Old white man saying old white things

[LeoChopper]

EVERYONE HAS PROBLEMS. Trying to make yours worse because you're the member of a minority or a woman isn't fair to anyone. Society does NOT treat me better just because I'm white and male; it's money that matters, not gender or skin colour.

And yet, all the problems that weatherwax mentioned are still real and important. Classism is not something to forget because of sexism and racism, but it is something we should be concerned with in addition to them, not instead of them. I think the one difference is that the idea that classism is even wrong in the first place still hasn't been internalized by people to the same extent as it has for those other two; racists will often deny being racist, but classists usually don't even bother.

[Steave]

I kind of wanted to say a combination of what Leo and Kea said but I'm not feeling eloquent enough.

In my opinion, while it does suck being a middle class white guy, not supporting the feminist movement is not going to help.

[Kea]

And yet, all the problems that weatherwax mentioned are still real and important.

Well, not all of them. The one about women not being good comedians is what I would categorize as an instance of media-manufactured outrage. You know how it goes. Some commentator says some stupid sexist thing for the page views, and then it's argued about for ages afterwards.

[Steave]

Well it's a very real thing in the comedy industry here. It's pretty much why I distanced myself from it and focused on other interests.

[weatherwax]

I dunno, Kea. There's many a writers' room in film and TV with a fraction of the women working on scripts compared to men, and the boys club of stand-up comedy is well-documented. And there's a reason why Bridesmaids was advertised as "WOMEN TOTALLY CAN BE FUNNY, SEEE????"

Yeah, Adam Corolla says sexist things and the internet explodes -- that I buy as manufactured outrage. But Christopher Hitchens going on record that women aren't funny because they don't need to be biologically? That makes me feel like people are actually putting thought into the idea.

[Kea]

I don't doubt that the comedy industry is male dominated, but that matters only insofar as there are women who want to be in that industry but are getting turned away or put off. Which they likely are. Gee I wonder why more women don't work in an industry that consists of late nights, hard drinking and frat-boy shenanigans? But the whole "are women funny?" issue is bloody stupid and Christopher Hitchens is talking out of his arse. Has he met any women?

But when thinking about occupational segregation, I'm prepared to accept that due to cultural and social norms, men and women are likely to be concentrated in different fields, and that isn't necessarily a problem in and of itself. Nobody seems terribly concerned that the vast majority of taxi drivers are men, after all. It's a problem when "women's work" is consistently lower pay and lower status, and when women and men are discouraged from breaking away from the norm. If a dude wants to be a nurse, he doesn't deserve gay jokes thrown at him.

[drachefly]

In my opinion, while it does suck being a middle class white guy, not supporting the feminist movement is not going to help.

Support the principles, and those parts of the movement that deserve it.

Heck - some parts of the movement are so different they're effectively different movements altogether.

[Jorodryn]

Women aren't funny? Has he ever seen Rita Rudner, Ellen Degeneres, Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, Lucille Ball, should I go on?

[AxelFendersson]

^ The line is usually that the various women who are successful comediennes are exceptional cases and don't disprove the overall trend.

Of course, that does reduce the statement from 'women aren't funny' to 'women are statistically less likely to be funny', which may even be true (how would you even measure?). But people always seem to have trouble distinguishing between 'some', 'many' and 'all'.

[FreakyBoy]

Best I can tell, the average person isn't funny, so why should it be a surprise that the average woman isn't funny?

[Kea]

I don't even find the average comedian funny.

It's also a matter of taste, and the role culture plays in defining it. Why should it be any wonder that if the comedy industry is historically male dominated, its taste-makers would define as funny the things the average male is supposed to find funny? Namely, dick jokes.

One of the reasons I tend to prefer British comedians like Eddie Izzard and Bill Bailey is that they joke about plenty of other things besides dicks.

[Jorodryn]

hmm.. I guess I don't watch the phallus joke comedians so much. The ones I watch tend to tell anecdotal type jokes/stories or are completely off kilter without treading the gutter for their humor. (of course I do find the Whose Line crew quite funny and they do a lot of potty humor so maybe my initial statement isn't completely accurate.)

[AlternateTorg]

You know, I've heard the rant of "Stuff sucks for women, and it's all the fault of old white men" a number of times, and it really bugs me. First, I'm a white man, and, if all goes according to plan, will eventually be an old white man. It upsets me certain individuals, whom I have never met and against whom I have committed no offense, have decided that I am among their victimizers simply because of my race, my gender, and with time, my age, three things over which I have no control. A person who says that the inequalities faced by women are caused by old white men are being ageist, racist and sexist. Not only that, they're harming their cause by lumping people who would be their allies in with their enemies.

