Monday 7 March 2011

International Women's Day




A few thoughts:-

1. A man is still more likely to earn more than a woman. Yes, if she has children. Childless women do about as well as men.
2. Men have a far better chance of entering political office. Well, what's stopping you standing, and if the people like you, voting for you? That said, I'd never vote for a woman of child-bearing age. I want an MP working for me, not taking up to a year off and leaving me unrepresented.
3. Men have a far better chance of becoming a company director. Start your own fucking company, then. I'm sure that you'll crap all over those companies that have chosen less talented people than you.
4. As a man, you're less likely to be judged for promiscuous behaviour. And this comes down to simple biology. A man can theoretically create around 90 pregnancies in the same time that a woman can create 1, assuming enough willing partners. So, to get lots of partners is success. For women to be promiscuous means she's willing to give away her womb cheaply. Now, who really judges women hard for such behaviour? Men? No, men will happily just have a piece of that. It's women who do so, because it gives them a higher moral view of themselves.
5. As a man, you're less likely to fall victim to sexual assault. Sure, it's possible that a group of women could probably beat me in a fight, but it would be a rare woman who could do so on her own. We're physically stronger. Life's a bitch in that regard, but there's little a campaign can do to address it.
6. And unlike the 30000 women who lose there jobs due to pregnancy, there's no risk to your career. And we already have laws against that, so what do the International Women's Day people want doing about it?

7. Women are responsible for 2/3rds of the world done worldwide. Define "work", because frankly that sounds like bullshit.
8. Yet earn only 10% of the income. Which is probably because a lot of that is basically being a housewife, which isn't a job with an income, but allows your husband to go out and earn one without paying for a load of staff.
9. Every year, 70m girls are deprived of even a basic education. And what are they going to do with it if they got one? If your life is likely to be "get a husband, get married, have children, raise a family", how much use is an education going to be? Now, the nice part of us says "but education broadens your mind" and that's true, but to people in those countries, that's a luxury right now.
10. We're afraid to walk the streets at night. Thing is, that's partly the result of the sort of emancipation that women wanted. I'm not saying emancipation and freedom for women aren't good, that meeting your own boyfriend by going to clubs isn't a better world than introductions by parents and locking up your daughters, but it has to be accepted that the downside of that freedom is that women don't have someone to protect them.

I'm very supportive of freedom for women, but a lot of the IWD stuff is either fantasy, or based on the choices that some women want to have (at the cost of others). In fact, I'm convinced that the sort of feminism that wants free childcare is basically a feminism that supports middle-class women with careers over working class women without one.

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