It’s like you’re trying to be funny, Flowers, but you just come across as hating women. Which is actually how I read a lot of your posts. I think…I think you think you’re funny? I think Demon G Sides thinks you’re funny. But mostly I think you just try too hard.
He does have a valid point though. Despite there being a perfectly valid case for feminism (or egalitarianism) some women sell the cause out.
No - I recognize this. I don’t have a problem with being understanding. I DO have a problem with people exploiting a system, and I DO find it baffling that people want to ignore an actual, real, identifiable cost that actually exists and pretend like it doesn’t. Generally speaking, the difference in competence between individuals makes it so that there’s usually a better reason not to promote Sally instead of Jesse (or the other way around) than whether or not Sally will guarantee that she won’t be taking a month long sabbatical on purpose in the near future. Most people aren’t even close to equivalent to one another, so even trying to discuss these sorts of situations as though they are is a fool’s errand. The fact of the matter is that all of the stuff I’m saying ALREADY GOES THROUGH YOUR MANAGER’S HEAD before he promotes you, and, generally speaking, your manager will still promote you because your qualifications probably outweigh you not being around for a month or two. Nonetheless, if you had an identical twin with your personality and aptitudes who was willing to sign a legal contract guaranteeing her availability at a greater rate than you, that makes her a more valuable hire. It just does. We absolutely cannot pretend that that isn’t the case - denying reality is never good.
I’m not saying women shouldn’t be managers here. I’m not even saying that women managers shouldn’t go on maternity leave after they’re promoted. I’m saying two things:
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If you’re given responsibilities, you should be expected to live up to them, and being in a protected class shouldn’t ever be an excuse to do a bad job, like my former manager; and
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We shouldn’t pretend that this isn’t an actual, legitimate concern. Knowing nothing else about two people (which is already a ludicrous proposition), if one can give me a better guarantee than the other that he’ll actually be around to do the job he’s being hired for, that is an attribute with some value. How much is up to the person doing the hiring to figure out, but I don’t think that we should be required by proper decorum or law to ignore it or pretend that the cost with the other alternative just doesn’t exist. This is the standard that I hold myself to and I do fall into certain protected classes in the workplace.
I think maybe the fact that we’re talking about a situation that’s already so ludicrous (the concept of two actual equivalent people going out for the same job - or, hell, just the idea of two equivalent people), along with my own inability to communicate, may be screwing up what I’m trying to say, though, so I’ll just shut up now.
This thread is kind of amazing in its badness. I think I’m gonna go add “infertility” to my resume.
On a related note, in one of my past jobs, my employer (a mother of 2) gave potential clients my contact information to verify that yes indeed I was available to work for her 60 hours a week and on holidays so that they wouldn’t worry about her taking time off for her family. It’s pretty sad that some people have so little respect for family life that things like that are actually necessary. It’s not like she was a transplant surgeon or in any sort of life-or-death job that required her to be available on a moments notice.
I figured there must have been a personal experience that was coloring what you were thinking. This discussion parallels the discussion that we had previously about fat people, with some saying they wouldn’t hire a person because they were fat. Not hiring someone because they could get pregnant is the same situation.
You are making a decision based on ‘what if’ scenarios, AND (and this is the important part) you are assuming that the risk is greater than the reward. What I’m saying is that the reward can and is often worth the risk. When an employer hires someone, they are taking a risk, a big risk which is why we’ve seen the rise of overpowering HR departments. Some of the risks can be seen but many can’t be. Sure, there are employers out there who would like to know if you have sick parents or a child with a disability or friends who want to interrupt your work every five minutes, but that’s part of doing business is taking on that risk. Trying to minimize that risk by refusing to hire people who may or may not develop into a worst case scenario will harm your business because you won’t be hiring the best people you can find; you’ll be hiring the lowest risk people you can find.
There you have it. In the modern day worker’s paradise of the United States, having a child is “exploiting a system.” Next you’ll be expecting the government to help pay to take care of it, you ingrate!
I find it interesting that you are absolutely certain that your terrible boss was carefully scheming to screw you and your coworkers over, and probably cackling with glee while she nursed her newborn. Here’s a hint: if you think everyone around you is obsessing over how they interact with you, you’re the one who’s crazy.
This is a pointless argument to try and make, because as you yourself said:
I really wish all these reasoned and thoughtful responses weren’t necessary in the first place. Brian’s posts look like the product of a world where Gordon Gekko and Patrick Bateman went back in time to assassinate Emmeline Pankhurst.
Could be morning sickness. I wouldn’t hire you.
