You still didn't get the difference between equal opportunity and equal outcome, did you?
I'm glad you finally acknowledge that there is a difference; took you long enough.
However, I'm not in favor of "equal opportunity" (which is, in fact, a government policy intended to produce equal outcomes). Nor do I generically endorse "equality of opportunity" (which progressives often use as a synonym for "equal opportunity").
I specifically only consider strict equality under the law, private property rights, and freedom of association to be acceptable policies.
Landlords. These leeches serve no purpose but to suck off the productive value from the real working class.
If you think that buying is cheaper than renting, why aren't you buying?
Of course, the median condo price in Manhattan is about $2 million. That costs you about $3000 in property taxes and $7000 in mortgage payments per month. Median rent for Manhattan is somewhere around $4500.
Landlords and the city than through the fun of zoning laws keep housing stock at a bare minimum.
What the city does is determined by voters, not landlords.
AirBnB customers compete with renters. And they compete rather well because between rent control and renter protection laws, AirBnB customers likely pay more and are less hassle.
Not sure what he looked at, but the average rent in SoHo is about $5000 and in Chelsea about $4200. So AirBnB rental rates are comparable to market rates for long term rentals.
Public schools are a function of government, for example, and pupils at bad schools don't have the same opportunity as students in good schools. This is a form of inequality of opportunity the government can address.
The government has run public schools for more than a century, the vast majority of primary and secondary students attend public schools, the US has some of the highest per pupil spending in the world, and there is still massive (and increasing) inequality among educational opportunities. Obviously, the government cannot address this inequality of opportunity.
From what I've seen, women don't have the same opportunity as men to get into technical fields due to social factors that happen before maturity.
Parents and educators encouraging their daughters to pursue typically female pursuits wouldn't be a lack of equal opportunity. But the reasons women do not go into STEM fields isn't a lack of opportunity, it's that women's preferences are different from men's, both for cultural and for biological reasons.
One of the big barriers to men becoming nurses is that lots of women are seriously uncomfortable with male nurses without a woman around, and that's not something that can be legislated away. It requires a cultural change.
So when men don't want to hire women, that's sexism, patriarchy, and discrimination and requires government intervention and punishment; but when women don't want to hire men, that is because they are uncomfortable and requires a cultural change. Don't you even see how ridiculously sexist you yourself are?
You probably aren't qualified to judge whether women grew up with more opportunities and privileges than you had, since it's really difficult to see and understand one's own privilege and compare it to others.
It may seem like that to an ignorant, privileged guy like you, but I am quite qualified to judge this for myself vs the average American woman born after 1960.
I've been describing feminists I know and interact with. I don't remember making any claim about third-wave feminism. As far as neo-Marxism goes, there's people who believe in Marxism, just like there's people who believe in libertarianism. Both promise attractive societies, and neither of them actually work on any reasonable scale when applied to human beings.
But you keep repeating the ideas and beliefs of third-wave feminism and of neo-Marxism. The fact that you are oblivious to where these ideas come from doesn't change that.
Equal opportunity is pretty much fairness. If you have another proposed definition, please contribute. Obviously, there's forms of unfairness that can't be fixed.
We have already established that you use the term that way. And I have already responded: I strongly oppose any form of government that attempts to improve fairness by interfering with liberty; attempting to do so is intrinsically unjust, and on top of that, the price of making it work is too high.
I'm well aware of information problems. For the most part, they don't apply in the stuff we've been talking about.
It's not "information problems", it is "the information problem", an explanation for why socialism cannot work. But it is for the same reason that government cannot create gender equality or racial equality in the workplace. After all, setting a price for labor is no different in principle than setting a price for any other good.
I plead guilty to the charge of respecting actual evidence. Whether anthropology is a science or not is, I suppose, debatable. Literature isn't a science. Both of those contain lots and lots of observations. Not all truth is scientific.
So you are proposing to address problems you identified using scientific methods (underrepresentation of women and minorities) using truths that are not scientific. That's another aspect of neo-Marxism and postmodernism you have adopted.
Look, you are obviously not quite aware of the history of the idea and ideology you believe in, nor do you even understand the basis on which people criticize it. I suggest you read up on it.
Um, huh? You're spinning theories that say there's dominance and hierarchy in hunter-gatherer bands, despite the fact that people who have actually looked at such bands report otherwise.
