straight white male: the lowest difficulty setting there is

[beansmum]

Just wanted to share this article......
jezebel.com/5911165/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is

haha so thats where my friend got it from!

I posted this just after you it seems!

Yes, Kim is right. The social group who are currently the lowest academic achievers are white w/c boys. That said, I also see the article's point...

The logical thing would not be to compare working class males with middle class women but with working class women - all things being equal.....

Low academic achievement doesn't always necessarily equate to low career achievement and I suspect there are more trad "male" blue collar jobs than "female" that result in better pay.

I remember ages ago reading some telegraph/guardian article saying that the biggest pay gap is not between middle class men and women but working class men and women.

It's a like for like comparison.
Compare the white male school drop out no-gooder with the white female school drop out no-gooder.
He will be a homeless druggie and she will be a homeless druggie prostitute at much more risk of abuse and maybe getting murdered.
The well educated guy will have more open doors than the well educated female.

I agree that class is an important dimension. I think that is mentioned in the comments in reponse to the statement. It is from a US website, and as a (sweeping) generalisation, I would say that less time is spent scrutinising the impact of class and economic situations on people's lives in the US than it is here, as we are a slightly less to the right than they are.

In the UK I think many people generally have in mind class, sex and/or gender, disability, sexual orientation and ethnic group. Clearly you could on forever adding more differences between people though.

"Of course if you compare like with like, it's easier to be a straight white male."

Exactly.

People who want to deny sex inequality, invariably don't compare like with like though. They always say "how can you say that a white western woman is less privileged than a rickshaw driver in India?"

When what they should be comparing, is the rickshaw driver with his wife/ daughter/ mother/ sister. Just by being a man, he's better off than any of those, all other things being equal.

And the white woman in the west, just by being a woman, is not as well off as her brother/ father/ husband/ son, all other things being equal.

No-one who doesn't want to "get it" about equality, ever makes like with like comparisons.

kim - did you read the article? It's not a statement that all straight white males have life easy. That statement would be untrue, obviously. Can't be bothered explaining what the article actually says, but you pretty much summed it up: "if you compare like with like, it's easier to be a straight white male".

kodaly wrote - "the first thought for a Feminist opening her drapes on a morning and looking out should be to see if she can see ANYTHING that was made by a woman."

How about : herself and all the other people whom spent 9 months inside a mother's womb?

Women produced the men who built that stuff Kodaly.

And they wipe up the shit produced by them. And do the dirtiest jobs in the world, try being a loo cleaner. And remember that men made laws to prevent women making their own living and we are living with the historical residue of those laws.

You sound like a woman hater.

What are you doing on Mumsnet, if you think women are parasites?

We produce the human race and nurture it from our bodies. We do most of the work that involves producing and socialising the next generation of human beings. Most men are happy to dump all that work on us and then tell us it's not work and we do nothing.

And women haters hve the cheek to call us parasites.

I'm not sure I understand your point kodaly. And I'm fairly certain you didn't understand mine.

Also why does Kodaly think the people who build houses and roads are white males?

Some of them are black, surely?

But they fight very hard to ensure that women don't get into civil engineering. The level of opposition faced by women in jobs where men dominate, is incredible. They want to keep us out, so that they can retain the right to call us parasites.

It would appear women created this forum on which you're spouting such woman hating shite. So do fuck off.

Koadaly, that is rather presumptive of you, just because those things traditionally involved the labour of men does not mean that there have not been women involved in there production at any level.
Where I used to live I actually watched the house being built and a women doing the roofing and the guttering.
Can I suggest you read this article before venturing your opinion on such matters in the future:
biscuit

Also, who was looking after those men's children while they built the roads?

For free?

I made my drapes, does that count? And my garden fence and my son. Otherwise I'm pretty useless. Most of the women I know work though. But just as lawyers, cleaners, doctors, teachers, uni lecturers. I guess it's not like they've MADE anything. parasites.

Most clothes are and have been made by women historically. Doesn't count. Most food grown, gathered, prepared, cooked and served by women. Doesn't count.

Nothing a woman does, counts. Because we're parasites doncha know. Whereas men are marvellous big creators. I don't know why they don't just kill us all and get on with running the Earth without us. But then they'd had to do their own laundry and produce their own children and they wouldn't like the first and wouldn't be able to do the second. Which is where the oldest hatred stems from.

The ill-informed myth that women don't do tough jobs like construction or road building has been made before in the feminist section of Mumsnet. Unfortunately, it probably won't be the last time either.

Here are just a few examples showing women doing these jobs:

Photos of female construction workers

Photo of a female construction worker

Another photo of a female construction worker

Another photo of a female construction worker

Article about a female construction worker