Everyone knows, intuitively, that women are more valuable than men from a strictly reproductive point of view; sperm is cheap, eggs are expensive, right?
I wonder if, as women entered the workforce, if we didn't unconsciously transfer that strictly reproductive valuation to the worlds of business, art, government, etc., where it really doesn't belong.
Because it sure looks like female workers are intrinsically valued for no reason other than their biological sex while male workers are expected to generate value in order to prove their worth.
This is a population-level generalization, of course. You can find counterexamples here and there. But even when a woman does perform well in the workplace, her value is typically inflated even further.
Yes, that's definitely all true. And it's worse than that. It manifests at practically every level of society. Why is it that, when men outnumbered women getting college degrees, it was proof of systemic sexism and resulted in a major piece of legislation in the form of Title IX, but now that women significantly outnumber men and the ratio is getting worse every year, people just talk about how proud they are of the imbalance (like Obama doing exactly that in a state of the union address) and how we need even more gender-specific scholarships for women? Why is it that a male high school teacher having sex with a female student is rape, but a female high school teacher having sex with a male student is 'an affair'? Why is it that, when people are avoiding danger, it's 'women and children first', or when deaths in a military action are reported, you'll hear 'X dead, including Y women and children'? Why is it that blacks getting shot by police results in a major movement and attempting to explain it with statistics will result in people calling for you to be fired from your job, but men accounting for 96% of people shot by police results in nothing? Why is it that women can serve in the military if they want to, but only men are required to sign up for the draft? Why is it that we have a presidential candidate who announced that he would only consider choosing a woman as his VP, but the idea of a candidate announcing he'd only choose a man would be electoral suicide? Why is it that having almost all men in your boardroom is considered shameful and wrong, but having almost all women is considered progressive and wonderful? Why is it that James Damore was made into an international pariah for daring to suggest that men and women might be different, and Google should hire the most qualified candidate instead of discriminating against men? Why is it that trying to have a single men's rights speaker at your university will likely result in a riot, but you almost certainly have an entire women's rights department (women's studies) built into the school itself? Why is it that every time women lag behind men in any area, whether it's health or education or any professional field or politics, it's considered proof of sexism against women, but when men lag behind women, it's seen as proof of men's inferiority to women?
Or, to put out a specific example for this site: John Flynt, aka Brianna Wu's company only hires women. Nobody in anti-GG or in the gaming press has a single problem with that. Imagine what they'd say if a company existed that only hired men. Hell, even in KIA itself, in the early days, people organized a fundraiser for "girls who code" or something to try to convince onlookers that we weren't sexist. Imagine that: Organizing a fundraiser to give money only to one gender, to convince people you are NOT sexist. Because that's what "I'm not sexist" means these days: That you are actively PRO-sexism against men.
So yes. Yes, I would agree that society values women over men specifically because they're women. A society that treated its women the way we treat men is basically unthinkable.
Everyone knows, intuitively, that women are more valuable than men from a strictly reproductive point of view; sperm is cheap, eggs are expensive, right?
I wonder if, as women entered the workforce, if we didn't unconsciously transfer that strictly reproductive valuation to the worlds of business, art, government, etc., where it really doesn't belong.
Because it sure looks like female workers are intrinsically valued for no reason other than their biological sex while male workers are expected to generate value in order to prove their worth.
This is a population-level generalization, of course. You can find counterexamples here and there. But even when a woman does perform well in the workplace, her value is typically inflated even further.
Yes, that's definitely all true. And it's worse than that. It manifests at practically every level of society. Why is it that, when men outnumbered women getting college degrees, it was proof of systemic sexism and resulted in a major piece of legislation in the form of Title IX, but now that women significantly outnumber men and the ratio is getting worse every year, people just talk about how proud they are of the imbalance (like Obama doing exactly that in a state of the union address) and how we need even more gender-specific scholarships for women? Why is it that a male high school teacher having sex with a female student is rape, but a female high school teacher having sex with a male student is 'an affair'? Why is it that, when people are avoiding danger, it's 'women and children first', or when deaths in a military action are reported, you'll hear 'X dead, including Y women and children'? Why is it that blacks getting shot by police results in a major movement and attempting to explain it with statistics will result in people calling for you to be fired from your job, but men accounting for 96% of people shot by police results in nothing? Why is it that women can serve in the military if they want to, but only men are required to sign up for the draft? Why is it that we have a presidential candidate who announced that he would only consider choosing a woman as his VP, but the idea of a candidate announcing he'd only choose a man would be electoral suicide? Why is it that having almost all men in your boardroom is considered shameful and wrong, but having almost all women is considered progressive and wonderful? Why is it that James Damore was made into an international pariah for daring to suggest that men and women might be different, and Google should hire the most qualified candidate instead of discriminating against men? Why is it that trying to have a single men's rights speaker at your university will likely result in a riot, but you almost certainly have an entire women's rights department (women's studies) built into the school itself? Why is it that every time women lag behind men in any area, whether it's health or education or any professional field or politics, it's considered proof of sexism against women, but when men lag behind women, it's seen as proof of men's inferiority to women?
Or, to put out a specific example for this site: John Flynt, aka Brianna Wu's company only hires women. Nobody in anti-GG or in the gaming press has a single problem with that. Imagine what they'd say if a company existed that only hired men. Hell, even in KIA itself, in the early days, people organized a fundraiser for "girls who code" or something to try to convince onlookers that we weren't sexist. Imagine that: Organizing a fundraiser to give money only to one gender, to convince people you are NOT sexist. Because that's what "I'm not sexist" means these days: That you are actively PRO-sexism against men.
So yes. Yes, I would agree that society values women over men specifically because they're women. A society that treated its women the way we treat men is basically unthinkable.