Category Archives: Men and Women

A History of Decentralization 5

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Environment, Law/Justice, Left and Right, Men and Women, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy, Science and Technology, Secession, Strategy

aragon.black
Jun 11, 2019
14 minute read (full)

First let’s decentralize history…

This month’s thematic has been a real challenge for us and raised many questions in our minds. Why? The history of decentralization is complex and non-linear. But most of all, it is difficult to be considered from an objective point of view, stripped of the predominance of the state.

Talking about decentralization leads obviously to discuss about centralization; to find the ghosts of history, to cross-reference the victories and failures of social-political movements; to discover some contemporary alternatives to the generalized centralization of our lives. Unless we consider that a technology is neutral, in the end, we cannot talk about decentralization without talking about governance, suffrage, politics or apoliticism, autonomy, organization… and the dominant model of centralization: the nation-state. Still, if a very vast literature and documentation concerns rise of states, it must be stated that the one granted to the opposite, i. e. the absence of a state, is almost non-existent. More…

Don’t make women register for the draft. Just end draft registration for everyone. Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Men and Women, Military

The anti-Vietnam War and anti-draft movements of the 1960s and 1970s are a shining example of what I would consider to be an anarchist success. No, the government wasn’t abolished. But the most powerful state in history was forced to withdraw from a war of imperialist aggression by means of a combination of illegality (draft resistance), civil disobedience, mass protests, riots, civilian armed struggle (there were literally thousands of bombings in the US during that time, as well as armed confrontations between feds/pigs and militant organizations), and passive resistance, mutiny, and “fragging” (assassinating officers) by soldiers.

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Feminism Against Chauvinistic Feminism 20

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Men and Women, Sexuality and the State • Tags:

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

I’ve long considered myself to be a feminist, even before I realized I was trans. It’s always seemed like basic common sense to me that people shouldn’t be defined by the contents of their genitalia but by the quality of their character. Regardless of where you stand on rape culture or abortion or Hillary goddamn Clinton, that’s really what it all comes down to. That and realizing the basic fact that our society treats women and anyone perceived as feminine like second class citizens at best. If you ask most people, left, right, or center, on these basic realities of American life, they’ll generally (if begrudgingly) agree with you. Then why is feminism still such a controversial subject? Try casually mentioning it on almost any given message board and count the seconds before a dozen trolls threaten to rape and gut you and leave you for dead by the highway. Seriously, fucking try it. I have. The very word feminism seems to bring the worst out of people online.

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The Democrats’ Left Turn Is Not an Illusion Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Left and Right, Men and Women, Race and Ethnicity

The research that is cited in this article, along with the “Hidden Tribes” report that came out recently, seems to confirm what I have long suspected, i.e. that “political correctness” is the ideology of the mostly white, educated, affluent, left-wing of the upper middle class. This is probably one of the more interesting parts of this article:

“In fact, white liberals are well to the left of the black electorate on some racial issues.

Take the issue of discrimination as a factor holding back African-American advancement. White liberals are to the left of black Democrats, placing a much stronger emphasis than African-Americans on the role of discrimination and much less emphasis on the importance of individual effort.

Among white liberals, according to Pew survey data collected in 2017, 79.2 percent agreed that “racial discrimination is the main reason why many black people can’t get ahead these days.” 18.8 percent agreed that “blacks who can’t get ahead in this country are mostly responsible for their own condition,” a 60.4 point difference, according to a detailed analysis of the Pew data provided the Times by Zach Goldberg, a doctoral candidate in political science at Georgia State University.

Among blacks, 59.9 percent identified discrimination as the main deterrent to upward mobility for African-Americans, and 32.0 percent said blacks were responsible for their condition — in other words, blacks are more conservative than white liberals on this issue.?”

By Thomas B. Edsall

New York Times

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The Alt-Right is Gay 5

by • Arts & Entertainment, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Men and Women, Race and Ethnicity, Strategy, Uncategorized, WTF!?

5724398e-af35-4eb9-9c97-3a873d9bd900One thing about European New Right philosophy that I think is right is that America is a completely separate culture and civilization from Europe even if it is a derivative in many ways. Interestingly, North American New Righters try to be more European culturally and intellectually even if many of them are Americans by birth and citizenship. That said, as the demographic change continues and whites become just another minority I don’t see how white nationalists will not become even weirder to most Americans or not be a right wing version of the creepy cross dressing homo plastic surgery freaks of leftist identity politics groups with their own bizarre subcultures and idiosyncrasies. I am just not convinced that a high brow, intellectual, racialist counter culture is going to achieve intellectual hegemony in US cultural institutions and then trickle down from the Alternative Bourgeoisie to the white masses to forma zee Eudapean Amedikin Etno Homozexuelle State.

