A good friend of mine recently wrote to me, "I would love to see you blog about this one..." I opened the link and saw the following:
My first thought was, "Certainly this isn't saying what I think it is?" Oh how wrong I was..
Alasdair Thompson, chief executive of New Zealand's Employers and Manufacturers Association, was on a radio debate and cleared up all of this silly frustration over why women are still earning less than men in the same occupations. He lists the following two reasons:
1) ..."once a month they have sick problems."
2) and that when they become mothers, ""they have to take time off to go home".
Thanks for clearing that up Mr. Thompson! I appreciate it! We can now go about our lives content with women earning less... I just have a few questions if you please..
1) What about the fact that men are more likely than women to take an extended vacation?
2) And even when women do take a vacation, they are almost twice as likely to feel guilty about it?
3) How about women on the work force performing 70% better than men in complex multitasking?
4) And women in the work force typically having more education than their men counter parts?
Besides when women get "sick" once a month, it's basically a full week where they have an extremely high "bull shit meter" and need everything around them to be done just right and perfect. In a sense, you get a full audit of your company practices and policies once a month. And not one person is going to get in the way, because what employee is going to argue with this:
Obviously this guy, Al, is ridiculous and his arguments disgusting but his answers come from a very honest and not PC place. This is what he feels and believes; honestly. It really shows the mentality still against women in the work force. It truly is sad.
I am not a feminist. I truly am not. I do believe there are major differences between men and women. I don't believe we are on equal footing on everything simply because we are built different in a very natural and basic sense. But don't for a minute think that I believe that women ought to be treated any differently or not afforded the same opportunities as men. I believe that equal should be that, equal.
I disagree with biases on both levels. For example, I really, really hate that women fought to be in the military and they continue to fight to be allowed in all the same areas of men in the armed services, yet have a completely different and lower standard than men in the physical testing. How does this make sense? I can do everything you can do, combat and all, but I shouldn't have to run the same time, do as many push ups, or have the same physical skill sets? That's bull crap if you ask me. In the same way that a woman lawyer, CEO, or other professional occupation can do twice the work and get three quarters the pay. It's all a bunch of bunk.
Although I disagree completely with the thoughts of our good friend Al up there, it's actually nice to see someone be honest. This world is full of every one being so damn "politically correct" all the time, society pretends that those thoughts and feelings don't exist anymore. "No one actually thinks that way." That's not true, a good number of people, men and women, think that way, they are just too smart to say so in public.
Here is what I am getting at, Al is obviously silly, but he isn't alone. Our society needs to stop being so politically correct in everything they do and what they think and "feel" and be honest. We won't be able to fix the problem if we are just continuing to pretend everything is ok on the surface, while watching the real affects of the true feelings and perceptions continue on.
Let's be honest and let's fix these problems.
*Sources
International Vacation Deprivation Survey
Science Daily
Reuters
6 comments:
I have a couple comments.
1. Not all women PMS. I don't. I think stereotyping women as perfectionist bitches while they are menstruating is pretty ridiculous.
2. I would consider you a feminist. While I certainly disagree with you as to the source and degree of gender differences, I don't think and most people I know don't think you have to believe the genders are equal to be a feminist. You just have to believe in equal opportunity and equal treatment between the genders. That to me is what feminism is about.
And since you wrote "But don't for a minute think that I believe that women ought to be treated any differently or not afforded the same opportunities as men. I believe that equal should be that, equal." I personally consider you a feminist, even if you wouldn't use that label on yourself.
Ok for your 1st point, you obviously missed the facetious humor in the majority of this post. I was being completely farcical in that particular paragraph.
For your idea on feminism and that I am a feminist, no, I am not.
I personally have major issues with women being in the military at all, I don't even really believe its good to have them in it. I don't believe that they should be in combat especially. I also believe that men and women are inherently different and believe in a lot of traditionalist principles. BUT, what I was saying was, IF society has decided that women and men should me equal, then equal should be equal.
I think you missed the main point of this post really. I was joking and going for a laugh with the PMS part, which I thought would be obvious with the goofy graphic I added, but also I know what a feminist is and I know what I believe. I'm not a feminist. But if society wants to make them equal, they should make them totally equal.
Yeah, then I don't think your point of view was well established. I'll give you the humor, whatever, it's hard to get on the internet, even with silly graphics, because there are people who seriously do say stuff like that.
But in general, it was not at all clear to me that you believe society is misguided in the equality portion. In that case, then yes, I do agree you are not a feminist.
The only reason I commented was because of this "I know what a feminist is" type of sentiment. Honestly there are so many variations of what feminism means to different people that there are women who think they aren't feminists just because they believe in gender differences. But with your clarification, I understand your point. Vehemently disagree with it, but understand.
I can understand your confusion with my personal stance.
The main point of the post wasn't to push for anything other than for society to quit forcing people to be so politically correct in public and still act on their true feelings in private. People still believe women are less than men because of child birth, pms, etc, but won't admit it, so society goes on believing it isn't out there. That is the problem.
On my own personal stance, I am not a feminist. I have some strong beliefs about women being in curtain areas and doing certain things for many reasons.
BUT, I do not believe that my country nor any government should make laws restricting women who want to be in certain fields or do certain things. I do not think laws should restrict equality in any sense, gender, race or age. That has nothing to do with my beliefs regarding women, but more a belief on what a government should and should not be able to restrict.
*hahahaha certain areas, not curtain areas... hahaha
lol. I want to be in curtain areas. I'm eagerly waiting for the day when we can afford to ditch the blinds :)
I do agree, though, that by forcing this sort of crappy discourse about women into private conversations, we're not confronting and potentially defeating stupid assumptions about PMS, child birth, etc.
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