Archie comics CEO being sued for calling employees "penis"

boing
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I guess here it depends on your definition of disadvantage, as this would be a definite disadvantage to progressing in a career without necessarily involving actual discrimination.

Not quite. As I argued with sprocket up above, we’re talking about culturally systemic disadvantages. When we use the word “systemic” we mean engrained in the system of culture, something that is culturally imposed. The fact that only women can have babies is neither culturally systemic nor a disparity within culture (it isn’t up to culture to decide this), only within nature.

Where the discrimination lies is setting up a culture to allow a biological fact to disadvantage an entire group of people. If a culture’s default setting is to allow pregnancy to negatively effect career choices, this is purely a cultural decision, not a biological one. Nature has no care about “careers” or “financial well being” as such things only exist as cultural inventions. Pregnancy and childbirth and nursing does not actually have any direct effect on careers or financial well being that’s written into the natural laws of the universe. To say that pregnancy and birth and nursing are “biological disadvantages” is not really accurate, as they only become “disadvantages” because we choose to define them as such, to allow them to be. It’s a willful decision to set up “careers” so that pregnancy effects them negatively, a decision that we can undo at any time. If we don’t, there is blatant discrimination, just as if we refused to let people without legs have decent careers. The natural fact is only not discrimination if there’s a natural effect in play, such as people without legs not being able to be marathon runners. If the effect is purely a cultural decision however, then I don’t see how it can be defined as non-discrimination.

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Ok, I’m quite happy with your definition. I will point out the technical violation of the “rules” I put up, since not only have you chosen a different word (“systemic”), but also deviate quite a bit from the dictionary definition (“relating to the system as a whole, as opposed to its parts”). The reason I point it out is because to make your point you’ve chosen ideologically charged vocabulary. This is a common pattern of argument, for example, when people claim that “misandry isn’t real”, by redefining the word to be something else than what people commonly understand it to mean. In this case, I don’t mind arguing with the “ideological” definition, so I’m just being annoying and you can probably ignore the whole first paragraph.

I was briefly considering “bullet proofing” your definition, by asking you to clarify certain aspects, but I think I’ll just go ahead and give you my example and then name a couple of counterarguments that I would not accept.

As previously promised, the example concerns a European country, namely my country of birth (I’ll PM you with details if you don’t believe me that the following is accurate). After I finished my secondary education I was required by law to give a year of my life to either military or civil service and do slave labor for 300 euros a month. This was literally a year of my life draining away doing menial work (cleaning, preparing food). I was subject to any disciplinary measure my superiors saw fit (e.g., not being allowed to leave the barracks for a given amount of time). I did not learn any skills (unless you count smoking menthol cigarettes and evading drug tests), and the experience was not enjoyable. All my male peers had to do the same (save for a small percentage who are disqualified on medical grounds). My female peers, in the meantime, mostly went on to study or went straight into a job. They had the option to do voluntary civil or military service (which is by the way a success of feminism in my country, and I say that without sarcasm), but they were not required to do so. Failure to comply on my part would have led to imprisonment.

In addition to a year of my life down the drain, this is a pretty severe financial loss. I was compensated a total of ca. 3500 euros for the year, which is completely out of proportion to my current earning potential.

I will now argue why this fits your definition of “systematic unfair disadvantage”:

    • Engrained / prevalent to the point of being arguably embedded.*

Every male (save a small percentage) has to do it. The requirement is encoded by law, which is one of the most powerful manifestations of culture. In addition, it is actually ingrained beyond law: There’s a notion that doing military service is a “great honor” for a man, at least among the less educated. Choosing civil service over military service, or not doing either has an impact on your employment prospects in certain industries and will make a segment of the population think less of you.

    • Culturally socially imposed, not just naturally imposed. *

I think this is pretty clear.

  1. Isn’t simply an obstacle or limitation, but a distinct disadvantage, compared to another group’s advantage.

Women have the advantage of not having to do it, although they have the option if they wish. I’m not entirely sure what you mean by this one, and I think this part of your definition is too ambiguous. Keeping in mind your later explanation though, I’m pretty confident that it fits the definition. Having to do military service is not something new that popped up as a consequence of some social equalization process, but an ingrained tradition.

  1. It should not be “legitimate”.

There are plenty of armies (e.g., Israel’s) where both men and women are required to serve. Both men and women can be trained to be soldiers. The argument that men are somehow “natural soldiers” whereas women are not, would be sexist in itself.