It’s true that the Alt-Right is growing but the only reason it’s growing is because it provides more social space for non threatening preppies, dandies, stuck up snobs, and closeted homosexuals who have the same west coast values and lifestyles as most yuppie square professionals on the Left (wining and dining at fancy restaurants, driving a nice car, parking, lunch and dinner, having a dog sitter, living in an upscale apartment with a loft in a “good neighborhood,” etc.) except that they hate blacks and dirty Mexicans so they get off on identifying as Euro Mysterion to scare a few democrats who don’t know any better.

One thing you’ll notice about the Alt-Right is that there’s not a whole lot of discussion of actual strategy in their circles. I think one of the reasons the ENR has never been able to extend its influence outside dissident intellectual circles in Europe is because its high brow intellectuals have no conception of practical politics. They’ve never been able to agree among themselves on anything other than their homosexuality to be able to actually work out any practical plan of what a WN / ENR / Alt-Right society would actually look like (form of government, economic system, legal definition of rights and responsibilities, foreign policy, handling of gay marriage and other inter-white irreconcilable cultural conflicts, etc.) or how any of it would really be achieved or implemented.

The Alt-Right was interesting when it was bringing the ideas of real thinkers like Dugin and Benoist to an American audience, and promoting bad motherfuckers like Jack Donovan who has since broken with the Alt-Right. Richard Spencer’s leadership has been terrible. He’s more or less become the new David Duke. Whether that was his intention or not is beside the point. He did nothing to prevent it. Matt Parrott, who used to produce the ATS podcast on VOR and CC, has become a self-parody along with his son-in-law, Matt Heimbach. Those guys have become the new Tom Metzger or something. The Right Stuff guys like Mike Enoch have gone off the deep end as well.

It’s a shit show.

Kind of anti-SJW SJWs.

This is why the Alt-Right and the New American Right will never become anything more than a fetish for a small minority of weird intellectuals just like the symphony or the opera. Practical strategy, armed resistance, and all the other stuff that actually matters beyond the level of a small group of ineffectual intellectuals aiming to develop the white counter-culture through art, literature, and philosophy is a no-go. It’s the same with conspiracy kids, the libertarians, and most anarchists of course, which is why most of our work at ATS has been about addressing these questions. We certainly don’t have it all figured it out but we know the tradition of secession resonates well with Americans, and we know pan-anarchy would enable a number of white republics or white socialist states. Conspiracy theorists can have their UFO tents. Anarchists can have all their varying hyphenated communities. And white nationalists can have many different kinds of homosexual cities. Aristotle noted that the great cities of classical civilization possessed over 150 different constitutions among them. One big homosexual state is just not necessary and let’s be real, it’s not going to happen. So why not aim to break up the central state and scatter throughout the continent?

I don’t think whites have much of a future in modern American political culture and I agree that it’s a problem but I don’t think a white rights movement is the way to go. If that’s what you’re going for, cool, but I’ll be hanging with the anarchists agitating for secession while you guys reread Ezra Pound Part 9 Million behind the symphony set on Sundays.

Holla.

2017 Was the Year I Learned About My White Privilege Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Men and Women, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity, Uncategorized • Tags:

Prominent neocon Max Boot moves leftward. In the early 2000s, I predicted that eventually “conservatism” in the USA would look like today’s Democratic Party, and that “liberalism” would look like the present academic left/SJWs. This seems to be the direction in which things are increasingly heading.

Boot says nothing in this article that is particularly insightful. What great epiphanies has he had? That many cops are assholes (duh)? That blacks, poor people, and other disadvantaged folks are more likely to be victims of police brutality than country clubbers (duh)? That some white folks stereotype black folks as criminals and ne’er do wells (duh)? That some men commit sex crimes against women, among other crimes (duh)? That some men (and others) engage in rude, boorish, or inappropriate behavior (duh)?

None of this has anything to do with the critique of totalitarian humanism. That workers are exploited does not legitimize Communism. That the Israel Lobby has too much influence over US foreign policy does not legitimize neo-Nazism. That Islamist extremists engage in terrorism does not legitimize US imperialism or Boot’s own neocon foreign policy outlook. Boot sounds like a guy who has realized that the stock value of “cultural conservatism” is declining, and is looking leftward for a more lucrative gig.

