this shows how equity maintains the status quo. — Banno

What does, what Vagabond said, or what you said about Labour versus the Liberal party?

At any rate, if one feels that x is unequal, then we can't treat x equally is one's opinion while having x remain unequal.

Sure. It was the "It is of no value" that bothered me. — Banno

Didn't mean for it to bother you. Let me rephrase in saying that feminism as a stand alone philosophy is of itself valuable to those who see value in it. For those who do not see the value of the general understanding of feminism, like myself their identification with it based on their own experiences may not see the value in relation to themselves.

My wife's disability and her advocacy linked me up to feminism and hence to gender issues, sexuality, institutionalisation, the plight of First Nations people and so on. — Banno

That's fine, but just because you identify with feminism on that basis does not mean its a blueprint for me to identify with it, I thought I made that clear why I choose to not identify with it.

I specifically said culture. — DingoJones

Ok so we're back to culture and not laws even though media wise, Shari'ah Law is to blame for the killings of homosexuals. Ok so you're now saying that Muslim culture is inherently more aggressive towards homosexuals, atheists, etc?

Second, there no need to pick a country, as Im not talking about the countries laws. — DingoJones

See my above response...

Third, how do you know where Im getting my information? — DingoJones

Because your information is not academically based, nor is it true from a cultural standpoint and besides, your comment in reference to Muslim society is indicative of a layman's understanding of the Muslim faith. It's armchair scholarship at its best. You're trying to articulate to me about Muslim culture on a global scale to someone who has traveled and has been immersed in it. In other words, what you know or what you've seen in the media is totally different than what is in the real world.

Finally if I'm going to make an assumption how do I know your views are not coinciding with reality?

You have not one thing academic to substantiate your claim. Your dialectical propositions are not precursors to what is plausible. You need to substantiate this with evidence, not conjecture to convince me its truth.

You're trying to articulate to me about Muslim culture on a global scale to someone who has traveled and has been immersed in it. In other words, what you know or what you've seen in the media is totally different than what is in the real world. — Anaxagoras

Could you tell me of your experiences please (PM if you wish as we’re veering off track in this thread - or create a new one). I did ask before where so if it isn’t too much bother I’d like to hear as I’m interested in individual experiences as well as academic writings.

Thanks

Ok so we're back to culture and not laws even though media wise, Shari'ah Law is to blame for the killings of homosexuals. Ok so you're now saying that Muslim culture is inherently more aggressive towards homosexuals, atheists, etc? — Anaxagoras

Tilting at windmills. You continue to argue against a strawman that I’ve already pointed out to you yet here you are. You’re the one framing this through some strange media bias filter, you are the one thats throwing in atheists, you are the one bringing up sharia law...do you have my comments mixed up with someone elses?

Because your information is not academically based, nor is it true from a cultural standpoint and besides, your comment in reference to Muslim society is indicative of a layman's understanding of the Muslim faith. It's armchair scholarship at its best. You're trying to articulate to me about Muslim culture on a global scale to someone who has traveled and has been immersed in it. In other words, what you know or what you've seen in the media is totally different than what is in the real world.

Finally if I'm going to make an assumption how do I know your views are not coinciding with reality?

You have not one thing academic to substantiate your claim. Your dialectical propositions are not precursors to what is plausible. You need to substantiate this with evidence, not conjecture to convince me its truth. — Anaxagoras

Not a single part of any of that answers the question. Instead you ignored the question, and then proceeded to build a strawman as part of that non-answer. Again.
Do you know what it means? Straw-manning?

White middle aged middle class cis straight able males tend to call themselves egalitarian. — Banno

What an irrelevant comment. It also seems to be an implicit ad hominem.

What does, what Vagabond said, or what you said about Labour versus the Liberal party? — Terrapin Station

@Banno confuses the mere aesthetic of dicks in parliament with the overall status quo that feminism should seek to overturn. Because I refuse to to equivocate in this way or assent to the value of gender quotas, he likens me to the problem. He's wrong; identity politics itself remains poisonous. Recent history should be evidence enough (eg: the rise of the reactionary alt-right, the election of Trump, Brexit, nationalism in the EU, etc...):

@Banno

"One of my merits is that I'm a woman"...

But is one of Bernie's merits that he is a man? If not, how does favoring Hillary the individual amount to fairness or equality, or address the "capabilities", of and for the female demographic? A privilege for one is not a privilege for all, and if all you care about is the aesthetic-moral appeal of finally electing someone without a penis, nothing whatsoever might be achieved for women at large through the office itself. In my opinion, Hillary Clinton doesn't actually give a shit about the middle class, female or otherwise, so I don't trust her as a politician. Should people sharing my views have voted for Hillary anyway because she has a vagina?.

