the right, who benefit from feminism, but to be honest with you, if you were a woman watching this video, you are probably not going to ever end up on A TV show wagging your finger at the host, demanding that the other guest not be allowed to speak.
You are probably not going to make feminism work for you in the same way this lady is making it work for her.
And please, please do not make the mistake of thinking that I'm suggesting that women need to, in the words of Cheng Yuga, get back in the kitchen and make people a sandwich.
I'm just saying don't listen to these harpies.
They have a vested financial interest in you buying into their bullshit.
And women are reporting that it doesn't make them happy.
So listen to your gut.
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