By Max Boot

Foreign Policy

Men wave rainbow and 'black lives matter' flags while marching in the annual LGBTQI Pride Parade on June 25, 2017 in San Francisco. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)

In college — this was in the late 1980s and early 1990s at the University of California, Berkeley — I used to be one of those smart-alecky young conservatives who would scoff at the notion of “white male privilege” and claim that anyone propagating such concepts was guilty of “political correctness.” As a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union, I felt it was ridiculous to expect me to atone for the sins of slavery and segregation, to say nothing of the household drudgery and workplace discrimination suffered by women. I wasn’t racist or sexist. (Or so I thought.) I hadn’t discriminated against anyone. (Or so I thought.) My ancestors were not slave owners or lynchers; they were more likely victims of the pogroms.

I saw America as a land of opportunity, not a bastion of racism or sexism. I didn’t even think that I was a “white” person — the catchall category that has been extended to include everyone from a Mayflower descendant to a recently arrived illegal immigrant from Ireland. I was a newcomer to America who was eager to assimilate into this wondrous new society, and I saw its many merits while blinding myself to its dark side.

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Sexual Harassment 2

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Men and Women, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

Bill Lind argues that the solution to the recent brouhaha over sexual harassment is a return to Victorian mores. I would make the polar opposite argument,i.e. that present day hysteria over “sexual harassment” is in fact a kind of neo-Victorianism, along with other manifestations of PC, e.g. anti-smoking puritans, the food police, feminist crusades against sex workers, the language police, helicopter parenting, safe spaces, trigger warnings, sensitivity training, etc. All modern nations maintain laws against rape and sexual assault. These are violent crimes that are normally punished severely by the courts. Most functional businesses with competent leadership maintain rules against sexual harassment in the workplace, and terminate employees who violate the rules. Are there people who do all these things anyway, is spite of laws or rules? Yes, just as there are people who commit murder, armed robbery, and burglary even though they are assuming the risk of prison or execution, and there are employees who show up for work intoxicated even though they are risking termination. Nothing more needs to be said.

By William S. Lind

Traditional Right

No law is more deeply engraved in human nature than that which leads men to make advances towards women and women to flirt with men.  It was written there long before history began, before time began to be reckoned.  Why?  Because it is necessary for the perpetuation of the human race.

Today, cultural Marxism seeks to overturn this law, or at least half of it.  Women are to be allowed to do whatever they want, befitting their “victim” status in cultural Marxism’s hierarchy of saints and sinners.  But men–should one so much as look at a woman with a gleam in his eye, he is to be damned to eternal shame, cast out of public life, deprived of employment, and ordered to undergo psychological “re-education”, presumably so he can become a better person by turning gay.

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Making sense of the culture war over transgender identity Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Men and Women, Sexuality and the State

The Economist

As more people change gender, they are sparking a debate that enrages some and confuses many

A BEAUTIFUL man with high cheekbones, fluttering eyelashes and a galaxy of silver glitter in his hair strides into the room. He is wearing a wedding dress and dirty trainers. The gender-bending at this club night in east London is not new: Shakespeare’s comedies are filled with cross-dressers; Gladys Bentley stomped the boards of 1920s Harlem in a tuxedo; Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie’s ambiguous interstellar alias, landed in the 1970s. What is new, though, is that convention-defying statements of gender identity are moving from stage and dance floor to everyday life.
The word “gender” is used by prudes to avoid saying “sex”, and restricted by purists (and, until recently, The Economist’s style guide) to speaking about grammar. In the 1970s feminists described the restricted behaviour regarded as proper to men and women as “gender roles”. But in recent years “gender identity” has come to mean how people feel or present themselves, as distinct from biological sex or sexual orientation. Growing numbers of young people describe themselves as “non-binary”. Others say gender is a spectrum, or that they have no gender at all. Facebook offers users a list of over 70 gender identities, from “agender” to “two-spirit”, as well as the option to write in their own.

Keith Preston: Status and power shields US elites from sexual allegations Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Men and Women

Press TV. Listen here.

Acts of sexual harassment in positions of power are commonplace in the institutional settings, and in the case of US President Donald Trump, given his background and “lifestyle proclivities” it is “reasonable to assume that these allegations are probably true,” an American analyst and media figure says.

