It's a Man's World!

[slomo]

... a thread in which slomo dumps men's rights copypasta, AD-style. I'll flesh this out over the next few days, but I'm going to start with this graphic:

[slomo]

The ‘Equal Pay Day’ factoid that women make 78 cents for every dollar earned by men

Few experts dispute that there is a wage gap, but differences in the life choices of men and women — such as women tending to leave the workforce when they have children — make it difficult to make simple comparisons. That’s what’s so facile about repeatedly citing “78 cents” or “77 cents.”

Democrats are relying on a simple calculation from the Census Bureau: a ratio of the difference between women’s median earnings and men’s median earnings. (The median is the middle value, with an equal number of full-time workers earning more and earning less.) That leaves a pay gap of 22 cents.

But the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the gap is 18 cents when looking at weekly wages. The gap is even smaller when you look at hourly wages — 13 cents — but then not every wage earner is paid on an hourly basis, so that statistic excludes salaried workers.

Annual wage figures do not take into account the fact that teachers — many of whom are women — have a primary job that fills nine months out of the year. The weekly wage is more of an apples-to-apples comparison, but it does not include as many income categories. (Still, we should note that the wage gap likely would increase if part-time workers were included in the statistics, as is done in Canada.)

June O’Neill, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who has been a critic of the 77-cent statistic, has noted that the wage gap is affected by a number of factors, including that the average woman has less work experience than the average man and that more of the weeks worked by women are part-time rather than full-time. Women also tend to leave the workforce for periods to raise children, seek jobs that may have more flexible hours but lower pay, and choose careers that tend to have lower pay.

Indeed, BLS data show that women who do not get married have virtually no wage gap; they earn 95 cents for every dollar a man makes. (Another interesting fact: Women who are members of unions make almost 91 cents compared to their counterparts.)

In 2011, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis surveyed economic literature and concluded that “research suggests that the actual gender wage gap (when female workers are compared with male workers who have similar characteristics) is much lower than the raw wage gap.” They noted that women may prefer to accept jobs with lower wages but greater benefits (more flexible parental leave) so excluding such fringe benefits from the calculations will exaggerate the wage disparity. One survey, prepared for the Labor Department by the CONSAD Research Corp. during the George W. Bush administration, concluded that when such differences are accounted for, much of the hourly wage gap dwindled, to about 5 cents on the dollar.

[slomo]

Why Men Die Younger: Causes of Mortality Differences by Sex

Abstract: It is generally accepted that, on average, women live longer than men. Few, however, are aware that there is an underlying and consistent pattern of factors contributing to the sex mortality differential. This paper attempts to synthesize the evidence supporting and refuting the hypotheses for the sex mortality differential. The extent of the sex mortality differential is examined. It has existed since at least 1750 and occurs at all age groups—even prenatally—in nearly all animal species studied and for almost every major cause of death. Evidence supports both the biological/genetic and the social/cultural/environmental/behavioral schools of hypotheses, as well as interactions between the two, but the determining component may revolve around the differing chromosomes and hormones between the sexes. Behavioral distinctions, especially cigarette smoking, also affect the sex mortality differential.

[slomo]

Lower Levels of Antiretroviral Therapy Enrollment Among Men with HIV Compared with Women — 12 Countries, 2002–2013

Equitable access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) for men and women with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection is a principle endorsed by most countries and funding bodies, including the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) Relief (PEPFAR) (1). To evaluate gender equity in ART access among adults (defined for this report as persons aged ≥15 years), 765,087 adult ART patient medical records from 12 countries in five geographic regions* were analyzed to estimate the ratio of women to men among new ART enrollees for each calendar year during 2002–2013. This annual ratio was compared with estimates from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)† of the ratio of HIV-infected adult women to men in the general population. In all 10 African countries and Haiti, the most recent estimates of the ratio of adult women to men among new ART enrollees significantly exceeded the UNAIDS estimates for the female-to-male ratio among HIV-infected adults by 23%–83%. In six African countries and Haiti, the ratio of women to men among new adult ART enrollees increased more sharply over time than the estimated UNAIDS female-to-male ratio among adults with HIV in the general population. Increased ART coverage among men is needed to decrease their morbidity and mortality and to reduce HIV incidence among their sexual partners. Reaching more men with HIV testing and linkage-to-care services and adoption of test-and-treat ART eligibility guidelines (i.e., regular testing of adults, and offering treatment to all infected persons with ART, regardless of CD4 cell test results) could reduce gender inequity in ART coverage.

