That said, at the risk of getting political, my usual reaction when I hear people complain about legislation that provides “special benefits” for queers (a common real-world idea that has some commonality with the accusation of having embraced an equal-and-opposite bias) is that the complainers don’t really have a clue what they’re talking about, and that the preferential bias they think they see is simply what movement towards equality looks like when one is steeped in a culture that pervasively reflects a particular kind of inequality.
And I suspect this is not unique to queers.
So, yeah, I think you’re probably being uncharitable.
I’m not arguing against any specific implementation, but against the idea that optimal implementations could be devised by merely looking at the specific subset of the population you’re interested in, and ignoring everyone else. Your (admittedly, hypothetical) definition of “sexism” upthread sounds to me like just such a model.
I usually model the standard feminist position as saying that the net sexism in a system is a function of the differential benefits provided to men and women over the system as a whole, and a sexist act is one that results in an increase of that differential.
You’re suggesting that this definition fails to look at men? I don’t see how. Can you clarify?
Granted, this definition does look at men, but only as a sort of reference:
If we assume for convenience that the only effect of the dress code is to increase the freedom of women compared to men, then implementing that dress code is not a sexist act.
It seems that, like MBlume said, your model is designed to reduce the difference between the benefits provided to men and women. Thus, reducing the benefits to men, as well as reducing benefits to women, would be valid actions according to your model, if doing so leads to a smaller differential. So would increasing the benefits, of course, but that’s usually more difficult in practice, and therefore a less efficient use of resources (from the model’s point of view). And, since men have more benefits than women, reducing those benefits becomes the optimal choice; of course, if the gender roles were reversed, then the inverse would be the case.
A better model would seek to maximize everyone’s benefits, but, admittedly, such a model is a lot more difficult to build.
Granted, this definition does look at men, but only as a sort of reference
OK, thanks for the clarification.
It seems that, like MBlume said, your model is designed to reduce the difference between the benefits provided to men and women.
Yes, insofar as “sexism” is understood as something to be reduced. It’s hard to interpret “sexism in a system is a function of the differential benefits provided to men and women over the system as a whole” any other way, really.
As for the rest of this… yes. And now we’ve come full circle, and I will once again agree (as I did above) that yes, if anyone defined sexism as I model it here and sought only to eliminate sexism, the easiest solution would presumably be to kill everyone. And as I said at the time, the same thing is true of a system seeking to eliminate cancer, but it’s not clear to me that it follows that someone seeking to eliminate cancer is necessarily doing something wrong relative to someone who isn’t seeking to eliminate cancer.
Sure, in principle.
That said, at the risk of getting political, my usual reaction when I hear people complain about legislation that provides “special benefits” for queers (a common real-world idea that has some commonality with the accusation of having embraced an equal-and-opposite bias) is that the complainers don’t really have a clue what they’re talking about, and that the preferential bias they think they see is simply what movement towards equality looks like when one is steeped in a culture that pervasively reflects a particular kind of inequality.
And I suspect this is not unique to queers.
So, yeah, I think you’re probably being uncharitable.
I’m not arguing against any specific implementation, but against the idea that optimal implementations could be devised by merely looking at the specific subset of the population you’re interested in, and ignoring everyone else. Your (admittedly, hypothetical) definition of “sexism” upthread sounds to me like just such a model.
Hm. So, OK. What I said upthread was:
You’re suggesting that this definition fails to look at men?
I don’t see how.
Can you clarify?
Granted, this definition does look at men, but only as a sort of reference:
It seems that, like MBlume said, your model is designed to reduce the difference between the benefits provided to men and women. Thus, reducing the benefits to men, as well as reducing benefits to women, would be valid actions according to your model, if doing so leads to a smaller differential. So would increasing the benefits, of course, but that’s usually more difficult in practice, and therefore a less efficient use of resources (from the model’s point of view). And, since men have more benefits than women, reducing those benefits becomes the optimal choice; of course, if the gender roles were reversed, then the inverse would be the case.
A better model would seek to maximize everyone’s benefits, but, admittedly, such a model is a lot more difficult to build.
OK, thanks for the clarification.
Yes, insofar as “sexism” is understood as something to be reduced. It’s hard to interpret “sexism in a system is a function of the differential benefits provided to men and women over the system as a whole” any other way, really.
As for the rest of this… yes. And now we’ve come full circle, and I will once again agree (as I did above) that yes, if anyone defined sexism as I model it here and sought only to eliminate sexism, the easiest solution would presumably be to kill everyone. And as I said at the time, the same thing is true of a system seeking to eliminate cancer, but it’s not clear to me that it follows that someone seeking to eliminate cancer is necessarily doing something wrong relative to someone who isn’t seeking to eliminate cancer.