Is the Western World anti-man?

Fiona G wrote: »

Around 50% of STEM PhDs in America and Europe are women, whilst the corresponding statistic for the amount of women holding senior positions in universities and research facilities is around 20%. How do you explain that disparity?

The thing is, for me anyway, all HR people being women and all bin men being men IS a problem. One that can only be addressed by viewing the sexes as equally fit to do and excel in both jobs.

Won't reply to the all feminists hate men comment, cmon seriously?

Before a PhD doesn't guarantee you entry into academia. I.E the amount of female PhDs won't necessarily correlate with the amounts of females in senior positions.

One eyed Jack wrote: »

This one always bothers me. What rights do mothes have that fathers do not in Ireland, given that the court acts in the best interests of the child, and not in the interests of the parents?

Joint custody should be the automatic default unless either (a) it's not geographically feasible (in which case, in my view, whichever parents wants to move and uproot their child from his or her social life etc should be the one to lose, or (b) one of the parents has a conviction for being abusive.

Secondly, and this is one we can probably both agree on, the recent fathers' rights thing about getting more rights if you've lived with the mother for X amount of time is a perfect example of the rights fathers don't have - those rights should be automatic, living with the mother shouldn't be a requirement. The mother should never be considered the "default" parent to begin with, both should be given equal weighting from the moment the child is born. In terms of names on birth certificates, access, etc.

It's a pretty basic concept, really - "mother" and "father" shouldn't exist as legal terms, only "parent".

Fiona G wrote: »

Honestly, I don't think any of my posts warrant the tone of that reply. Will leave it there.

It was worded harshly, I'll agree. But I'd be interested to see how you can reconcile demanding equality of outcome in employment (50/50 senior positions) with not demanding it in education (50/50 gender quotas for college places, for instance, where demand exceeds supply)?

I mean if gender equality is desirable, it should apply to areas in which men are disadvantaged as well. If for instance you believe in quotas for politics and senior management, which are currently male dominated areas, I personally don't think you can oppose the same quotas in third level education without being a hypocrite. In my view, it's impossible to support one but not the other, without holding at least some discriminatory views. But that's just me.

If anyone does hold one view but not the other, I'd be interested to see how they rationalise it.

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Joint custody should be the automatic default unless either (a) it's not geographically feasible (in which case, in my view, whichever parents wants to move and uproot their child from his or her social life etc should be the one to lose, or (b) one of the parents has a conviction for being abusive.

Secondly, and this is one we can probably both agree on, the recent fathers' rights thing about getting more rights if you've lived with the mother for X amount of time is a perfect example of the rights fathers don't have - those rights should be automatic, living with the mother shouldn't be a requirement. The mother should never be considered the "default" parent to begin with, both should be given equal weighting from the moment the child is born. In terms of names on birth certificates, access, etc.

It's a pretty basic concept, really - "mother" and "father" shouldn't exist as legal terms, only "parent".

That was addressed in the Children and Family Relationship Act with both parents now given automatic guardianship of the child.

Fiona G wrote: »

Not sure I understand where you're coming from here. How is asserting that men too can be victims of abuse "infantilising" anyone? It's a fact. Both men and women can be victims. Both men and women can have an inherent capacity for overcoming adversity. Gender isn't a factor. Honestly don't see what your issue is here in highlighting that fact.

Had a long, long explanation for this written out, but then my phone battery died, probably for the best anyway as I remembered the looks I get when I try and explain this... :pac:

Ok, I'll try and keep this brief as possible. Basically, you do have a point, but it's the language you're using, in almost suggesting it's an inevitably that "men and women can be victims" (or the current more positive connotations associated with it word - "survivors", equally cringeworthy).

Gender is absolutely a factor in the differences between how men and women process their experiences or difficult events or times in their lives when they are stressed or traumatised. Women externalise, men internalise. Women externalise because they know they can, men internalise because they think they 'can't'.They won't, and they're unwilling to open up the same way we can get women to open up. I'm speaking very generally here, I'm aware of individual cases but they are just that - individual cases that don't tell us anything about trends.

Men and women socialise differently, because they are almost conditioned to think differently (nature vs. nurture we could be all night arguing that one), but men aren't as comfortable with the label of "victim" as women are. Now most people regardless of their gender are uncomfortable with that label and rightly so IMO, but women are more easily able to identify with it than men, and are more able and willing to talk about themselves than men, generally speaking, and there are a whole plethora of factors for this, from social conditioning to women knowing there is more of a support network among women for them, whereas for men, there just isn't that support network, it's fcuking miniscule in comparison.