“Of course Trump is going to deny all of this, and of course the White House press is going to deny all of this as well, or at least its press representatives like Mrs. Sanders [will deny]. That does not mean this did not happen, it just means of course the White House will issue the obligatory denial,” Keith Preston, the chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com, told Press TV on Sunday.

Such offensive conduct is common in “elite circles” and there is nothing “unique” in what Trump or others in positions of power have done, he added.

The multiple allegations against former US President Bill Clinton is not lighter than Trump’s allegations, he said, emphasizing that Clinton “probably has at least as bad a track record as far as engaging in sexual harassment and arguably sexual assault. Bill Clinton has been accused of actual rape by a number of women.”

“Those allegations have never been proven in the sense that he has never been charged of a crime. However, they have never been disproven as well, and a lot of that obviously has to do with the fact that they are of status and power and privilege and it shields them in that way.”

Women have recently been coming forward to share encounters of sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, including in the US media and entertainment industries and the realm of politics.

An avalanche of sexual misconduct allegations have been made in recent weeks against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. The scandal has rippled in a wide range of industries, encouraging victims of sexual assault to share their stories on social media under the hashtag #MeToo.

The latest accusations of sexual assault came against journalist Mark Halperin. Halperin, who until recently worked for NBC and MSNBC as an analyst, has been accused by several women of sexual assault. Some of the allegations against him say that, while working at ABC News, he touched women without consent and pressed himself against three of his co-workers.

Amid the series of sexual harassment scandals against elite political and media figures, the issue of sexual allegations against Trump was once again raised by reporters during a briefing with White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders on Friday.

“Is the official White House position that all of these women are lying?” a CBS News reporter asked Sanders.

Sanders responded: “Yeah, we’ve been clear on that from the beginning, and the president has spoken on it.” She did not comment further and quickly moved on to another question.

Laci Green interviewed by Dave Rubin: Red Pilling, Sex, and Constructive Dialogue Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Men and Women, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Sexuality and the State, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

Laci Green (YouTube Creator) joins Dave Rubin live in studio to discuss social justice warriors, politics and her recent awakening, gender, sex, and more. Subscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c…

The city hardest hit by Mexico’s earthquake is a sexually liberated matriarchy Reply

by • Men and Women, Sexuality and the State

Pan-anarchism for Amazons?

TheLilly.Com

On Thursday, an earthquake devastated parts of Mexico, killing at least 65 people in what President Enrique Peña Nieto called the country’s most powerful tremor in the past 100 years.

Approximately 50 million people felt the 8.1-magnitude earthquake, which was centered more than 600 miles from Mexico City in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Tapachula, a town in Chiapas famous as a way station for Central American migrants headed to the United States.

But one of the worst-hit towns appeared to be Juchitan, located in the state of Oaxaca. At least 36 people have been killed there. Entire streets have been turned into rubble; the town’s white city hall has been reduced to debris.

Juchitan plays a special role in Mexico. The city of 100,000 is home to the country’s indigenous Zapotec people, who run a matriarchal society.

“Women are public figures here,” Marina Meneses, a sociologist and Juchitan resident, told the Los Angeles Times. “Women are the main organizers.”

Many of the city’s men work as fishermen or farmhands, which leaves women to run the market. That economic freedom translates to social freedom.

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What’s the alt-right, and how large is its audience? 1

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Immigration, Left and Right, Men and Women, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy, Sexuality and the State

Many liberals and leftists that I know are currently in a state of panic over the rise of the Alt-Right, which they predictably regard as the onset of the Fourth Reich. In reality, the Alt-Right is a very small movement that is made to seem much, much larger than it is because of its provocative effect which is duly amplified by the sensationalist media.

The Alt-Right is an entirely predictable backlash against ongoing demographic transformation of the US, the entrenchment of political correctness, globalization, and the hegemony of the neocons in mainstream conservatism. The Alt-Right is to white nationalism what the Religious Right was to Christian conservatism, only with a lot less in the way of size, resources or influence. In nearly 40 years of its existence, the Religious Right has lost every one of its major issues (abortion, school prayer, gay rights, gay marriage, reversing the sexual revolution of the 1960s, gender roles, family relations, education policy, etc.) and the Alt-Right will be even less successful in the long run.

The Religious Right merely wanted to turn back the clock to the 1950s while the Alt-Right wants to go back to the 1920s when segregation, eugenics, and comprehensive immigration were the status quo. Ain’t gonna happen. In fact, neo-Nixonian Donald Trump may well turn out to be the right-wing’s last stand. (And unless anyone accuses me of libertarian bias, it is even more unlikely that the mainstream libertarian program of turning back the clock to the Gilded Age is going to happen).

