All those jobs going overseas? Blame it on the ladies. At least according to MRA blogger The Fifth Horseman – the guy behind The Misandry Bubble, a bizarre apocalyptic manifesto that took the manosphere by storm last year. In a heavily upvoted comment on The Spearhead, TFH explains:
Not many people realize that outsourcing happens mostly due to feminism.
Feminists impose all sorts of costs on businesses in the US, who are forced to employ women despite the low productivity of these female employees.
Since an office is not allowed to have too many men, the next best answer is to move the entire department to India or China, where Western feminists can no longer harass it.
Since Western women cost more than what Western men produce, outsourcing is inevitable, as a means to avoid feminism.
The blogger behind the Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology blog was impressed enough with this argument that he featured it in a post of his own, adding
Plenty of people have tried to run the numbers on the offshoring of jobs, but they can never figure out where the savings are supposed to be. Business would only offshore jobs if it made financial sense, and running the numbers indicates that it doesn’t make financial sense because any savings gets eaten up by the costs of offshoring. That is the case until you include the costs of feminism in the analysis. When someone runs the numbers on offshoring, they don’t include things like the costs of the false sexual harassment industry, affirmative action, and pure makework jobs for women in their analysis. As soon as feminism is included, offshoring makes perfect financial sense for business. …
If you want jobs to come back to the US (and elsewhere), then you have to eliminate feminism.
Yeah, that’s gotta be it.
I think the argument was that pregnancy and birth happen naturally–they’re not completely voluntary actions taken by the mother–therefore they’re no big deal really because once a woman is in labor she can’t choose not to give birth.
…Apparently men can choose not to get work injuries? But they choose it anyway to prove their strength? And that’s admirable? I’m not really sure where he was going with this.
i work at starbucks. i’d hardly call it a dangerous job but i do scald myself with hot water on a fairly regular basis whilst frantically trying to complete a store full of people’s specific orders. all with a smile! and i clean bathrooms too. not physically dangerous, but certainly not pleasant. all for the cushy salary of $9/hr. it’s really not that big a deal but i certainly do feel some physical pain on the job! what does NWO think women do for work?
I totally want to live in your world for a bit, NWO. Because not hurting at all would be fucking amazing. I once explained to someone that I am never not in pain – usually from my ankle and hip. They were gobsmacked. So was I, I kind of figured that everyone had something like that. If you’ve never experienced that, congratulations, and I hope it stays that way. If you do, I’m horribly sorry and recommend talking to your doctor about prednisone (it won’t cure the pain, but it can help a LOT).
Lyssa: I eventually developed ‘asbestos hands’ – I never even felt the heat from the shot glasses (this was back in the days when you pulled a shot by hand, into shot glasses. You young whippersnappers don’t know how good you’ve got it with your pushbutton espresso machines…). I don’t know if this happens to everybody, though.
Note to all: If you google “20 most dangerous jobs,” you will be amazed as I was to learn that milk machine technician is not in fact one of them!
LyssatakeaBow:
He thinks all women go to cushy “make-work” jobs in pristine, glass skyscrapers where they get paid to wear silky office clothing and claim that they were sexually harassed. They don’t actually produce anything or provide a service, but they make more than old Owly does working thirty-four hour days, twelve days a week, at a backbreaking, dirty, and unrewarding job as a milking machine technician. This is because businesses do not want to make a profit, so they create do-nothing jobs out of thin air for women, while funneling men into having to do all the hard work for practically free.
There’s no word on whether the silky office clothing consists of only silky micromini skirts and silky see-through tops, though I would assume so.
Also, childbirth doesn’t hurt. At all.
Dangerous job story: My brother once worked in an aluminium casting factory. Sometimes, with any injection molding process, you get little bits of whatever the parts are made out of along the seams of the final product. With plastic, it’s no biggie – it comes out with the part and you trim it or reject it. With aluminium, it doesn’t. It gets stuck along the seam part of the mold and can cause serious problems with molten fucking metal coming out of the mold. So the machines are programmed to let off a warning to tell you that there’s stuff in the mold, and won’t inject until the plates meet properly.
So one night, my brother came on shift, he was doing his thing, when he suddenly felt something hot at the back of his legs. He turned around, and there was a geyser of melted metal coming out of his machine. Once he got the geyser sorted, he reported it to his supervisor, who was understandably a little bit pissed. When he hunted up the previous shift manager and asked wtf he’d been thinking, the other manager said (and I swear I am not making this up): “Oh, the alarm was annoying us, so I turned it off.” BrotherB didn’t push it, gods alone only know why, but my ass would have been in the president’s office the next day, preferably with pictures of what molten aluminium does on contact with the human body.
I’m pretty sure that’s more dangerous that fixing milking machines, though it doesn’t quite have the jet setting lifestyle.
Is there a single occupation that only males occupy, except maybe sperm producer? I know female welders, electricians, miners, lumberjacks, trappers, soldiers, police officers, dog catchers, carpenters, engineers… I can’t think of a single job that women are explicitly excluded from.