Summary pitched at a lay audience...

[Elvis]

Gotta love it when a scientist does the AD thing — a true data dump. If contradictory data exists, I hope that it, too, will be welcomed here.


Other than to say that, I'm staying out of this!

[slomo]

Gotta love it when a scientist does the AD thing — a true data dump. If contradictory data exists, I hope that it, too, will be welcomed here.

I absolutely welcome opposing views -- as long as they are provided with evidence. Here, "evidence" means academic papers or well-research white papers by reasonably well-known sources, or else news articles or blogs that use them as principal sources. These should be reasonably quantitative papers, i.e. not literary criticism or anything else that leans heavily on critical theory, deconstruction, Marxist theory, etc. (or if they do, theoretical statements are backed up by actual data).

I'll give you all a head start:

Salary Differences Between Male and Female Registered Nurses in the United States

We determined salary trends by gender using nationally representative data from the last 6 (1988-2008) quadrennial National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses (NSSRN) (discontinued in 2008). This mail, electronic, and web survey selected a state-based probability sample of currently licensed RNs from data provided by state boards of nursing with a sample size of more than 30 000 RNs per year and a response rate of approximately 60%. We also used the American Community Survey (ACS; 2001-2013), a household survey with a response rate exceeding 90%, to extend time trends to 2013 and establish that unadjusted salary differences by gender were not limited to NSSRN data. The sample consisted of full-time employed RNs working 50 or more weeks per year and 35 hours or more per week. The outcome variable of annual salary was measured continuously in both surveys.

Using ordinary least-squares regression and employment information in the NSSRN, we assessed how much of the annual salary differences could be accounted for by demographic factors, work hours, experience, work setting, clinical specialty, job position, survey year, state of residence, and other factors. Analyses were performed using Stata version 13.1 (StataCorp) and a 2-tailed probability value of <.05 indicated statistical significance. The study was deemed exempt by a research ethics board.

...

Male RNs outearned female RNs across settings, specialties, and positions with no narrowing of the pay gap over time. About half of the gap was accounted for by employment and other measured characteristics. This gap is similar in magnitude to the salary differences found for physicians.2,3

Study limitations include survey data that are subject to reporting biases and the lack of detail regarding specialties and positions in the NSSRN.

[American Dream]

One good turn deserves another:

Are You Man Enough for the Men's Rights Movement?

Probably not, at least according to a growing army of pissed-off activists who are convinced that the male species is profoundly endangered by our feminized society. They say it's a woman's world nowthat women have the upper hand in sex, in universities, in custody battles. And don't even get them started on all those "bogus" rape cases. It's enough to make a certain kind of man join a revolution. Jeff Sharlet reports from the movement's first national gathering and meets the true believers who want you to fight for your right to patriarchy

"What is ’the manosphere’?" I ask Paul Elam around three one morning. This is not a factual question. It’s an existential one.

I already know that "the manosphere" refers to an online network, nascent but vast and like the universe constantly expanding, each twinkling star in its firmament dedicatedobviouslyto men. Men and their problems. Usually with women. Some galaxies of the manosphere are composed of self-declared "pickup artists" (PUAs) who want to help ordinary guys trick women into bed; other solar systems deal earnestly with child custody and the Adderallization of rambunctious boys. There are constellations of MGTOWs, "men going their own way," separatists and onanists and recluses. There are hundreds of websites and blogs, many openly hostileSlutHate, Angry Harry, The Spearhead, NiceGuy’s American Women Suck Pageand many more that are brutally lewd. For instance: Return of Kings, published by the author of a series of popular country guides such as Bang Ukraine: How to Sleep with Ukrainian Women in Ukraine.

