Thread:Willbachbakal/@comment-30437313-20161107061712/@comment-30437313-20161107085606

"But it justifies and explains that, though."

No, it asserts it. There is a humongous difference. And it asserts it because, in the author's world view, women are oppressed and presenting evidence to the contrary causes cognitive dissonance which creates mental gymnastics like this to justify still believing women are oppressed.

"Women truly are pushed towards certain specific jobs, and men towards others, and women-dominated jobs tend to pay less."

1.) Prove that women are pushed towards specific jobs, then. Go on. Do it. I know you can't. The best you can do is show that, say, most nurses or teachers tend to be women. I know how this works. You're only going to be able to point to the end result and create a causation which helps support the idea that women are oppressed. Do you really think you're the first feminist I've dealt with?

2.) Likewise, prove that these jobs pay less specifically because there are women working in them. Again, this is something I know you are incapable of doing because no other feminist has been able to.

"Arguing that women only do this by choice assumes that they somehow want to be paid less, which is insulting, and attempts to downplay the very real and very visible structures in place that condition job tracks based on gender."

1.) No, it argues they want safer jobs. Which makes perfect biological sense.

2.) Are you seriously telling me that women being comfortable with easy, low-paying jobs is somehow more insulting than the idea that their minds are being controlled by society and that they entered these jobs because it's what the patriarchy told them to do? Are you seriously going to tell me that it's not insulting to imply that women cannot make their own decisions?

"and attempts to downplay the very real and very visible structures in place that condition job tracks based on gender."

Structures that you can't prove exist because they're all in your head. Again, I know how this shit works. They're social constructs devised explicitly to try and explain a hypothesis that isn't even true in the first place because you can't accept that it's simply not true. This is why people look at you as if you're crazy whenever you start spouting off unironically about the patriarchy.

"The "evil men" bit also suggests a misunderstanding of what a patriarchy is: a patriarchy isn't a system in which only men participate, it's a system whose power structures are slanted in favor of men."

Oh I understand patriarchy just fine. It's the social construct that feminists created to explain how women are still oppressed despite that not actually being the case. This is why feminists are never able to consistently define the patriarchy and tend to opt more towards describing characteristics of it. They do this because, the minute they define it, it becomes falsifiable.

"Looking at the number of men versus women in positions of power right now is just an example of that."

As if on cue.

"Women can also participate in and enforce the norms of a system that largely privileges men, in part because these norms tend to be self-perpetuating and conditioned from an early age."

No, Will, internalized misogyny does not exist. You... You really are going down the Anita Sarkeesian path of "women should not be allowed to make their own choices because they might pick the wrong one" aren't you?

"However, I think it's only fair to point out that the patriarchy hurts men too"

Are you really so deluded that you never asked yourself how men could simultaneously be so competent that they can oppress women and be so incompetent that they end up oppressing themselves too? This is why patriarchy as a concept is such a consistent failure: Without a real definition and just characteristics, you're bound to come up with ones that contradict each other.