I'm not "spinning theories", I am questioning the theories you have spun. You made a claim about the natural state of humans as if it were a scientific fact. I'm saying that you failed to have given evidence for it and that your beliefs are incompatible with, and implausible, in light of what we know about human biology and psychology. If you want to claim that there are no dominance hierarchies in hunter gatherer societies, present your evidence.
For example, hunter-gatherers do not get clinically depressed.
How would you know? Establishing that claim would require a widespread examination of hunter gatherer societies using clinical diagnostic criteria, none of which has happened, and none of which we even know how to do. Again, there is no significant evidence for your claim.
And even if there were, it really wouldn't matter. If you make a society totalitarian enough, you can eliminate dominance hierarchies (outside the state), you can eliminate gender inequality, and you can eliminate depression. But, of course, that is what you are actually advocating: elimination of these common effects through totalitarian government.
Whether a man has been taught about "toxic masculinity" is not really relevant to what he does; whether he's been taught to respect people and not need to establish dominance in a small group is relevant.
What you so tendentiously call "toxic masculilnity", the traditional cultural masculine norms, are indeed very relevant to what a man does. Men need physical activity, men need to curb their emotions, men need to have clear gender roles. It isn't the presence of traditional cultural masculine norms that has caused men to abuse women and to fail, it is their absence. Traditional cultural masculine norms certainly had their disadvantages; for example, they involved a lot of male-only spaces, and it is worth thinking about how to address those. But feminists and progressives are incapable of even contributing to that discussion because they are starting with unproven (and often incorrect) assumptions about gender and the nature of masculinity and femininity.
[Dominance hierarchies] can be [about bullying people, and telling them what to do, and abusing women.]
Well, you have conceded my point there: those abuses are not a necessary part of a dominance hierarchy. Therefore, when say that your workplace is an example of a workplace without a dominance hierarchy because you believe those abuses don't exist, your example is not valid.
If the company attitude became toxic, I'd quit.
Lucky then that you work in a company with a dominance hierarchy that usually keeps such abuses in check.
Cultural anthropology is not a scientific discipline because it doesn't use the scientific method; hence it can't give you objective answers about questions about the use of power and dominance in hunter-gatherer societies.
The dominance complaints were largely about individual interactions.
Dominance is usually established in individual interactions, even if the dominance hierarchy structures a large organization, so that observation doesn't show that big organizations aren't built around dominance hierarchies.
Human communities are generally larger than 150 people, and at that point the sorts of interactions we evolved doing break down
If they break down, that means that large organizations based on dominance hierarchies couldn't function. But, in fact, dominance hierarchies and male interaction styles are universal in large organizations. So your belief contradicts reality.
What I'm asking for is for the power and dominance struggles to not carry down to the individual level. People competing for power can work well in a business. That doesn't mean a businessman should force himself sexually on a subordinate woman.
What does that have to do with dominance hierarchies? Men are forcing themselves on women whether there are dominance hierarchies or not, whether they have been taught about toxic masculinity or not. We know that because many of the men accused in the #MeToo movement were feminists and progressives, and many of the abuses occurred outside dominance hierarchies.
There's people at work who tell me what to do. They pay me a good amount of money for the privilege, and don't try to dominate me in other ways. The company, BTW, has a market cap in the billions and had about 35% growth this quarter from 1Q 2017, and maintains high growth rates and profit margins, so it isn't exactly unsuccessful.
You believe that because you believe that dominance hierarchies are about bullying people, and telling them what to do, and abusing women. Your company is, of course, a strict dominance hierarchy, like all other large companies. You have superiors and they have absolute power over your job and how you carry out your job; the fact that they don't exercise that power every minute of the day and that they don't abuse that power for sexual favors just shows that they are good leaders, not that they lack power.
rather than what views you attribute to me out of ignorance
I don't attribute your views to ignorance, I'm pointing out your ignorance when it occurs (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt; of course, you might simply be lying or equivocating). For example, you denied the connection between neo-Marxism and third wave feminism; you talk about "equal opportunity" as if it were synonymous with "fairness"; you ignore issues like the information problem; you consider anthropological results to be scientific.
The fact that a woman could be a famous scientist didn't mean that women were treated equally in the sciences. The fact that women aren't barred from X field entirely doesn't mean that there's any fairness in the treatment.
