I subscribe to the feed at http://wordpress.com/tag/employment/, which I’d only recommend if you’re adept at speed-reading: the amount of content with that tag is too high, and 95% of posts are of little or no interest to the British employment law enthusiast.
It does however turn up the odd gem - such as a particularly irate blogger who tries to make a case that pay inequality between the sexes needs to be measured in light of better social benefits for women. There’s the odd cogent argument, such as a mother who has 51% of staying contact per year receiving 100% of child benefit, but when he spends over 500 words arguing that men should pay a lesser proportion of the TV licence because the programming on TV is so targeted towards women, and that speed cameras unfairly target men because it is they who like to speed, the whole thing collapses into hysterical idiocy. Read it here, and be prepared to raise your eyebrows and be glad you’re not sat in the pub with bubblyian right now.
Reading his other articles, I do wonder at whatever very sad personal story left this man feeling this way. On a quite genuine note, the family justice system (as well as sex discrimination in employment) is under attack from those who feel unjustly treated, and professionals in the system need to look at what they can do to ensure that justice is achieved, and that those who don’t or can’t get the results they want understand the rational reasons why not.
Meanwhile, those who didn’t realise the internet was populated by this sort of comment should go immediately to the spEak You’re bRanes site, for enlightenment on how the non-logical half think.
I laughed, I wept. But surely no amount of reasoned explanation is ever going to touch the likes of bubblyian (and how inaccurate is that pseudonym?).
Well, no. And part of me is slightly disappointed that my link to him didn’t register a pingback. I must control these confrontational urges.
Thanks for reading my comments - if you disagree with the logic, I await your counter arguments. What about the other issues I raised to challenge the perception that women are somehow discriminated against when they prefer low-paid non-career jobs?
Hi there.
I’m not going to get into an argument - it would take us too long and I doubt it’d achieve much. The fact is that in your blog there is the odd good point floating around. The problem is that you take your opinions and analysis to such an extreme level that it robs you of your credibility because your readers start laughing before they understand what you’re trying to say.
Discrimination in its purest form is inevitable - take one of your points:
There are currently proposals to introduce road pricing (‘toll roads’) on motorways. This would disproportionately penalise men who make up the majority of high mileage drivers.
That’s probably true, assuming you mean disproportionate as in ‘proportion’ rather than ‘proportionality’. Everything we do in life effects one group more than another. But an intelligent analysis accepts that as inevitable, and goes a step further to say ‘how does it affect individuals?’ This is where any argument that the discrimination has a practical impact on an individual because of his gender falls down: a man and a woman will pay the same toll. Your approach is to say ‘all men pay more tolls than all women.’ What that does is pit all the men against all the women - is that what you want to happen? On your way of thinking there can never be equality. Women will keep on having children, being worse at reading maps, being better at multi-tasking, crashing their cars less often, and so on. And there will always be more of them, and they’ll live longer. Because that’s just biology. All we can do in society is create the maximum opportunity for each individual to reach their potential.
None of that is meant to take away from things that you say are in themselves unfair - such as the argument you make about ‘passported days’ in child benefit. These are genuine, good points. But the rest of what you say is so twisted by the hate you have inside you that to anyone without your experiences it’s gibberish. I’m sorry, but it is. Gibberish.
I honestly think you should keep doing the blog, and sharing your opinions. However, you might want to take a step back, get rid of the emotion left over from whatever happened (or didn’t happen) to you, and decide rationally on your key arguments. Ditch the examples, especially ones you must know are weak - like saying that this story wouldn’t have been reported if it were a man - and do an essay in a couple of hundred words which gives those points. Write it for the majority who, like me, don’t at the moment care about what you have to say. Make it persuasive instead of just ranting. And maybe then, you’ll change some minds. Good luck with it.
Well - I hope what has happened to me and hundreds of thousands of other men and children in this country never happens to you or anyone close to you. You are right, unfortunately, that until it happens to you, you believe it could not possibly happen in a so-called civilised society, but it does happen on ever-increasing basis - family breakdown and the access to children severely and unfairly restricted to the father by the mother.
But regardless - you should consider the argument and not the motives or reasons of the person behind them. Don’t shoot the messenger until you have understood the message and you clearly have not understood the message - why is it that when changes occur that if there is a gender diference in the effect of those changes that it is just about always men who suffer more than women? Is it coincedence or is there a deeper conspiracy going on?
Laugh if you like, but it would be better to join the fight against female subjugation of men before it is too late.