As the flagship political site of the movement (it had just shy of 9 million site visits last year), Elam’s A Voice for Men functions as the closest thing there is to a center, an intelligence, a superego to the bloggy manosphere id of lust and fury. Just how big the whole thing is, nobody can say. More than fringe, less than mainstream, but at 3 A.M., sitting with Elam in his hotel room, I’m not looking for numbers. Size doesn’t matter. What I’m really asking is, What does it all mean?

Elam has just wrapped up a conference. "An eye popper," he says, the first time he’s brought A Voice for Men off the Internet and into the flesh. He likes to say, "You can’t fight titty hall," but that’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s fucking shit up. That’s his slogan: "Fuck their shit up." "They" being feminists. Six eight, 290 pounds, with the beard of John Brown and the rumbling voice of James Earl Jones, Elam, whose name happens to be "male" backward, wants to be a provocateur. Responding to a feminist critic, he once wrote, "The idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection." But that kind of talk is just for show, he says. He points out he used to be a counselor. What he’s doing, really, is a kind of therapy. He wants me to understand. So he draws a map of the manosphere, alluding to its origins as he sketches: its roots in the men’s liberation movement of the 1970s and ’80sauxiliary to the much larger women’s movementand the New Agey men’s movement of the ’90s, its coming of age online, when Elam first started posting under the name Lester Burnham, Kevin Spacey’s midlife-crisis character in American Beauty, its explosive growth since he founded A Voice for Men in 2008. Refuge, reaction, and fantasyland, practical advice and political calculation, identity and secret identity, cold fact and hot ambition. It’s so complex not even Elam can map it neatly:

He holds up his rendering. The semblance is clear. "A dick and balls," I say.

More at: http://www.gq.com/story/mens-rights-act ... rentPage=1

[Elvis]

One good turn deserves another:

Are You Man Enough for the Men's Rights Movement?

Probably not, at least according to a growing army of pissed-off activists who are convinced that the male species is profoundly endangered by our feminized society. They say it's a woman's world nowthat women have the upper hand in sex, in universities, in custody battles. And don't even get them started on all those "bogus" rape cases. It's enough to make a certain kind of man join a revolution. Jeff Sharlet reports from the movement's first national gathering and meets the true believers who want you to fight for your right to patriarchy

"What is ’the manosphere’?" I ask Paul Elam around three one morning. This is not a factual question. It’s an existential one.

I already know that "the manosphere" refers to an online network, nascent but vast and like the universe constantly expanding, each twinkling star in its firmament dedicatedobviouslyto men. Men and their problems. Usually with women. Some galaxies of the manosphere are composed of self-declared "pickup artists" (PUAs) who want to help ordinary guys trick women into bed; other solar systems deal earnestly with child custody and the Adderallization of rambunctious boys. There are constellations of MGTOWs, "men going their own way," separatists and onanists and recluses. There are hundreds of websites and blogs, many openly hostileSlutHate, Angry Harry, The Spearhead, NiceGuy’s American Women Suck Pageand many more that are brutally lewd. For instance: Return of Kings, published by the author of a series of popular country guides such as Bang Ukraine: How to Sleep with Ukrainian Women in Ukraine.

As the flagship political site of the movement (it had just shy of 9 million site visits last year), Elam’s A Voice for Men functions as the closest thing there is to a center, an intelligence, a superego to the bloggy manosphere id of lust and fury. Just how big the whole thing is, nobody can say. More than fringe, less than mainstream, but at 3 A.M., sitting with Elam in his hotel room, I’m not looking for numbers. Size doesn’t matter. What I’m really asking is, What does it all mean?

