Author Topic: How about a Discussion on Jordan Peterson?  (Read 15803 times)

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Offline Montgomery

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Re: How about a Discussion on Jordan Peterson?
« Reply #45 on: October 20, 2020, 02:33:29 pm »
Any decent person wants women to have the same employment opportunities as men, the question is in how that's achieved?  Do you install gender quotas in fields where there is a gender disparity?  Some schools and employers have.  So then some feminists argue that if say 80% of engineers or IT professionals are men, or there is any gender disparity in any field where women are the minority, that shows some kind of gender discrimination against women, which needs to be rectified with quotas that deny men with more merit of a job and give it to women.  Well if you're going to discriminate against someone, you need more evidence than unequal gender numbers in the workforce.  You need to show it is due to discrimination, and not due to different choices women are making.  Which Peterson argues.  Peterson has always argued for equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.  But some feminists don't want to hear that, and they get very angry.  Peterson argues some of it may be due to discrimination, or it may also or only involve differences in career choices.

He argued the data shows women more often prefer working with people, and men more often refer working with things (there are always many exceptions of course).  There are more female medical doctors than male, for instance.  And psychologists, social workers, teachers, and nurses etc.  So to look at gender disparities we need to look at multiple variables and not just one variable by crying "sexism" every time.

I think you've very ably restated Jordan's case for him and I have to commend you for that!

But wait!

Quote
Any decent person wants women to have the same employment opportunities as men,..............

First of all, is that really true? And secondly, is that the real point of contention here?

So first, is it true that employers correct the inequity in pay for equal work done?  No, they do not in many cases if not most.

And second, the 'employment opportunity' to which you speak isn't the property of the left to correct. So assuming that it actually does exist, it becomes the property of employers to correct.

Social responsibility is the property of the left and is so by definition. "Socialism".  A socially responsible person won't, or shouldn't, make accusations based on preferences being different between men and women.  The extent to which it exists is a given in my opinion and I would criticize any person claiming social responsibility if they don't take that into consideration.

If an employer chooses a man for the job over a woman then in some cases his choice will be justified. For the sake of the conversation I'll refer to a ditchdigger. First, the woman doesn't want the job and secondly she isn't physically capable of doing the job. And so discrimination isn't a  valid issue to hold against an employer.

But let's now take the example of an employer consistently choosing men over women for  engineering jobs.  That can be validly called discrimination unless the employer can make a case for it not being so.

In either case, it's not the left making the decisions, it's the rightist.  The leftist, or at least the true leftist will do the socially responsible thing and not discriminate. After all, it's the leftist that makes an issue over discrimination.

Unfortunately, your explanation still lacks the specific case upon which Jordan is motivated to object to the claim of discrimination.

I hope you'll see that I still don't totally disagree with what you've stated on Jordan's behalf, I've just questioned whether or not his talking point is valid.

And now to the point, or at least the point as I see it. Jordan is trying to justify unequal pay for equal work and he fails to lay the responsibility for correcting that wrong on the employer. Or, as you also suggest, not laying the blame squarely on the employer who is guilty of discrimination. Supposing that does happen?

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said. ~M.T.