Now, before you formulate your reply, I want to give you a couple of arguments I’ve heard and what I think of them:

A. “But military service for men is a result of the patriarchy, hence its not an instance of a systemic disadvantage. Or: Only an oppressed group can suffer a systemic disadvantage. Or: Yes, but women still suffer MORE disadvantages hence any disadvantage experienced by man is not systemic.”

I’ve heard this before, and am puzzled by it. The main reason I made you define your terms in advance is to avoid this outcome. If you find yourself in this camp I would ask you to answer this question: Is there a possible world in which men are privileged and also suffer a systemic disadvantage? I think your answer must be yes, since you seemed to be saying that you concede the possibility of a systemic disadvantage, but you just don’t know of any that held up. There are some who disagree and claim that “a privileged group with a systemic disadvantage” is a contradiction in terms. Should you (to my surprise) agree with that, I’m not willing to argue any further, since I feel language has been ideologically stretched beyond its limits.

B: “But women tend to lose time from work when they give birth, so its not unfair that men also lose time.”

This would be the idea that “two wrongs make a right” (which you previously disagreed with) and would also gloss over the fact that childbirth is a fact of biology not culture.

C: “In wartime, men’s superior physical abilities make them better soldiers and someone has to stay home and care for the kids.”

That would be unspeakably sexist.

These were all generic arguments I’ve heard before, now some specific arguments that you could try and make based on your definition:

D: “The disadvantage would be harmful if removed, hence it doesn’t satisfy point 4.”

This is technically true, but you could also use it to justify slavery (may cause short-term economic harm if removed). The point is that one could find a number of better arrangements, e.g, a lottery system that picks both men and women, or a system based purely on physical ability (all men undergo such an evaluation anyway).

E: “Maybe people in your country disagree with this system, so while it is legally embedded, it is not culturally embedded”

The law is a prime manifestation of culture. Also, people recently voted in favor of this system (I think there were a larger percentage of female voters, but I’m not sure).

F: “This may be an obstacle that all men suffer, but I would not call it a systemic disadvantage.”

I think it would be silly to draw a distinction between an obstacle that - being member of a group - one would typically expect (whereas other groups don’t) and a disadvantage held by a group.

Alright, that’s it for me. I’m curious what you’ll say. I’ve brought this up a number of times in such discussions and never received a satisfactory reply.

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Pregnancy and childbirth and nursing does not actually have any direct effect on careers or financial well being that’s written into the natural laws of the universe. To say that pregnancy and birth and nursing are “biological disadvantages” is not really accurate, as they only become “disadvantages” because we choose to define them as such, to allow them to be.

I agree with you to an extent, in that we can be creative and design workplaces to work with women who are pregnant or nursing. Often the systems are built with men in mind and without sufficient support, and much needs to be done to change that. Often women are undervalued and the possible limitations of pregnancy during the career are overplayed. However, there are issues that could directly affect their work:

Pregnant women aren’t able to do very heavy work and often have trouble standing for long periods. Work on a cargo ship might be a problem for example, as they might need medical attention if there were any complications with the pregnancy. Closer to the birthdate, they will need extended time on leave, which can affect a career. This doesn’t have to be a major factor in most jobs, but sometimes you can’t just pass on your work to someone else for a few months or pick it up at a later date. If you take half a year or more off work, you may miss opportunities to advance in your career. Nursing requires you to feed your child every few hours, day and night. You can’t just save up milk for a few feeds, so often this requires at least pumping during the day (which wouldn’t have been possible more than a few decades ago) and getting up multiple times in the night. Sleep deprivation will definitely affect your career if you’re working full time.

These things won’t necessarily affect everyone, and certainly not to the same extent. Many of the disadvantages come from men not pulling their weight, employers not creating women-friendly working environments or other factors such as unavailability of childcare. With the right system in place, pregnancy and nursing can have much less of an effect, but this is through active effort to equalise the system, rather than because it was never an issue.

WRT to your observation that having babies is natural rather than systemic, my point was that this natural difference can cause a cultural disparity that is non-random and not necessarily rooted in discrimination, and that doesn’t necessarily entail advantages and disadvantages. In practice it usually does involve discrimination and inequality, but even with the good will of just about everyone involved, some disparity remains.

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Well said.