Elam has just wrapped up a conference. "An eye popper," he says, the first time he’s brought A Voice for Men off the Internet and into the flesh. He likes to say, "You can’t fight titty hall," but that’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s fucking shit up. That’s his slogan: "Fuck their shit up." "They" being feminists. Six eight, 290 pounds, with the beard of John Brown and the rumbling voice of James Earl Jones, Elam, whose name happens to be "male" backward, wants to be a provocateur. Responding to a feminist critic, he once wrote, "The idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection." But that kind of talk is just for show, he says. He points out he used to be a counselor. What he’s doing, really, is a kind of therapy. He wants me to understand. So he draws a map of the manosphere, alluding to its origins as he sketches: its roots in the men’s liberation movement of the 1970s and ’80sauxiliary to the much larger women’s movementand the New Agey men’s movement of the ’90s, its coming of age online, when Elam first started posting under the name Lester Burnham, Kevin Spacey’s midlife-crisis character in American Beauty, its explosive growth since he founded A Voice for Men in 2008. Refuge, reaction, and fantasyland, practical advice and political calculation, identity and secret identity, cold fact and hot ambition. It’s so complex not even Elam can map it neatly:

He holds up his rendering. The semblance is clear. "A dick and balls," I say.

More at: http://www.gq.com/story/mens-rights-act ... rentPage=1

Do I have to post the rules?

Here, "evidence" means academic papers or well-research white papers by reasonably well-known sources, or else news articles or blogs that use them as principal sources. These should be reasonably quantitative papers, i.e. not literary criticism or anything else that leans heavily on critical theory, deconstruction, Marxist theory, etc. (or if they do, theoretical statements are backed up by actual data).

What you posted is a breezy imitation of gonzo journalism. There's one paragraph listing some "evidence" but no data.

[American Dream]

Go ahead and join up with the cause, if you think they're cool!

[slomo]

Go ahead and join up with the cause, if you think they're cool!

I'm going to try to minimize my editorial comments, because I want to let the data speak for themselves. However, I do want to point out what is a common theme in AD's posts: an attempt to subvert facts and research with emotional pieces that characterize an entire position by the actions of its most extreme adherents. In other words, smear tactics. You can see this theme in all of the recent gender/fascist posts in which AD has participated. There is never any acknowledgement of the potential validity of the position itself (or at least its major arguments), any recognition that the position may in fact be held by a non-negligible and growing fraction of ordinary westerners, or any attempt at counterargument with population-based statistics, only an attempt to frighten people away from a legitimate discussion by appealing to old, familiar bogeymen.

The reality is a very large segment of men's rights advocates find Paul Elam to be polarizing and counterproductive. I am one such person. I think the facts and figures speak for themselves: there are a number of social spheres in which it can easily be demonstrated that men are systematically disadvantaged relative to women. This does not contradict the existence of other social spheres in which women are disadvantaged relative to men. However, it does contradict the totalizing Patriarchy narrative that claims everything in western societies is systematically set up to benefit men over women. It's demonstrably not true that the world works that way. The purpose of this thread is to show that.

[tapitsbo]

.

[tapitsbo]

I can empathize with the feeling that draws people into wanting men's rights and understand personally some of the difficult situations it tries to address. Having to live even temporarily with a violent, unstable female partner I can definitely relate to what draws a lot of men into this current of ideas

On the other hand, I think it's laughable how much it misunderstands the thrust of much current feminism (which is largely critical of individual rights and isn't much interested with sincere discourse with men - men with power over feminists aren't threatened by them and aren't interested in much discourse either.)

These gender woes are going to fester and grow worse until people of all genders have a little more to live for...

A little more justice for the environment, let alone the spirit and varied purposes of our species, especially the world's populations that are severely disenfranchised - these things all seem way more needing of attention to me than the MRA crusade

"Rights" as a consumer within the current system are always going to be limited in their ability to change the world...

The system needs huge changes that go way beyond ticking boxes to make sure men and women are "equal" (questionable itself for many reasons such as womens' capacity for child-birth, and plus I don't trust the MRA assessments of the different genders' standing any more than most feminist ones)

By all means I think men should reflect on and even assert their identity as a group but to squander this on squealing for "rights" under the current system seems misguided, to me, at least the current approaches do. I guess you could indeed say men lack a "voice" but they sure are on the verge of getting one simply as a consequence of reality hitting the strange beast that feminism has become head-on - yet this is where "MRA's" seem behind the curve and other ideas about being a man are gaining momentum more quickly - ones that aren't caught up in a quixotic, vaguely libertarian struggle for "equal rights"

On the other hand, I do think the angst of young men is deliberately stoked in an effort to make them want to fight violently for various control systems.

