By David Futrelle
Men’s Rights Activists generally respond to discussions of the wage gap between men and women by snidely dismissing it as a long-disproven myth. (It’s very definitely not.)
But there are a few brave MRAs willing to accept the fact of the wage gap. One Men’s Rights Redditor I wrote about a few years back called MrWhibbley acknowledged that yes, men earn more than women. But in his mind the problem wasn’t discrimination. It was actually the result of women being a bunch of nasty bitches.
Now another Men’s Rights Redditor has stepped forward with an even bolder theory: the wage gap exists – but it’s actually a sign that men are the truly oppressed ones.
Yes, that’s right: Men are oppressed by earning more than women.
In other words, men are the victims of a vast female conspiracy designed to ensure that women can get free meals from their dates.
I should point out that in addition to being very silly, Neo2Trinity’s tweet is packed with utter bullshit. So let me take a few minutes to rebut some of the claims.
Neo2Trinity gets one thing right: more than 90 percent of workplace fatalities are male.
But this is not an issue that affects anyone but a tiny percentage of a percentage of working men. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 5,190 US workers died on the job in 2016 (the most recent year they have complete data for); 4,803 of them were men (92.5 percent). In that same year, there were 151 million people in the US work force (not counting unemployed people); 80 million of those were men (53 percent).
That means that the average working man had only a 0.006 percent chance of dying in a workplace accident in 2016, which was actually a pretty bad year, accident-wise.
That said, it’s appalling that as many as 5000 people die each year in workplace accidents, especially since many of these accidents are preventable, the result of employers skimping on safety to save money.
Thing is, for all the rhetorical attention MRAs devote to this issue, I have yet to see even a single MRA lift a finger to actually do something to improve job safety. Indeed, MRAs are arguably making things worse, given how many of them are Hillary-hating Trump voters who helped to elect a man who is doing his best to gut workplace safety protections.
As for the idea that men take dangerous jobs to earn more to spend on women, well, it turns out that dangerous jobs do not, on average, pay more than less dangerous ones, as cartoonist/blogger Barry Deutsch noted in a blog post some years ago. Sure, coal mining is dangerous, as Men’s Rights Activists never tire of pointing out, and it pays relatively well. But agriculture is actually MORE dangerous — and farm workers earn shit. If you want to make the big bucks, Deutsch notes, you’d do better to skip the dangerous jobs and go into a field that require specialized knowledge, assuming you have the necessary education.
As for Neo2Trinity’s claim that women are wealthier than men? Just plain wrong. In fact, the wealth gap is considerably larger than the wage gap; for every dollar of wealth owned by men, women own only 32 cents. Divorced women find it even harder to accumulate wealth; the median net worth of divorced women is only 25 percent of the median net worth of divorced men.
I will, however, grant that widows are generally better off financially than their dead husbands — though dead men don’t really have much in the way of expenses. So amidst all the rest of the bullshit in the comment, Neo2Trinity actually gets two things factually correct — but in each case completely misses the point. Which is pretty much the MRA in a nutshell: on the rare occasions they get something right, they’re still completely wrong.
@ catalpa
That’s wrong in the moral sense. It does get a bit complex though. To bring the Latin back in, offences are generally spilt into mala in se and mala prohibita. That is to say, offences that are inherently wrong (murder, rape, theft) and offences that are deemed to be wrong by the state (regulatory offences, speed limits, age you can buy stuff). So it’s the mala in se sense that we mean here.
It is of course true that all competent people with capacity are deemed to know the law; even the regulatory stuff. That seems a bit onerous but you can see the public policy reasons behind that. That’s also one of the reasons that offences must be “down by law” if they are to be constitutional (or whatever your local equivalent is, here it’s the ECHR). That is to say it must be at least theoretically possible to find out what the law is, even if that would actually mean trawling through the entire law library.
Interestingly the ‘ignorance is no excuse’ only applies to criminal laws and there’s a weird thing where ignorance of the civil law can be a defence to a criminal charge (eg I misunderstand the law on bailment of goods so I think I’m entitled to your property; that could be a defence to theft)
Hope that makes a bit of sense.
@Alan:
In some ways, one of the great flaws of the Common Law system and its adherence to precedents in various corner cases is that it does make it significantly harder for people to actually know the full extent of the law. That said, that normally is only significant for those corner or vague cases.