Look, you keep defining "equal opportunity" as "fair and equal treatment by everybody in society". If you want to define "equal opportunity" that way, fine, then I oppose equal opportunity, strongly, and in no uncertain terms. That kind of "equal opportunity" is illiberal, totalitarian, and impossible to achieve through government action.
For example, many women who grew up with far more opportunities and privileges than I do nevertheless claim benefits and opportunities under government programs that are designed to help women simply because of their gender. That is, I am being denied equal opportunity because of government interference in the market. Government interference can't achieve equal opportunity in your sense for the same reason government can't successfully centrally plan the economy: because of the information problem.
I pointed out a minor effect that's thoroughly nailed down. Most social science experiments are fuzzy. It's a very difficult field to be rigorous in. That one is clear-cut. It doesn't mean it's the only effect.
You're being evasive. You have yet to point out evidence of a major denial of opportunity even in your totalitarian sense, let alone in my weaker sense. And this is not something you can demonstrate in social science experiments, it is something you need to demonstrate in real world data and laws.
Does that voucher include transport to and from a school that's an hour away because there are no "good" schools around the areas where some families can actually afford to live? Who's going to organize that transport and who pays for it?
I suggest you look up statistics on schools and school districts before you continue to demonstrate what a vile prick you are.
Yeah, because parents have a lot of choice in that matter.
It's easy for parents to have a lot of choice in that matter: give them school vouchers and free school choice. Teachers and teachers unions object to that because they know full well that a large percentage of them would cease to have a job in teaching.
That's like saying Comcast must be a great ISP, considering how many people want to subscribe with them.
Similar to public schools, Comcast is a government-maintained near-monopoly. Of course Comcast sucks just like public schools: all government-maintained monopolies restrict choice and they all suck.
The choice California gives you is either to be an indentured servant to both corporations and the state, or to become a government-dependent welfare recipient. They control you either way.
They hate independent contractors and the gig economy because it allows people to get away from their stifling regulations and taxation.
Being competitive, unsentimental, risk-taking, and assertive (typically male traits, even according to feminists themselves) is, in fact, conducive to inspiring others, being respectful, and allowing for frank and open discussions. Men use anger and aggression functionally to resolve issues quickly and efficiently and to work out their social relations; typical men can get angry at each other and ten minutes later be best buddies or work efficiently together again, that's what the "unsentimental" part is all about.
It is typically female traits of conflict avoidance, risk avoidance, cooperation, and agreeableness that interfere with inspiring others, being respectful, and allowing for frank and open discussions. Women tend to mistake that for brow beating because women tend to use anger and aggression to define their long term social relationships. That's why many women have trouble functioning in male organizations, and why women also have trouble creating competitive organizations around their own preferred interaction styles.
The fact that your description of feminists is much different from my experience.
We don't have to debate what I think (third wave, critical theory) feminists say, it's sufficient we debate what you say, because you basically just repeat many of their beliefs, even though you seem to be ignorant of their history and internal logic.
The natural state of humanity is cooperative and lacks power struggles. Those came along relatively recently, as the population of groups increased.
That is what critical theorists, neo-Marxists, and third wave feminists believe. However, it is false. The natural state of humanity is gender-specific dominance hierarchies and competition. That is hardwired into human biology and brains, just like that of all social animals. To believe what you do, you have to throw all of evolutionary biology and psychology out the window and assume that humans are not what they actually are, namely slightly modified apes. In effect, your beliefs (like those of Rousseau and Marx) are pretty much the atheist equivalent of young earth creationism.
Even if your misconceptions about human nature were true, so what? Even you admit that dominance hierarchies and competition arise naturally in large groups and societies and are a cultural universal. So where is your evidence that your ideas work? Before we let your ideas loose on society, demonstrate that they can work on something smaller than 300 million. Where are the successful, long-lived size 1 million groups that work through cooperation and without competition or power? The successful, long-lived size 1000 groups?
What I'm saying is that people shouldn't have to compete for power to avoid being dominated.
You don't have to compete for power, you're perfectly free to try to found your own community/business/family that is free of power and hierarchy. When you do, you'll find that those communities don't function well. What you demand, however, to share in the rewards of other people's dominance hierarchies without the inconvenience of conforming to them or competing in them.