When I was taking a class in employment discrimination, I always wondered who these people were who made it such that Congress (Congress!) felt like they needed to enact the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and, you know, Title VII (probably my all-time favorite law, because it allows you to discriminate in hiring against somebody who is a Communist). Now I know.
Brian, let me tell you something. If somebody works at a job, and they like their job and want to advance in it and make a career out of it, they will bend over backwards to do well in it. When somebody takes advantage of policy/law to skip out on work while still getting paid/being protected from firing at an inopportune moment, it is probably because they think that job sucks and everybody associated with it can die in a fire for all they care. Something to keep in mind.
Robert, your contention that women do tend to leave work to raise families is circular. They do it because it’s expected of them based on the traditional notion that a woman’s place is in the home, and the system is set up such that they are pushed into it. Women probably tend to leave work to raise families because a) they tend to get paid less for the same work anyway, b) they can get more paid leave than their husbands can, c) people at work are assholes to them about things just because they’re female, and d) other.
Ouch! Nailed mid-ninja edit! I still feel queasy though.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to make derogatory comments to women at the bus stop.
I don’t know… When I was growing up, my dad worked long and erratic hours putting deals together. If he’d put off a bid presentation because he had to look after my brother and I, he’d never get business from those particular clients again.
Well, it’s good to know QT3 will be abolishing the discrimination against young, single males in the car insurance industry. Will I be reimbursed? When can I expect to see my check?
I don’t know what job would be so crucial and important that they didn’t delegate that responsibility to multiple people or have a well thought out contingency plan for. If the work is absolutely imperative, then there has to be a backup plan. Say the man you hired just wants to outright quit, what then? You shouldn’t discriminate against women because of potential children, but I suppose it’s still a variable that has to be planned for. But let’s not fool ourselves, risk assessment is real and not always horrible, unjust and evil. With roughly equal applicants, I’m taking the 30 year old man over the 65 year old man. The real injustice is when you start taking clearly less qualified applicants over the more qualified applicants solely because of said risk assessments.
I’d love to see the journal that published that paper.
No, they don’t. Some men think they do because of specific blinders our society puts on, largely ideological and sexist. Women live 5 years longer then men; one of the reasons is 20-something men have amazingly high death rates due to car wrecks, gunfire, and general trauma. Men have much higher rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, getting thrown in jail, and setting the building on fire joking around with coworkers. They also have higher rates of sexually harassing coworkers and embezzling. I’d say a perfectly “rational” employer looking to minimize gender risk would hire nothing but women; but uh, that’s a stupid way to hire and promote people.
Did he have to prove someone was there to look after the kids, though? I get that lack of childcare can cause problems with certain types of jobs. Two things though: one, I’ve never EVER had a male employer ask for that sort of confirmation. It’s always the mother that needs to know exactly how available and how flexible I am. Two, she didn’t work erratic hours. Long, yes. Erratic, no. Her hours were predictable and she NEVER took time off work for family emergencies. If I couldn’t cover it (very rare), her husband did. There was really no need for her to offer up that sort of proof based on her work history, but it was often a concern.
Equally, men tend to stay in work and not raise their families because a)they are the primary breadwinner by default, b)they wouldn’t get as much paid leave as their wives can, c) people in general are assholes to them because they’re househusbands, and d)whatever.
When it comes to these types of things, it’s a problem for men as well. Look at family law and you’ll see massive discrimination against men because of stastics, and dodgy risk analysis.
It’s such a terrible problem to be paid more for the same work.
I was only complaining that a lot of the stories on the site seem fictitious or at least grossly exaggerated. Stop throwing me into the same lot as Brian. That’s the last thing that I want. I could care less about the actual legality or ethical treatment of women or men in the workplace. Not an argument that I am invested in. Sorry to disappoint.
Warren, go fuck yourself. I know you were very important to epic and gears of war (this is sarcasm), but to me you’ll be nothing more than a pretentious douchebag who has hard on for being a staunch moralists and then taking said morals and bludgeoning everyone around you to death with them.
I can’t believe people actually say the things on that blog. My hat is off to the women who put up with it. Haw-haw-haw-you-can-have-sex-whenever-you-want laffs aside, it’s all pretty indefensible.
My fiancee rides the bus to work every morning. It’s the same bus driver, and she always thought he was a friendly old man because he was so nice and cheerful. Then one day when she was getting off the bus he made some creepy comment about her butt in the pants she was wearing, and it totally broke her down. She was really upset about it. I told her to just ignore him, he’s an asshole, but obviously that’s easier said than done. I can’t imagine having to deal with that shit on a day-to-day basis.
If that was directed at what I said then…
lern2comprehend
If not, then…
vOv