Well, the “Day Without a Woman” is upon us an life is moving along fairly normally. Well, at least for most. What is the point of all of this?
In the same spirit of love and liberation that inspired the Women’s March, we join together in making March 8th A Day Without a Woman, recognizing the enormous value that women of all backgrounds add to our socio-economic system–while receiving lower wages and experiencing greater inequities, vulnerability to discrimination, sexual harassment, and job insecurity. We recognize that trans and gender nonconforming people face heightened levels of discrimination, social oppression and political targeting. We believe in gender justice.
Organizers, which include a known terrorist, are encouraging women to do three things:
- Take the day off
- Avoid shopping
- Wear red
Taking the day off, sounds great, count me in! The irony is that, in order to demonstrate support and solidarity for vulnerable women, it’s vulnerable women who pick up the slack. Multiple school districts and independent schools have cancelled class today because so many employees are taking the day off. One of these districts is Prince George’s County, Maryland, which isn’t exactly known for its wealth and privilege. So to accommodate privileged government workers who can afford to skip work, working mothers have to find a way to take care of their kids, in a community in which 60% are eligible for free lunch.
Atta girl, that’ll show them!
If that wasn’t enough, some women have taken to using their Resting Bitch Face all day as a manner of protest/solidarity. It’s apparently a serious oppression that women are expected to have a pleasant and likable demeanor.
Yeah, you go girl!
You know what would really show the world women are important? Work. Work hard and produce results. Create things. Build things. Innovate. Solve. These are the things that will show the rest of the world you matter.
What I think is really going on is that, much like environmentalism, this is another means by which leftist agitators are seeking to further their agenda–destruction of traditional values, culture, and our economic system. It’s communism by a different name. I admire the naive person who supports basic ideas of equality and justice getting involved with this, but this movement is much more than that. We’ve heard of the idea of a general strike before. We know what “solidarity” and marches often mean. As environmentalism seems to be waning in the popular discourse, it seems the movement is transitioning from green on the outside to pink on the outside.
It’s still red on the inside.
40 comments
I have to say that I would have lost respect for my wife if she had decided to participate in this. She’s a teacher. If it had come up, I would have reminded her that her duty is to her students, not her genitals.
Thankfully, I married well. She knows that it’s what you do day in and day out that matters and defines your meaning to others, not throwing in with a meaningless publicity stunt one day out of the year.
So some women are saying that they feel that they are not valued enough. Your solution is that instead of striking they should work. Are you suggesting that they haven’t been working hard enough thus far? Not innovating or building or otherwise showing the world they matter?
How would continuing with business as usual produce any change? Are you envisioning a day when the GOP wakes up and says, ‘hey, women are valuable!’ and voluntarily closes the wage gap?
There is precedent for this strike. The women’s strikes in Iceland and Poland got real results. And we’d all be working 12 hour, 6 days a week in horrible conditions of people here in the US didn’t strike in the generations before us.
If you think equality for women is an erosion of your traditional values, culture, and economic system, it might be time to re-examine those.
For the record, at the risk of giving you more ammo, my only objection to this strike is the affiliation with Rasmea Odeh.
The gender pay gap is by and large a myth when everything is taken into account. And if it’s not, why are these people not protesting the Clinton Foundation?
For some reason I just really dislike these types of protests. This includes boycotts as well. If I want a chicken sandwich I will get one regardless of the politics of the ownership. Same here. You don’t show your importance as a woman by slacking off and reinforcing silly stereotypes (no shopping, LOL).
How big a deal would it be any way? I have sick time and literally no one would miss me beyond a nice “hope you feel better soon”. THAT WILL SHOW THEM! I DO have a killer resting bitch face.
I suppose that there are cases where I would participate in movement politics but this seems like misplaced angst. There is a crazy man running the show and you are wearing red. I don’t wanna ….
So much to disagree with, where to begin?
Putting words in my mouth…this sounds like a woman’s argument (JUST KIDDING!!!!!!). Seriously, where did I say “women aren’t working hard”? I didn’t. Many women work very hard. Many don’t. I would wager the ones who work hard aren’t the ones taking a day off for a political protest.
It’s really a very basic concept I learned very early on. You don’t show your value by whining or complaining, you show it by working hard. People notice.
What does the GOP have to do with it? I thought this was a bipartisan/nonpartisan protest uniting all women. If I’m mistaken and this is a left wing/democrat protest, please correct me.
Also the wage gap is nonexistent. It is a persistent myth.
Did I say it was unprecedented? No. And just because a strike may have been valuable in the past doesn’t mean it’s valuable now. Your argument is logically unsound (aka wrong).
Equality for women is a core value, one that has been won already. There is not a single right or legal protection in this country that is for men, but not women.
Well, we can agree on something I suppose.
Meanwhile, the rest of society-male and female-goes about its business. Feminism-it’s not for the children:
https://pjmedia.com/parenting/2017/03/07/day-without-women-participants-should-be-ashamed-especially-with-schools-closing/
“I would wager the ones who work hard aren’t the ones taking a day off for a political protest.” So the teachers you mentioned in your OP don’t work hard? You really want to go down that rabbit hole?