In fact, many Western males simply don't know how to function in dominance hierarchies at all anymore because they were raised by mothers and teachers who don't understand them, which is one reason recent generations have struggled so badly. You erroneously believe that dominance, competition, and aggression are intrinsically bad and that only the people at the top of the dominance hierarchy win through these arrangements. And the real irony is that you have been manipulated into those beliefs by people who use you as useful fools in their own dominance and power games and who don't give a fuck about the fact that they are wrecking people's lives that way.
I'm really unimpressed with your "former progressive" claim; that's an old rhetorical trick. I'm not giving it any credence.
Rhetorical trick? What would be the point? No, the reason why you don't understand me is because you are still steeped in the progressive mindset with its false and inconsistent assumptions about the world. That won't change until you actually start reading some conservative and libertarian writings with an open mind and until you start questioning and fact checking what you believe. Right now, you're still arguing from the position of an unthinking member of a tribe.
There are studies that involve sending out test resumes with male and female names on them, and measuring the response rate. Easy to show, although (as I said) minor.
It's not "minor", it simply isn't an example of "denying opportunities". If a misogynistic company turns away women purely based on their gender, then a gynophile company has an opportunity to hire those women that they might otherwise not have had. Opportunity is defined with respect to the entire market, not with respect to every individual company.
Furthermore, "minor" examples are not interesting to begin with, because government shouldn't be in the business of micromanaging society and fixing "minor" problems.
But we can agree to disagree on that one. Since you are saying that it is "trivial" to show that significant opportunities are being denied to women, you must have other examples, and ones that demonstrably have a major impact.
Single motherhood is due to the lack of family planning. Who was it that pushed for abstinence only sex education?
The idea that most single mothers get pregnant because they lack sex education is false. Half of US abortions are repeat abortions. And single motherhood is extremely widespread in progressive states with sex education; there is little evidence that sex education reduces single motherhood. But there is certainly evidence that government support of single motherhood increases the problem, and Democrats and progressives have been the primary drivers behind that.
Single motherhood isn't a consequence of lack of family planning, it is a consequence of family planning, in particular, the plan to become a single mother. Women become single mothers because they choose to become single mothers. And they choose to become single mothers because it's an economically viable choice that is accepted by society.
Who's fought against abortion? And now who's giving out contraceptives?
I certainly fight against both government financed abortions and against giving out contraceptives. I have no moral problem with you having an abortion or you using contraceptives, but I see no reason why I should pay for your bad decisions.
Maybe you should stop shooting yourself in the foot and blaming it on the other guy.
You can fuck whoever you want, get pregnant in whatever way you want, get whatever STDs you like, scrape fetuses out of your womb in whatever way you want. it's a free country, and if it makes you happy, good for you! But you have to accept the consequences of your choices. That is, when you come to me and say "give me your money to protect me from the consequences of my actions", I am most certainly going to 'blame" you and tell you that I am not responsible for your sorry state and that I see no reason why I should pay to fix your problems. And what's particularly offensive to me as an immigrant is that the people who are making those demands were considerably wealthier and more privileged than I was from birth and they pissed it all away.
The essence of liberalism and foundation of modern societies is that we treat people as competent adults with free will. That means that you get to make your own choices, and you have to live with the consequences of those choices. If you make bad choices, people may still grant you charity, but that is a voluntary private choice on their part, not an obligation. That's how Western societies became free, wealthy, and powerful.
I still think that's the best way of running a society. If you want government to protect you from the consequences of your bad choices, on the other hand, you implicitly want totalitarian government. There is no third option.
Except teachers don't have an option of working summers teaching and getting the extra pay, which is why the whole summer off argument is specious
Plenty of teachers take other jobs during the summer.
Except teachers, at least where I live, have a contract for a certain number of paid hours per week but are expected to work extra hours none the less
Teachers are not supposed to work extra hours, they are supposed to be skilled and professional enough to get the job done in the hours they have. Elementary and high school teaching should not be so intellectually taxing or unpredictable that you need extensive preparation for your lessons. University professors do need extensive preparation for lectures, which is why their teaching load is usually much lower than that of elementary and high school teachers.
Since your arguments failed you feel it necessary to resort to ad hominems to try to make your case.
No, you were trying to make it ad hominem, namely by giving the false impression of being a teacher.