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No, see, this is perfectly indicative of the natural bias involved on this subject. The only reason you’re calling it “being creative” to address pregnancy needs is because the workplace (ALL workplaces, barring rare exceptions) was originally designed with the intent to never allow anyone who could get pregnant into them in the first place. It’s only “being creative” NOW because the blatant discrimination existed for centuries beforehand. Now, the discrimination continues, as all of women’s needs are considered “additional” and burdensome as compared to men. The disparity exists because of the bias. The work place, any work place, never had to be designed not to include women. We just happened to choose that route, for a very long time.

If women had run the work place for centuries, and then men later joined, and due to men dying younger than most women they rallied to lower the retirement age with different medical benefits, and women scoffed at such a thing, this too would be discrimination, because it would reflect a culture that decided not to include the reality of men into its workplace framework.

But everything for all people, including men, are “issues” when it comes to deciding how to put together and run different pieces of any society. The fact that we use men’s needs as the default, with women’s additional needs being “issues”, shows the bias. Men’s issues are natural and universal, anything considering non-men, are now “issues” that we need to be “creative” to address. But that’s because our culture let that ship sail long ago, and has to respond defensively and/or progressively from here. The existence of the disparity still plainly demarcates the original (and continuing) discrimination.

I don’t think you’re quite grasping my argument, js. I already pointed out as an extreme example that no-legged people couldn’t run marathons and that wasn’t discrimination (Quote: “The natural fact is only not discrimination if there’s a natural effect in play, such as people without legs not being able to be marathon runners.”), and your example here is precisely the same thing. This is not a cultural disadvantage, as the culture has not added anything to the equation to bring about an advantage or disadvantage. As such, there is no way a political or social movement can instill change, without resorting to science fictional solutions that we can’t actually do yet (and therefore it can’t be considered to be a cultural decision yet, because we can’t yet make any decision).

However the extra care and/or wheelchair ramps, desks, or other considerations that would be minimal but required to have a no-legged person work an office job would be discrimination, because there’s nothing about the work itself that they’re disadvantaged at, only the fact that the workplace was designed without them in mind. Same with pregnancy and birth: the only reason most careers are negatively impacted by the concept of pregnancy and birth, is because the entire work force was created with the intention of never allowing anyone who could get pregnant or give birth access to it. If that isn’t the very definition of discrimination, I’m not sure you grasp what discrimination is.

The key to all of this: in any situation, theoretical or otherwise, can we actually make it work with women? In most cases the answer is yes, but not with the paradigm currently in place that considers only men’s needs, and considers women’s needs as an additional burden.

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Also, you’re talking about mere “differences” here, and yes differences exist. But “disparity” is this: Disparity - definition of disparity by The Free Dictionary

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You give one of the meanings of the word “disparity”. The world is also used more generally to denote “a great difference”. It serves to check more than one dictionary sometimes.

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Yeah, good Lord, I may be from the U.S., but from a part of the country that’s relatively low on the income (and therefore education) scale, and I’ve been told by people who should know better that the reason so few of us here are rich is because we’re not taking advantage of our white privilege…and this from people who were higher on the social ladder…smh. People want everything to be simple, to the point of being offensive. Yeah, the poor people here are poor because they’re not trying hard enough, way to go so far liberal that you’ve gone hardcore conservative…

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I did. It still boils down to disparity, on balance denoting inequality vs. being a purely synonymous word with “difference”. Especially when using in in conduction with anything socio-economic or political, it virtually always denotes unequal, which is one of the nits I’ll be picking with your recent long response, sprocket (it’s coming soon, I think you might be somewhat happy with it, too, we’ll see).

When in doubt, check the synonyms in the thesaurus. They are not the same for difference and disparity. Some are shared, but not most. And disparity from all its definitions (compared with all of “difference” definitions) comes out as a much more targeted meaning between the two.

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I agree that there are shades of meaning which you explained quite well.

If you had said “a better word to use would be disparity, because …”, I wouldn’t have commented. But you seemed to be asserting strong semantic distinction which does not exist in common usage.

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Well, in context of what we’re talking about, I’d argue there does exist such a strong distinction. The reason so many definitions of virtually every word exist is so it can be used in different circumstances/topics to mean slightly different things. In terms of cultural in equality, which is what this entire thread is about, I can’t really say it shouldn’t have been obvious which definition was most apt. To argue as though it was purely synonymous with “difference” I truly believe was a flat out error on jsroberts’ part.

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I can’t really say it shouldn’t have been obvious which definition was most apt.

edit: I was gonna say something snarky, but redecided. I will say your definition of when someone else makes an “error” is very liberal. If this kind of comment came up during peer review, I’d shoot it down as being needlessly nitpicky.