The wage gap is not a myth. (The article Zurvan linked says “If we want to have a fruitful discussion about a gender wage gap, we should have it after the comparison is adjusted for those factors.” I would welcome such a discussion. I agree that the 77c number should be adjusted. However, nothing in that article says there no gap at all, nor does it offer a different number. Here’s what it looks like when you do account for these factors – http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/13/news/economy/equal-pay-day-2015/index.html) Btw, how long are you gonna keep bringing up Hillary, Zurvan?
The strikes I mentioned are not ‘in the past.’ The one in Poland happened last October. Besides, tell me what’s changed in society to make strikes less effective?
It’s not actually true that women have the same protections as men. Your boy Scalia wrote “Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t” (http://ww2.callawyer.com/story.cfm?eid=913358&evid=1)
If equality for women is a core value, why have 15 states (including yours) refused to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment?
Why has the US not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women? It’s just us plus Iran, Palau, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Tonga. 186 other countries are in.
The U.S. Congress is ranked in 72nd place out of 139 for female membership, below Uganda, Algeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. And we’ve never had a female head of State, unlike Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Liberia.
We are one of 4 countries in the world with no guaranteed maternal leave. Just us and the Marshall Islands, Niue and Papua New Guinea.
1 in 3 women live in or near poverty. Women are twice as likely as men to retire into poverty. And don’t get me started on domestic violence and rape.
Tell me which of the above best represents your culture and core values?
The article I linked to does beg to differ, despite you claiming it doesn’t. It points out that there have been many studies done that prove it’s a myth.
As long as it’s fun to keep poking the bear. If the defacto leader of the left (at least until last November) doesn’t truly care about any sort of pay gap, why on earth should I?
Saudi Arabia signed it? Where it’s legal to beat your wife? Egypt signed it, where you can actually kill your wife legally? And why do you think we should sign it again?
Here’s a better question to ask over all of those you attempt to obfuscate the true situation with – what right in this country do men have that women don’t? The answer is none.
However, there is one protection Women have in the US that Men do not. Abortion. As despicable as it would be if a man did it, there is no severing of parental rights for a man if a woman chooses to have a child. He better get used to paying up for the next 18 years. But if a woman wants to kill her unborn child, well, that’s not supposed to be any of his business.
When men are obligated to pay half the cost of prenatal care for both the woman and the child, we can maybe talk about fairness. Lets not even start with the physical toll of pregnancy and labor on the woman’s body v. the man’s.
You will have noticed that maternal leave is one of the issues women are striking about. More civilized countries have parental leave, for both the father and the mother. Guess how that sort of policy correlates with abortion rates.
As things stand, your health insurance will cover Viagra but not birth control. Again, you want to lower abortion rates, maybe work on that.
You choose to get pregnant, and your employer should be forced to pay you? That’s idiotic. If you are competitive in the marketplace, then employers should offer it as a perk to keep top talent. The government has no place in this equation.
Dagnabit, not sure how I screwed up the quote like that.
By your logic, only top talent should have kids? Not, say, a waitress or grocery store cashier…
Btw, I read your wage gap article. It only says the 77c number is a myth, not that there’s no gap. Did you read mine?
Lastly, how does poking the bear help with Thrill’s experiment in civility?
You are the one who brought up fairness in re: abortion, snowflake. I see you have no snappy comeback for my proposal that men pay for prenatal care equally.
And you don’t see how the fact that one party has to pay a major physical toll while the other does not influences the decision-making calculus.
Is this because you really don’t understand the impact or because you do and don’t care?
I think the shopping was meant to be more like small business Saturday, as opposed to ‘math is hard, let’s go shopping.’ The actual platform called for not spending any money/contributing to the economy, with the exception of minority owned businesses, if necessary.
If no one at your job would miss you, you might be one of the women zoom thinks should work harder. And, obviously, smile more.
Btw, this thing was planned before the crazy man got elected (last October.) It was an international plan, not started in the US.
That’s an easy one. If a man wants parental rights, how about they have to provide prenatal care?
As long as women have an out that men do not, the law is not applied equally. It’s the only case in this country where that happens. Women have more than equal rights, despite the rest of the obfuscation you attempted.
The law is not applied equally because of the biological reality that women carry children inside their bodies and incur the risk and physical consequences.
It’s something that men are not able to do.
It’s the exact justification as the rules preventing women from serving in combat. As soon as a man is physically able to carry a baby (like some trans men have,) he gets to decide the outcome of the pregnancy.
Read the wage gap article. It’s not obfuscation just because you disagree.
So by that reasoning, if a man suffers from Couvade syndrome (sympathetic pregnancy) while his wife/girlfriend/whatever is pregnant, then he should get protection under the law, and some say in the pregnancy? Interesting concept. The point still stands that there is no law in this country that doesn’t equally protect women as it does men, but the converse cannot be said.