By Thomas J. Main

Los Angeles Times

Inquiring minds want to know: What exactly is the “alt-right,” and how large is the audience for the movement?

The essence of the alt-right can be distilled to this catchphrase: All people are not created equal. That’s even more extreme than it may sound. Prominent alt-right thinkers don’t only believe that some are naturally taller, stronger or smarter than others, but also that some groups are more deserving of political status than others. They reject the concept of equality before the law.

Andrew Anglin is editor of the most popular alt-right web magazine, the Daily Stormer. He has written that “The Alt-Right does not accept the pseudo-scientific claims that ‘all races are equal.’” He also supports repatriation of American blacks to Africa or “autonomous territory” within the U.S.

Not all alt-right thinkers are so radical in their aims, but they all believe in some form of race-based political inegalitarianism. The unequal brigade includes in its ranks editors of and regular contributors to many alt-right web magazines, including Richard Spencer of Radix Journal, Mike Enoch of the Right Stuff, Brad Griffin (also known as Hunter Wallace) of Occidental Dissent, Jared Taylor of American Renaissance and James Kirkpatrick of VDARE (named after Virginia Dare, the first British child born in America).

The exact size of the alt-right is perhaps not of the utmost importance. As an ideological movement, the alt-right seeks not immediate policy or electoral victories, but longer-term influence on how others think about politics. Still, it’s possible to get a sense of the scope of this netherworld through web traffic.

From September 2016 to May 2017, I analyzed visits and unique visitors to scores of political web magazines of various political orientations. (One person accessing a site five times in a month represents five visits but only one unique visitor). Through interviews and using the site Media Bias / Fact Check, I identified nine alt-right sites, 53 sites associated with the mainstream right, and 63 with the mainstream left. I excluded left- or right-leaning general-interest publications, such as BuzzFeed, the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. Data were obtained from SimilarWeb, a well-known provider of web-marketing information. All audience figures given here are monthly averages for the nine-month period I studied.

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The Land of No Men: Inside Kenya’s Women-Only Village Reply

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Men and Women

Pan-Anarchism is for everyone, even abused African women.

Broadly

Where the foothills of Mount Kenya merge into the desert, the people of Samburu have maintained a strict patriarchy for over 500 years in northern Kenya. That is, until 25 years ago, when Rebecca Lolosoli founded Umoja village as a safe haven for the region’s women. Umoja, which means “unity” in Swahili, is quite literally a no man’s land, and the matriarchal refuge is now home to the Samburu women who no longer want to suffer abuses, like genital mutilation and forced marriages, at the hands of men. Throughout the years, it has also empowered other women in the districts surrounding Samburu to start their own men-excluding villages. Broadly visited Umoja and the villages it inspired to meet with the women who were fed up with living in a violent patriarchy.

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Iran and the Left: Why They Supported Islamic Reaction 2

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Men and Women, Religion and Philosophy, Uncategorized

An old Trotskyist article from the 1970s on the relationship between Left and Islamic fundamentalism during the Iranian Revolution.

Workers Vanguard

Spartacist League

When mullah rule was established in Iran in early 1979, the vast bulk of the Western left actively supported Ayatollah Khomeini’s seizure of power. Virtually  the only group that refused to bow to the Islamic reactionaries was the  Spartacist League, to which the League for the Fourth International traces its origin and from which founding cadres of the LFI came. At that time, when the SL stood on the program of revolutionary Trotskyism, its newspaper, Workers Vanguard, published the following important article.

In one sense it is now very easy to polemicize against those leftists, especially ostensible Trotskyists, who supported the Islamic opposition to the shah. We said Khomeini in power would seek to reimpose the veil, restore barbaric punishments (flogging, amputation), suppress the national minorities and crush the left and workers movement as ruthlessly as did the shah. Imperialist propaganda, they shouted, Khomeini is leading a great progressive struggle! Thus one self-proclaimed Trotskyist group in Britain charged:

    •  “The Spartacists make a series of charges against the Mullah-led opposition as a result of which they characterize the movement as one of ‘clerical reaction.’ A number of these charges amount to uncritical retailing of the chauvinist rubbish which filled the American press throughout the Autumn. The Mullahs they claim wish to restore Iran to the 7th century AD…. They wish to introduce savage Islamic law punishments; stoning, public hanging and whipping etc. They wish to enforce the wearing of the veil and the removal of the rights given to women by the Shah.”