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But then I’d be lying. If all else fails, consider this: js was defining my (and others, whom I was responding to originally) own use of the word for his purposes, not vice versa. That makes the context his responsibility.

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I’m not sure if I’d put it all down to active intent, but in either case I agree with your main point: creativity is needed to being a workforce that was mainly focused on male employment to one that includes everyone, not because employing women requires more creativity in itself.

Either I’m not grasping it, or you’re moving the goalposts. You claimed that pregnancy and nursing have no inherent effect on careers or financial well being, but that any disadvantage must be due to active bias (willfully setting up careers to exclude pregnant people). If an inherent effect exists, it would have to be natural. The examples I gave all show direct and natural disadvantages that pregnancy would have on someone if they were competing on a level playing field with someone who was not pregnant or nursing. If someone leaves work for a few months and isn’t given paid maternity leave, this affects their financial well-being. It takes laws or employers to decide that this time off work should be covered by the company, not taken from the woman’s salary. If people are paid by the hour or for their production, not paying them would not necessarily be discriminatory; in fact, paying them while they are at home is discriminating between valid and invalid leave. We can all agree that there are many discriminatory practices that needlessly exclude women, so I don’t need to point that out.

It is hard to imagine a similar advantage that pregnancy or nursing would give in the workforce that would exclude men if the roles were reversed, so I don’t think the second part of your argument is valid (although if you can point out major issues specific to men that would put them at a disadvantage, that would help). In the same way as with disability though, it is stupid to exclude someone based on these disadvantages, as long as the ability is not crucial to the work being done. If pregnant people want to keep working, let other people do the heavy lifting. When they need time off, don’t penalise them for it. Recognise their strengths and don’t require them to be someone else before they can take part.

Re: differences vs. disparity: Women who stay at home for longer periods or take part time instead of full time work may have a wage disparity for that reason, or may not progress as far in their careers. As I mentioned, this could be due to inequality/discrimination (for instance, a partner who is unwilling to do their share, lack of childcare or a bias in the workplace), or it could be an active choice to spend more time with family, in which case it is unclear whether they would consider themselves at a disadvantage (so calling the lower wage a disparity would not be taking their wider goals into account). In reality there is a confusing mix of these reasons, and the statistics often don’t show the full story.

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I agree with you. Dave seems to view culture as a completely blank slate. In his view, things are either clearly non-cultural (not being able to run a marathon due to leglessness [which btw is only an issue in cultures where marathons are a thing]) or entirely cultural, which he implicitly equates with “arbitrary”. If it is cultural then someone willfully instituted it. His style is representative of the intellectual culture he draws from. Steve Pinker wrote a great book about this called “The Blank Slate”.

I see culture a tree of branching possibilities that grows on biology (among other things). Not every branch is equally likely. Some areas of the humanities insist that there either is no tree (culture is entirely constructed, i.e., arbitrary), or that - even if there were a tree - we could never even begin to understand what it was like.

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No, it wouldn’t, because as I already stated “careers” and “financial well being” do not have natural definitions, only culturally imposed ones. The inherent effect only exists in response to the culturally defined thing. Why do careers have to start at particular ages and run for “X” number of years and earn out in particular ways and demand “X” number of hours during certain hours of the day? Because we say so. It is not THAT simple to actually institute change (that’s why it’s a struggle and requires many conversations and many potential solutions to select between). But philosophically, this is the plain jane reality: we can make these things anything we’d like, all that’s missing is making sure that what we decide makes sense. This is not (as sprocket seems to think I think below) a total “blank slate”. But its more fungible than we admit it to being.

Generally speaking social change always has economic costs - when slavery was ended the South US economy tanked completely, because it had relied so heavily on slave labor. But quickly a new system was put in place after the Civil War and this system has surged with relative speed. The Southern US workforce never required slavery. It simply decided to lean on it to the point where it became difficult to extricate itself from it later down the line.

Less extreme examples exist with women in the work force, the end of segregation, affirmative action, regulations, etc. These things do have consequences, but they never harm the system in apocalyptic ways that detractors say they will unless we don’t change with it. They system is what we make of it, within our abilities at any given time.

