To "level the playing field" do we really need to "slant" the playing field?

Question

The false empowerment of this age lowers standards to let women into fields that require physical strength & affirmative action gives women an automatic "leg up" over men.

Why can't natural ability be the deciding factor?

Why can't people hire based on experience/talent/education & actual merit?

(Let me guess, the evil patriarchy would never hire women & they'd be forced into secretarial jobs or prostitution. )

Women are outnumbering men on college campuses. This means there will be more qualified women than men entering the workforce.

...& yet women still get the slots left open for them over men.

How slanted does the field need to get before the insanity stops?

"Equal opportunity" ...Remember that noble idea?

EDIT:

(wendy g)

I'd like to see these "articles." What you're talking about is illegal.

What you need to realize is that all of the "affirmative action" & "standards lowering" are COMPLETELY reinforcing the notion that women aren't good enough.

(bruce207)

The playing field will never be "equal" due to the fact that men & women will never be "equal." We're different with different strengths.

I'm not surprised there are so many "complaints" of discrimination. Our culture has been flooded with all sorts of feminist "patriarchal" theories about the oppressive male class. If a woman doesn't get the raise she expected, guess whose to blame? ...No, not herself who didn't perform to her boss's expectations....

Nope, men are to blame! Whew! ...for a minute there I thought the woman might have to take some personal responsibility.

If you want to talk about stereotypes, men are stereotypically lazy/sex-addicted/violent/oppressors... Any laws protecting men from discrimination?

EDIT:

(patios)
Physical strength is indeed still important.

Roads & bridges don't build themselves. It may appear this way from your air-conditioned office, but in the real world outside, things strength is key.

Police officers will always need to overpower perps. Firefighters will always need to carry people out of buildings. Our military forces will always need to employ ground combat in certain situations.

Your monkey bar analogy meant absolutely nothing. Our young boys are exactly like they've always been & their muscles develop as they always have.

You need to step into the real world it seems.

(Laela)

Equal opportunity was the old goal. It seems perfectly fair that women have all of the options men do.

No one has a problem with this.

The fight for equal outcome is the fight to lower standards so that women can enter fields they previously wouldn't be able to.

The fight for equal outcome is also the idea that we need the same amount of women scientists as male scientists & tries to goad women into the sciences even when they wouldn't have done that for themselves with their own free choice.

The fight is casting aside natural talent, normal hiring/school admission practices as well as natural interest.

If a woman wasn't going to enter the sciences that should have been that. ...But instead we now have "women only" scholarships that coerce women into science.

What's wrong with "equal opportunity?" When will we stop propping women up so they're ALWAYS getting a leg up?

Answer 1

Sure - equal opportunity like having open positions posted at your work site when it doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize they've already decided who gets the job - hey, they posted it, didn't they?

Everyone has an equal opportunity to APPLY - which is where anything 'equal' stops. Noble indeed.

Answer 2

Let's be honest. Natural ability can't be the deciding factor because there would be cases where some or most women wouldn't qualify, and then they'd start crying and screaming discrimination. Just like the race card.

People can't only hire based on experience/talent/education for the same reason. Not to mention a lot of employers are mentally unstable and don't deserve the job they have. Oh, and quotas...

The insanity will never stop. It's going to keep slanting until we all kill each other.

I have another analogy. See it as one person being taller than another. The shorter person stands on a stool and claims to be the same height. Period.

Answer 3

..."And yet women still get the slots left open for them over men."
From what I understand, this is not true. I've read several articles suggesting that many schools have covertly done away with affirmative action statutes for women, in light of the recent attendance trends, giving them to men instead. The whole purpose, initially, was to "even out" attendance. Now they are trying to do that by gearing it in the opposite direction.

As for the rest...you're joking, right? One need only take a momentary glimpse at this board on a daily basis to see that the attitude that women "aren't as smart, or motivated, or good enough" is still very prevalent. Women are succeeding in school, but if the attitudes represented here are indicative of anything women might face in the wide world, then we have a long way to go before equality is acheived.