I don't teach nor have I been a teacher,
I'm glad to hear it. In contrast, I have been a teacher, and I come from a family of teacher. So, I can tell you from personal experience, in addition to rational arguments, that American teachers are overpaid and underperforming, and that their arguments for why they should receive higher pay are totally unfounded.
No, what you should focus on is that the BBC and other media publish fake news, spread FUD, and lie to you. This is just one particularly egregious example out of many.
Lake Geneva is not an outlier. Other lakes show similar levels of pollution. Italy's Lake Garda
Calling Lake Geneva or Lake Garda "pristine" is ridiculous. There are major cities located on those lakes, and they have been used for waste dumping, agricultural runoff, and mining wastes since Roman times.
What you're saying here is that free market forces favor women as writers
Correct. But the free market doesn't favor women as writers because they are better writers, the free market favors women as writers because women have tons of unearned power and privileges.
Men aren't subsidizing them, since women are providing the bulk of the money.
Where do you think women get their money from? On average, from men, either via marriage or via government transfers.
So, it's fine for you to claim that men are better authors than women, but when someone comes up with any possible evidence that you're wrong you're not going to consider it. Right.
What do you think we have been doing? I have considered the evidence and I have found it to be flawed. Women dominate as writers not because they are better writers, but simply because they have unearned privileges and unearned power.
You are making an unsupported claim about equal opportunity that can be trivially disproved in minor ways.
Well, in that case, it should be no problem for you to disprove it. So far, you have been unable. Where exactly are there opportunities denied to women that are available to men?
You are claiming that the existing disparities are due to something you're willing to accept, without establishing that.
Why do I need to establish what both you and feminists agree on: men dominate certain professions because of traits that you call "toxic masculinity".
You're defending toxic masculinity in its clearly toxic form.
You bet I do: men are "physically strong, unsentimental, and assertive", biology programs most men to be "physically strong, unsentimental, and assertive", and society very much should encourage men to be "physically strong, unsentimental, and assertive".
And I say that as a gay man who is not, and never was, "physically strong, unsentimental, and assertive", who was never going to be CEO of anything, and still made a good life for himself. If I can do it, then so can any American woman, with the massive privileges and options available to her.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm glad you finally acknowledge that there is a difference; took you long enough.
However, I'm not in favor of "equal opportunity" (which is, in fact, a government policy intended to produce equal outcomes). Nor do I generically endorse "equality of opportunity" (which progressives often use as a synonym for "equal opportunity").
I specifically only consider strict equality under the law, private property rights, and freedom of association to be acceptable policies.
If you think that buying is cheaper than renting, why aren't you buying?
Of course, the median condo price in Manhattan is about $2 million. That costs you about $3000 in property taxes and $7000 in mortgage payments per month. Median rent for Manhattan is somewhere around $4500.
What the city does is determined by voters, not landlords.
AirBnB customers compete with renters. And they compete rather well because between rent control and renter protection laws, AirBnB customers likely pay more and are less hassle.
True. We call that property rights. What you want is "I'm gonna take yours, by force if necessary".
FTFY
No, this is about a company making a market more efficient, by bringing together buyers and sellers.
No, you could not. Capitalism means free markets, and outlawing AirBnB is incompatible with free markets.
Why does the NYT hate capitalism?
(1) Free markets and competition are killing newspapers and journalists are scared shitless.
(2) A crony capitalist (Carlos Slim) owns a significant stake in it, and he certainly hates free markets.
Not sure what he looked at, but the average rent in SoHo is about $5000 and in Chelsea about $4200. So AirBnB rental rates are comparable to market rates for long term rentals.
The government has run public schools for more than a century, the vast majority of primary and secondary students attend public schools, the US has some of the highest per pupil spending in the world, and there is still massive (and increasing) inequality among educational opportunities. Obviously, the government cannot address this inequality of opportunity.
Parents and educators encouraging their daughters to pursue typically female pursuits wouldn't be a lack of equal opportunity. But the reasons women do not go into STEM fields isn't a lack of opportunity, it's that women's preferences are different from men's, both for cultural and for biological reasons.
So when men don't want to hire women, that's sexism, patriarchy, and discrimination and requires government intervention and punishment; but when women don't want to hire men, that is because they are uncomfortable and requires a cultural change. Don't you even see how ridiculously sexist you yourself are?
It may seem like that to an ignorant, privileged guy like you, but I am quite qualified to judge this for myself vs the average American woman born after 1960.
But you keep repeating the ideas and beliefs of third-wave feminism and of neo-Marxism. The fact that you are oblivious to where these ideas come from doesn't change that.
We have already established that you use the term that way. And I have already responded: I strongly oppose any form of government that attempts to improve fairness by interfering with liberty; attempting to do so is intrinsically unjust, and on top of that, the price of making it work is too high.
It's not "information problems", it is "the information problem", an explanation for why socialism cannot work. But it is for the same reason that government cannot create gender equality or racial equality in the workplace. After all, setting a price for labor is no different in principle than setting a price for any other good.
So you are proposing to address problems you identified using scientific methods (underrepresentation of women and minorities) using truths that are not scientific. That's another aspect of neo-Marxism and postmodernism you have adopted.
Look, you are obviously not quite aware of the history of the idea and ideology you believe in, nor do you even understand the basis on which people criticize it. I suggest you read up on it.
I'm not "spinning theories", I am questioning the theories you have spun. You made a claim about the natural state of humans as if it were a scientific fact. I'm saying that you failed to have given evidence for it and that your beliefs are incompatible with, and implausible, in light of what we know about human biology and psychology. If you want to claim that there are no dominance hierarchies in hunter gatherer societies, present your evidence.
How would you know? Establishing that claim would require a widespread examination of hunter gatherer societies using clinical diagnostic criteria, none of which has happened, and none of which we even know how to do. Again, there is no significant evidence for your claim.
And even if there were, it really wouldn't matter. If you make a society totalitarian enough, you can eliminate dominance hierarchies (outside the state), you can eliminate gender inequality, and you can eliminate depression. But, of course, that is what you are actually advocating: elimination of these common effects through totalitarian government.
What you so tendentiously call "toxic masculilnity", the traditional cultural masculine norms, are indeed very relevant to what a man does. Men need physical activity, men need to curb their emotions, men need to have clear gender roles. It isn't the presence of traditional cultural masculine norms that has caused men to abuse women and to fail, it is their absence. Traditional cultural masculine norms certainly had their disadvantages; for example, they involved a lot of male-only spaces, and it is worth thinking about how to address those. But feminists and progressives are incapable of even contributing to that discussion because they are starting with unproven (and often incorrect) assumptions about gender and the nature of masculinity and femininity.
Well, you have conceded my point there: those abuses are not a necessary part of a dominance hierarchy. Therefore, when say that your workplace is an example of a workplace without a dominance hierarchy because you believe those abuses don't exist, your example is not valid.
Lucky then that you work in a company with a dominance hierarchy that usually keeps such abuses in check.
Cultural anthropology is not a scientific discipline because it doesn't use the scientific method; hence it can't give you objective answers about questions about the use of power and dominance in hunter-gatherer societies.
Dominance is usually established in individual interactions, even if the dominance hierarchy structures a large organization, so that observation doesn't show that big organizations aren't built around dominance hierarchies.
If they break down, that means that large organizations based on dominance hierarchies couldn't function. But, in fact, dominance hierarchies and male interaction styles are universal in large organizations. So your belief contradicts reality.
What does that have to do with dominance hierarchies? Men are forcing themselves on women whether there are dominance hierarchies or not, whether they have been taught about toxic masculinity or not. We know that because many of the men accused in the #MeToo movement were feminists and progressives, and many of the abuses occurred outside dominance hierarchies.
You believe that because you believe that dominance hierarchies are about bullying people, and telling them what to do, and abusing women. Your company is, of course, a strict dominance hierarchy, like all other large companies. You have superiors and they have absolute power over your job and how you carry out your job; the fact that they don't exercise that power every minute of the day and that they don't abuse that power for sexual favors just shows that they are good leaders, not that they lack power.
I don't attribute your views to ignorance, I'm pointing out your ignorance when it occurs (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt; of course, you might simply be lying or equivocating). For example, you denied the connection between neo-Marxism and third wave feminism; you talk about "equal opportunity" as if it were synonymous with "fairness"; you ignore issues like the information problem; you consider anthropological results to be scientific.
