Harriet Harman, a has-been Labour politician and deputy leader has said that the next Labour leader must be a woman and that men should stand aside.
Fuck right off you sexist idiot. And keep fucking off when you get there. How stupid can you get? Imagine if a man had said that women should not stand and back men instead? As someone who as voted for Labour in the past, I want the best person for the job, regardless of sex.
boy oh boy, I’m not bothered by this is the slightest.
I don’t mean should should necessarily get what she’s asking for, but I’m not offended that she’s raising the issue and trying to accomplish it.
If everyone got this offended every time a man did something sexist, we might actually end up with some equality around here. Quartz, don’t lose your fire, you’ve only just started this journey to end sexism. Onward!
There’s a time and place for affirmative action. This isn’t it.
(Although, it might have been a good idea for the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.)
While I don’t endorse the proposal of restricting (even by self-selection) the candidate pool to women, I think that cries of “OMG TEH SEXISM” about strongly advocating specifically for female leaders are kind of missing the point. The point is trying to push back against a strongly entrenched historic and persistent societal bias in favor of men. As Harman noted in a later quote:
One of the reasons we’ve still got the gender imbalance we’ve got in positions of leadership is that we still have many men believing (whether consciously or not) that their gender is some kind of fundamental qualification for important jobs, and many women believing (whether consciously or not) that their gender is some kind of fundamental disqualification for them.
If instead we declare, even if only as a thought experiment, that this time we’re going to consider only women for this particular important job, then we start to move past those preconceptions.
We don’t have to.
Our mothers and grandmothers were stripped of their union memberships and jobs at the end of World War II.
Tell me, do eldest children who are daughters now ascend to the House of Lords before their younger brothers? I don’t recall.
Well, it’s not called the House of Ladies, is it?
<runs away>
Don’t be silly, it’s by some wat’ry tart throwing a sword at you, you silly twit.
One viable way to restore equality is to temporarily push inequality the other direction. This is accepted in society in many situations. What matters is whether the fixing the inequality matters more than the temporary inequality you are establishing.
I do not know in this case. Is there an issue with having fewer women and this affecting what they actually do? There is an argument that you need diversity to represent a diverse country. This is the argument that says, if all else is equal, why not elect the black lady over the white man? You’re not going to be worse off either way.
As for the outrage, you do really need to have a historical perspective. Even if you disagree with her, this is not the same as if you reversed the genders. There is a longer historical history of picking men and not women.
In a world without sexism, intentionally picking a man or a woman would neither one be a big deal. But when women have historically been discriminated against, intentionally picking a man is worse than intentionally picking a woman when either one could do the job.
“When I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court] and I say, ‘When there are nine,’ people are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.”
― Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Absolutely not. That means discrimination against the other group. Two wrongs don’t make a right. It’s equality of opportunity that matters, not equality of result.
Wait, I think people did raise objections to a Supreme Court made up of nine men. Not enough people, sure. And not soon enough. But “nobody ever” is a bit of an overstatement.
But when, even by 2018, we still haven’t had a female labour leader, despite membership of the party being roughly 50/50 (and female leaders are grossly under-represented in all walks of life) then you have to ask if equality of opportunity actually exists – whether the characteristics that people look for in their leaders are based on characteristics which favour men, or whether the selection process is currently off putting to women (as an example, research has shown that men will apply for a job if they can tick off c. 30% of the job spec, women will discount themselves if they can’t tick 80-90% of the spec).
Assuming there is gender equality, when women STILL aren’t properly represented, does raise questions, and I think Harman is right to keep the debate top of mind, even if you disagree with her methods.
I’m in favor of women running for office. I’m not so much in favor of sudden announcements that this time, in this generation, a generic woman should be elected, presumably over a specific and popular man. This sounds like an anti-Corbyn strategic play, in the present context.
Exactly.
Especially not in the context of talking about a position for which the qualifications are so inherently subjective anyway.
What makes one person a better leader than another? Is there some particular intellectual or administrative capacity? In a democracy, is the only criterion that you should use the ability to gain more votes? Ask people about issues like this, and you’ll probably get as many answers as you have respondents. In such an atmosphere, is it really that unreasonable to ask that women be included as part of the process?
I’m not necessarily agreeing with the principle that the selection pool should only be women, but anyone who believes that the system as it has existed up until now has been an objective and unqualified meritocracy, and that efforts to promote women’s greater inclusion are inherently sexist, needs his head examined.
Person A and Person B are in a race, but Person A has to carry a 100 lb weight. If Person A is allowed to dispose of his weight halfway through the race, is it now a fair race?
I would enjoy replacing most of the US federal government posts with women, especially since the rise of John Bolton last night to NSA. Anything that cuts back on the Toxic Masculinity is cool with me.
Kudos to the Short Fingered Vulgarian for scraping the absolute bottom of the lady barrel and elevating broads like Conway, Huckabee-Sanders, and DeVos to positions of power. Just to remind us that women politicos can also be utter shit-swabs.