Counter-feminism
A friend of mine recently mentioned a common rant her father goes on about. It is a theme I've heard several times from many quarters, and even thought myself in the privacy of my own head.
I work in an industry that is decidedly male. As in, 85% or so. It is hard for women to break into it as it is such a strong field. I'm not proud of it, but that's how it goes.
When I was job hunting right out of college I had thoughts like the above. I wasn't diverse enough. Being a white male meant I got zero bonuses for diversity. Not even veteran bonuses as I never served. I had to gain access based 100% on my merits, not based on which disadvantaged class I was in. It felt no fair, as people with less innate spiffy as me were getting in.
That was the male privilege talking. Just by walking in the door I got a default +5% on the selection because I fit the pre-conceived notions of what someone who does what they wanted looked like. At the time I did not understand that all but the most generic civil-service classes involve the subjective opinion of one or more people in the selection process, and that subjective opinion is biased towards white males in my field. The built in bonuses for being female or not white were there to level the playing field.
So yes, there is push-back for this. You get that any time an entitled class (men in this specific case) gets deprivileged in some way. But, this is for the better in the long run.
How it should work, and unions have been trying to push for this for years, is that each worker is evaluated objectively on their ability to add to the organization. As anyone who has attempted to hire anyone more than the most menial of disposable workers knows, objectivity on such relative worth is very hard to come by, and reliable objectivity even more so. So we're stuck with a subjective system.
So yes, Men are somewhat deprivileged from where they were 30 years ago. It isn't all gone yet, and that wage gap is still devilishly hard to get rid of. The Son who has a degree in classics will most likely not get a job in his field. His innate male-ness still counts for some, but he'll have a hard time busting into the 'personal assistant' field, better try for something more tech oriented. The daughters are both earning more money than I am, a position they simply couldn't have been in 30 years ago. It is entirely possible that the daughters will continue to earn more than the son, even at the same relative life-stages. This is something else that would have been very hard to accomplish 30 years ago.
So no, rolling the clock back 30 years to when male privilege ruled would not make everyone happy. Being deprivileged does feel like things are now unfair, but that's because they've been unfair for so long that the unfair has come to seem normal. In this case, get used to the change. It is better for all of us.
Where are the jobs for white men? If 75% of doctors and 70% of pastors are women, what are the men going to do? All these women are taking jobs that men used to have, so what jobs are men going to have? I never worried about you girls finding good jobs, but now that [son] has graduated from college (with a classics degree), I'm worried about him getting hired, because he is not diverse enough. Reverse discrimination! Why, even though [crazy mormon guy] is qualified, they won't hire him as a preschool teacher in Mormon country!I've heard this before.
I work in an industry that is decidedly male. As in, 85% or so. It is hard for women to break into it as it is such a strong field. I'm not proud of it, but that's how it goes.
When I was job hunting right out of college I had thoughts like the above. I wasn't diverse enough. Being a white male meant I got zero bonuses for diversity. Not even veteran bonuses as I never served. I had to gain access based 100% on my merits, not based on which disadvantaged class I was in. It felt no fair, as people with less innate spiffy as me were getting in.
That was the male privilege talking. Just by walking in the door I got a default +5% on the selection because I fit the pre-conceived notions of what someone who does what they wanted looked like. At the time I did not understand that all but the most generic civil-service classes involve the subjective opinion of one or more people in the selection process, and that subjective opinion is biased towards white males in my field. The built in bonuses for being female or not white were there to level the playing field.
So yes, there is push-back for this. You get that any time an entitled class (men in this specific case) gets deprivileged in some way. But, this is for the better in the long run.
How it should work, and unions have been trying to push for this for years, is that each worker is evaluated objectively on their ability to add to the organization. As anyone who has attempted to hire anyone more than the most menial of disposable workers knows, objectivity on such relative worth is very hard to come by, and reliable objectivity even more so. So we're stuck with a subjective system.
So yes, Men are somewhat deprivileged from where they were 30 years ago. It isn't all gone yet, and that wage gap is still devilishly hard to get rid of. The Son who has a degree in classics will most likely not get a job in his field. His innate male-ness still counts for some, but he'll have a hard time busting into the 'personal assistant' field, better try for something more tech oriented. The daughters are both earning more money than I am, a position they simply couldn't have been in 30 years ago. It is entirely possible that the daughters will continue to earn more than the son, even at the same relative life-stages. This is something else that would have been very hard to accomplish 30 years ago.
So no, rolling the clock back 30 years to when male privilege ruled would not make everyone happy. Being deprivileged does feel like things are now unfair, but that's because they've been unfair for so long that the unfair has come to seem normal. In this case, get used to the change. It is better for all of us.
posted by Corwin at 8:28 PM
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