The second thing that bothers me is that most discussions about the challenges faced by women seem to ignore the possibility that some of the inequalities may partially be caused by the women themselves. (The discussion here, which seems willing to at least touch on the issue, appears to be among the minority in this regard.) People don't like to bring up this idea because the uber-feminists immediately lump them in with people who say that it's a woman's fault if she gets raped and other such nonsense. Maybe it's just my personality, but when I have a problem, my very first question is to ask whether I am causing any part of it.

For example, it is true that the upper echelons of business are still dominated by men. While I am sure that the glass ceiling still exists to some extent, I wonder if at least part of the reason that those upper ranks don't see more women is that women may be less likely to want to make the sacrifices required to get there. Many of the men who got to those positions spent so much time at work that they had no social life or put off finding a spouse or having a family. Those that did have spouses and families often spent very little time with them. A lot of them went through a divorce as a result of spending so much time at work. Are men simply more willing to put work above family and friends, or are women perhaps simply more aware of what all that time at work will cost? I don't know. The point is, part of what's going on might be caused by the women themselves, but nobody wants to talk about that.

The thing that probably bothers me the most, however, is that while there are still inequalities faced by women that should be rectified, there are a number that exist for men that I perceive to be getting next to no attention. For example, in 2009, the U.S. federal government gave out $872 million in funding for breast cancer research (which overwhelmingly benefits women), while prostate cancer received a comparatively paltry $390 million, despite the fact that its prevalence and lethality are comparable to breast cancer. Heck, to get an indicator of their relative "popularity," just take a look at Google results: 30,400,000 for "prostate cancer," compared to 107,000,000 for "breast cancer." Mention "breast cancer awareness," and you think of pink ribbons, fundraising walks, commercials on TV during "Breast Cancer Awareness" month; a wide array of things and activities designed to call attention to breast cancer. Now mention "prostate cancer awareness," and your mind comes up comparatively blank. People just plain don't care as much about it, despite the fact that it kills just as many men as breast cancer kills women.

That's just one example, but there are more. A man insulting and belittling his wife on a TV show is emotional abuse, but woman doing that to her husband is comedy. A woman who takes the time to talk with a small child is caring and friendly, a man who does so is probably a child predator. But women's issues get all the attention.

*sigh* Okay, I've unloaded my Martian rancor. Were were we?

[Kea]

I'm sorry if I sounded like if I was going off on all white men, when in fact the target of my ire was just one particular old white man, who displayed an incredible obliviousness to the society in which he lives. I don't think that he's a sexist, but I think he does have multiple blinders on as a result of him being old, and rich, and a white expatriate, and a man.

Consider, that here in Hong Kong
- Polygamy was legal until 1971.
- Young girls were bought and sold as indentured servants up until after World War II
- Free public education to age 16 was made available only in the 1970s. Before that, families that couldn't afford to educate all of their children sent only the boys.

While enormous improvements have been made since the 70s, and women in their 20s and 30s are doing extremely well*, the women who lived through those not-so-old injustices are not yet dead. Over 70% of women over 60 have only elementary school education or none at all, compared to about half of men. About 39% of women in their fifties still have elementary school or no education. Women in the exact same age group as Mr. Clueless did not get the same opportunities in life, have terrible job prospects, and are far more likely to retire in poverty than men of the same age. So far from whining about trivial non-existent injustices, there are lots of women alive today whose lives are more difficult because they are women.

By the way, I concur with you that a lot of men's issues (in the Western world) are not talked about enough. Men also deserve workplace policies that allow them to spend more time with their families, nobody cares about prostate cancer**, and due to de-industrialization, working class men are just not doing too well.

* There is essentially no gender wage gap in the 20s and 30s - if you strip out foreign domestic helpers from the data. Put them back in, and a gulf opens up. Hong Kong has essentially achieved gender equality in the workplace for its native population by importing cheap foreign labour that is overwhelmingly female. These women are imported under special guest visas where they receive roughly half of the normal minimum wage, and will never gain permanent residency no matter how long they live here. In short, they're a permanent revolving underclass.

**Breast cancer gets way more attention that most other cancers, male and female (with the possible exception of children's leukemia). So it's not just prostates that are getting the shaft. (Pun intended)

[AlternateTorg]

Don't worry, Kea, I didn't think you were talking about all old white men, just a certain one. But there are plenty of other people who do make that generalization.