–Workers Power

    , February 1979

Well?

Now every piece of news out of Iran proves the international Spartacist tendency (iSt) was obviously, indisputably 100 percent right. The streets of Teheran are filled with the anguished cries of those, from middle-class liberal women to Guevarist guerrillas, who claim they were taken in by Khomeini’s revolution. Tragically, the voice of the revolutionists who warned of the reactionary clericalist aims of the mullahs was drowned in the clamor of opportunists singing the praises of the “anti-imperialist” ayatollah. It is the Iranian masses who will pay the price.

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6 Feminist Myths That Will Not Die Reply

by • Left and Right, Men and Women, Uncategorized

By Christina Hoff Sommers

Time

Much of what we hear about the plight of American women is false. Some faux facts have been repeated so often they are almost beyond the reach of critical analysis. Though they are baseless, these canards have become the foundation of Congressional debates, the inspiration for new legislation and the focus of college programs. Here are five of the most popular myths that should be rejected by all who are genuinely committed to improving the circumstances of women:

MYTH 1: Women are half the world’s population, working two-thirds of the world’s working hours, receiving 10% of the world’s income, owning less than 1% of the world’s property.

FACTS: This injustice confection is routinely quoted by advocacy groups, the World Bank, Oxfam and the United Nations. It is sheer fabrication. More than 15 years ago, Sussex University experts on gender and development Sally Baden and Anne Marie Goetz, repudiated the claim: “The figure was made up by someone working at the UN because it seemed to her to represent the scale of gender-based inequality at the time.” But there is no evidence that it was ever accurate, and it certainly is not today.

Precise figures do not exist, but no serious economist believes women earn only 10% of the world’s income or own only 1% of property. As one critic noted in an excellent debunking in The Atlantic, “U.S. women alone earn 5.4 percent of world income today.” Moreover, in African countries, where women have made far less progress than their Western and Asian counterparts, Yale economist Cheryl Doss found female land ownership ranged from 11% in Senegal to 54% in Rwanda and Burundi. Doss warns that “using unsubstantiated statistics for advocacy is counterproductive.” Bad data not only undermine credibility, they obstruct progress by making it impossible to measure change.

MYTH 2: Between 100,000 and 300,000 girls are pressed into sexual slavery each year in the United States.

FACTS: This sensational claim is a favorite of politicians, celebrities and journalists. Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore turned it into a cause célèbre. Both conservatives and liberal reformers deploy it. Former President Jimmy Carter recently said that the sexual enslavement of girls in the U.S. today is worse than American slavery in the 19th century.

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Women Still Face Oppression Today in the U.S. Reply

by • Left and Right, Men and Women, Uncategorized

By Mina Ghaninejad

The Rattler

In August of 1920, women were granted the right to vote by the implementation of the 19th amendment. Since then, women have slowly progressed into having the same rights as men. And although most people would assume that women have reached the same status as men, given the modern era, that is simply not the case.

Women today are still oppressed in multiple ways, and yet we as a society turn a blind eye to the oppression that physically and emotionally harm women as a gender and as individuals. Not only are women financially oppressed, women are also socially and sexually oppressed in more than one circumstance in which men would not be.

In 2012, statistics from catalyst.org, documented the median annual income for both sexes. While women earned $37,791, men earned $49,398. In the educational field, statistics proved that the higher the degree, the higher the difference between pay. While the average median women with doctoral degrees get paid $1,371 weekly, men get paid $1,734.  Women with only a bachelor’s degree earn $930 while men earn $1,199.

In 2013, the average everyday female worker gets paid only 78% of what men earn. Though women in all states face unequal pay, some states only give women 66% of what men earn in states such as Louisiana, while in Washington, D.C, women receive 91% of what men earn.

In 2014, the Senate Republicans refused to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. This law has been persistent on being passed since 2012, however once again for the third time, it was shot down by Congress. The Paycheck Fairness Act allows employers to talk about their wages more freely and easily. The Act also forces employers to explain why the different sexes earn different wages, and to close the pay gap between males and females. And while every Democrat voted for the bill to be passed, every Republican in the Senate voted against the bill, though claiming they support equal pay for equal work. The Senates reason for the refusal of the bill was that it would ‘increase civil lawsuits, and would be pointless since discrimination based on sexes is already illegal in the United States’.

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