Male disposability, the Apex fallacy, and male privilege

Post Reply New Topic

Garbage collecting is hard physical labor that nobody wants to do. Its also extremely dangerous; garbage collects regularly contract nasty infection and have a higher occupational mortality rate than police officers.

And you are committing a logically fallacy by saying that garbage collectors are either paid minimum wage or make as much as a brain surgeon, without anything in between being an option.

Ok. Lower the surgeon's pay by 30k and increase the bin man's pay by 30k. I'm sure that will go down a treat with the highly skilled in society.

There seems to be a disconnect between pay in Wales vs. pay here in the US. I have a surgeon friend and his pay is closer to three times that amount you listed. The catch is that he has to pay malpractice insurance to the tune of around $50,000/year. He cannot operate without that in play. His wife is in medical school to become a radiologist, a job that pays equally well as a surgeon. Unfortunately, she will still make less than him when she graduates due to glass ceiling bias in the workplace. That should never happen.

I do not make any where near six figures teaching full time at a university. Yet, many of my students will go on to medical school or pharmacy school and make much more than me when they graduate. Do not equate pay with the value of the job. I have had former students remember me as the person that taught them the most, even in their field of study. That is the reward I seek in doing what I do.

Could I go on and literally double my paycheck overnight by switching into the chemical industry? Yes, but I would likely not be happy being directed by others in what I can do research on. At the university, I can choose what I want to work on in my spare time in the laboratory. You often do not get to do that in industrial jobs. Sometimes one must pick the route that makes them whole, not the one with the largest pay amount. Money is not everything.

We're talking about raising the pay of people in lower paid jobs. Nobody other than yourself has said anything about lowering the pay of brain surgeons.

I think there's a lot of truth in that. Personally I can't relate to the notion that there aren't enough women in positions of extremely high power commanding extremely high pay. I don't care about the proportion of this or that group who are slave drivers. I care about the fact that society is bent enough to tolerate slave drivers at all. I'm a lot more likely to sympathise with aspirations to make women equal if they're aimed at the whole of society and not just the select few at the top of the food chain. Anybody grumbling at not being accepted as a CEO is presumably already doing better than average. So I have no sympathy with their grumbles - "Please support me in my struggle to end up even better off than you, than I already am." Sorry, but no. There used to be this big debate about women's right to work, which never seemed to notice that a lot of ordinary women have never had any choice but to work. I don't see elitism and fairness as having much in common.

As a man who isn't in any position of leadership or power, I gain no benefits whatsoever from the fact that the people who do have that power also happen to share a gender with me. I know that this is going to be difficult for some of you to believe, but Donald Trump or Jeff Bezos have never showed up at my door with a $100,000 check for being a fellow male.

People making this argument want to group me with those in positions of power based on a particular shared characteristic they chose arbitrarily. How many people in positions of power are atheists, autistic, or ex-Muslims?

The vast majority of people in power are neurotypical Christians, and so are most women. Therefore women are clearly privileged. How does that work for you woke folks? That's the same logic you use.

I think this is an interesting and important conversation, however...

The world in this current time and place is not ready to have this conversation. No matter how many studies we have that provide evidence for things like height being a massive impact in a male's overall success, no one wants to hear it.
The truth is that people don't care. That wouldn't be a problem if they didn't PRETEND to care about social issues. It is much less effort for the general population to go with whatever headlines they are fed and to label someone who wants to talk about these issues as a disgusting misogynist. I used to battle with these sorts of conversations a lot. In the end this is what I learned:

Human society is animalistic and hierarchical. The similarity in our behaviors and the behavior of primates is astounding. We are brutal, selfish animals - but we pretend or try to tell ourselves otherwise. This is a fight that cannot be won, however, there is an advantage in being realistic about what our reality is, if one chooses to try and survive, perhaps despite the odds. There's no point in talking about this or bringing it up. One will have more success in keeping as many opinions as possible to oneself. If we know what we are up against, we can develop a game plan, and we can adjust our expectations. There can still be a great deal of joy in life despite this. I believe it is still worth living. On bad days, I remind myself how quickly my life has gone so far, and that it will come to an end before I know it, whether I like it or not. It's temporary. That's the beauty of it.

It never is. The world wasn't ready to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The world wasn't ready to accept homosexuals' or transgender people. The world is never ready for change, which is why people need to make the change happen.

And because I know I need to explain this very slowly to some people: No! I am not comparing men's issues to the kinds of discriminations faced by minority and LGBTQ communities.

The world is ready to accept anyone as long as they're not ignoramuses who are out looking for things to complain about.

The overwhelming body of empirical evidence to the contrary says you're dead wrong. But since when have people like yourself let facts influence their ignorant opinions, right?

Just go back to tailgating at the lake or whatever it is you people do.

There is no comparison on the western world and between acceptance from the 60s and 2010+ such is the massive difference.

I don't care what people get up to in bed, how they dress or what the heck they identify as, so long as they don't ram it down my throat and don't make a spectacle of it.

It just comes down to modesty doesn't it?

There does appear to be a big difference in the UK overall between some professions. Doctors and surgeons are still paid a lot of money but nowhere near the typical salary of a US doctor.

