vacation

My vacation started Wednesday. It was really great to have a day off. I got a few things done around the house, but didn't do much otherwise. Thursday I went to work, to finish up what had to be done before the end of the year. I got my boss going in the right direction on something he was taking the lead on next week. And then I was done for the next couple of weeks. I'm off from the 14th through the first.

I didn't do much on Friday. Yesterday we went to Stout Fest at a local brewery. There were some interesting beers. Last night was a special Christmas D&D session. Tonight is the regular gaming session. I guess I'll spend the rest of the week getting ready for Christmas.

the patriarchy

A libertarian on my Facebook list shared a video that had a big headline that read [Jordan] "Peterson completely destroys feminist narrative." I was originally planning on ignoring it, but the "destroys" thing drives me crazy. So I watched it. His position was mostly listing all the areas where men don't have an advantage in society, as if this makes everything even. But then he also talks about how the free market is the driver that causes some professions to be dominated by men. "Plumbing is a field that is dominated by men. Yet there are no roving bands of tyrannical plumbers causing people to disproportionately choose male plumbers over female ones."

So I commented:

Holy shit, he went there! He said that our society, with its patriarchal structure, is based on competence, and then goes on to give all kinds of examples of male-dominated jobs! So the caption said he destroys the feminist narrative, while he actually shows us the very basis of sexism.

Some guy replied:
"You sound like that BBC reporter he also destroyed." And he posted another video of this guy.

I didn't want to watch it, especially because it was 30 minutes long, but I gave it over ten minutes, here and there. It was a sort of debate, where the woman interviewer would say things like "so what you're saying is..." And he would reply "no, what I'm saying is..." Or "on average, a woman gets paid nine percent less than a man doing the same job. That's not fair is it?" "It depends on why it's happening. I can give you an example..." My main takeaway from the video was that he thinks there are a lot of reasons why women don't do as well in society, and most of them are not prejudice.

The other thing about this video, was that the woman kept bringing up points against him, and he kept shooting them down. And she seemed to be getting angry while he remained absolutely calm. She appeared to be losing the debate. But the thing is, he wouldn't give her anything to fight against. Every single point she brought up, it was like, "no, that's not the issue." And he'd talk about all the issues, and it was like "no, I'm not taking a side, that's just the way things are."

Anyway, back to my debate. He said the guy destroyed a reporter. I replied,

You happen to agree with his brand of BS, so when you hear him say it, of course he "destroys" the opposition.
I'm giving you the definition of sexism, and explaining how his argument exemplifies it, and you still don't get it.

Now the guy starts to actually think. Not well, but at least he's posting sentences.

No actually you aren’t and you completely misunderstood what he was saying because all
Your blinders are predispositions to hear that gender is a social construct and that there are no real differences in males and females. Unfortunately that is untrue and his points went over your head.

What he is essentially saying is that nature makes men take more risks and that the distribution of extreme success and extreme failure has a longer tail on both sides causing all the negatives and also that a very select few in the far end outperform all people.

YOU interpret that as saying men in general are superior but he is not saying that at all. He is saying men have greater failures as well which you completely ignore.

I replied

Your blinders are predispositions to hear that gender is a social construct and that there are no real differences in males and females. Your guess of my perception is wrong. I believe there are differences and that women's contributions aren't appreciated in a male-dominated society because of those differences. In the video you posted, he talks about that sort of thing, but seems to accept it as a result of society. "That's just the way it is."

He talks about empowering women to present themselves in aspects that men can understand and appreciate, so the women can advance. Again, that's evidence of systemic sexism. And one solution he worked on was not educating men to appreciate the differences, but to "help" the women to reduce those difference.

No response. I won't assume I got through to him on any level, but who knows. Maybe he didn't reply because he didn't understand what I meant.

I was referring to a part where he explained that one of the factors in women not earning as much as men, is that some people are too agreeable. Agreeable people earn less. And women are more likely to be agreeable than men. And then he said he helped a group that was working with women to teach them to be more aggressive and less agreeable in the workplace.