I mean, in hindsight, democrats should have chosen Bernie over Hillary on the basis of merit, right? (the merit of being able to defeat Trump, and having a consistent record of adhering to their espoused and desirable ideas). We tried to play the identity politics game, and a bunch of white (and otherwise) people rejected it because it controverted their individual beliefs (or outright insulted them). And look where it has got us (endless division)... "Nothing changes" might have been better than the step backward that was caused by the constant focus on aesthetic measures of fairness. If you want a society where people are elected because of skin color and geniticular happenstance, then welcome to America. Identity politics has successfully revived national socialism by teaching people that it's fair to treat people differently based on their race (and gender).

Hope remains though. Trump is the perfect Falstaff to demonstrate the dangers of inherently dividing demographics into competing teams. He is our ipecac.

Dick jokes.

The point is the difference between equity and fairness. The capabilities approach goes a long way to sorting out our choices.

But aren't you thereby suggesting that women lack the same capabilities as men (i.e: handicapped?)

No more than you are saying that men are more capable than women.

If men and women are both capable of acting as representatives in an elected body such as parliament, then we would expect to see equal numbers of men and women.

But we do not.

So either women are not capable representatives, or there is some other extrinsic factor biased towards men.

Your response?

We ought relate this back to the title.

In so far as feminism is about the improper use of gender in determining eligibility for social roles, it is as much an advantage to males as to females.

A side issue - Have you noticed how those who object to identity politics are among its main advocates?

Advocates for various issues see themselves as part of an overarching progressive agenda. It's those who oppose change who are most bothered by the range of issues, and who see them as somehow in a state of antagonism.

No more than you are saying that men are more capable than women.

If men and women are both capable of acting as representatives in an elected body such as parliament, then we would expect to see equal numbers of men and women.

But we do not.

So either women are not capable representatives, or there is some other extrinsic factor biased towards men.

Your response? — Banno

My response is for us to stop the biased favoritism of men and the biased dis-favoritism of women, not to compensate by shifting to overt favoritism for women at whichever stage of candidate pre-selection (because that achieves nothing but pander).

I don't wish to discuss female-vs-male capabilities in the general sense (but we can if necessary), because whatever they may be, it is the merits of individual candidates that matter, not the merits of their gender.

We should expect to see more female political representatives than we do, and the causes of that outcome are myriad. You want to treat the effect without addressing or understanding the problem(s) to begin with. If more women aren't making it to office because of a myriad of social obstacles placed before them, foisting a few more individual women into parliament solves nothing.

The rest of woman kind will remain affected by those obstacles you have yet to name or address.

Quotas work on the opposite basis, that's to say, because of the capability of women (whether equal or greater than a man), we get more of them in position, bypassing other cultural elements which would overlook capable women in favour of men.

The objection of merit doesn't work in this context because the issue at stake is that capable women are being excluded. Remember, the question of capability isn't a status by which we judge whether one person gets a position over another capable person, it's a measure of whether someone fits skills and knowledge of the position.

As such, merit objections to quotas contain the underlying assumption that women are not capable. If women are capable, there is no objection to be made, on the grounds of capability, about them getting a position by a quota (or any other means).

stop the biased favouritism of men — VagabondSpectre

Ah, so we have grounds for agreement at least in that there is some bias.

If more women aren't making it to office because of a myriad of social obstacles placed before them, foisting a few more individual women into parliament solves nothing. — VagabondSpectre

Well, perhaps the opinions of the women so selected will assist in identifying the problems invovled.

Indeed, that seems to be what happens - a period of reverse bias leads to a new stability.

The middles aged middle class white males who dominate political processes may not be the best folk to judge issues of feminism, gender, race, and ability.

On the capabilities approach...

What is being advocated is an approach such that we work to allow folk to do what they are capable of.

I don't wish to discuss female-vs-male capabilities in the general sense (but we can if necessary), because whatever they may be, it is the merits of individual candidates that matter, not the merits of their gender. — VagabondSpectre

It works at the individual level. SO for example one would focus on what a person with a disability is able to do, and remove barriers to the capability. Ramps instead of steps. A few extra boxes for the short guy.

If men and women are both capable of acting as representatives in an elected body such as parliament, then we would expect to see equal numbers of men and women.

But we do not. — Banno

The US is just old fashioned.

