My family has been listening to Jordan Peterson

[leafinthewind]

My folks (and my brother) have somehow got really into Jordan Peterson. It's been a bit if a surprise tbh. We don't live close by, so it's slipped in without me realising. They think none of the problems in the world are 'sexed' - that women choose to earn less, choose not to run the country, choose to do the lion's share of the housework and child care. They think women control the majority of family resources, even if they don't earn an income. Essentially, they see men as real victims and women as play-acting victimhood.

My brother said that women must be choosing to run the world this way, because men never would. He thinks that men and women are naturally drawn to different areas of action/inaction. Women care about cobwebs; men want to work overtime; women prefer to do the childcare; women want to do care work; other women keep the wages for care work low because they want cheap care for their children/relatives. My mum thinks women oppress ourselves with no input from men.

It is pretty clear that men earn more than women mostly because they work more. I think they also get a payment for risk-taking - though I'm not completely sure now much male risk-taking behaviour is learned/social rewarded and how much is truly innate. Actually I think some probably IS innate, and that men will remain over-represented in risk-taking even as we move towards equality. So I conclude that the pay gap between men and women may remain as a 'wage for risk' even once we have solved other problems. This doesn't mean that we should stop trying to fix things, though.

I don't know where I'm going with this, but I'm astonished that intelligent, well-educated people can look around, see the number of women at the top of politics/business/the media, and think that it's all really OK. Thanks for listening.

Sorry, the lost me at “women care about cobwebs.” 😂😂😂😂

😂 Computer, no kidding, right?!

I’ve dipped into a it of Peterson, and I’m nowhere near well educated enough to completely verify or rebut his positions. What I will say is that analysis of why there is a pay gap isn’t the same as saying we shouldn’t bother closing it. However to achieve that one must surely have the right diagnosis first surely?

I mean I’m not going to argue that sexism doesn’t exist as clearly it does, but I don’t think it’s wrong to question how fundamental it is in holding women back. For example there is a lot made of women in STEM so ok fair enough, if you don’t as much of a deficit in bio-sciences and indeed there are more some studying medicine than me now. Unles someone can explain why male physicists are a magnitude MORE sexist than biologists so much as to affect female numbers in that discipline then I’d be inclined to look for other factors to explain the shortfall.

See Dervel I agree with you - so I don't want to just push back blindly at them. But they just don't accept that women are making choices (pro care work, anti STEM, pro childcare, anti upper management) because the playing field isn't level. They think women would prefer to earn less and work less than men, and clean and care more than men even if everything else were equal. It seems mad to me, but there we are.

They're marginally more receptive when I point out that this works badly for men too, but then they come round to "if this is bad for men, men can't be driving it, so it's not caused by some non-existent patriarchy, we all just need to take personal responsibility for ourselves and everything will be fine".

The reasons why there are fewer women in physics than biological sciences is going to be more complex than simply there being more unpleasant sexists in that field. Although I could believe that to be the case, given the public behaviour of some recent examples.

To challenge the "innate" business, you could point out countries where they have a different set of what is considered suitable for women. Some countries have very little issue with women IT, I think some Eastern European ones for example. Why is that if women's abilities are innate and linked to sex?

Or, you could leave them to it. I don't think I could be bothered to try to talk to people who hate women, and want to tell me why.

Biology vs. physics - here's a simple social explanation.

Back in my schooldays (girls' comp), biology O level was compulsory. The reasoning was that a science of some sort would look good on our UCAS forms/to employers, it was too complicated to timetable "at least one science, choose which one most appeals", and biology had the broadest appeal to girls.

So I found myself forced to take what (to me) was a useless O level in biology, because I wanted to do physical sciences (which I did - but at the cost of leaving me with a seriously skewed set of O levels, in itself likely to adversely impact on university applications).

So there was undoubtedly social pressure to do biology - in my case, quite overt, in your face compulsion - simply because I was a girl. Less overtly, I think it was seen as a suitable "girl's" science because the main "respectable" STEM career for a girl to go into back in those days was nursing.

So it's not as simple as "either physicists are more sexist than biologists" or "biology appeals to women's innate caring side" - in fact there's a whole historical and social set of reasons why women were steered towards biology.

If they think women end up with the shitty end of the stick by choice, I would wax lyrical that when they require care, you will be CHOOSING not to supply that care and maybe they should hope that their son will CHOOSE to provide it. And then point out that if they had expected you to do it and not him, that is what you mean by the playing field not being level, and women being pushed towards their supposed choices - which are often not really choices at all.

I’m sort of being a bit devil’s advocatey here, but I genuinely do not wish to frustrate. I am primarily here more to learn. I think precious few people in the world enjoy completely free choice and whilst I’m sure of that set of people more are men, but that doesn’t necessarily translate further down the hierarchy.

I know you can say it’s relative and that the further down the scale you go a woman at the same level is worse than a man in the same place, I believe (and I can’t emphasis this enough I don’t know and may well be in error), that is only half right. Taking those sleeping rough as I’m given to understand a woman sleeping rough is at significantly more risk relative to a man in the same situation, for depressingly obvious reasons, but then again there are way more men sleeping rough than women.

I’m not interested in getting bogged down with who has it worse (from a tit for tat debating perspective), but I do genuinely care about those who have fallen through society’s cracks whatever their gender. I do recognise that there are some subtle and not so subtle ways women are compromised uniquely and I’d never dream of detracting from any conversation seeking to redress this.