I also know a lot of male bank tellers, nurses, office workers, etc.
Maybe in NWO’s world, having a penis makes you more sensitive to pain.
While we’re making fun of NWO, I would like to point out that men are far more likely to work in dangerous professions and get injured or die on the job. Obviously, women do have dangerous jobs too.
Nevertheless, job safety is a gender issue.
Unimaginative: MrB works in childcare and education and specializes in special needs kids. According to NWO, my husband does not exist or is legally barred from his profession.
Ullere: “If sexual harassment has a cost(and it does) then you can save on that cost by relocating to a country with lower sexual harassment costs.”
No.
One more try at explaining why this doesn’t make sense.
The cost of dealing with sexual harassment litigation can be alleviated by moving your company to a country without that kind of legal protection for the litigants.
However, the other cost you included, the cost to the company of missed shifts, lower productivity, and turnover, is caused by the sexual harassment itself, not by the litigation enabled by anti-sexual harassment laws.
Moving your company to a country that doesn’t have legal protection against sexual harassment will not make a dent in this, and in fact it might make it worse, since sexual harassers will rightly feel they are allowed to sexually harass all they want without consequences.
The obvious way to eliminate both costs is for people to not sexually harass. Moving to a country that allows it seems rather counterproductive in reaching that goal.
@Ozymandias: Job safety is a gender issue, but FEMINISTS/WOMEN are not to blame for men’s greater access to more dangerous jobs, and until our trollz also acknowledge women are more likely to be killed by intimate partners than men are, then I will continue to point out the prejudice in claiming WOMEN are to BLAME for men taking dangerous jobs. That’s what I’m mocking. As long as they see feminism as the cause of such things, instead of part of a solution, then MOCK I will.
And the sweeping MEN DO X as if men never work in jobs other than the 20 most dangerous professions is also irritating.
Ozy – I agree with you, and I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about that in the past. I also agree with NWO (!!!) that worker’s compensation for severe injury or death can be pitifully small.
One thing that initially surprised me about the MRM was that nobody seemed seriously focused on worker’s rights or improving working conditions. The MRM writing I’ve found about working involved how women are so bad for the labor market and how they don’t do any “real” jobs. Most of the articles I’ve found on hegemonic masculinity and it’s influences on workplace behaviours (including safety) have all been from the same Gender Studies types that MRAs so frequently discount. The MRM seems to have a lot invested in maintaining ideas of masculinity that, in conjunction with the fact that many employers are evil or negligence personified, lead to the construction of unsafe work environments.
Ozy, prostitution is a very dangerous profession. Maybe the most dangerous, if you include the threat of AIDS.
NWO – After a typical day of work for a man.
His feet might hurt.
His back might hurt.
His arms might hurt.
His legs might hurt.
His shoulder might hurt.
His neck might hurt.
His knees might hurt.
These pains are an accepted part of employment for a man. No one will be sued and no one will be punished.”
………………………………………………………….
Well, leaving aside that I’ve done hard physical labor… If he’s put in undo danger, or injured on the job, have you ever heard of a thing called workman’s comp? You can sue for unsafe working conditions or injuries related to your job? Even in magical libertopia! Promise! Do you just want absolutely no unions, compensation packages, ability to sue, contracts between employers and employees, or anything except “stop whining?” in NWOland? And once we stop whining, we’ll all be… Free? 0_o (Again, unions and contracts and damage suits do not require a State in libertopia!)
what’s the over/under on owlslave’s next post ignoring everything he’s previously said and responding to all the women who have talked about the dangerous jobs theyve worked by saying its not really that bad and a man would have done all those things without complaining about them?
alternatively: women make safe jobs dangerous with their typical womanly incompetence, which is why big daddy has to step in and pay them to eat bon bons in front of the tv
Re, Workplace Injuries and Fatalities:
The BLS says that 92% of workplace fatalities are men. Yes, 8% != 0, you have proved your point. However, most folks who argue about this don’t make absurd and trivially easy to disprove claims like “No women die on the job”.
I don’t regard this as oppression for the simple reason that I take a viewpoint that isn’t that far from Heinlein’s on this matter: “[It is a husband’s] right, and his proud privilege, to die for his woman.”.
I just wish that attitude was met with something other than complaints about supposed workplace inequality.
Re, Sexual Harassment:
I can think of three issues with current sexual harassment law in the US:
1) It infringes on the rights of employers. If I’m an employer and I want to allow sexual harassment in my office, the government shouldn’t stop me. Doing so would infringe on my right to freedom of peaceable association. Of course, as an employee, I (and pretty much any other talented person) would see such activity as a good reason to run away as quickly as possible. The marketplace doesn’t reward hostile work environments, and I would expect most employers to have and enforce some policy prohibiting harassment. If I were an employer, I most certainly would.