Look, you keep defining "equal opportunity" as "fair and equal treatment by everybody in society". If you want to define "equal opportunity" that way, fine, then I oppose equal opportunity, strongly, and in no uncertain terms. That kind of "equal opportunity" is illiberal, totalitarian, and impossible to achieve through government action.
For example, many women who grew up with far more opportunities and privileges than I do nevertheless claim benefits and opportunities under government programs that are designed to help women simply because of their gender. That is, I am being denied equal opportunity because of government interference in the market. Government interference can't achieve equal opportunity in your sense for the same reason government can't successfully centrally plan the economy: because of the information problem.
You're being evasive. You have yet to point out evidence of a major denial of opportunity even in your totalitarian sense, let alone in my weaker sense. And this is not something you can demonstrate in social science experiments, it is something you need to demonstrate in real world data and laws.
I suggest you look up statistics on schools and school districts before you continue to demonstrate what a vile prick you are.
It's easy for parents to have a lot of choice in that matter: give them school vouchers and free school choice. Teachers and teachers unions object to that because they know full well that a large percentage of them would cease to have a job in teaching.
Similar to public schools, Comcast is a government-maintained near-monopoly. Of course Comcast sucks just like public schools: all government-maintained monopolies restrict choice and they all suck.
By whether parents are choosing to send their kids to those teachers. That's the way we measure performance in a free market.
The choice California gives you is either to be an indentured servant to both corporations and the state, or to become a government-dependent welfare recipient. They control you either way.
They hate independent contractors and the gig economy because it allows people to get away from their stifling regulations and taxation.
Being competitive, unsentimental, risk-taking, and assertive (typically male traits, even according to feminists themselves) is, in fact, conducive to inspiring others, being respectful, and allowing for frank and open discussions. Men use anger and aggression functionally to resolve issues quickly and efficiently and to work out their social relations; typical men can get angry at each other and ten minutes later be best buddies or work efficiently together again, that's what the "unsentimental" part is all about.
It is typically female traits of conflict avoidance, risk avoidance, cooperation, and agreeableness that interfere with inspiring others, being respectful, and allowing for frank and open discussions. Women tend to mistake that for brow beating because women tend to use anger and aggression to define their long term social relationships. That's why many women have trouble functioning in male organizations, and why women also have trouble creating competitive organizations around their own preferred interaction styles.
We don't have to debate what I think (third wave, critical theory) feminists say, it's sufficient we debate what you say, because you basically just repeat many of their beliefs, even though you seem to be ignorant of their history and internal logic.
That is what critical theorists, neo-Marxists, and third wave feminists believe. However, it is false. The natural state of humanity is gender-specific dominance hierarchies and competition. That is hardwired into human biology and brains, just like that of all social animals. To believe what you do, you have to throw all of evolutionary biology and psychology out the window and assume that humans are not what they actually are, namely slightly modified apes. In effect, your beliefs (like those of Rousseau and Marx) are pretty much the atheist equivalent of young earth creationism.
Even if your misconceptions about human nature were true, so what? Even you admit that dominance hierarchies and competition arise naturally in large groups and societies and are a cultural universal. So where is your evidence that your ideas work? Before we let your ideas loose on society, demonstrate that they can work on something smaller than 300 million. Where are the successful, long-lived size 1 million groups that work through cooperation and without competition or power? The successful, long-lived size 1000 groups?
You don't have to compete for power, you're perfectly free to try to found your own community/business/family that is free of power and hierarchy. When you do, you'll find that those communities don't function well. What you demand, however, to share in the rewards of other people's dominance hierarchies without the inconvenience of conforming to them or competing in them.
In fact, many Western males simply don't know how to function in dominance hierarchies at all anymore because they were raised by mothers and teachers who don't understand them, which is one reason recent generations have struggled so badly. You erroneously believe that dominance, competition, and aggression are intrinsically bad and that only the people at the top of the dominance hierarchy win through these arrangements. And the real irony is that you have been manipulated into those beliefs by people who use you as useful fools in their own dominance and power games and who don't give a fuck about the fact that they are wrecking people's lives that way.
Rhetorical trick? What would be the point? No, the reason why you don't understand me is because you are still steeped in the progressive mindset with its false and inconsistent assumptions about the world. That won't change until you actually start reading some conservative and libertarian writings with an open mind and until you start questioning and fact checking what you believe. Right now, you're still arguing from the position of an unthinking member of a tribe.
