This article is an opinion written by one of our new redactor ! Comment what you think about this post !
We live in amusingly strange times. There has arguably never been a moment in time quite like this, where serious compelling arguments could be made both for this being the most intelligent and enlightened society and generation in history, but also for this being the most intellectually void, narrow-minded era in recent years.
Both sides of this peculiar coin can be seen when trying to deal with society’s historical shortcomings. Sure, in our grandparents time children’s medicine contained heroin, blacks had their own schools and everyone was smoking like there’s no tomorrow, but such a large proportion of the current population refuses to vaccinate their kids, promotes ideas like cultural appropriation and white supremacy and see smoking as the devil itself rising from the depths of hell to plant cancer in your throat, that a reasonable person looks at everything and wonders where the hell has all the balance gone.
A perfect example of things going from bad to good to stupid is women’s fight for equality. Throughout the 20th century, many brave people have fought so that society sees women as more than mobile cooking machines and babysitters and treats them as intelligent human beings capable of any intellectual endeavor. And in most part, in the Western world, their struggle was a monumental success.
An objective analysis might show that historically this is the best time in thousands of years to be a woman, probably since the ancient days of Matriarchy. They still benefit from the small quirks their gender brings them from the days where they had little or no institutional power, and at the same time legally hold one hundred percent of rights a man has, with legal courts ready and willing to enforce those rights when infringed upon.
However, one statistic of perceived inequality still refuses to go away, and constantly pops its ugly head in official studies and politician speeches again and again: the dreaded gender wage gap. We have “equal pay day”, government-funded studies on how to combat it, respectable media publications denouncing it and top politicians like Barack Obama saying that “it’s wrong”.
For someone who works hard, has responsibilities and doesn’t have time to dig deep into every issue out there, it may make perfect sense to believe that a woman makes 78 cents for every dollar a man makes, because the media generally presents it not as what it is, meaning the median earnings of all men working full-time jobs versus all women working full-time jobs, but as women earning less “for the same job”. Sure, now that you know the root of the statistic it can easily be debunked in 20 seconds by stating the obvious: more men choose to be engineers and more women choose to teach 3rd grade. But then you’re thrown into another rabbit hole, where biology is denied and women are “conditioned by society” to become 3rd grade teachers and “toxic masculinity” is instilled early in men so they think they want to build bridges, not teach ballet.
So yeah, to hell with it, let’s go with that argument. Screw evolution, screw biology, screw genetics, men and women are perfectly identical and only society determines who does what. Cool, now what? Is there still a wage gap? Well yes there is, and here’s what women have to do to eliminate it.
Dirty jobs
As a society, we’ve become addicted to the things around us actually working. We like working infrastructure, sewage systems, power grids and a million other things around us that we take for granted but can’t live without. All intellectuals, free spirits, all the strong independent women out there who don’t need no man, the platform for their activity is maintained by some people doing dirty, disgusting, dangerous and hazardous jobs. And by people I mean men.
All jobs that imply a certain level of danger, health risk and societal shame have a pay bonus, for (hopefully) obvious reasons, and well over 90% of them are performed by men. The same 90-plus percentage is true when it comes to workplace deaths, strengthening an already rock solid and empirically obvious case. In other words, if we aim to achieve the progressive paradise of equal pay between genders, equality must occur in those life-threatening, lung blackening, and spine-wrenching occupations.
Standing up for an initiative like quotas for women in boardrooms is a chic cause to get behind, and you may think the purpose is so noble that it’s worth the disgustingly authoritarian practice of telling a private institution who to hire based on their set of genitalia. But what about construction workers? Do women want to spend their lives on construction sites, working in dust all day laying bricks and building bridges? Have you ever seen a construction worker’s hands? You like buildings, bridges, and highways, don’t you? Well, go build one.
A significant part of the wage gap would evaporate if millions of women would get that danger or hazard bonus by going down mine shafts, working in extreme temperatures, carrying all the urban garbage (It’s 2018 and they still call it “garbageMAN”. Wake up, feminists!), going down into sewers to remove rat carcasses from clogged pipes, saving people (the 412 rescue workers who died on 9-11? All men. Every single one.) and many other such wonderful, empowering, noble jobs that the Patriarchy only allows men to do. Grab a shovel, ladies! Also, die a little more in the workplace. All for that sweet, sweet equality.
Stop having babies; it takes up too much of your time
OK, now that we got the job balance covered, on to the next step; no more childbearing for you, as it kills the momentum of your lifelong attempt to be the richest stiff in the graveyard.
Despite feminists treating biology like a pagan religion that needs to be abolished, most of it is undeniable fact, like the part where a woman having a child will not be at her best physically, mentally or emotionally for at least a year around the birth. Being bombarded by hormones while watching yourself change in shape will definitely not do wonders for your career, and neither is the after-birth depression you’ll be experiencing.
So even with the complete elimination of the apparently outdated but scientifically proven view that mothers have the best tools to be primary caretakers of a child, the undeniable fact is that having a child will more or less completely incapacitate you for at least a year, at the absolute peak of your working age, while your male colleagues won’t have to deal with this shortcoming.
So to hell with the uniquely life-changing experience of having a child, no need for the life-long bond you’ll have with your baby, a bond that no non-parent will ever be able to fully comprehend. Go get that promotion, girl!
Become obsessed psychopaths, please. It’s for your own good
But these are trivial issues, you say. The real issue is the systemic sexism, the so-called Patriarchy, men holding all the power, men making the laws, men running companies and major institutions, keeping women down as a result. As a side note, activists absolutely love the word “systemic”. It sounds good and is impossible to fully prove or disprove, it’s the intellectually lazy person’s dream word.
But back to the point, it’s not men who occupy those top positions. They’re occupied by people who are willing to put everything else in their lives in a distant second place, people who are willing to work obsessive 100 hour work weeks, continuously plan and scheme their ascension to even higher positions, neglect their families, neglect their health, basically sacrificing everything else in their lives in search of money and social status. A vast majority of these mentally deranged but highly effective individuals are men.
Why would you want that? Are you really going to miss your child’s school play because you want that corner office? Are you ready to monetize your time, your health and the happiness of everyone around you just to increase that bottom line? If the answer is yes, then you have every right and opportunity to do that throughout the Western world, no matter your gender. If, however, the answer is no, please quit bitching about the people who really want those positions and realize there’s plenty of reasons to feel sorry for them.
Nordic countries have been on the forefront of gender equality measures for decades, and the number of women entering Science, Technology, Engineering or Mechanics fields is more or less the same, if not lower, than in most other places among the civilized world. Why oh why is that happening? Could it be that women are different, and want different things from life? Could it be that the gender activists that won the battle decades ago became accustomed to receiving funds for their cause, and don’t want those funds to dry up?
So there it is, ladies. You’re not satisfied with current Western society, with a gazillion NGO’s and government policies supporting all your causes? Not satisfied with the fact that you genetically possess skills that help you pick up social cues and read human emotion at a level most men don’t even comprehend? Not even satisfied that you can grow another human being inside you, feed it and care for it more than any man could? Cool, it’s a free world; it’s your right not to be satisfied. You can pick up a shovel or lock yourselves in your offices, then tie up your ovaries, and you’ll make a ton of money, I guarantee it. Then you’ll have a heart attack and you’ll die 10 years earlier than you were supposed to, and we can also close that pesky “years on planet Earth gap” between the genders.