Where I think we’ve come unstuck is that we’ve enshrined actual conscious sexism as the root cause of all women’s ills. Like sexism = pay gaps so if you prove sexism isn’t the primary factor then that makes the pay gap irrelevant. When in truth it is surely worthy enough to try to correct it anyway?

Where I think Peterson is coming from is that state intervention not only fails to solve the problem, which is why he keeps banging on about Sweden with the most progressive programs seeing the gender differences widening (contrary to what most proposing them predicted). So maybe the solution lies culturally rather than politically.

I think it's strange that you would prefer to come and discuss this with strangers when you could be having an interesting discussion with them.
Or do you think all your friends and family should toe some kind of party line and are having a fit of the vapours when they don't?
However, if you're coming on to start a 5 minutes hate for Peterson, go ahead, you'll get lots of support.

It is pretty clear that men earn more than women mostly because they work more

This isn't true.

Multiple studies have shown that if you put a female name on a CV, that person will be offered a lower salary, and be assessed as less competent.

Further studies show that when a woman then asks for a pay raise, or more responsibility, she is less likely to get it, as when she exhibits the same 'go gettem' attitude that works for me, she is unconsciously punished for acting in an unfeminine manner.

If you then watch the google training vids on unconscious bias, you can see that this bias then feeds back to enormous differences in salary after a very short amount of time.

Hmm,

If you want to address this with them, I am pretty sure Peterson does not say there is no sexism involved in the pay gap - he says that direct sexism is one element, but not the largest, which I believe is pretty well empirically supported.
He also says that the other reasons for the pay back do come down to choice to some extent, as well as differing social pressures on men and women, some of which may be very much related to biological differences like breastfeeding. Some is related to differing approaches to things like asking for raises. And he also thinks some is down to preferences for different types of work.
As far as I understand, he says direct sexism should be addressed and is bad, differences based on different circumstances and pressures and communication styles may or may not be something to address, and (I think) he is ok with differences in preferences between men and women just being left as is.
All of which is to say that his position seems not to be quite what your family is saying, and something it would be quite possible to have a rational discussion about. I'd be inclined to point out the differences in what they are getting out of it.

butteryellow good point. And one I made when I was actually talking to my folks Gene. I'm here because I'm not there. We live a long way from one another. I'm used to us all broadly agreeing, though none of them have ever been feminists.

Goosefoot thank you. That's really helpful. I think they were expecting me to agree with them, just as I was expecting them to agree with me. It was a surprise argument. I don't think we're a million miles apart - except that I'm explicitly a feminist and they are not. Which sometimes feels like a big difference, and sometimes not, depending on the discussion.

It's just been a bigger thing in my head than I expected because I don't get home often, I got the impression that my brother doesn't like me much at the moment, other parts of my family are mostly interested in poking at the open sore that is Brexit... And I just don't want to watch Peterson videos, which makes me feel like a closed-minded git. But there it is.

Dervel that makes sense. And I agree. We need to focus on kindness and compassion. That's what I told them. I think they maybe have been thinking about this for a while and come out fighting.

It’s easier to hold their position imho. Women choose to earn less and do more housework. So we can save our energy considering whether there’s sexism at play there and instead spend it on sympathising with men who have it much harder because they all work 70 hour weeks on oil rigs and such to keep us in dusters and stilettos.

Perhaps what is happening in Sweden and to an extent the western world is the pushback of above on equality measures. So really, we’re that used to men being superior to women that when we’re forced to be more equal we find ways to create difference and inequality in order to recreate the status quo?

I don’t know that. What I do know is that 1000s of years of inequality cannot be redressed in 50ish years of equality on paper (and only 9 countries have equality on paper anyway).

Yes Golden. I kept saying that women's decisions aren't made in a vacuum, but they didn't get/hear what I meant. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio... Thank you.

Their criticism was heavily reliant on my choices.
Them: "You choose to work less than your DH. Were you tricked? I don't think so!"
Me: "The choices of an individual woman aren't the problem. But when you look up and see that far more than women than men are deciding one way, and that they are left with less power afterwards, you should feel a bit suspicious."
Them: "So you want to deny women free choice?"
Me: "No, I want to examine the power structures behind the decisions."
Them: "You think it's a conspiracy to oppress women?"
Me: "Yes. No. Let's have another cup of tea."
And now I'm home so I'm arguing with them in my head.
As you were.

Ime the people that think women choose to sah or work pt in poorly paid work whilst sponging off their hard working husband are not the ones choosing to sah or working pt in poorly paid roles. I know men that were very surprised when I said I wanted to work and did not want to sah - they assumed I enjoyed playing housewife because my dh earned enough to keep me. The concepts of independence and self actualisation for women seem to have not even occurred to them.

But as you said, it's easier to hold the idea that everything is fine. Not least since things are indeed much better than they were. Thanks for chatting.

Butteryellow, all of your post can be true, but it’s still literally true that “most of the pay gap is due to women working part time” because when you compare the sex difference in pay per hour it’s much less than the sex difference in pay per year.

That’s the problem with that phrase of course. The covert implication it carries, and that you heard, is that because most of the difference is due to X then the remaining difference can and should be ignored, when that doesn’t follow logically at all. Most cancer deaths in women may be due to breast, bowel and lung. Doesn’t mean we should cancel cervical screening.