Phyllis Schlafly has apparently not yet had her fill of saying really stupidly anti-feminist things. She's at it again, arguing that this whole "pay gap" thing between men and women is some combination of not really that big a deal and a good thing. Here's a nice solid debunking of her claims from the new Vox.com. But as a feminist man, I just had one point I wanted to add that Vox's thoroughly empirical work didn't really capture.
Schlafly suggests that men prefer to be the higher earner in a couple, while women prefer to have their (male) partner be the higher earner. This, she argues, would mean that in a world without a gender pay gap, half of all women would be unable to find a suitable husband. Now, that's some damn shoddy internal logic, for one thing. If the income distributions for men and women were identical, you could just line up all the men and line up all the women from highest-earning on down, and then have Man #1 marry Woman #2, Man #2 marry Woman #3, etc., and the only people left without a potential mate would be the highest-earning woman and the lowest-earning man. That is, obviously, absurd, but it's just such a glaring logical flaw in Schlafly's "argument" that I couldn't resist pointing it out.
But my main point is different. The Vox piece notes that Schlafly seems to be somewhat correct that a lower wage gap seems to correlate with less enthusiasm for getting married early and often. But I daresay there's an alternate causal mechanism for this phenomenon that has nothing to do with the innate preference of both sides for the man to be the breadwinner. Basically, it seems to me that an awful lot of men don't really seem to go out of their way to be, y'know, kind or decent toward women, much at all. An awful lot of guys are at least somewhat, y'know, rapey. There's an unfortunately large segment of masculinity that really does seem to regard women as existing for the sole purpose of the convenience and pleasure of men. To put it bluntly, that whole complex of attitudes is probably not very attractive to the majority of women. To put it even more bluntly, you'd expect that the kind of guy who's open to essentially coercing a woman into being with him would also, therefore, need to use coercion to get a woman to be with him, at least in any sort of long-term capacity. Not necessarily coercion through physical violence or chemical incapacitation, though of course both of those are disgustingly prevalent.
No, coercion can be a lot subtler than that. And for a lot of human history, including up until pretty recently and still to a large extent today, the coercion guys have used to get laid is economic in nature. Men are the breadwinners, and if women want to share in the fruits of their labors, well, they need to marry one of them. And here we see what I would imagine explains most of this apparent statistical connection between the wage gap and marriage rates. The more women are able to be economically independent, the less reason they have to even consider getting with a man who is--aside from his bank account--totally unappealing. If they find a guy who is appealing, in ways beyond the financial, then they'll still be interested in him, and maybe even in marrying him, naturally enough. But because being single is a less desperate situation, because your lack of a good romantic partner is not compounded by a serious impediment to your ability to live a life of decent material comfort, there's just a lot less reason to settle for a guy who isn't willing to be basically decent to you (and then some).
If this is right, of course, there should be a long-term correction coming. That is to say, if broader trends in society make women a lot less desperate to find a guy, any guy, just someone to take care of them, men will have a much stronger set of incentives telling them to shape up. Hopefully, therefore, female economic empowerment would over time lead to a more enlightened set of behavioral norms among men. Give it long enough and some formerly oafish men might discover that it's not so bad being nice to women. They might actually discover that, hey, a lot of women are actually really cool people once you get to know them, and stop just trying to screw them by any means necessary. And if that happened, then marriage rates would presumably come back up. And, I daresay, divorce rates would be substantially lower at the end of this process than at the beginning, because more people would be getting together, and married, for the right reasons.
So where Phyllis Schlafly sees the end of civilization, I see the potential for a feedback loop that could make civilization a lot better. That's the hope, anyway.
Showing posts with label Phyllis Schlafly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Phyllis Schlafly. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Gratuitous Swipe at Phyllis Schlafly
I happened to notice Matt Yglesias tweeting a link to this piece by Phyllis Schlafly, noted unintentional comedian. She's at her unintentional-comic best, arguing quite brazenly that Republicans must oppose immigration because immigrants all vote for Democrats. It's honestly quite hilarious; you should go read it, and laugh at it. I have two somewhat more serious points to make about it, though, one of which is on the issue of immigration and one of which ties in with my last post.
First, Schlafly argues that she doesn't oppose immigration for racial reasons, since even new European immigrants seem to be left-wing. Furthermore, this fact, that immigrants and children of recent immigrants are more left-wing than the existing median of the society to which they immigrate, seems common to all Western democracies. I would simply like to note that there's a reason for that, a reason rooted in what conservatism has become in the modern world: an apologia for entrenched power. Immigrants by definition enter a society which already has a power structure and one in which they have no pre-existing position. The faction which generally seeks to keep power where it lies and uphold existing power structures, even when power is quite significantly concentrated or when those in power got their power unjustly, will naturally not tend to appeal to their concerns. Immigrants, then, have perhaps the most fundamental motive of any group to turn to the faction supporting the deconstruction of existing power dynamics, and of a generally more egalitarian and inclusive distribution of power throughout society.