Answer 4

If the empowerment is false so shall be the strength of which it solely depends on; from which natural ability, being stronger always has the upper hand. To understand everything that is going on is to undestand the true meaning behind these two facts:
1963 The Equal Pay Act makes it illegal for companies to pay different rates to women and men who do the same work.
The Presidential Commission on the status of women, appointed by President Kennedy and chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, releases a report that details inequalities faced by women. Kennedy follows with a presidential order demanding that the civil service make hiring decisions “solely on the basis of ability” and “without regard to sex.”
1964 Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of race or sex. Never before had it been illegal for a company to refuse to hire or promote a woman just because of her sex. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is created to enforce the new law.
Yes, just exactly what is meant? Does it really mean that women are just as physically strong as men? Does it mean that women can pick up the slack? Just exactly what does it mean? Perhaps we have equality opportunity, yet at the same time we have no idea of what it is. Perhaps it was done, in truth to keep hoards of women from trampling the White House lawn, who knows.

Answer 5

Well, yes. Sometimes it might be necessary to slant the field. Picture a flat board with all the marbles on one side. To equalize the playing field, one might slant it, so that some of the marbles roll to the other side. But one must perhaps know when there is no longer a need for the slant- and release the board to lie flat, lest ALL the marbles roll to the other side.

Hope the analogy helps.

Answer 6

The playing field is not equal to start out with. Things like job discrimination which still will exist, there are over 23,000 complaints of gender discrimination a year and probably hundreds of thousands of unreported cases.

then there is a thing called stereotype threat which, has been show to reduce performance of any group (even white males) but occurs primarily in minority or marginalized groups like females.

Not to mention inherent subconscious double standards where women will be more severely disliked when giving negative information to people compared to men.

Your fallacy is that the playing field is equal.

Answer 7

Other than firefighting and similar occupations, what you've described doesn't concern me. Women will step up to the plate in my opinion. We need to make sure we continue to call them out on double standards in their romantic relationships, because that's where the real problem is. It's the last thing they want to face and then work on.

Answer 8

The only "insanity" is found in those who are so congealed unto themselves and their paradigms that they presume the right to slant the world to suit them and them alone. Take men, for example. Although physical strength is no longer of value in a modern world in which no one is allowed per law (OSHA) to lift more than fifty pounds without special training and equipment and supervision, many men persist at slanting the world in such perverse ways as to lock out and judge people based on physical strength and adult male body proportions, as though the adult male body is THE STANDARD and everything else is a "slant"! LOL. Some people are so self-centered and egotistical as to foil the fair rise of others with such nonsense.

For example, say you have a task to physically condition thirty four year old boys as a psychology graduate school project. The boys' main therapeutic goal is upper body conditioning which will be measured by how long they can suspend and pass hand-to-hand from overhead bars. This goal will help the boys in that each of them has recognized problems in school with confidence. And, each of them has expressed a profound sense of failure for not being able to do hand-over-hand upper body activities. In other words, they feel like losers because some dork in each of their lives has ridiculed them for being pansies on the monkey bars in the playground.

Now, YOU, having a desire to help others, hence your masters work in Psychology, must design an exercise program that gives these boys a chance to potentiate their upper body strength. So, you herd them all outdoors your first day together and watch them romp in a playground. When they flock to the overhead bars, you observe and listen closely. A few climb up, grasp hold of the first bar and dangle bravely. But, their muscles are weak and they do not even try to reach for the next bar. They just scream hysterically for you to come rescue them. Which, you do, of course, because you don't want to get sued.

Later that day, you and your girlfriend are walking through the same playground and you're telling her all about this project. She dangles seductively from the ladder on the overhead bars apparatus and listens, batting her eyelashes in the proper way girls learn to indicate adoration and rapt attention as you yammer on about how weak these boys are. You say, "They wouldn't even TRY. What do you think leads some kids to be such quitters?" To which she secretly sighs and says, as she reaches unsuccessfully once more most half-heartedly as yet another child who never could cross that hallowed ground from bar-to-bar her entire life, "Perhaps, if the bars were closer so that something other than an adult or a gorilla could reach the next one, they might actually play on the bars and grow to be as strong as YOUUUUU, my mighty mass of physical strength and perfection." Flutter, flutter of eyelashes.

But, YOU then whine, "How slanted does the field need to get before the insanity stops?"

Answer 9

Q: "& affirmative action gives women an automatic "leg up" over men.
Why can't natural ability be the deciding factor?"

A: Correlation is not to be confused with causation. Repeat after me: Correlation is not to be confused with causation... repeat after me...

The 3 posters above articulated it so well, why mess with perfection?

Answer 10

How many times have we feminists made it clear that we don't want our standards lowered? Why don't you attack the people setting the standards instead of us?