But as American Dream says, Your Mileage May Vary

[slomo]

Tapitso, I am somewhat sympathetic to your point of view. Ultimately the question of "rights" (for women or men as classes) is a non-starter in the face of all the other very real problems becoming more severe every day. The goal of this thread is to use data to undermine a narrative I believe is false and harmful (Patriarchy), but my real interest is psychology. [TW: the following is opinion without sourceable evidence.] The Patriarchy narrative, and feminism in general, locks the male psyche into its most atavistic archetype, that of male-as-aggressor, when in fact there are other archetypes available: male-as-protector, male-as-rescuer (I realize these are overlapping, not distinct, archetypes), i.e. the father archetype in contrast to the adolescent warrior. The ultimate effect is to remove hope from young men, to remove any sense of purpose. This in turn leads to many of the social abominations we see currently, and directly feeds the forces that deliberately stoke "the angst of young men ... in an effort to make them want to fight violently for various control systems." You think the solution is more feminism, more totalitarian policing of language and desire, to make young men feel even worse about themselves? I think not.

Feminism acknowledges only the outermost surface of the male psyche, the mask men wear for society and for almost all women. It does not acknowledge a deeper layer of humanity, a layer that is mostly not shown to anybody other than a handful of male friends and a significant other (if a man is lucky enough to have a loving partner): a deep need to marshal male energies in service of higher meaning. Feminism fails to see men as human at all.

So, the easiest counterargument to make is to point out the obvious fallacies of Patriarchy theory, to point out the many spheres in which men have it demonstrably worse than women. AD seems to insinuate that I have some hidden agenda, and he's right in one sense: I seek to undermine Patriarchy theory as an attractive ideology, to advocate its abandonment by both women and men. Once we all recognize that men and women are all, at a deeper layer, souls looking to find a meaningful place in the world, only then can the world have any hope of healing.

[tapitsbo]

Thanks slomo -

You think the solution is more feminism, more totalitarian policing of language and desire, to make young men feel even worse about themselves?

I definitely don't feel more totalitarian policing is in order as I hope anybody reading between the lines of my post could see. I know I can write in a stupid and obtuse style here but I find being direct can lead to even more miscommunication, sometimes.

Although more feminism of a different kind than the kind prevailing now would be great.

I think Patriarchy does refer to something real, as warped as some feminist formulations of it may be. Although maybe it is mutated beyond all recognition for some contemporary Westerners in their personal lives. Think of the organized crime networks obsessed over on RI and their corresponding microcosms in miniature settings of communities, workplaces, families - then again there is a Barbara Bush behind George H.W.

Once we all recognize that men and women are all, at a deeper layer, souls looking to find a meaningful place in the world, only then can the world have any hope of healing.

I think a lot of people realize this - I feel sorry for any who don't.


***


Here's a darkly funny anecdote about gender politics I just remembered: I recall, about a year ago, someone in my family deeply involved in queer feminism posting a blog article (I'll dig it up sometime, maybe) that argued that consent is something that can be, based on feelings, withdrawn from past actions at any time after intimacy by any involved parties. Anything can be deemed rape according to a change of feelings, yes, even if there is a recording of unambiguous, affirmative consent. Of course, since the author believed state justice is inherently oppressive violence, the punishment for said rape should be shunning by "the community" so the perpetrator can process their place in a causal chain of someone else's wounded affect. I trust the wise readers here can imagine some of the unfortunate scenarios that would result from this set-up...

[slomo]

I don't have any qualms with claims about the existence of systems of hierarchical domination. However, I don't believe they are based fundamentally on male domination of the female. If we're going to use reductive models, I think it's more fair to say that these systems are about elite classes dominating working classes, but in reality I think the dynamic is far more complicated than that.