"scarce" resources, college and sexism

[rm]

And then there's this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/opinion/23britz.html

It's the sort of thing that makes it hard for me to imagine any world in which women, at least as a group, don't always lose.

via rackmount

Comments

Re: If you haven't seen it yet...

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

Have you heard "I Didn't Just Kiss Her"...? I just saw this today. There's a video embed here:

http://www.out.com/detail.asp?page=1&id=25011

[rackmount.livejournal.com]

this was exactly why i posted it.

FIRST prove you're 10 times better to prove that you're anywhere near as good as men.

SECOND prove you're 10 times better because god forbid the guys should fall behind.

wth? or, as i said, damned if you do, damned if you don't. i mean jesus. there are lots of places i considered applying that were man-only until the 60s/70s.

[rackmount.livejournal.com]

"The more women go to college and the fewer men do, the less relevance college education will have in our society."

You're right, but that's not a bad thing. The fact is that going to college has not been the same thing as going to COLLEGE since the G.I. Bill. The number of colleges and universities has multiplied since that time. Do you think that's because everyone's gotten smarter or more collegey? Do you think it's because every college-grad improves his or her chances equally? No. The working and middle classes have been sold "college" as a way to climb the status ladder, only to find out that going to Bowling Green State University is NOT the same thing as going to Smith or Oberlin or Brown. The only thing that's similar is the amount of debt it requires. I really don't think it would be the worst thing if our current college-heavy post-high-school thing switched to being a patchwork of what used to be called "normal" schools, teaching schools, seminaries and business preparation courses.

Anyway, companies need some way to separate resumes out, and at the beginning of the career-path, that ends up being college. Give me an example of what else businesses can use when they are offering entry-level jobs that will cut down on "worthy" applications, and I might believe you're right about this. as it is, college will remain, no matter what the gender imbalances.

And I'm going to ditto the Uppity lady below: "The problem is masculinity; so why is the "solution" to make things harder for women?"

Re: ...

[magnetgirl.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to say-really well-stated throughout this thread. I need to learn to debate in this fashion!

Uphold The Market!

[keith418.livejournal.com]

"The central debates about race in America today are no longer debates between racism and antiracism. Rather, the debate today is between two kinds of antiracism. One, identified with multiculturalism and the left, urges us to respect and preserve the differences between blacks and whites and Native Americans and Jews and whomever. It gives poor people identities and, turning them into black people or Latinos or women, insists on regarding their problems as effects of discrimination and intolerance. The other, identified with the right, regards the respect for racial difference as itself a form of discrimination and insists that the only identity that matters (the one we should be respecting) is 'American identity.'


"The problem with this debate is that, from the standpoint of economic inequality, it doesn’t matter which side you’re on and it doesn’t matter who wins. Either way, economic inequality is absolutely untouched. The dream of a world free of prejudice, the dream of a world where identities (whether American of hyphenated American) are not discriminated against, is as foundational to the right as it is to the left. And the dream is completely compatible with (is, actually, essential to) the dream of a fully free and efficient market. Here's where the concept of neoliberalism - the idea of the free market as the essential mechanism of social justice - is genuinely clarifying. A society free not only of racism but of sexism and heterosexism is a neoliberal utopia where all the irrelevant grounds for inequality (your identity) have been eliminated and whatever inequalities are left are therefore legitimated. Thus, when it comes to antiracism, the left is more like a police force for, than an alternative to, the right. Its commitment to rooting out the residual prejudices that too many of us no doubt continue to harbor deep inside is a tacit commitment to the efficiency of the market. And it commitment to the idea that the victims of social injustice today are the victims of racism, sexism, and heterosexism (the victims of discrimination rather than exploitation, of intolerance rather than of oppression, or of oppression in the form of intolerance) is a commitment to the essential justice of the market. The preferred crimes of neoliberals are always hate crimes; when our favorite victims are the victims of prejudice, we are all neoliberals."

- Walter Benn Michaels

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

Privilege issues aside, I'm really puzzled by this piece. Granted, I was accepted into university a decade ago, but I won a scholarship for three of my five years, and my grades were well above what would have been an automatic accept. This was also at a state school. I can't imagine things have changed so profoundly in just 10 years at least in Salt Lake City. Where are these elusive schools of which the author speaks? Are they all private, ivy-league deals? If so, that's sort of an issue of privilege right there, I'd think.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

Ungh. Woops. I failed to notice that "the most selective universities" were specifically mentioned in the article.

Still, that raises an interesting point, doesn't it? Of saying that "elite" universities are somehow better than state schools? And that education there is somehow better than what those of us who didn't go to Harvard or Yale received,

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

I went to a state school and ... don't really regret it. I'm debt free too!