While we have issues here with dodgy contracts on minimum wage and low hours in many jobs, the gulf between rich and poor actually isn't that bad if you work full time. At least compared to the US. Pay only becomes a problem if you get shoved into working for a dodgy company, pick a job which where demand vastly outstrips supply or decide to work in an idiotic field of work that's been shoehorned into the job market but it still overall useless.

And just who exactly is ramming anything down your throat?! Why are you threatened by others "making a spectacle" about wanting to express their identities and be accepted for their true selves?! Is it because you're secretly terrified that you might discover one day that you like penises?

The whole concept of modesty is basically just a bunch insecure man-babies demanding that others should be forced to hide whatever parts of themselves make you uncomfortable. You think you're entitled to force others to live their entire lives in hiding, and whenever anyone inconveniences you with the knowledge they exist you think something is being forced on you.

Here in the US, the demographic that does almost all he whining about others "forcing" something on them and demanding modesty are Evangelical Christians. The same people demand the right speak openly about their beliefs at every public event and political rally. They demand that every elected office in the entire country should only be held by someone who shares their specific beliefs. They think they should be free to march down every street and into every home, school, and place of business harassing everyone they encounter with their proselytizing. But they get their panties in a knot if anyone else gets any open acceptance or representation of any kind. I imagine you are no different.

Let me give a piece of advice that will make things much easier for you: whenever you any group engaging in any expression or activity you personally have no interest in, simply pay them no heed continue to go about whatever you were doing. You do not have to participate in anything you do not wish to participate in. Nobody is forcing anything on you.



I have never lived or worked in the UK, so I do not know what the situation there is like. But given that everything you've had to say so far has been extremely ignorant and bigoted, I do not trust you to represent an accurate picture. Perhaps other members from the UK can shed some light on this.

I know to go about whatever I'm doing if I see a group engaging in or expression an activity I have no interest in, I've been doing it for 30 years and don't care whenever gay pride makes an appearance near me. Forcing unisex public toilets on everyone, forcing equal pay for unequal jobs, and "positive discrimination" (which is illegal) is what I have an issue with and what I consider "ramming" down someone's throat. It's got nothing to do with being a man and it's not me doing the "forcing".

Forcing to stop forcing yes.

Market values for work too.......market value. There is nothing ignorant or bigoted about saying jobs outside of STEM fields pay less and women dislike higher paying STEM jobs. If you read my comments, you would have seen a link to my "ignorant bigotry" which partially came from UCAS which is the top authority of universities here.

I'm a bit hesitant to wade into this debate, it seems to getting a bit heated, but maybe I'll just state my opinion and run...

It just seems to me as if modern society has lost its way with how we value each other and our respective contributions. And it upsets me that we always end up with this male vs female sort of argument, when as far as I can see, the imbalances can and do affect all genders.

Please forgive generalisations with respect to gender in my explanation, but it is a necessary part of explaining my point.

So what I mean is, if we look back at our deep ancestral roots as bands of hunter-gatherers, there would have been something of a hierarchy within the band, yet also a recognition of the importance of the contribution offered by every individual, whether that was as a hunter, a gatherer, a provider of shelter, a cook, a carer, a storyteller, or, more likely, someone who contributed in varying degrees to all of those areas of need, according to their skills, proclivities and the needs of the tribe. In those days, the value of each individual's labour to the survival and prosperity of the tribe was more obvious.

Along the way, what with the development of agriculture and towns and cities, societal roles became ever more specialised. It was natural for women as child-bearers to often take on the role of caring for the family while the men worked to support them. Men would naturally come to see themselves as fulfilling a role to a greater tribe such as the state or nation through their work, whereas women might think of themselves more in terms of fulfilling a role to the family unit.

In modern society, all genders are being undermined with respect to how they are valued.

As someone who has grown up as female, it is easy for me to understand the frustration of female devaluation. It is knowing that the huge amount of time and emotional investment I have put into raising my children has been deemed to have, essentially, no value to society. We are not paid to stay home and take care of our children. In a society which revolves around money, the pressure is on us instead to get a 'real job' and leave our kids in the care of (often also poorly-paid) childcare workers. And this is not just a question of money. It's about an insidious sense of ones worth being lesser because one is working in a service industry rather than 'using one's intellect' and 'actually doing/making things'.

I can also see the issue of male devaluation. Let's face it, we no longer have enough meaningful jobs to go around, the ones that allow men to feel they as an individual are serving a crucial role in society. Instead there are ever more BS jobs which may be serving an appetite for services and entertainment but would hardly cause societal collapse if they were to disappear overnight. And with the mind-numbing wealth disparities in modern times, even those in important jobs (yes, such as garbage collection), are still struggling to make ends meet and would be justified in feeling disgruntled.

I can understand that nowadays, with small families being the norm and there being no particular drive to populate, perhaps it is debatable how much value there truly is to the bearing of children. And hence I can understand the shift in mindset that men may be seeing their own value more in terms of their work rather than as providers and protectors of the family, and may no longer hold to the 'save the women and children first' mindset of former times.

What I'm concerned about though, is what we are bringing in to replace this mindset. In this case, whom should we save first? And call me a pessimist, but I'm very afraid that with current society the way it is, there would be special lifeboats reserved for the ultra-wealthy (of whichever gender), and the rest of us would be fighting amongst ourselves for places on the remaining few boats, with children trampled underfoot.

That was a really powerful and insightful answer Mrs Peel. ^