2) Cost of compliance. Complying with the law takes time, money and effort that I’d much rather invest in productive efforts. It would be a lot easier to deal with problems as they come up without fear of external lawsuits. If the employer gave a damn (which is likely, see above), they might even take action more quickly in the absence of such laws, since they can just fire the offender without involving legal and engaging in elaborate CYA maneuvers.
3) All too often, companies write sexual harassment policies that forbid any sort of expression of romantic interest to anyone who happens to work for the same company out of a fear of lawsuits. This has a chilling effect on truly mutual desires. My parents met at work. These days, there’s a good chance that wouldn’t be allowed at a lot of places.
In short, sexual harassment (really, grown-up bullying by some of the examples given in this thread) is a bad thing (duh), but I’m not entirely sure I like our hypersensitivity in this area either.
ithiliana: I completely agree with you, of course. 🙂 It is not feminists’ fault that men tend to work dangerous jobs, since men were working more dangerous jobs for long before we showed up.
Morchella: The prison-industrial complex and worker safety are the two issues I’m most concerned that we’re overlooking on NSWATM… both of them tend disproportionately to affect men. And destructive stereotypes of masculinity (particularly, in the case of the prison-industrial complex, black masculinity) have a huge role to play on both sides.
oldfeminist: You’re quite right. 🙂 The 20 most dangerous professions (all, iirc, male-dominated) only lists legal professions, and of the illegal professions (again, iirc) prostitution is the most dangerous.
It infringes on the rights of employers. If I’m an employer and I want to allow sexual harassment in my office, the government shouldn’t stop me.
you don’t have a ‘right’ to anything unless you can name a source for that right. laws are there to tell you what you can and can’t do. every law limits your behavior in some way. this is not a real objection.
Cost of compliance. Complying with the law takes time, money and effort that I’d much rather invest in productive efforts.
costs of compliance are relatively low, so low in fact that as i pointed out upthread, a lot of employee rights advocates find the best way to get changes is to just help employers come into compliance. this is speculation, not a real objection.
All too often, companies write sexual harassment policies that forbid any sort of expression of romantic interest to anyone who happens to work for the same company out of a fear of lawsuits.
citation needed. please tell me of these policies. my parents met at work, and i have no doubt their relationship would still have gone forward today because it was based on mutual attraction and respect.
but I’m not entirely sure I like our hypersensitivity in this area either.
if you think the current state of anti-harassment law is ‘hypersensitive’ its because youve made up what the law must be in your head without checking the actual state of things. read upthread to see how clueless you actually are.
Whenever this “you can have either none of the sex or all of the sex, you can’t have both!” misogynist asshole talking point is made I always wonder if they’ve throught things through in terms of long-range consequences. If women were to truly accept that framework, chances are that the majority of women would choose “none of the sex”, since sexual frustration is considerably less unpleasant than constant rape. So the result would be that straight men on the whole would get a lot less sex.
This does not seem like a good method of recruiting more men into the MRA movement to me. Join us and together we will control women! You’re never getting laid on a date again, but hey, there will be no more sluts!
Now, I was going to respond to Urelle, saying how yes I misconstrued sexual harassment cases, and was corrected by Sharculese. I also wanted to say that the problem within sexual harassment lies with the harassers, not the harassed, but you all brought that up. This is what I get for leaving the thread for a night 🙁 I guess I’ll cheer for you guys then.
Also, @oldfeminist, thank you for articulating more concisely what I was saying in my walls of text.
However, sadly an interesting discussion, with citations on both sides, has once again been derailed by slavey. Sadface.
At least he’s entertaining.
” Of course, as an employee, I (and pretty much any other talented person) would see such activity as a good reason to run away as quickly as possible. The marketplace doesn’t reward hostile work environments”
Unless you’re in a place with a poor economy, and you sort of have to hang onto whatever job in order to keep afloat. Unless nobody in the marketplace (aka consumers) knows the sexual harassment takes place. Unless someone covers up the harassment. Unless it’s a firm/company that doesn’t really sell hard goods to a large market that would facilitate that sort of vote-with-your-dollars model. Unless the buyers of said service (if the company provides a service or good) don’t *care* about sexual harassment, and take a “None of my business” approach. Unless you aren’t a worker considered a commodity worth keeping around.
Dude, I’ve been a waitress/food delivery driver for most of the last, iunno. 5 years? For two or three years before that it was being a clerk or a hostess or some such. For the last 5 years, I had to have my job to get by, much less live comfortably. I couldn’t just leave over sexual harassment. Which happened often, mind you. So, either, change your glibertarian mindset, or start changing shit out in the real world in some big, huge ways.
So, either, change your glibertarian mindset, or start changing shit out in the real world in some big, huge ways.
the problem with this particular glibertarian argument is exactly the same as the glibertarian argument against the civil rights act: there’s no evidence it happened anywhere, and no evidence it would have happened, and we have tons of evidence that passing laws did a lot to alleviate these problems. it’s wishful thinking by dudes who are convinced these things don’t affect them.