Feminism, as well intentioned as it might be, does nothing, zero, zilch, nada, to give men the support they need, because they treat men as "let's do things our way" (looking at you Emma Watson and the He4She campaign or whatever the hell that mess was). They either refuse, or just outright fail to recognise that there are these differences, and different obstacles to be overcome, for both genders, and lumping them all in together and trying to treat them the same way in the pursuit of equality, does both genders an utter disservice IMO.

I'm probably picking you up wrong on that point too, it seems ridiculous. Let the privileged group keep their advantage so they don't feel threatened? What??!

There's that latest social justice buzzword that's really hacking me off lately. It's not about perceived 'privileges' and so on. By virtue of their gender, people are going to have these natural advantages over one another - can men give birth? No. Can women pee standing up? Not without great difficulty, and their aim isn't as good as a man (debatable about men's aim, but it's as good as your box analogy ).

Basically, the point I'm making is that men and women have different needs, different priorities, completely different mindsets, and the best thing IMO is to give each gender what they need respectively - rather than have them give up anything, give them what they need, what they lack, rather than trying to bestow upon people these "equal rights" that are completely impractical and of no use to half of them either way. If you're a man, certain rights that women have are of no use to you, and if you're a woman, certain rights that men have are of no use to you.

It's the complete opposite to the argument used by some MRA's that taking women's rights away from them is the best way to achieve gender equality, an argument that makes it so easy for MRA's to point out that feminists don't want women to be bin collectors. Who the fcuk does want to be a bin collector? Surely the goal is to inspire people to want more from their lives for themselves than to be picking up other people's trash? It's an infinitely stupid argument, but feminists leave themselves wide open for it every time because they're too afraid to say "bin collection is literally, a shìt job, and nobody should have to do it!".

Another idiot phrase doing the rounds recently is "the world needs ditch diggers". No it doesn't, the world needs people who are smart enough to come up with a better way to excavate ditches more efficiently than manual labour. We should be encouraging people to aspire to be better, not settle for less, in the pursuit of "gender equality".

I'm willing to accept every scientifically verifiable difference between men and women under the sun. Facts are facts I won't dispute them.

If you want to understand people as individuals, then you're going to have to throw out the science book. People are not Vulcan, they come with all sorts of personalities, and while the whole female brain/male brain thing may be scientifically speaking a load of rubbish, outside a lab environment, men and women's perceptions and perspectives of their world around them are often complete polar opposites (there have been studies done on transgender people's neuropathology that shows differences in their brains, but apparently no differences between male and female brains is the current scientific narrative - colour me skeptical).

Well, I accept your opinion and understand where you're coming from. But I genuinely do believe that a world where gender wasn't such a big "thing", if you will, would be a better functioning society. Both genders are constantly pushed into small boxes, although these boxes are getting bigger and overlapping in some places (terrible analogy).

Gender will always be a thing, and a big thing at that, instilled in us from childhood when we first played "you show me yours, I'll show you mine", and we noticed the immediate physical differences in characteristics. I get your analogy, which is what the current wave of feminism is trying to do - lump everyone into one big box, but it's not just feminism - you have the LGBT lobby groups wanting 'safe spaces', their own little box within a bigger box, Russian doll style, you have the upsurge in the unfortunately afflicted and generally sad cases MGTOW's who want to go their own way, etc.

Point being - you're not ever going to get everyone into the one box, and no box is ever going to be big enough to accommodate everyone. The best you can achieve is to understand diversity, and understand that because of their differences, not in spite of them, but because of their differences - different people are going to bring different things to the table, and they're not all going to need the same things, some of them are allergic to being served the same gruel as everyone else (damn coeliacs ), but if you make it a BWYG party (Bring What You Got!), it makes for a far more entertaining and diverse gathering than treating everyone in society as though they are the same, when clearly, they bloody well aren't, and even if you were blind, you could still tell the difference (not an excuse for a cheap feel, I mean by their voices, by touch, etc, the way an actual blind, deaf or dumb person figures out their world).

Probably is, I've recently realized that every job interview I've had in the last few years where a woman was the interviewer, I wouldn't get the job or even a call back for a second interview if there was one.

We need more men interviewers for definite as every job that I have obtained, it was a man interviewing me.

I'm at the point now where if I walk into an interview, and one or two women are sitting there ready and eager to grill and discard me, I've lost hope in my mind already, because I know they have a woman lined up for it, I'll go on with the charade and talk through my CV and relevant experience in a positive and attractive light but I've been let down so many times by female interviewers it's unreal so it's hard not to think the Western World isn't becoming anti-man.