Of course, the advantage of the Common Law system is that it tends to be more rapidly self-healing when someone tries to abuse a particular interpretation of the law. Minor bits around the edges tend to have a shorter feedback cycle rather than having to get the laws officially rewritten.
And, honestly, if there’s anything that computer security has taught me, it’s that there is no set of rules that is both perfect enough to withstand a deliberate attempt to subvert them, and also still useful for everybody else. For all that flexibility in the law causes problems due to differential sentencing and the like, inflexibility can cause even worse problems.
Ah, that makes sense. I was mainly thinking about mala prohibita stuff. Stands to reason there’s different expectations regarding those types of offences. Thanks for indulging my curiosity!
@LittleLurker
You can’t have the one without the other. If the lower class is really as good as the upper class, what possible justification is there to keep them subordinate and impoverished?
Yes. And a class system intrinsically disadvantages some people based on their class; that’s what class is.
This is only even partially true if intra-generational class mobility is a thing. To a very great extent, the class you are born in is the one you will die in. To an equally great extent, your racial and ethnic background determines the class into which you are born (and also affects your chances of mobility from that class, up or down)
It absolutely is an ism, as mentioned above.
Well, yes.
People absolutely will tell you that; I’ve heard it a bunch. The latter one is a TERF classic.
Not really. The level of inequality requires psychological/social justification (Scildfreja can probably speak to that aspect better than I can). Essentially, if you’re chronically treating someone badly, you will convince yoursel, that they deserve it because otherwise you’re the bad person here.
!??!?!??!? That’s a new one on me… Although it actually demonstrates my point: These people are conflating cultural differences established over generations of social and physical endogamy within classes with the lack of material wealth/comforts experienced by disavantaged classes. To take a U.S. example, NASCAR racing is a heavily working-class white form of entertainment. That’s a cultural thing though, and has nothing to do with wealth. A NASCAR fan who wins the lotto and never has to worry about money again won’t suddenly start watching the America’s Cup instead. The identity and the money are unrelated.
Keep in mind that the capitalist class system comes directly from the feudal one, and in that system aristocrats and peasants were absolutely considered different races, and the aristocratic race was better. Add in that nationality was considered race as well, and e.g. English and Irish were supposedly fundamentally different breeds with fundamentally different characters imbued by nature (sound familiar?).
@ Dvärghundspossen
This is true; they’re not believable, but they’re comprehensible. (such novels exist; I’ve read them).
@ohlmann
This is absolutely true.
A totalitarian state cannot be communist in any meaningful sense. State capitalism has the same disadvantages and the same endstate as the usual sort, without any of the upsides.
Capitalism as it exists today is not a failure of implementation; it’s working exactly as it was intended to.
And yet you have not actually addressed any of the points made in this thread or my link.
@Jenora Feuer
Look! A wagon wheel!
Sunshine on a stick!
Apparently, we ’70s kids wouldn’t eat food unless it sounded like an exotic variety of blotter acid.
@Dalillama
That’s an important distinction. When people talk about the lower classes, they often mean a certain income level; but plenty of blue-collar folks find the means to own expensive trucks, boats, and ATVs, because it’s what the culture values as a marker of success. It’s why there’s a distinction between old money and nouveau riche. The barriers to the upper classes consist of more than just wealth. Donald Trump will never be accepted by New York society, no matter how much money he has, no matter how many buildings have his name on them, no matter how much ormalu and gold crud he puts all over his apartments. No doubt that fuels a lot of his resentment towards “the elites”, even though on the surface he’s one of them.
@ohlmann
Steady on… am I reading this wrong? Are you sure this is what you meant to say?
@Dalillama
Thanks for the reply. 🙂 I agree with most of what you said. Maybe the difference is simply that I define lower or working class in my post as materially poor and/or working in certain exploitative jobs whithout adding the other markers that you and Buttercup mentioned. Those I agree are expressions of classism and are – also agree – used as psychological justification strategies, so the oppressors can feel justified. Wether or not class mobility exists depends I think a bit on the country you’re in as someone above said, but overall it is – as you said – pitifully low, especially when we look outside the “western” world where entire countries are seemingly – apart from a tiny elite – kept as a kind of “working poor” to allow the “upper class” countries their privileged living.