We have here a parliament 46% female, 54% male and I thinkis that quite close enough. Especially when below 50% of the candidates running for Parliament were women, hence women haven't had it more difficult to get the the Parliament than men. The Green Party here btw. has 85% of it's members of parliament female. Here's the stats from the birth of the modern Parliament with the amount of female members of Parliament. Women have been present right from the start. (There are 200 seats in the Parliament here.)

If more women aren't making it to office because of a myriad of social obstacles placed before them, foisting a few more individual women into parliament solves nothing. — VagabondSpectre

What if one of the main obstacles is a toxic masculine culture in parliaments and party rooms that discourages them from getting involved? Experience shows that a pretty reliable way to dissolve toxicly masculine cultures is to require them to have a significant proportion of women in their midst. That can be achieved by quotas. Once the quotas have done their job, the obstacle will be gone and the quotas will no longer be necessary.

In 1994 the Australian Labor Party introduced quotas for the proportion of women in winnable seats. It was met with strong internal resistance at the time, but some brave souls pushed it through. The result is that the party's culture has changed enormously, it has very strong female representation in parliament, most of its its most potent political operators are women, and its opponent - the strangely-named Liberal party - is now broadly perceived as being anti-women, which is an enormous electoral liability for them.

Thanks for that. Saved me finding the data.

Fair enough. We were taking as our example the Australian Liberal Party, which faces a thrashing in a forthcoming election partly because of its entrenched misogyny.

Ah, so we have grounds for agreement at least in that there is some bias. — Banno

There's always room for agreement, but where we differ is always more interesting. I've never said sexism and misogynistic bias doesn't exist, but I probably believe it is of lesser magnitude than you (finding out how much less, entails a very wide discussion of how we weight each causal factor which contributes to a disequilibrium of average outcomes between genders).

Well, perhaps the opinions of the women so selected will assist in identifying the problems invovled. — Banno

They're supposed to be voted in, democratically, for that very reason. The people speak in large part through the concerns and promises of the candidates they elect, and it is by the words and actions of those candidates (rather than the virtues of their gender) that the most immediate and impactful change can be instituted

The long and storied rises and falls of the Equal Rights Amendment in America is a didactic history on this point. Americans had the chance to put in constitutional writing that individuals could not be discriminated against on the basis of sex or gender. The champions of the opposition were often female, and their main argument was that women would lose their special treatment (not being drafted and gender based labor legislation favored by conservatives).

Using what is ostensibly your present argument, that differences in capabilities between men and women warrant different treatment, the Equal Rights Amendment Act, which is the very legal entity which would make unconstitutional the unfair discrimination we both agree is a problem, was prevented from being passed into law.

"I'm a woman, take it from me; we don't need no ERA".

"Perhaps" just isn't good enough.

a period of reverse bias leads to a new stability.

The middles aged middle class white males who dominate political processes may not be the best folk to judge issues of feminism, gender, race, and ability. — Banno

(In America,) I don't believe the middle class dominates much of anything. Why hold the average man uniquely accountable? Crimes of thy father and all that?

I don't condone reverse bias. Groups don't suffer, individuals do, reverse bias is just more bias.

Fair enough. We were taking as our example the Australian Liberal Party, which faces a thrashing in a forthcoming election partly because of its entrenched misogyny. — Banno

I really wouldn't see the reason in entrenched misogyny or anything like that (even if I don't know Australian politics so well). Sorry, but apart from the Muslim Brotherhood I assume few political parties are entrenched with misogynists. If the voters, especially women voters, have been used to vote for men, then that is a far more bigger reason than misogyny. One really has to look at how voters relate to women candidates. Typically the media seeks to make misogyny or chauvinism to be the reason for under representation of women and hope they catch some old politician they don't like saying something bad about women in politics.

Tell you the truth, very few men actually hate women and would be opposed to them in Parliament in the Western World. Political traditions are different in various countries. If there isn't the tradition of female politicians to seek office, then you simply don't have so many talented candidates from to choose from.

Then you advocate accepting the existing bias.

OK.

As such, merit objections to quotas contain the underlying assumption that women are not capable.. If women are capable, there is no objection to be made, on the grounds of capability, about them getting a position — TheWillowOfDarkness

The same number of women and men don't always apply for the same job, and companies should have the right to choose based on merit even if it doesn't create perfect gender parity in staff numbers.

The causes of the disequilibriums between men and women aren't wholly caused by the actions of sexist cis gender white males.

Then you advocate accepting the existing bias. — Banno

Did you even read my post?