It's not "minor", it simply isn't an example of "denying opportunities". If a misogynistic company turns away women purely based on their gender, then a gynophile company has an opportunity to hire those women that they might otherwise not have had. Opportunity is defined with respect to the entire market, not with respect to every individual company.
Furthermore, "minor" examples are not interesting to begin with, because government shouldn't be in the business of micromanaging society and fixing "minor" problems.
But we can agree to disagree on that one. Since you are saying that it is "trivial" to show that significant opportunities are being denied to women, you must have other examples, and ones that demonstrably have a major impact.
The idea that most single mothers get pregnant because they lack sex education is false. Half of US abortions are repeat abortions. And single motherhood is extremely widespread in progressive states with sex education; there is little evidence that sex education reduces single motherhood. But there is certainly evidence that government support of single motherhood increases the problem, and Democrats and progressives have been the primary drivers behind that.
Single motherhood isn't a consequence of lack of family planning, it is a consequence of family planning, in particular, the plan to become a single mother. Women become single mothers because they choose to become single mothers. And they choose to become single mothers because it's an economically viable choice that is accepted by society.
I certainly fight against both government financed abortions and against giving out contraceptives. I have no moral problem with you having an abortion or you using contraceptives, but I see no reason why I should pay for your bad decisions.
You can fuck whoever you want, get pregnant in whatever way you want, get whatever STDs you like, scrape fetuses out of your womb in whatever way you want. it's a free country, and if it makes you happy, good for you! But you have to accept the consequences of your choices. That is, when you come to me and say "give me your money to protect me from the consequences of my actions", I am most certainly going to 'blame" you and tell you that I am not responsible for your sorry state and that I see no reason why I should pay to fix your problems. And what's particularly offensive to me as an immigrant is that the people who are making those demands were considerably wealthier and more privileged than I was from birth and they pissed it all away.
The essence of liberalism and foundation of modern societies is that we treat people as competent adults with free will. That means that you get to make your own choices, and you have to live with the consequences of those choices. If you make bad choices, people may still grant you charity, but that is a voluntary private choice on their part, not an obligation. That's how Western societies became free, wealthy, and powerful.
I still think that's the best way of running a society. If you want government to protect you from the consequences of your bad choices, on the other hand, you implicitly want totalitarian government. There is no third option.
Plenty of teachers take other jobs during the summer.
Teachers are not supposed to work extra hours, they are supposed to be skilled and professional enough to get the job done in the hours they have. Elementary and high school teaching should not be so intellectually taxing or unpredictable that you need extensive preparation for your lessons. University professors do need extensive preparation for lectures, which is why their teaching load is usually much lower than that of elementary and high school teachers.
No, you were trying to make it ad hominem, namely by giving the false impression of being a teacher.
I'm glad to hear it. In contrast, I have been a teacher, and I come from a family of teacher. So, I can tell you from personal experience, in addition to rational arguments, that American teachers are overpaid and underperforming, and that their arguments for why they should receive higher pay are totally unfounded.
No, what you should focus on is that the BBC and other media publish fake news, spread FUD, and lie to you. This is just one particularly egregious example out of many.
Calling Lake Geneva or Lake Garda "pristine" is ridiculous. There are major cities located on those lakes, and they have been used for waste dumping, agricultural runoff, and mining wastes since Roman times.
Correct. But the free market doesn't favor women as writers because they are better writers, the free market favors women as writers because women have tons of unearned power and privileges.
Where do you think women get their money from? On average, from men, either via marriage or via government transfers.
What do you think we have been doing? I have considered the evidence and I have found it to be flawed. Women dominate as writers not because they are better writers, but simply because they have unearned privileges and unearned power.
Well, in that case, it should be no problem for you to disprove it. So far, you have been unable. Where exactly are there opportunities denied to women that are available to men?
Why do I need to establish what both you and feminists agree on: men dominate certain professions because of traits that you call "toxic masculinity".
You bet I do: men are "physically strong, unsentimental, and assertive", biology programs most men to be "physically strong, unsentimental, and assertive", and society very much should encourage men to be "physically strong, unsentimental, and assertive".
And I say that as a gay man who is not, and never was, "physically strong, unsentimental, and assertive", who was never going to be CEO of anything, and still made a good life for himself. If I can do it, then so can any American woman, with the massive privileges and options available to her.