Folks:
What’s happening in your neighborhood as a result of the Day Without Women strike (USA Today)?
The referenced USA Today article says “Women are encouraged to not work, whether your job is paid or unpaid. Women are being asked to avoid shopping in stores and online — except for local small businesses and women-owned companies that support A Day Without a Woman.” It seems that the most enthusiastic work-avoiders receive taxpayer-funded paychecks (examples from CNN). By showing up at a “women-owned company” and asking for services, wouldn’t striking female government workers essentially be demanding that their sisters who run small businesses work while they enjoy a day off?
What about women whose primary source of income is family court divorce or child support litigation? Are they refusing to show up for court appearances today?
What about the suggestion to wear the color red? Supposedly we are in a Russian-controlled society. The Red Scare of the 1950s has been defrosted due to the fact that Vladimir Putin couldn’t find a better politician to buy than Donald Trump. Do we no longer associate red with Russian and Soviet politics?
How about Americans who don’t identify as “women”? USA Today says “Men are being asked to help with caregiving and other domestic chores on Wednesday.” Does that mean those of us who identify as “men” are off the hook the other 364 days per year?
Speaking of gender, does this holiday/event promote transgender hostility and cisgender-normative thinking? The page on the Women’s March site says
On International Women’s Day, March 8th, women and our allies will act together for equity, justice and the human rights of women and all gender-oppressed people, through a one-day demonstration of economic solidarity.
But doesn’t the name itself suggest that there are two primary genders? Unless we are going to have at least 58 separate holidays (ABC News list of gender options), each one corresponding to a gender ID, doesn’t celebrating 1 or 2 gender IDs put them above the remaining 57 or 56? As a first step, why not argue to rename this to International Gender-Oppressed People’s Day?
The same page suggests that a person might be stuck as a “woman” while having a different gender identification:
Let’s raise our voices together again, to say that women’s rights are human rights, regardless of a woman’s race, ethnicity, religion, immigration status, sexual identity, gender expression, economic status, age or disability.
Are they saying that someone who was identified by chromosomes and doctors at birth as a “female” and who currently expresses himself as a “male” (“gender expression”) is nonetheless still a “woman”? Is that cisgender prejudice?
While the streets around Harvard Square were shut down for a protest against Donald Trump’s latest executive order regarding immigration, I did a quick survey. An Asian-American health care professional friend laughed at the idea of not showing up to work. A software engineer friend said emphatically “A strike is ridiculous. Women fought for the right to work.”
Separately, here in our household, one female member seems to have taken the injunction against working very seriously indeed.
Every day is a day without women, in silicon valley.
All they need to do is take up fasting and it will be just as dreary as Yom Kippur.
I don’t see the point of demanding men also work harder in caregiving. If we are simulating that women have disappeared entirely, then the children should be gone too. If we are simulating women pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen, then increased caregiving misses the target and it just becomes “Women Are Lazy Day”.
Looking forward to the day without men!
Every woman showed up at work today. Consulting with my friends, same thing happened everywhere else. No significant number of women were taking off work for this event. But, the media has been on this for 48 hours straight. Everyone knows this event didn’t happen. Everyone knows the media is telling them that it did. This is why the media is not known as simply “the media” anymore but it has earned its name “The Fake News Media”. That is all it will be until it stops it’s clearly obvious campaign of totally false news stories.
Here in Australia, some of our public employees spent the day changing “walk” signs from silhouettes of men to silhouettes of men wearing kilts: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-07/female-traffic-light-signals-melbourne-pedestrian-crossing/8330560
I was rather surprised that the “female” silhouettes didn’t generate outrage over the suggestion that all women must wear dresses.
And how do we know that half of the Melbourne traffic signs don’t already identify as women anyway?
Save the Helicopters in Palm Beach!
I think this blog tends to appeal to men, but in defense of women…I would rather see a an actual woman comment here. The comments on this blog seem fueled by borderline autistic men full of testosterone with no proper outlet for it.
Phil, ping me if you disagree with this comment. I won’t be offended if you delete it.
So much for my MIT education. Sigh…
What? A day without nagging? Did I miss it?
Seriously, I think in Iceland this worked. It brought the country to a standstill in 1975 IIRC.
Once the sex bots are invented this whole gender war will become mute.
Murali: Regarding your diagnosis of “autistic men”, if I were to violate my own http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/comment-moderation-policy/ (let’s hope that none of the moderators delete this!) and speculate on the motivation of commenters, I would say that it is more likely that these are folks who haven’t fully accepted America’s culture of victimhood (see https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise-of-victimhood-culture/404794/ ).
One of my Facebook friends is a tenured professor. Even if she scales back to doing almost nothing she is guaranteed to receive total compensation (salary, housing, health care, pension backed by tens of billions of dollars in assets, etc.) of roughly 6X the median American’s income. Her husband is similarly well-compensated (though sadly he must actually meet an employer’s expectations and demands to get paid) and she can spend about 90 percent of her husband’s income (I subtracted 10 percent for the simple clothing and food consumed by this man). She lives in a winner-take-all state so if the husband is getting in the way of her cougarhood (maybe she wants to have sex with a series of attractive graduate students), at any time she can sue him and get (1) the house, (2) the kids, and (3) 80 percent of his income via alimony and child support.
She sees herself as a victim because of her gender ID as “female”. She marches and protests. She changed her Facebook profile photo to an image of herself holding a “RESIST” sign.
There are plenty of Americans, mostly younger, who would agree that, having been born with XX chromosomes and continuing to identify as a woman, she is in fact a victim. Then there are the Neanderthals, mostly of my generation and older, who ask “How is someone who gets paid 6X the median for potentially doing nothing a victim?” or “How can she be a victim of an oppressive husband when she can walk down to the courthouse and get rid of him (but keep most of his income and savings) at any time?” These questions are thoughtcrime on Facebook and in places where Hillary supporters were in a majority. As demonstrated by Facebook de-friending and the recent riot at Middlebury College, American victims can’t tolerate any exposure to thoughtcrime.
Personally I try to remain neutral. I can’t change American culture so why complain about it like a typical old guy who says “things were better back when I was a kid”? If Americans want to go down the path to full-time victimhood, who am I to stop them? On the other hand, it is worth watching the trend because people who spend more time being victims (e.g., knitting pussy hats, protesting, calling Congress to complain, suing employers for discrimination) are less productive. Thus there may be an opportunity to enhance investment returns by buying shares in companies that operate primarily in non-victimhood cultures.