Fiona G wrote: »

Quotas in education don't really make sense though. To allocate places based on gender quotas and not leaving cert points would obviously be illogical and wouldn't allow those best suited or those who worked the hardest for a course to be given the opportunity they deserve. Gender doesn't come into it, most college courses have a decent gender mix anyway. Usually the disparities arise outside of an educational environment.

In the example we're discussing, there's roughly an equal amount of men and women leaving with the same post doctorate qualification, but there's a huge gap in their movement into positions of seniority. It's not that STEM is male-dominated per se, it's that the senior positions which women are equally capable of holding are male-dominated.

To look at your example of politics, I'd say if you looked at any regular Law and Politics course or similar in Ireland you'd see a gender balance, from my experience. Again the disparities arise as you move higher up in seniority. It would be a different story totally if the college courses were all male-dominated but afaik they're not. And if they /were/ male-dominated, I'd be recommending campaigns and advertising to get more women into those courses (like all the Women in STEM stuff you see around), but enforcing quotas would be illogical.

I don't see where hypocrisy comes in here, but maybe I haven't addressed your issue fully.

You don't see the hypocrisy?

Ok, let's take this one at a time. Firstly, here's the first thing that jumped out at me:

Again the disparities arise as you move higher up in seniority. It would be a different story totally if the college courses were all male-dominated but afaik they're not. And if they /were/ male-dominated, I'd be recommending campaigns and advertising to get more women into those courses (like all the Women in STEM stuff you see around), but enforcing quotas would be illogical.

So you'd recommend campaigns to get women into male dominated courses, but not to get men into female dominated courses? At the moment, college itself is getting more female entrants than male ones. Isn't that as big a problem? Arguably, college is to secondary school what senior management is to junior management in business.

Then we have this:

Quotas in education don't really make sense though. To allocate places based on gender quotas and not leaving cert points would obviously be illogical and wouldn't allow those best suited or those who worked the hardest for a course to be given the opportunity they deserve.

So does this mean that you do, in fact, oppose gender quotas in job interviews, political parties, etc? Because I fail to see a difference. In both cases, gender quotas mean prioritising gender over qualification.

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Only if the father has been living with the mother for X amount of time when the child is born. That's bullsh!t, as it still implies that the mother is the "default" parent. So it's still not equality.

That ended up in the final bill? Fatherhood is supposed to be about your relationship with a kid not a privilege you get from a relationship with the mother. Ah well......

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

This is an absolutely appalling affront to fathers' rights and the fact that it was passed in 2015, and that the government somehow hailed it as "progress", shows just how dire the situation regarding mens' rights really is.

People like to excuse stuff as happening in the past but it is pretty obvious mothers stranglehold over parenthood isn't going anywhere. Much as they complain about it it also suits a lot of them to keep it that way.

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

'fraid so.

http://www.citizensinformationboard.ie/publications/relate/relate_2015_05.pdf



Emphasis my own.

This is an absolutely appalling affront to fathers' rights and the fact that it was passed in 2015, and that the government somehow hailed it as "progress", shows just how dire the situation regarding mens' rights really is.

How is it an affront to father's rights exactly? You ignored the next bit -

•A new arrangement will be put in place whereby unmarried parents may jointly sign the statutory declaration when registering or re-registering the child's birth.

Determining legal guardianship is not the same as determining the biological parent. In the case of the mother, it's obvious she's the biological parent. In the case of the father, not so much. In the case of same sex parents, that stipulation avoids a case where the biological father can claim legal guardianship without ever having had any contact with the child.

Hell of a difference between biological parentage and legal guardianship. How would you determine in the case of unmarried parents who the father is, in order to give them automatic guardianship rights at birth? Anyone could claim to be the father, or the mother could claim anyone is the father, and you can't grant them all automatic guardianship. The best you can do is the way they've done it.

Think back to your Rosanna Davison letter. If her long term boyfriend is automatically assumed to be the biological father, and therefore legal guardian, then the actual biological father would have no right to claim legal guardianship. At least this way, he has, up until the child is 18.

I'm pretty sure in time to come there will be a test case of unique circumstances for this legislation, but for now it's actually a positive for father's rights, not as you're trying to claim - an affront to them.

One eyed Jack wrote: »

Hell of a difference between biological parentage and legal guardianship.

Only for fathers.

One eyed Jack wrote: »

How would you determine in the case of unmarried parents who the father is, in order to give them automatic guardianship rights at birth? Anyone could claim to be the father, or the mother could claim anyone is the father, and you can't grant them all automatic guardianship. The best you can do is the way they've done it.

Is that any different with married parents or people in a long term relationship?
Fatherhood always has a degree of uncertainty without genetic testing.