Apart from that, you can go father back then the middle ages with the figure of “natural inferiority”. Antiquity had the distinction between “civilised” and “barbarians”.
My impression is rather the opposite. I think people more often talk about cultural differences between classes (and also how working-class culture is looked down upon) than the problems economic insecurity or downright poverty brings with it. Probably because they’re more comfortable talking about the former than the latter.
Okay, so, I don’t know nearly as much about economics or Marxist theory as some people here, but if you’re talking about medievalism then this is something I know something about.
In the medieval era, there was indeed a distinction between aristocrats and commoners; in some places like England, Sicily and parts of Spain this became a racial distinction too.
However, part of the story of the medieval era is the story of the rising merchant class slowly gathering more power and wealth as the towns and cities grew; and those merchants were absolutely commoners rather than being aristocrats. In many places, especially in Northern Europe after the 12th century, a commoner could join the merchantile classes (the bourgeoisie, in Marxist terms) simply by becoming rich. By contrast, even very wealth merchants had difficulty trying to transition to the aristocracy, outside of places like Venice and Lübeck. Many countries instituted laws to prevent them trying to do so, or attempting to intermarry, or attempting to take on the trappings or traditional roles of the nobility.
For example, one of the complaints about King John of England that led to the aristocratic rebellion against him was that he staffed his bureaucracy with “men of common birth” – that is, non-nobles. To the aristocrats, they may as well have been peasants.
This attitude – that aristocrats were different from commoners, but that all commoners were the same – persisted for centuries even after feudalism had been eclipsed. In England it was one of the elements that led to the Civil War, in France it was one of the elements that led to the Revolution, and in Germany it was part of the mess that was 1845-1848. In most places, the more intelligent and foresighted aristocrats saw the rising capitalist class as the threat they were, and attempted either to squelch them or to join them.
Jane Austen, that marvellous commentator of the English class system, demonstrated this perhaps best in her novel Pride and Prejudice. The Bennett sisters are impoverished rural aristocrats; one of them marries a man who is “in trade” (a successful businessman) and this is seen as a tremendous scandal. To the nobility of the time, a man “in trade” is not a nobleman, and therefore no better than a peasant, regardless of his wealth.
I have not read Chekhov, but I believe he examines this in his novels too.
As such, if you argue that medieval notions of class informed modern notions of class, then you’re right; but the two are very different, and the privileges of medieval aristocrats were absolutely not the forebear of the privileges of modern capitalists.
I don’t have the academic background to defend the following, but:
It is my observation that those who do succeed in climbing up the class ladder are often the most rigid defenders of the lines between classes. This may be because their own mobility is meaningless as an achievement if just anyone can do it, or it may be because people who don’t believe in the class system won’t be motivated to climb it in the first place.
Meanwhile, a system which does not allow people to climb at all may result in talented, ambitious people building guillotines.
As such, I hypothesise that a class system with a small amount of mobility will be more durable than one which allows either large amounts of mobility or none at all.
Hrm; it’s a great deal more complex and regional that that too; frex the Venetian great houses and many of the Dutch were merchants and aristocrats and saw no contradiction there. The Dutch, as you undoubtedly recall, were the preemeinent colonial power in what’s now New England for some time, and many wealthy and influential families remained so after the transition. Further south, the plantations (and their inhabitants) were commonly owned by second+ sons of the English aristocracy, disinherited by primogeniture and seeing a chance at a life more like that to which they were raised than would be offered by the church or army. The line between these two groups and the capitalism practiced in the modern U.S. is direct.
OT (well, kind of) I just wanted to mention that the Graun has got another article that may be of interest. Two days running?!?!?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/09/about-the-boys-tim-winton-on-how-toxic-masculinity-is-shackling-men-to-misogyny
@EJ – It’s often said that GOP voters keep on being convinced to vote against their best economic interests because of the illusion of class mobility. Their ambition is to be one of those successful businessmen someday, so voting for a higher marginal tax rate is potentially damaging to their future prospects.
In practice, it’s very easy to move down the class ladder, but much more difficult to move up. Too many gatekeepers, and too many things have to go exactly right.
