My post before this was a response to a blog of a local friend (Madi) who has posted thoughts on her sexist experience in the workplace. After my response, I received a couple criticisms that motivated me to think things through even more!
Here is the link to her blog: http://madistandsupandout.com/to-be-their-secretary-i-dont-think-so/#comment-81
Here is my response:
I’m not attacking Madi nor invalidating her experience; I’m disagreeing with her interpretation of her experiences. It is not a male-dominated society that she fights, but a normal social phenomenon of group identity that has a tendency towards biased opinions. This is culture. My complaint is that modern feminism increases this identity bias, and seeks to solve this illusion of masculine oppression through mass political action. But political action against whom? Are we really raging a civil war against the Male CEOs and the majority male population in political leadership? Who is the enemy here? Men? Or culture? Men are not inherently evil, just as women are not. I am not inherently biased because I am a male, just as Madi is not inherently biased because she is a female. Thus, we are solving a cultural problem, not a man problem. Culture can be resolved through dialogue, which is what I’m trying to encourage here.
My thesis is this: Running a society based on interpreted experiences that are validated by identity will only perpetuate a problem that feminists often claim to be fighting against.
Madi conquered a hard situation, and it's very respectable. But she devalues her experience by saying, “...and thus another evidence that woman must fight against the male suppression!” There are high numbers of women claiming sexual harassment, sex-biased job-placement, and lower pay due to simply being a female under a male boss, supervisor, or a male-majority workplace that is prejudiced against them. This can clearly be seen here: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/12/14/gender-discrimination-comes-in-many-forms-for-todays-working-women/
But this is an anecdotal fallacy: meaning that just because someone thinks he or she is experiencing something, doesn’t make it valid evidence. Even if 47% of all women in the workplace claim to have been sexually harassed, or discriminated against in some way, it does not validate their experience. Just because the 80% of the Pharisees claimed that Jesus was an oppressive blasphemer doesn’t validate their point.
The greatest evidence that males continue to be biased against women would be the wage gap. The source I previously provided shows that claim to be exaggerated and ultimately inconclusive. But even if there still is a 1% wage gap, then we still see that modern feminism does not need affirmative action: they just need to be open to dialogue, just as the men do. I am as susceptible to bias as you, but the way to overcome it is through dialogue. That is the difference between modern society and the Guayaki Indians. That is the difference between Socrates and the Athenians who made him drink poison.
In its greatest virtue, modern feminism continues to bring the awareness of possible subconscious bias that both males can have of women and that women can have of themselves. However, as the sources I previously shared show, the natural differences and tendencies of the sexes are still under investigation, so even in a perfectly free state, women may never be 50-50 represented in business leadership and political positions. They simply may not choose to do so. That does not mean, however, we should not strive for a perfectly sovereign government… but that’s another discussion.
Madi should be getting a little mad about what she went through! She may have experienced sexism on a micro scale, but not the white-male-dominated-society sexism that radical liberals seem to claim. She says that this experience was specifically more sexist than any other work experience she has had and that the cause was the build-up of hundreds/thousands of years of women’s oppression that has become second-nature to males. It seems that over the centuries both females and males had grown so accustomed to the usual role of the feminine women that for her to be politically active or in the business world was not only unheard of but was publicly acknowledged as taboo. This changed with academic writings such as that of Simone de Beauvoir, and women’s suffrage movements in the 1800’s that brought awareness and united women in a common cause for liberty and representation in government. But, if women were able to wake up from the dream of divine feminity, then wouldn’t men also be able to wake up from the dream as well? Simone argued that no, since men enjoyed their cultural standing as the center of historical attention, with women as the supporting actress. Not only that, but men were in control of the resources, so naturally they would want to give up control of the economy. But that brings up classic conflict theory: that money, wealth, power, and security are the basis for human actions. That is the basis for communism, and also the basis for the idea of the male-dominated hierarchy.
But Madi did not write this blog because she is seeking wealth or power; she is writing because it is meaningful to her because it helps her organize her thoughts and share her experiences to encourage others to speak out. Similarly, I am just an online English teacher who has a passion for social psychology, and I found an opportunity here to organize my thoughts! Anyway, I’m pretty dang broke. I’m not arguing my point to stay in power, I’m arguing my point because modern feminism attempts to make men evil, and assumes that male-hierarchy continues to pervade modern society. I argue against Madi because we should not assume that sexism is such an issue that women are pervasively being economically oppressed. That attitude can lead to oppressive attitudes towards men, and develop a false idea of utopia, and how that utopia is to be achieved.
There is no empirical evidence to support modern male dominance. The surveys of women who purport to have sexist experiences in the workplace suggest that sexism is still prevalent; however, the multivariate analysis of the gender wage gap shows that this claim errs towards confirmation bias; a bias that is based on the group identity of the women. #MeToo.
Still, in support of Madi, I suggest that if it was sexism that she faced, then her battle was not against the male-hierarchy, but was more of a high-school musical scenario, where she was battling the current status quo on a small scale. Men and women alike categorize themselves into groups based on commonalities in beliefs, preferences, talents, etc. And, those groups grow close-knit, and develop inside jokes, and, like any other group that finds a commonality between them, will distinguish between us and them. This can make entering a new workplace especially difficult. This is not a good thing! Groups, once formed, can naturally act in a marginalizing, derogatory way. Do women do something similar when they gather together? Sure. Again, high school is a great example of this: when a girl moves up the social hierarchy, it's only natural to defend her position, even if that requires publicly humiliating opposition or using friendship to guarantee a leadership position (such as on a sports team). Of course, that is wrong as well, but what we have identified is a social action that every individual is susceptible to! This is not historical phenomena, its a human, psycho-social phenomena.
In our situation, this social oppression will only increase if it’s assumed that “others cannot understand what I’m going through”, or someone’s opinion is marked as invalid simply because they are a man or a woman. Don’t invalidate me just because I’m a man. Please answer some of my argument, I’m open to being wrong, but please be willing to walk me through it.
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