Did they take it down?
MileyCyrus
Karma: 2,312
Moreover, the objections made about the recent health-care mandate were not made by and large based on gender equality issues.
Sure. My point was that no one was requiring employers to cover vasectomies, so of course no one will get angry about having to provide vasectomy coverage.
Someone started a rumor last decade that a large portion of health insurers cover Viagra but not birth control. It’s not true.
So this is an interesting point but actually reinforces the sorts of claims being made by Xachariah, since the amount of objection to vasectomies is much smaller than the amount of objection to birth control, which is consistent with his hypothesis.
If you’re thinking about US politics in 2012, most of the “objection to birth control” was objection to Obama’s mandate that insurance companies to fully cover birth control for women, but not men.
If a middle-class couple in a first world country decide to create and raise a child, they have done
[pollid:379]
Instead of the whole ‘soul’ thing, lets go with “Women deserve to be punished for having sex,” and that ‘life-begins-at-conception’ is just a rationalization.
Every pro-lifer I’ve ever met has shared two characteristics: they don’t think women who have abortions should go to jail, and they think that women who have abortions are worse off than women who choose to give birth. That doesn’t fit with the pregnancy-as-punishment theory.
(It does however, expose another type of misogyny: they refuse to believe a mature woman in a sound mind could ever choose abortion.)
Possible explanations:
One sex knows something the other sex doesn’t:Perhaps since men are treated as the default gender, women understand what it’s like to be a man better than men understand what it’s like to be a woman.
How to test: Turing test. Create an anonymous panel of 4 male and 1 female economists, and then let a group of males ask them questions. Afterwards, the males vote on which panelist was female. Reverse the test. Whichever sex knows something the other sex doesn’t will do a better job at passing the turning test and a spotting one of their own.
Signalling Women and men are expected to have feminine and masculine traits respectively, and one of the ways they can signal having these traits is by supporting certain politics. For example, a woman might endorse social welfare programs to signal that she has compassion (a feminine trait).
How to test: Not sure.
Brain differences: Women and men have slightly different brains. Perhaps the presence of testosterone in men causes them to support riskier free market policies.
How to test Look at intra-sex differences in brains and see if you find any correlations. If, for example, men with lower levels of testosterone are more likely to support liberal policies, and women with higher testosterone support more libertarian policies, that would be evidence that the intersex differences in testosterone could be responsible for the gap.
Self-interest Bias Perhaps women are better off under liberal policies, while men are better under libertarian. Each group is rationalizing reasons support policies that protect their sex.
How to test: See how each sex reacts to a pair of questions, one specifying a female, and one specifying a male. For example “Should waiters be covered by minimum wage laws” verses “Should waitresses be covered by minimum wage laws.” If one sex gives the same answer for both these questions, and the other sex gives different answers, that is evidence that the second sex is biased.
Differences between libertarian/liberal movements Perhaps the libertarian subculture isn’t welcoming for women. Women become liberals because libertarians creep them out.
How to test Recruit politically inactive women at a local university. Send one group to a libertarian convention, the other to a liberal convention. Ask each about their experiences.
Other explanations/tests?
For starters, write lots of letters to the editor stating that war is always wrong. Don’t just attack the easy targets like the Iraq War. Try and write things that will make your average dove say “Well that’s going a bit far.” (ex, saying the American Revolution was unjustified.)
A rule not ultimately backed by the threat of violence is merely a suggestion.
You can threaten non-violence, like a boycott.
Mmmm.… I can’t remember any instances.
I was reading Twitter today. I was tempted to create a Twitter account solely to publish a wry rebuttal to particularly obnoxious user, but then I remembered this post. Thanks for helping me resist the temptation.
Has anyone used one of those pay for a doctor’s opinion websites? How do you know if it’s a scam?
That’s exactly what happened! It makes me wonder how many other people in Alice Springs also read Optimal Employment.
The meals and accommodation was $40/week.
If there’s a typo, I don’t see it. It really was $40/week if that’s what you’re getting at.
That’s the base minimum wage, there’s also mandatory penalty rates (extra money for weekends, holidays, late hours ect.) and superannuation. In my case, the restaurant cut a deal with the government where they paid a higher base rate in exchange for not having to pay penalty rates. But the government is still setting the wage, not the free market.
I suspect most of the variation comes from the aboriginal population. There are whole villages in the Northern Territory where nobody has a job and everybody lives off welfare.
Edit: Half of the territorians live in Darwin, where the unemployment rate is around 2%.
You showed more courage than I did. I wish I had come out as an atheist before my grandmother’s funeral.
Beats me. I wasn’t even the least qualified person; some of my coworkers could barely speak English. The Alice Springs unemployment rate was less than 3% at the time, not counting backpackers.
Hmm, still doesn’t work for me. That’s odd.