The self-defeating nature of using "Privilege (Theory)" (in societal discourse)

[schlaufuchs]

Isn't that what history as a discipline does also when trying to explain historical phenomenon? It takes a historical phenomenon first, and then goes about trying to rationalize it through source material.

Depends on the history. Modern academic historical scholarship typically strives to avoid doing that, though.

 

[MaryKB]

Yes and the unequal pay for equal work narrative even derails the real reasons behind the very real earnings gap, which is the unequal amount of time fathers and mothers spend with children, the gender roles which end up segregating the job market and that women spend more time in part time jobs. While there is undoubtedly still sexism in wages, those are the real reasons behind the earnings gap being that large, all of which are discussed by gender studies scholars and those are the problems into which policy should be directed, instead of worrying about how much upper middle classed BBC presenters make. Interestingly there isn't much talk about the possible wealth gap, which I suspect is even larger than the wage gap.

And you'll find there's totally more to it also, a lot with how cultures are set up to reward how men do things, and confirmation biases such as how men often get credit for things they don't do. Also you can tell men really often don't seem to like taking directions from women, and are hesitant to promote us over other men.

I can give a couple examples of things I go through, such as for one thing over these last few years I've seen my male colleagues being offered new positions instead of me. So my team is all male save for myself, and I'm pretty much the person who does the most, and my coworkers use my programs I create and my templates and everything, and always need to ask me for help to do pretty much anything. I'm totally fine with that, I mean that's sort of my role and I greatly enjoy providing support. But I'm always seeing them getting credit for everything when they didn't even do it, and I've had three of my colleagues offered nice new positions (by other male managers) over two years, and no one has approached me even once. My manager (a woman) had to work really hard to get me my promotion. Anyone who says there's no such thing as a "boys club culture" I believe is either willfully blind, not paying attention, or not empathizing.

And I have a colleague, he's a good friend of mine, and he is on another team but he's a level below me (my boss is equal to his boss' boss). He has a "bank officer" and I'm a "vice president", and his duties are nowhere near as important as mine are, but I know he's getting paid about $5,000 more than I am. So I just don't know how you even being explaining this, right?

And you see people always saying things like "you have to negotiate for raises" and such, well believe me women do ask. But have you ever tried being a woman and asking a man for something? You're treated like you just said something abhorrently offensive, or you at least get some pretty heavy condescension, and it's even worse if you're suffering from something like imposter syndrome. I've worked very hard and smart to get to where I am, and even when I get glowing reviews every year and when I have a boss who's really trying her best for me, I just don't get opportunities or substantial increases in my pay. And it has nothing at all to do with me choosing a bad degree (mine's in accounting), or only working part time, or taking time off for children, or anything like that, you know what I mean?

 

[Hygro]

This is gonna sound really out of pocket but if you wanna win at this you're gonna need to learn to be a dominant boss lady like listen to gangsta rap plus some female influencers like Cardi B on backward and study some of that heinous reddit quarantined dark arts of matrix colored pils. Otherwise enjoy that you're in the top 1% of CFC OT earners haha.

A lot of archaeology and anthropology is interpretative. Same with psychology, sociology, zoology, economics, large parts of astronomy and biology... Falsifiability isn't always (or even often) a useful way to approach these fields, and insisting upon it will simply force scholars misrepresenting their work.

Faslsifiability is the combo break on the narrative/synthesis/pattern-find combo-build, but none of them aspire to stay narrative unless they are to replace religion and ceremony.

 

[Ryika]

And you see people always saying things like "you have to negotiate for raises" and such, well believe me women do ask. But have you ever tried being a woman and asking a man for something? You're treated like you just said something abhorrently offensive, or you at least get some pretty heavy condescension, and it's even worse if you're suffering from something like imposter syndrome.

I mean... you're asking them to give you more money. That's something they generally don't want to do, because more money for you, is less money for them. Well, not really, if we take into account motivation, a bigger likelihood to keep skill in the company instead of having ones workers go look for alternative jobs and other things, but that's how many people think. So of course the first reaction to that is generally not very enthusiastic, especially not if you're working for a large company where you don't have the chance to develop a personal relationship with the guy you have to ask for the pay raise. That's the same for men and women. You go in, you ask for a raise, and to get that raise, you need to make a compelling case for why you deserve that raise.

As far as I understand it, it's true that both, male and female bosses, tend to value a woman's work less than a man's work, so yes, you do start at a disadvantage in that negotiation and that is one of the issues that factor into the pay gap (some people on the other side will simplify that into "Women just don't ask for pay raises.", which is also wrong), but the way you make it a day and night issue where men seem to just get the pay raise because they're men, and for women it's an insurmountable obstacle doesn't have much to do with reality.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I'm curious as to what promotion options are available to "vice-president" other than "president"?!

 

[Traitorfish]

Most pop-evopsych, as you put it, takes its postulates about human nature first and then goes about rationalizing them. This means that any set of facts will be adduced in a way that it appears to justify the postulates.

Is it not sufficient just to say... that? It seems like it would be more accessible to a general audience, at any rate, than insisting on a specific positivist epistemology as the condition of being allowed to have an opinion.