For instance, how many women are involved in high paying blue collar jobs?
Consider marketing campaigns for college admissions. Who is the target? What is the marketing angle? Is it possible that ad campaigns that talk about empowering women through education are, in fact, taking money from women, thereby disempowering them?
Just exploring out loud…
I don’t think so. Why have women been disadvantaged relative to men? Lack of education, lack of opportunities. This is changing. Women are proving themselves superior in schools, which is a pretty good sign that they will prove themselves superior in many other fields. If the current trend continues, soon it will be considered a disadvantage to be a man.
Ok, I’ll give you another joke. Something we’ll all find funny:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GIJMH9opso[/youtube]
Cracks me up everytime. Especially when you first hear the crack and you know what’s coming up, he’s waffling on about something to do with parliment or something, but I can’t concentrate through laughing because I know he’s going to fall. He’s going to fall on his bum bum!!
Oh yeh, back on topic anyway…boys v girls? Meh.
You might be right. In some contexts, it’s already considered a disadvantage to be a man. I’m thinking specifically of growing up a Muslim boy in Europe.
That’s the sub-topic.
The big problem with Title IX is that not enough women are interested in sports. You might have 500 men interested and 300 women. If the population is a 50/50 split, the men are screwed. As with almost everything in US education, it’s all about the results that some liberal dipshit group wants and not about what the students want and need. I don’t know who came up with this law, but they were assholes.
Worse still, it can work counterproductively to the group you’re trying to favour. You have to be very careful about what you measure:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson’s_paradox
Unless “generally” mean’s “in every possible way”, then the conclusion dosn’t follow.
No, not necessarily. But it might. Investigation is necessary.
Are you sure that statistic is significant? Seems pretty close to me.
What immediately pops to mind when I hear the conclusion being drawn that a certain group is disadvantaged (or barred, or repressed, etc.) based on comparative figures like this is the question of whether that group is generally not as inclined to take the opportunities as the other group. Maybe women are more often inclined to enroll in college than men.
If this turns out not to be the case, I then question whether its warranted to point the finger at the more advantaged group and say they are the ones disadvantaging the other group (like they’re a bunch of big meanies). One example that comes to mind is that of women being pressured to look thin and beautiful so as to win the affection of men. One theory behind why this happens is that the cosmetic and fashion industries are run by big mean exploitative men who are victomizing women into feeling inferior unless they’re the most beautiful and sexy of the bunch. But there is the alternative theory that women are just more competative with each other, each one vying for the attention of men who are just standing by watching it all happen passively. Women, according to this theory, are more likely than men to one-up her peers when she deems her peers as more beautiful and attractive, and it reaches a fervor pitch where out-doing her competition becomes nigh impossible, and thus low self-esteme ensues.
These things have to be considered before any judgment is made or any fingers pointed.
I’m not sure of anything, Gib. Are women generally disadvantaged relative to men? That depends on your outlook. Is worldly power necessarily advantage?
My syllogism was designed to expose assumptions, not to advance an argument.
good going anon…i have a bunch of whining females around me…telling me how downtrodden they are…
Hmm, well maybe they are downtrodden.
maybe the are…but not in my fam…
Are you downtrodden, Turtle?
i dont think so anon…i like your statement about assumptions and not trying to prove anything…
-I don’t think it is. The premises may or may not be true, however, the conclusion assumes that college enrollment is an advantage, thus representing a reference frame of the advantaged/disadvantaged relation. Which is dubious at best. The ability to learn and the opportunity to learn are not the same. Also, there is no infallible method of establishing that opportunity follows ability. To put it simple, anybody with enough money and connections can enroll into college (provided he/she is not the King/Queen of retards), and even with a college degree there is no guarantee that a good paying job will follow. There are a lot of examples of men and women with high education and still struggling to make ends meet…
I’m a little confused. Most of what you just wrote provides a supporting context for my conclusion. Earlier in this thread, I pointed out that high-paying blue collar jobs are heavily (almost exclusively) male dominated. College, on the other hand, is more and more a surrogate high school. You have to go to community college just to get the basics.
Again, I am not arguing for the conclusion that enrolling in college is, at this time, a disadvantage. I like the logic I presented only because the conclusion is surprising. I think the possibility that the conclusion is true should be taken as seriously as the more obvious fact that the logic is faulty. It’s the opposite of air-tight, yet to me anyway, there’s something compelling about it.
OP’s syllogism isn’t a syllogism. At all. Not even close. The conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises.
Education isn’t all that’s required for financial success. Men are better able to get into acceptable careers without a college education. There are various markets which are overrun by men without degrees: programming, graphic design, web design. It’s about being an entrepreneur. Sure, women may be more educated these days, but they are not as willing to start bigger businesses or risk their own money on investments, for whatever reason (there are more single-employee businesses whose single employee is a self-employed woman than a self-employed man, but as the size of private businesses increase, they are more often run by men than women.)
There’s also a matter of connections, which is always seen as a big deal in financial success.
I also think, whether it’s justified or not i don’t know, that women are just taken less seriously. I know a feminist who likes to talk a lot about the “infantilization of women,” and there is no doubt that that happens. Women also play along with it, behaving in “cute” ditsy ways and feigning ignorance or incompetence – if a woman pulls that shit it’s just cute, if a man does it he’s a fucking imbecile. Not sure if that is a result of the infantilization or if infantilization is a result of that. In either case, that tendency doesn’t help women in the business arena. Incompetence and ignorance may be cute in a social arena, but not in a business arena. (DISCLAIMER: I am not saying that women are incompetent or ignorant, just that it’s more socially acceptable for them to behave as if they are)