From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: More Hallucinations (was: Women as Victims)
Summary: -- all _kinds_ of hallucinations --
Date: 10 Oct 92 05:24:23 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile

gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
| >So what is it you want to change, Robert?  "Preferential"
| >hiring gave this little fragment of this big corporation
| >a 6:2 proportion of men to women in management.  This is 
| >now okay, or it's not.  Are you saying that "preferential" 
| >hiring was a good thing in the past?

sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer) writes:
| The important but unstated assumption in your argument is that all jobs
| "should" be held equally by women and men, and that when this is not the
| case, it is somehow "wrong." This is a premise that I reject completely.
| In a free society, women and men will make very different choices, and
| *why* they make these choices is not nearly so important as the fact
| that they DO. If preferential hiring of women still left men with a
| 6:2 advantage in management over women in this instance (25% female),
| then without it the number might perhaps tend toward 20% or 15% or
| whatever. And whatever number that may be is the "right" number, not
| some artificial 50% based solely on an envy-ridden ideology.

It's not envy that makes women want to get into the 
managerial jobs; that's where the money and status are.
The term "free" is very ambiguous; we are free in some
ways, but we are not free of the ways in which our 
society structures itself, and especially not free of 
the way it structures its economy.  In some kind of 
communistic state where every job had the same rewards, 
it might be that women would choose different jobs 
than men, but we're not likely to find out from 
experience any time soon.  Under American-style
capitalism, people -- male or female -- are very
strongly conditioned to seek "material" rewards, and
most women respond to this as much as most men do.

However, if your essentialist arguments were anything
but speculation, it would be a strong argument for the
women to support a much more authoritarian state than I
think either of us would care for.  Should I run that
one out, or can you see it without my doing so?

I must point out that you still haven't answered my
question about the two women who are the result of past
"preferential" hiring.  The previous form of preference
gave just about 100% of the managerial and engineering
jobs to men -- the company alleged that women "didn't
want them."  Then when a bunch of women who didn't want
the jobs sued the company to get them, and the govern-
ment also told the compnay it might lose some contracts
if it didn't change its ways, it discovered a whole lot
of women who _did_ want the jobs.  Then it discovered
that they could _do_ the jobs.  Revolution!  But 
according to you, it's wrong.  Now, do you want to
undo this past wrong, or what?  I mean, wrong is wrong,
isn't it?

rs:
| Imagine what would happen if some future president were to name Andrea
| Dworkin as "Czar of Gender Equality", and she dictated that 50% of
| all manicurists and hairdressers had to be male.  And, since there
| were not enough volunteers, Uncle Sam was calling YOU! (Then you wake
| up, in a cold sweat.) But the point being, you cannot "equalize" the
| trades and professions without massive degrees of coercion.

That's certainly an interesting fantasy.  Do you have
many of these?

gf:
| >                           ... one's qualifications are
| >a small part of the decision as to who gets hired and 
| >promoted and who doesn't ....

rs:
| Only those businesses whose highest priority is to earn a *profit*.
| They'll hire whichever qualified candidate is willing to do the
| work for the lowst pay. And if, as Warren Farrell points out, women
| *really were* (as in the fairy tale) paid 59 cents on the dollar
| for doing the same work as men, then corporations EVERYWHERE would be
| dumping overpaid men on the streets, and hiring women in their place.

I think profit is often secondary to power; I've seen 
people destroy their companies rather than abandon their
prejudices.  But this article is long enough, and the 
question is not particularly about feminism.
-- 
 )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )