cross-posted from: https://wolfballs.com/post/8348
Men are the authorities of the household, and authorities in religion. This responsibility comes with extra work and effort, thus the men need to have greater corresponding rights in society.
If for example men more exclusively serve in war (like having to register for the draft), then why should they be treated equally as women, when they give unequal effort?
So understandably some MRAs today advocate for equality, since in some cases women have more rights than men or privileges. But it's basically to me the wrong message, because equality has never and will never exist between the genders.
Instead, men are to have greater rights because of their greater responsibilities in society. This is not hateful, misogynistic, abusive, etc. in itself but seems logical, as it rewards men for the effort they put forth to take care of responsibilities (it calibrates effort and incentives).
Spotted_Lady@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
I tend to believe that rights should be based on merits. So, putting any personal beliefs aside, I get your point. So if you have to work harder or you have certain traits/abilities, it makes sense that whoever that is be given more rights and responsibilities. I mentioned something similar in the new Folk Science community.
As for equality, I think maybe equivalence is what is needed more. I mean, different people have different roles in society. So maybe we should respect folks more based on what they do or can do, and less on equality.
And egalitarianism often isn't good since that is about trying to force equal outcomes in unequal situations. I remember what I heard some special ed teachers discussing. The problem with No Child Left Behind and similar policies is that it actually causes gerrymandering of a sort. I mean, if you must force kids who cannot learn to reach the same outcome when that is impossible, then you end up with a situation where you put all the worst performers in one school. To me, that isn't a bad thing, as having them distributed throughout different schools would pull down the quality of education for more advanced and even average students. But the motivation for lumping them into one school would be a form of losing thinking. The motivation would be more like, "Since we're going to get fined for each school that doesn't reach the goals, why not put all who cannot earn in only one school, and then only get fined for having one school that doesn't meet district and federal standards?" So that is an example of gerrymandering (though not applied to race or voting in this instance).
squashkin@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
assuming you are a "lady", you sound like one of the exceptions to the rule, and I'm not sure what to do with your type - the intelligent women who have skills like men. I imagine throughout history though women found ways to use their talents in certain ways, like marrying men who might have similar skills and just giving them ideas to implement in their business (like a queen giving input to a king on how they ought to govern). The anti-suffragist women who opposed women voting had argued that their husbands represented their political interests, so that it was not necessary for them to vote personally, which sounds reasonable (I imagine the husbands and wives had conversations about who to vote for). So, some arrangements of the past I think could still be workable. It really is a challenge to figure out at times - there are a lot of women who simply tend to be more leftist in a destructive way.
Spotted_Lady@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
Yes, I understand the logic behind the anti-suffragists. It makes sense. Let the household be the main governing unit of society and give each household 1 vote. Going beyond that, there are risks such as divided households or couples not even talking about politics.
And yes, the problem with women in politics is that they use the wrong skillset. Criminals are hopefully not your kids. They are not lost puppies. In comparison, they are rabid dogs. What do you do if a "mad dog" comes up to you? Do you pet it, say, "Nice doggie!" and rationalize that it probably had a bad childhood and no father in the home and that it just needs love and acceptance? "He didn't mean to bite me." No. You either get away from it and call the authorities, or you directly neutralize the threat to public health and safety.
To be honest, there are men who shouldn't be in politics either. I remember about maybe 7 years ago where a judge let off a college student with past sexual complaints against him who likely raped a fellow student, saying more or less that he didn't want to ruin a "poor young man's" future. Stuff like that even indirectly affects things like race relations. In this case, the judge and the defendant were both white, and what would happen in the future if he had a Black defendant in the same situation? Would he have ruled the same? So the problem with bad court rulings that favor the defendant is that it creates an expectation in society for being graded on a curve, and rampant violence in the streets in retaliation if they don't get that.
sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 2 years ago
You brought up a good point, and I think it starts to dive a bit into the complexity of the topic.
