Feminist Myths: The Pay Gap, Domestic Violence, and Rape Culture

Column by new Root Striker Carlos Morales.

Exclusive to STR

A hint of skepticism may arise when a male, due to the commonly held notion that women are still treated as second-class citizens, makes any criticism of modern feminism. Whether it is the gender wage gap, domestic violence, the “glass ceiling,” rape culture, or a number of other gender-based stratification barriers that are keeping women down, it seems that women just can’t get a break. When discussing these topics, though, it’s important to look at them as a whole, to delve into details, and not to just dabble in media/government statements that might not hold true when looked at with a bias towards reason. So, let’s start with that “gender wage gap” that keeps sneaking its way into the conversation.

If media pundits, politicians, and government-funded intellectuals are to be believed, women work tirelessly and sexual discrimination is the reason why every 75 cents a woman makes, a man makes a dollar. But is that true? While it may be the case that men do make more than women in certain situations, it’s not always the case that it’s for the same work. One of the ways that the supposed gap was brought up, was when sociologists were researching doctors, they noticed that men were paid more. The issue was, that’s only telling half the story. Women are more likely to be general practitioners and pediatricians, while men are more likely to take specialized jobs such as surgeons and cardiologists. Now, this isn’t to suggest that it’s bad that women take a more general physician position, but simply that specialized jobs take more time in the form of schooling and are scarcer. We’re not going to dabble in the Labor Theory of Value here; simply put, the more scarce and the greater the demand for a resource, the more the price will go up. This specialization and time put in for it is a large reason for the gap in a number of other occupations as well. Men are more likely to take jobs in hazardous fields (coal miner vs. public school teacher), to take jobs in specialized fields that can require more difficult skills (engineer vs. librarian), pick unrewarding jobs, take financial risks, and work at inconvenient hours and work longer hours. None of this is to say that there’s anything wrong with picking alternatives; simply put, this is where the occupational culture is at in this era. This has a lot to do with the glass ceiling as well. Women tend to stop trying to make their way up the corporate ladder somewhere around after they get to salary positions equaling $80,000 to $120,000. This could be because they don’t find it necessary to have their lives controlled by their job, and want to work fewer hours.

I would like to point something out, though. Much of this only applies to married women, because here’s a fact that isn’t brought up in many feminist theory classes: never-married women without children earn 13% more than their male counterparts. For more information on this and sources, please check Warren Farrell’s Why Men Earn More.

Feminist also love to put themselves on a cross by stating that women put in long hours at home in comparison to men, but women are less than half as likely as men to work more than 50 hours a week. I would also like to put forward, that spending time with your children isn’t the same as being a damn coal miner, the notion that “they have the hardest job” is just another thing men love to say to get brownie points.

On to the “society is laid out for men” idea. I wonder, if society is geared towards benefiting just men, why is it that men are the only ones who have to sign up for Selective Service? Let me take a shot at it. Throughout history--especially in pre-industrial time--birth was hell for women and many women died during labor. This meant that women’s biological disposability was risky for humanity as a whole; with no women, you get no babies. With men, a different form of disposability enters in, that is, the social/cultural and manipulative disposability that gets men killed through warfare and dangerous occupations (a fun fact is that 93% of work-related deaths involve men). It takes conceptual titles to manipulate good men to die for terrible ideas; these include hero, colonel, general, and soldier. With those titles, you also get prizes, like the Purple Heart, Silver Star, and the Medal of Honor. Simply put, the disposability of humans lies with women who die due to biological and medical issues in labor, and men who are manipulated to die for lies.The truth is, society is not laid out for just men or just women. It’s laid out by and for those who con others into believing their lies and use force on everyone else who questions them.

Now about that “rape culture” business. I’m going to go ahead and grab the definition from that great free market invention known as Wikipedia: “Rape culture is a concept used to describe a culture in which rape and sexual violence are common and in which prevalent attitudes, norms, practices, and media normalize, excuse, tolerate, or even condone rape.”

If people mean rape culture is destroying just women, I have an issue. If people mean that rape culture is destroying both men and women, then they may have something. How is it destroying men? Men outnumber women among American rape victims. How is that possible? Are women running down men in back alleys and ripping their pants off? Of course not, but here’s a clue: 2.3 million Americans are in jail, 60% of them are non-violent offenders, and only 6.8% of them are women. Everyone knows that men are routinely raped in prison, to the point that cop dramas continuously make fun of it by telling convicts “Do you really want to be someone’s girlfriend?” The majority of rape in America is man on man, yet it’s joked about like it’s no big deal. That’s real rape culture.

Now let’s deal with the domestic violence issue. Domestic violence is absolutely horrendous and abhorrent. It destroys lives and families and is truly tragic. But is it really all about men hitting women? Two nouns, four words, and six syllables: “Frying pans” and “rolling pins.” That’s how the media perpetuates abuse against men. When a woman hits a man, it’s because he deserves it. If a man is to defend himself from a woman hitting him repeatedly, at best he’s weak and at worst he’s a psychopath who deserves prison time. A constitutional lawyer and author by the name of Phyllis Schlafly states this in regards to the flimsy nature of feminism, equality and domestic violence: “For 30 years, the feminists have been pretending that their goal is to abolish all sex discrimination, eliminating all gender differences no matter how reasonable. When it comes to domestic violence, however, feminist dogma preaches that there is an innate gender difference: Men are naturally batterers, and women are naturally victims (i.e., gender profiling).” A fantastic double standard in an ABC special showed this in “a reaction to women abusing men in public.” There are over 800,000 reports of women abusing men in the United States, and one could only guess how many men didn’t call the police because they were afraid of being considered weak or even worse, blamed for domestic violence themselves due to false allegations.

I realize that there are more questions and statements from feminists near and far that may have not been answered, but I hope that these facts make you want to delve into this subject more and to not take feminists, political pundits, and intellectuals on their word.