The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Social Justice’ and the Death Gap

Posted on | December 17, 2018 | 1 Comment

“Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, ‘social justice.'”
Thomas Sowell

Whenever you encounter a leftist advocating “equality,” you can be sure you are dealing with a fool. No such thing as “equality” has ever existed in human history, and none of the policies suggested by the Left can ever bring about this impossible condition. This is why, as the Nobel Prize-winning Friedrich Hayek famously explained, “social justice” is a mirage. Any policy agenda aimed at achieving this utopian goal is doomed to failure, although it does usually succeed at inciting envy. Because envy can be so easily mobilized as a political force, however, the Left continually tells us that our misfortunes are the result of an unjust inequality: Rich people are hogging up all the money, white people are the beneficiaries of “privilege” and, of course, as every feminist knows, men enjoy the wrongful advantages of the “wage gap.”

Yes, it’s unfair that my son with a high-school diploma earns more roofing houses than the typical feminist with her Gender Studies degree can earn as a barista at Starbucks. On the other hand, being a roofer is far more dangerous than serving coffee (or writing term papers about the patriarchy), and this danger may explain the pay differential:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that, in 2015, men dominated the 20 most dangerous occupations in the United States. Logging is the most dangerous job in the U.S., followed by fishing. Mining is the 20th most dangerous profession. More men than women occupied these jobs by anywhere from 85.4 to 99.9 percent.
Still, very few feminists, or anyone really, make a stink about the gender gap in casualties on the job. Perhaps because men earn so much doing it? Or they don’t deserve recognition because the patriarchy discovered logging and it’s getting what it deserved? Whatever the reason, it’s rarely mentioned, certainly not by feminists. I didn’t see “safety at work” anywhere in the #HumanRightsDay memes or tweets — but I did see calls for healthcare, contraception, and awareness of global warming as human rights.
Jordan Peterson, America’s favorite Canadian psychologist and gender rabble-rouser, wrote about this recently on his blog. He said studies, and his anecdotal research (he’s traveled to Scandinavia several times this last year), show that all this work to make men and women more equal has actually had the opposite effect. “Societies become more gender-equal in their social and political policies, men and women become more different in certain aspects, rather than more similar,” he wrote. However, when it comes to work and safety at work, men really do fill roles that are not only dangerous, but essential for a functioning, safe society.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

 

As you will note from the chart above, roofing is one of the top 5 most dangerous jobs and the workforce is 97.7% male. Why do you think that feminists are more concerned about increasing the percentage of women in high-tech jobs than in helping women become roofers — or working in the logging or fishing industries? Isn’t obvious that these are jobs women don’t want to do? Toting heavy bundles of shingles up a ladder is rigorous exercise, but women would rather pay money for a yoga class or a gym membership than to get paid for the kind of exercise my son does, and yet feminists believe women are victims of discrimination.

What feminists want is not “equality,” in the sense of basic fairness — the equal application of recognized standards of merit — but rather they seek to impose quotas in hiring for certain categories of employment. Feminists use a rhetoric of “diversity” and “inclusion” to justify discrimination against males in certain occupational fields. For example, what percentage of degrees in sociology and psychology go to male students? Less than 20%, because young men have learned that they cannot get hired in those fields. Academic jobs in the humanities and social sciences have become practically a “no-go zone” for males during the past two decades. Because there are no employment opportunities for men as university professors of English or psychology, therefore male students don’t even bother enrolling in those majors as undergraduates.

It is only such jobs — sitting at a desk in a nice air-conditioned office — that feminists care about when advocating “equality” and, by filing lawsuits over dubious claims of sexist discrimination, feminists have succeeded in compelling universities and corporations to institute de facto hiring quotas that favor women. It has been alleged, for example, that Google implemented a policy of not hiring (indeed, not even considering for job interviews) white male engineers. A deliberate policy of anti-male discrimination is what feminists endorse in the pursuit of “diversity,” and the fact that women are now a sizable majority (57%) of U.S. college students shows how feminists have succeed in discouraging men from pursuing higher education. My son is working in an occupational field with an on-the-job fatality rate more than three times that of police officers, and do you suppose that any feminist (e.g., Jessica Valenti) would give a damn if he fell off a roof tomorrow?

Don’t be absurd. Feminists want all men to die. If Jessica Valenti’s husband committed suicide, she’d be celebrating his death.



 

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One Response to “‘Social Justice’ and the Death Gap”

  1. News of the Week (December 23rd, 2018) | The Political Hat
    December 23rd, 2018 @ 7:05 pm

    […] “Social Justice” and the Death Gap Whenever you encounter a leftist advocating “equality,” you can be sure you are dealing with a fool. No such thing as “equality” has ever existed in human history, and none of the policies suggested by the Left can ever bring about this impossible condition. This is why, as the Nobel Prize-winning Friedrich Hayek famously explained, “social justice” is a mirage. […]