Only leftists consciously try to remake language. Conservatives do not,
I've never heard this before. Can you point me to some evidence?
The rest of your comment seems intentionally offensive. Am I correct in this assessment?
If so, feel free to pm me with your intended message without the offensive content, if you are trying to make a point with the offensive content. I don't know if anybody else is getting your intended message, but I know I am not, and I am curious, if you can reframe your content more constructively.
I don't want to get involved in the personal business between any two or three+ people, but I also do not mean to suggest that every arrangement that both parties agree to has a matching balance of stress and benefit to both parties. (Love your dream scenario! for me, that would totally be a nightmare.)
And I don't think any specific gender causes the harm for a pattern of gender differences, like a bias to favor male employees because people report more satisfaction with male employees.
But with a gender-based pay inequity, which couples benefit most? gay men, straight people, or lesbians?
And should we care more about couples than we do about individuals, eg: single women? I don't think anybody is suggesting this. But this is, in my mind, the primary problem with gender-based pay inequities, and 'innocuous' causes are no longer 'innocuous' if the harm to individuals is measurable and significant.
Well, I totally agree that 'such work' (some paid and some unpaid work in the home) is absolutely undervalued, but I'm not sure what that has to do with any particular perspective.
I don't know how other people think about the unpaid housework that other people are doing. I personally am grateful for it, but I have never supported anyone who I shared housework with, nor the reverse, and I really do have trouble doing the part I actually recognize as my share. And I have never cared as much about how clean things 'ought' to be as any of these roommates and ex-boyfriends did.
In myself, I kind of deplore this tendency to do what I'm inclined to and let the chips fall where they may. I do, of course, always manage to get things clean enough for my own standards. And I do far more housework when I live alone, because nobody else gets 'fed up' and takes over.
I had to respond somewhat anecdotally here, and I wish I could keep the more analytical, academic tone of your comment. My main problem with that is I'm not sure if I'm being descriptive or prescriptive, so I don't know how to respond without figuring that out--but I need a nap first and I wanted to reply right away. If I've made it clear which I was doing with this response, that was totally my intention!
I can't tell if your comment is mostly explanatory, or requests confirmation or introduces a new topic! Taking that nap now.
OK. I consider negotiable tokens to be the only definition of financially recompensed. An optional reduction of financial expense, on an individual level is simply personal budgeting.
In the case of any particular couple, how the work, paid or unpaid, is divided, I don't really care. Unless the arrangement is a source of stress for that relationship.
I think that a gender-biased pay disparity can aggravate financial stress in heterosexual relationships. And I think that a high disparity in income level can cause a similar stress in any couple, no matter the actual gender or sexual orientation.
The questions of 'how best can i contribute' and 'am I acting responsibly by choosing to contribute, unpaid, in the home while being supported (fully or partially) on someone else's "dime" (long may it last)' are difficult and sometimes conflicting questions, whether gender pay inequities are biased. Or irrelevant, because the couple are of the same gender.
Questions I wonder about but do not know the answers to: How common are one-income households in either situation? How stable are one-income households compared to two income households? I'm pretty sure there's quite a lot of data on heterosexuals.
Since gender bias probably exists, I wish we could compare it to data on homosexual couples, but they do not get the same social support or suffer the same social pressures... so I'm not sure how meaningful a comparison would be. But I'm still curious.
To say that a situation is not wholly caused by enumerated factors is generally trivially true, so the question becomes how much connotation is intended, which means the question should probably be rephrased.
Very true, and I must pedantically point out that I did not ask a question about how much connotation was intended. I suggested that the connotation of 'harmless' seemed careless to me. Literally and seriously careless, especially given my trivial research into the subject revealed that there is bias for male employees that employers, rationally, respond to.
I don't think it's a good idea to ask if states of the world are justified when people disagree about the causes of those states of the world unless great care is taken to not be confusing. Those things can be addressed separately by just talking about causation and also asking what would be justified under a hypothetical set of facts.
I agree. I was trying to avoid this, because I mostly agree. I did not bring up the state of the world, and I seriously did avoid discussion of it in this thread, which apparently was also offensive? I am somewhat concerned about the state of the world, but I already take great care not to be confusing, and fail.
I do have some doubts about drawing conclusions from a hypothetical set of facts, unless those conclusions are testable and, in fact, tested. But I am philosophically inclined to talk hypotheticals long into the night...
I don't know how to think of those things, particularly self respect, particularly since the frame is not just causation but justice.
Well, I probably care more about justice than I do just word choice. But I do far more for the cause of just word choice than any other. I will apologize for being elusive on more serious issues. I probably could have caused less confusion if I had not specifically tried to avoided answering questions about states of the world. Do you agree?
I absolutely agree that there are many statistical differences between men and women, and trying to deny this is actually ludicrous, whether or not it is harmful!
However, I object to the word ludicrous, because while I agree that there are statistical (as well as biological and almost certainly evolutionarily-based cultural) differences between men and women, the assumption of harmlessness, based on that claim you've often heard, suggests that there is no bias involved other than personal choice. And personal choice is biased by so many other factors!
And, though I did not make this clear, I was not trying to suggest that the harm was one-sided.
The thing about bias was difficult for me to argue specifically until I explored the matter of pay inequity and the current state of research. Over the years I have heard a lot on the subject, which I do not remember that well.
Because though it is no trivial matter to me personally, personally, If I can't identify a personal or cultural bias as actually causing me harm, I don't get that excited about it. And frankly, if I haven't identified what I should do about it, I try not to get exited about it if it is causing me harm. There are plenty of people in the world much more inclined than I to actually address the problems of gender-based pay inequities, which I think is a good thing.
It pretty much seems clear to me that a lot of men care more than women about getting a big pile of negotiable tokens. Statistical. Why women do less about getting a pile of negotiable tokens, I already understand. Some of this understanding of women may be visceral, or biological. I'm pretty sure most of it is pretty self-aware, or rational as well.
Why men care more I don't understand as viscerally, but I am actually trying to understand better because I would like a bigger pile of negotiable tokens to play with. :)
I feel like this is an accurate, thoughtful, and generous explanation of the confusion I have and the confusion I cause. If I could spend my few measly karma points upvoting this, I might!
After I read it, because it's late, and I can not take it all in right now. And I'm grateful for the effort, and the clarity of the parts I already understand!
Ah. I am abnormally careful about the question of 'who would' do something. People often take my serious suggestions as playful, and vice versa. I no longer recommend a new hairstyle to anyone because I have given this advice three times, it was always taken, and I only liked the results without qualification once.
I may be paranoid, but I do not like to worry about this. <-- also intentionally funny. I am trying to not to worry about whether it is true. <-- Also funny.
I am taking medication for insomnia. Seriously.
Mostly I was not sure what pedanterrific was arguing, but I asked him to clarify, and he did. I am often unintentionally funny to other people. Lately I am getting better at understanding what the 'subversion of expectations' I am committing.
I absolutely agree with your point, but I was not conscious of why the word innocuous bothered me when I made my comment, and I don't actually know if I read your comments before this moment. I don't always read every comment before I respond, and I don't 'notice' consciously everything I do read. Confusions galore!
What dangers are you referring to, specifically? Can you point me to a specific source that measures these harms? I have never heard your concluding suggestion before, though I think I have heard the opposite claim.