@EJ
I’m a bit sceptical. I did know this one noveau riche-girl when I was at university who was pretty insufferable, and I also knew a bunch of older-money dudes who were way more laid back. OTOH, I did the climb from working- to middle-class, and I used to have a colleague who had done the same thing. And we’re both very left-wing.
I really don’t think me being in academia as opposed to a patient tech is meaningless if enough other people has done the same thing. It would still be true that I earn almost twice as much as I used to do and have a more stimulating job with more control over my workday (even though being in the harsh academic job market is crazy stressful – but the nursing job market is also getting worse and worse all the time, so…). Those advantages don’t disappear depending on what other people do.
Also, we just talked in the thread about the “American Dream” phenomenon, which seems to largely consist of people who don’t believe that the US has a class system, but still think they’re gonna climb from a crappy job to a good one.
I expect that even if a capitalist system started out without racism somehow, it wouldn’t take long for such a sentiment to manifest.
Since capitalism causes a stratified society, with both very rich and very poor people, and since a child brought up by a poor family has significantly less opportunity available to them, there will be families that constantly remain poor. And since race is determined biologically, and most families raise biological children, certain phenotypes will become common in the constantly poor, and therefore be considered signs of inferiority.
I suppose a “capitalist” system which somehow prevents intergenerational wealth accumulation might mitigate that to some extent, but short of all children being raised communally, there would still be networking/educational etc. aspects that would be passed down, even if inheritance was abolished.
@ catalpa
Every now and then there’s a proposal here for 100% inheritance tax; but it’s usually abandoned as not exactly a vote winner.
@ Shadowplay
Yes, it does, doesn’t it?
Though that was a popular sub-psychedelic style.
@ all the mammotheers having a thoughtful substantive discussion about crime, intent and so on… I’m learning a lot! Thank you.
I would be behind a 100% inheritance tax as long as there were ways for parents of special needs children to put money away for those kids for after the parents pass on. I’d hate to see people who are unable to earn a living because of the way society is structured be burdened with sudden financial problems while also grieving their parent(s). Or if there are other protections like actually taking care of adults who can’t earn wages, that would be even better.
Surely people who support a meritocracy would support a 100% inheritance tax. After all, the children of the deceased didn’t do anything to earn that money. Why should they be entitled to it simply for being related to someone?
And yet one of the big things that right libertarians shriek about is inheritance tax (despite the current system in the states only really affecting the obscenely wealthy anyway), because “that’s earned money that was already taxed once”!
@Buttercup:
You’re giving me acid flashbacks, and I never did acid.
Exercise your choppers, really chew, chew, chew!
Don’t drown your food!
@Ohlmann:
There is what is known as the Salem Hypothesis, where it was noted that pretty much anybody who claimed to be both a scientist and a creationist would turn out to be an engineer. Unfortunately engineers are often trained to apply rules to solve problems without ever actually understanding why the rules exist or what the actual underlying mechanism is; combine that with a degree of arrogance because they know more about technology than most of the population, season with Dunning-Kruger, and you end up with… well, you end up with somebody like Scott Adams or Andrew Schlafly.
And I say this as someone with an engineering degree, but at least enough empathy to not be that blinkered.
@Dalillama, regarding the Dutch:
I still say that the greatest mistake the Dutch made was in taking the English on as apprentices for their trade empire. It meant that when the Dutch economy ran into problems, the English knew all of the more recent contacts (including the ones in the Americas which were easier to get to from England) and could just scoop up the pieces and take over while the Dutch were restabilizing.
@Alan:
Yes, one of the big problems with trying to improve any system is the great resistance from the people who benefit under the current system and won’t benefit as much if there are changes, many of whom have no problem with lying about what the changes will do to get others on their side. I believe Machiavelli had a line about that.
Subverting a 100% inheritance tax would probably be straightforward for anyone with a moderate amount of money. You’d need to upend the global financial system before it would work on anyone but the little people.
Wouldn’t just putting a bunch of your money in a trust for your kids subvert it?
A way of getting round our current inheritance tax is to make an inter vivos gift. Weirdly though you have to live at least seven years or they cop for the tax anyway. Actually, thinking about that, it’s a good way to ensure they take care of you.
I never understand why so many of these men bang on about men making up the majority of dangerous job holders.
As you point out precious few men work in dangerous roles and these MRA types are doing next to nothing to make those roles safer.