Second, toward the end of her piece Schlafly describes limiting immigration as something which must happen "[i]f the Republican party is to remain a party that is conservative and nationally competitive." It is no coincidence, I think, that the thing she's arguing for to achieve both of those goals is one which would, she hopes, keep the nation from getting less conservative. But it's too late. The modern Republican Party's very definition of conservatism is one which the American middle finds flatly unacceptable. Republicans have had amazing success getting people to look past that basic fact, and vote for them anyway; they may yet continue to do so in this year's midterms. But in Presidential years, when turnout is uniformly high even among less-empowered groups (see above), it is no longer possible for a party to be "conservative" the way Schlafly and her ideological kin use the word and also competitive. It's too late. And yeah, a big part of why it's too late is America's changing racial identity, the long-term decline in the percentage of the population who can reasonably identify with the historically-powerful rather than the historically-powerless. There is doubtless much more at work as well, though; something must be forcing the Republicans to define themselves in such unacceptable terms rather than adjusting to remain competitive.
Like I said in my last piece, I could write a dozen blog posts about why this is going on and barely scratch the surface. I just thought it was interesting that basically the very next thing I read after writing that post was one hell of an illustration of my point: Republicans are at this point so very wedded to a truly radical ideology, they're admitting as much and acknowledging the need to change the composition of the electorate to their advantage, rather than, I don't know, trying to convince the actual median voter that they should vote Republican. God forbid they have to do that, that the majority of the people might actually get to choose how to govern themselves. Oh, and of course the great thing about admitting it is that you just make it worse; you do very little but send to these Hispanics and Asians and Muslims the very strong message that no, the Republican Party does not like you, it does not think you can be real Americans, and it does not want you here, as such. Thanks, Phyllis, for saying out loud the really, really embarrassing thing you're all thinking.
First, Schlafly argues that she doesn't oppose immigration for racial reasons, since even new European immigrants seem to be left-wing. Furthermore, this fact, that immigrants and children of recent immigrants are more left-wing than the existing median of the society to which they immigrate, seems common to all Western democracies. I would simply like to note that there's a reason for that, a reason rooted in what conservatism has become in the modern world: an apologia for entrenched power. Immigrants by definition enter a society which already has a power structure and one in which they have no pre-existing position. The faction which generally seeks to keep power where it lies and uphold existing power structures, even when power is quite significantly concentrated or when those in power got their power unjustly, will naturally not tend to appeal to their concerns. Immigrants, then, have perhaps the most fundamental motive of any group to turn to the faction supporting the deconstruction of existing power dynamics, and of a generally more egalitarian and inclusive distribution of power throughout society.
Second, toward the end of her piece Schlafly describes limiting immigration as something which must happen "[i]f the Republican party is to remain a party that is conservative and nationally competitive." It is no coincidence, I think, that the thing she's arguing for to achieve both of those goals is one which would, she hopes, keep the nation from getting less conservative. But it's too late. The modern Republican Party's very definition of conservatism is one which the American middle finds flatly unacceptable. Republicans have had amazing success getting people to look past that basic fact, and vote for them anyway; they may yet continue to do so in this year's midterms. But in Presidential years, when turnout is uniformly high even among less-empowered groups (see above), it is no longer possible for a party to be "conservative" the way Schlafly and her ideological kin use the word and also competitive. It's too late. And yeah, a big part of why it's too late is America's changing racial identity, the long-term decline in the percentage of the population who can reasonably identify with the historically-powerful rather than the historically-powerless. There is doubtless much more at work as well, though; something must be forcing the Republicans to define themselves in such unacceptable terms rather than adjusting to remain competitive.
Like I said in my last piece, I could write a dozen blog posts about why this is going on and barely scratch the surface. I just thought it was interesting that basically the very next thing I read after writing that post was one hell of an illustration of my point: Republicans are at this point so very wedded to a truly radical ideology, they're admitting as much and acknowledging the need to change the composition of the electorate to their advantage, rather than, I don't know, trying to convince the actual median voter that they should vote Republican. God forbid they have to do that, that the majority of the people might actually get to choose how to govern themselves. Oh, and of course the great thing about admitting it is that you just make it worse; you do very little but send to these Hispanics and Asians and Muslims the very strong message that no, the Republican Party does not like you, it does not think you can be real Americans, and it does not want you here, as such. Thanks, Phyllis, for saying out loud the really, really embarrassing thing you're all thinking.
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