No, it’s obfuscation because it doesn’t do anything to disprove my point. If you want to get into a link battle…I’m really not interested.
That’s actually not how logic works, and has nothing to do with what I said.
And you said you read my article. Funny. She was talking about the pay gap myth in general (including the title of the article), and further delved into the 78 cent number because it was being touted by the White House at the time. Then further points out that the studies used to get to the 78 cent number are not treating apples with apples.
Yeah, unfortunately mine already debunked that as CNN doesn’t break down hours worked in any of their statistics.
Thrill’s a big boy that can handle his site how he wants to. Poking the bear with hypocritical liberal positions is going to happen a lot if I’m around, because there are a lot of examples of such. If he doesn’t like that, well, he can ban me.
It does disprove your point. It controls for factors like skill and length is service, like your article demands, and there’s still a gap.
A man suffering from sympathetic pregnancy should get protection under the law like anyone else with a mental health issue. Unless there’s a way to keep the baby by having him carry it in his imaginary uterus.
What you are proposing is akin to letting a woman make a decision about her husband’s vasectomy.
Maybe you guys will get a kick out of this one:
https://twitter.com/Thrill_RVS/status/839892068856123392
I disagree. We can leave it at that unless you want to dig further…the bottom is wherever you want to stop digging.
Only if you’re ignorant or intentionally obtuse. If women have a way out (abortion), men would get a way out (giving up of parental rights, and thus any child support) if there was equal protection under the law.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. After our second child, my wife went sent me an email with info on vasectomies, and a couple of days later she told me I was booked for an appointment. My reaction was, I guess we’re not having any more kids. Pretty convenient actually.
So you choose to ignore facts when they don’t fit your POV. Duly noted.
But even someone like you must see the difference between the two situations you are trying to equate. In the first instance, there is no child involved. In the second instance there is a child. Child support is not about women’s rights.
Pot, Kettle, etc.
I’ve consider vasectomy to be the unspoken rule in exchange for several decades of birth control. Seems fair.
Correct
A married man should not get a vasectomy without his wife’s approval. A married woman should not get an abortion without her husband’s approval.
I want to applaud the organizers of this event. It is such a grassroots effort…Not.
Can you imagine if the Koch brothers did something like this?
I don’t think Zurvan meant married people when he brought this up.
I do agree with you, overall, but if the parties cannot agree, surely the tie break goes to the holder of the body in question, in both cases.
I know you are, but what am I?
Also, I am rubber, you are glue…
I need to wait until my 7 year old wakes up to ask if kids these days have any new ones.
Don’t they? http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/05/13103/kochs-grassroots-leadership-academy-training-astroturf-army
#sarcasmfail
Such a fascinating website, clearly trustworthy without any risk of bias.
Pointing out that you ignored my facts every bit as much as I did yours is a child’s response? Interesting. Perhaps you should let the adults talk if you need to query your 7 year old on how to respond.
I was just trying to bow out with humor out what’s become a pointless debate since your arguments boil down to ‘I disagree and I refuse to address any argument that doesn’t fit my narrative, so let’s move the goalposts.’
As I’ve mentioned before, I am not interested in a YouTube comments-style discussion.
Do you really not know about it or are you being an ass?
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/10/07/charles-david-koch-donald-trump-afp-503496.html
I can get you more links, if you wish
Then perhaps you should step up the quality of your responses.
Tie break? I think the whole point of needing permission means you can’t do it without the other party’s. Both should be in agreement for the procedure to take place, otherwise it doesn’t.
I don’t want anyone having any misconceptions about my commitment to free speech. At some point, I’ll get our Terms of Service finished and posted to provide some clarity, but let me explain a few things to help out for now:
1. This is not my thread to moderate. Even when it is one of my threads, I won’t generally step in unless someone is getting threatened, someone is clearly trolling, or someone tries to dox somebody else. People are going to get insulted from time to time on this blog. It’s the way of the world (wide web) and it isn’t prohibited on this blog. You fuckers.
2. I’ve never banned anyone nor have I ever tried to get anyone else banned from any of the four blogs I’ve ever served on as an author. In spite of my preachiness, I’m really laid-back.
3. Nobody is bound by the civility rules I hold myself to on here, unless it’s a Discourses thread or another on which I specifically ask for civility from participants. I do ASK for civility, mostly because I don’t like to see good discussion threads get killed by flamewars, but I don’t enforce it with muh banhammer.
Unless it’s one of the dangerous/illegal things I mentioned above, please don’t invoke me on threads and understand that I don’t hold commenters and RVS authors to the same standard. I do try to create a climate of respect, but you people don’t work for me and I don’t pay you. Nor can I give you electric shocks through my tablet.
My own opinion is that “you get what you give.” When I want honest discussion and the chance to change someone on the other side’s mind, I prefer to be friendly. I find that people tend to listen to people they like.
I’m no saint. The Internet is littered with examples of me throwing insults around over the years but I’ll tell you now that it never got me anywhere.
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