Rex Kerr
2 min readApr 17, 2024

--

No, because you're factually wrong. I agree not to bug you about it, if you don't want to listen, but it won't change you being largely wrong.

On abortion: it's legal in most liberal democracies, so it isn't even an issue. Where it is an issue, like U.S. Republicans (already less than half the U.S.), women and men have rather similar views--yes, men are a little more likely to be strongly anti-abortion, but out of people who say abortion should never be legal, 45% are women! This is not being imposed by men. This is being imposed by men and women.

On differential pay: the effect of men specifically paying women less is modest and not consistent across studies. There do seem to be gender differences (women share bonuses more generously, but are less likely to promote employees) and also political outlook differences (conservatives pay women less, basically). The largest part of the gender pay gap is profession and promotion; within jobs with same title and experience etc. ("controlled wage gap") it's very close. "Men pay women less" is an extremely misleading characterization of the situation.

On Marx: he wrote mostly about capitalism, not (social, individual) liberalism. The two are not synonymous, and indeed, there is a great deal of tension between them. That ideals don't come to fruition without a lot of effort in cases where there's a lot of tension between ideals is, when phrased that way, unsurprising. And anyway, it's not terribly relevant to patriarchy as you're using it here.

I agree to know what I'm talking about, based on evidence, and disagree with you where you haven't based your beliefs on how things actually are. I also agree to change my mind based on evidence--evidence was how I came to an understanding in the first place, and it's an ongoing process--but that's the only thing that works.

I do agree not to bug you about it, though, if you want to hold alternative views.

--

--

Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

Responses (1)