Why are you taking this with or against us attitude? If I say that I'm against unjust discrimination, and I don't agree to what is in my view more unjust discrimination, I'm therefore in support of existing unjust discrimination?

I really wouldn't see the reason in entrenched misogyny or anything like that (even if I don't know Australian politics so well). — ssu

All I can say is that you are not looking.

It works at the individual level. SO for example one would focus on what a person with a disability is able to do, and remove barriers to the capability. Ramps instead of steps. A few extra boxes for the short guy. — Banno

We're all capable of being the president (Trump proves that). So should we work to ensure that Ivanka Trump becomes the next president? (She does have the potential after-all).

The rights of accessibility, and the standards of decency we try our best to uphold for people with different physical capabilities are not comparable to political offices, nor to the reasons which hold back women at large from breaking into the areas traditionally dominated by men (I don't know about Australia, but elsewhere the times are a changin). It's laudable to help people reach their potential, but you've mostly been talking about helping a tiny fraction of economically and politically elite women attain a privilege that few people can ever experience.

So I ask again, once the Liberal Party learns to pander and has 50% female representatives, what then? How have you otherwise said or achieved anything meaningful? How will I know which side to vote for?

As an aside, what do you think the Labour party says to the female candidates who are pre-selected because they are women? "Congratulations! We would like to support you in a campaign for your district! There are a bunch of other people we would rather select, but since we need to pander to the masses by having a better ratio of men to women, you're our strategic choice!".

Wouldn't that be a bit unsatisfying? Wouldn't you rather have not been unfairly subjected to extra obstacles in the first place?

apart from the Muslim Brotherhood I assume few political parties are entrenched with misogynists. — ssu

This highlights the dangers of people using 'misogyny' as a synonym for 'sexism'. The two are very different, with only a small area of overlap. Far too often people use the word 'misogyny' when they mean 'sexism'.

You are right. Very few men actually hate women. But many men either think they are superior to women in the features that matter (such as intellect), or that women's roles should be constrained to the traditional ones of home-making and caring.

The toxic masculine culture that persists in many male-dominated parliaments, party rooms, board rooms, men's clubs and sport clubs incorporates those features of perceived superiority, desire for women to keep to their place, and very often the treating of women generally as sex objects rather than as humans. The latter manifests through telling jokes that portray women as sex objects, plus language, songs and chants that do the same. None of this qualifies as misogyny, but it is enough to make the vast majority of women to want to go nowhere such a bunch of people.

Personally I would like to see people stop saying things are misogynist when what they really mean is sexist, demeaning, or even rape-culturish.

What if one of the main obstacles is a toxic masculine culture in parliaments and party rooms that discourages them from getting involved? Experience shows that a pretty reliable way to dissolve toxicly masculine cultures is to require them to have a significant proportion of women in their midst. that can be achieved by quotas. Once the quotas have done their job, the obstacle will be gone and the quotas will no longer be necessary. — andrewk

Congress/Parliament isn't just another man's club. We can fiddle with the rules of conduct/transparency of conduct for those who are put there by constituents, but we can't tell the constituents who to put there in the first place.

In my opinion, people like AOC are actually already doing a good job of this. More women holding congressional seats would be even better, but because the job they're there to do is more important than anything else, we just cannot force it.

In 1994 the Australian Labor Party introduced quotas for the proportion of women in winnable seats. It was met with strong internal resistance at the time, but some brave souls pushed it through. The result is that the party's culture has changed enormously, it has very strong female representation in parliament, most of its its most potent political operators are women, and its opponent - the strangely-named Liberal party - is now broadly perceived as being anti-women, which is an enormous electoral liability for them. — andrewk

Ultimately the voters will choose, and if intentionally fielding more women gets them more votes, that's the system as it stands. I would just hope that voters are still voting on the basis of the soundness of political ideas and personal consistency (merit) rather than voting based on emotional appeals. I realize that the law of averages allows campaigns to rise and fall through such approaches, but I resent them as political pandering and harmful to democratic health.

For sure, but it's not about a specific cause, it's about a result. Are capable women contributing? If not, quotas address that problem (aside from specific instances in which women are almost entirely disinterested/don't have the skills to enter form outside), whether we are talking people direct intervening to keep women out or some kind of instance or a wider social context in which capable women haven't been interested.

Again, people are being picked on merit here because we are discussing capable women. An organisation concerned with merit has nothing to fear because the people the quota insists they pick are capable. In terms of merit, there is no reason for an organisation to complain.