Pure egalitarianism has an issue that people aren't equal. I will never be a professional basketball player or the head programmer of a famous open source operating system or the top politician in my country. Some of the reasons might be situational, but most of them are based on merit. I'm not tall enough to be a basketball player. I'm not focused enough to become a head OS programmer, and I'm not social enough to be a head politician. The world is unequal in that it won't let me do these things, but it is fundamentally fair in this regard -- I am not these things because I don't deserve to be these things because I'm not what is required to be these things. If things were done to level the playing field, it would be equal, but the idea that people who are good at something need to be penalized and people who are terrible at something need to be elevated to make them equal is obviously unfair. It would basically be cheating, even if it was ok by the rules.
Pure meritocracy can have issues as well. For one thing, if there's people with no merit then they may be left with nothing because there'd be no place for them. Merit is distributed unequally. Most people are about average, and a tiny number of people are exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. In this case, you may be exceptionally fair, but extremely unequal.
A third and fourth set of dimensions to consider are stability vs. agility. Society needs to be stable enough that people feel they can make plans and do so, but agile enough that it can take advantage of opportunities and refocus when the status quo needs to be changed.
To me, discussion of rights needs to be limited in scope to basic fundamental stuff, everything else is a privilege above and beyond rights. Imagine everyone having the same basic rights, and then on top of that are privileges and people may have to qualify for those.
Spotted_Lady@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
I differ from you on the meritocracy part. I think that should be the main model. Yes, there are shortcomings, and there are ways around those. With a society based more on merit, you can still have aid organizations. If those who can produce are free to produce more, they would have more assets to offer those who cannot make do. Most folks would not begrudge helping the handicapped and the elderly, or even children that have fallen through the cracks. We could discuss homelessness elsewhere, as I lump those into several groups. Some are homeless by choice, have the minds of adventurers, don't want to be engaged with the government, or whatever. Some are homeless due to mental illness (other than substance abuse), handicaps, age, or being a veteran. Some are just irresponsible and/or addicted to substances. So society would do well to address mental illness and deal with substance abuse more as a health issue and less of a legal issue.
Drugs laws, IMHO, have not addressed crimes. If anything, it increases crime since it incentivizes drug dealing. So the few who are willing to take the risks to deal drugs even with high penalties will do so and become territorial. That reminds me of the hypothesis on why violent crimes dropped in the '90s. Some suggest that pagers and later cell phones made being a drug dealer less violent. So instead of standing in the street and dealing in some other gang's territory, you could use the delivery model. Your customers could just call you, you show up, you make the exchange, and you hastily leave. So the rivals can't kill you if they don't even know if you are there.
I agree on the scope of "rights." And in many cases, what is really needed in a certain situation is welfare, not rights. For instance, a dog will never be able to drive a vehicle, so you wouldn't give them the right to drive. But making sure their owners don't beat the hell out of them and starve them is a reasonable goal. So rights in the most basic sense that they have access to suitable care.
And with driving, that would actually be a privilege and an ability, not an inherent right. Dogs don't have the ability to learn how to drive. However, for humans, knowing how to operate a motor vehicle is not enough. For instance, if you are legally blind, suffer from epilepsy, or suffer from narcolepsy, you cannot get a license. Legally blind is when, even with eye correction, if applicable, you still have 20/200 or worse vision. Most states require 20/40 to be able to drive without eye correction. So if you have extremely long eyeballs and are already wearing glasses and perhaps even contacts (assuming they can be worn, you can't wear those if your eyes are in a severe cone shape), and you can only get about 20/70, then you aren't going to be driving legally.
Epilepsy and narcolepsy would make a driver a safety hazard for others since they would have no control over having a seizure or losing consciousness. Plus, those who have those disorders may have impaired thought processes adjacent to an attack. For instance, take cases where babies were placed in ovens (and maybe the bottle gets placed in the crib). Most of those cases involved those with epilepsy or some other neurological condition. However, we know what the rest of the cases involved -- cold-blooded murder.