A good example are the recent studies that have shown that automation and productivity has risen so much, so quickly, that we could theoretically reduce everyone to 4 hour work days and productivity would neither suffer nor cease to rise. This is obviously theoretical, but the primary reason no one is looking deeper into it is because it goes too much against the current cultural definition of work - no one is going to pay the same amount for 4 hours of work, likely they wouldn’t even if we could prove that productivity didn’t go down or cease to rise. Because our cultural definitions demand certain learned concepts of what is acceptable - 8 hours is a work day, because we say so, but does it have to be? At one point in time, maybe yes, but why balk if the situation has changed? It sounds ludicrous to most people because they aren’t demanding an 8 hour workday due to circumstances. They’re demanding it due to engrained definitions and habit.

There are always a confusing mix of reasons, however they virtually all boil down to the fact that the disparity (inequality) only exists due to the entire system being optimized for men in the first place. All the many reasons are largely if not entirely because the things women might have to think about…men don’t. I can give you examples of fictional workplaces wherein the set-up can be disadvantageous to men (the retirement age being one I’ve already given). Women also mature quicker than men so if the workplace was set up to demand that careers started earlier in life (maybe say 15 or 16) it could prove disastrous with men performing well under their female counterparts in terms of punctuality, focus, and productivity, causing them to find it difficult to hold careers of any value later in life. That’s two examples. This would of course demand a culture that has a history of valuing women in the workplace (and in schools) but if such a fictional workplace existed it probably would.

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No it’s not a purely blank slate. But it is not purely a biological or “natural” thing, either, that simply does what it needs to do out of necessity. If that were true, cultures would never die from sociological causes, but they do. See my reply to jsroberts for more. And let’s try to avoid lumping people into groups. That’s not arguing, that’s a kind of name calling.

Each branch is limited to the reality of its time of existence, the question is what do we do when situations change - when the ability to change can occur, but would of course have SOME cost or consequence, but the benefit would be arguably greater. Then change becomes purely a matter of decision and will, not natural constraints.

EDIT: also, just because something was decided to be a certain way doesn’t mean it was the best or most beneficial (for the culture) decision even at the time.

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I think we all agree on the basics. Further, I think on any social issue that would be likely to come to a vote, we’d be on the same side. You have a tendency to overstate your case though.

Are you really saying that social change is purely a matter of decision of will? Those are literally the only factors that influence social change?

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Okay, first for the happy surprise: while I’m going to nit pick and caveat some items, I totally agree with you on the core of this. Yay! I’m thinking we agree more than we think, and get feisty on terminology and the inability to agree on what the things we agree with MEAN.

Obviously, being an American, it goes against my sense of justice to have any obligatory enlistment to the military be a part of any culture, for any group. The fact that only men are made to do this does indeed make it a distinct disadvantage. Now if someone proposed a solution that women should be forced to do so, too, I’d disagree. But rather I’d fight to keep men from having to do it.

Smaller solutions would be better pay (chain it to average career pay at those ages) as well as a system to place men into jobs or schools where they need to be when they finish. Neither perfect solutions, but those would be the compromises.

As for the arguments you’ve heard before:

A. I thought of this instantly, but discarded it for the same reasons you give here. That said, it is not meaningless that men have to go against other men, rather than an opposing group, in order to free themselves from a particular disadvantage. But it does not change the fact that one group of men (those who gain from the cheap military labor) gain from the disadvantage of the rest (those who provide the labor). Even if the former once upon a time had to enlist themselves, they now uphold the status quo due to the benefits they get out of it, and that indeed fits the bill.

B. and C. are just bullshit, who told you these? Numbskulls.

D. I obviously agree with you here, I just argued it with jsroberts :smile:

E. and F. Agreed. Both points I’ve already made, elsewhere in this thread, too.

So the conclusion: if Men’s Rights groups fight for this, I’m all for it, and would support it. If they wanted to additionally fight for Men’s Rights in the workplace that had nothing to do with this (and in nations where there is no forced enlistment, I still can’t think of any workplace disadvantages whatsoever) then I’d still say “hell, no”.

Maybe, when it comes to Men’s Rights, I’d have to adjust my stance to this: I’m with you so long as the target aren’t the more disadvantaged groups, like women and minorities. If the actual target (defined as: the ones we have to fight to make the change happen) are non-men, I still can’t think of any way this could be legit. But at least for this one example of men vs. men, a-okay.

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I don’t know, from my perspective YOU have the tendency to overstate my case :stuck_out_tongue:

No. Certainly not the way I think you mean it here. I’m saying that while obviously all decisions are purely a matter of will, outside factors determine whether the decision is a good one or not. I think where we agree is that just because we CAN make any decision doesn’t mean we should, or would have any reason to want to.