# Resolved: Woman is the Nigger of the World (Thank you, John Lennon) **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 16, 2009, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154 "2009-02-16T20:30:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/81 "2009-02-18T08:51:53Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The most important work necessary to the species requires an essential contribution from each sex. I disagree. I don’t think the act of copulation qualifies as “work”, and I meant “work” when I said it. Once dad drops off the sperm, his “work” is done if he wants it to be. Not hers. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/82 "2009-02-18T11:28:34Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > FGM is not just something that women do to women for their own mysterious womanly reasons. Totally agreed, and I never meant to imply otherwise. Similarly, war is not just something that men do to men for their own mysterious manly reasons. We’re all in this together. **Cat Fight** , of course I’m aware of gender disparities in education around the world. That doesn’t meant the OP’s statement is true. **Stoid** , you ask based on what do I dispute your claim. I dispute it based on your lack of supporting evidence. You make sweeping generalizations coupled with irrelevant factoids (yes, men may be done with reproduction after the act of copulation–but rarely are). You ignore the overwhelming number of the victims of war who are male (or you try to brush taht off by suggesting that, since other males are killing them, their suffering somehow doesn’t count). Basically, you haven’t proven your case. Make a slightly less grandiose case, and I’ll probably agree with it. But the one you’re trying to make just isn’t proven. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/83 "2009-02-18T14:56:34Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Totally agreed, and I never meant to imply otherwise. Similarly, war is not just something that men do to men for their own mysterious manly reasons. Well, not always, and usually not for mysterious reasons, but most wars in history have been decided on by men and men who were forced to fight were forced by other men. There have been exceptions, but women have rarely been in any position to “do” war to men nor have we often had the power to prevent it. To consider fairly recent American history, I don’t know how my great-grandmother felt about WWI. Maybe she was one of the women who handed out white feathers (for “cowards”) to men who didn’t serve. Maybe, like Helen Keller and Jane Adams, she vocally opposed the war. More likely she did neither, but whatever her opinions on the subject might have been, she couldn’t have expressed them through voting. She did not have that right at that time. It’s the same through most of history in many times and many places. The women of Sparta enjoyed much greater freedom and better education than most women of the ancient world, and as you mentioned before they were hardly pacifists. But even Spartan women were not considered citizens, and they could not vote. (Many men in Sparta were not citizens either, but NO women were.) Sparta could go to war regardless of how women felt about it. If, rather than saying “Come back with your shield or on it”, the women of Sparta had all held hands and sang “Give peace a chance!” it wouldn’t have made any difference. Now, I want to be clear that I don’t think that, given equal rights, Spartan women (or any other women) would have been “better” than men. Given their culture I doubt very much that Spartan women would have pushed for peace even if they’d been full citizens. My point is that, like most of the women who have ever lived and many who are alive today, they never even had the opportunity. I guess some might say not being able to vote is a small price to pay for avoiding the danger of being pressed into military service yourself, but on the other hand history has shown us that many people have felt quite the opposite: that it is better to “live free or die”. ---
**Author:** ![palacheck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a88e57/32.png) [@palacheck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/palacheck)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/84 "2009-02-18T17:00:01Z")
I think that it’s about time we had a thread like this. So many of the female posters on this board are content with sniping the opposite sex in other threads(I’m not even tuned into watching for it and I could name the 5-10 core posters that just radiate bitterness and contempt for men), that it’s nice to see it out in the open for once. White guilt, male guilt I’m just torn up inside! ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/85 "2009-02-18T17:56:31Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I guess some might say not being able to vote is a small price to pay for avoiding the danger of being pressed into military service yourself, but on the other hand history has shown us that many people have felt quite the opposite: that it is better to “live free or die”. History has shown us that for most of history _men_ as a class didn’t have the vote, but they’ve still been at liberty to help themselves to the horrible death of their choice. Universal female suffrage lagged universal male suffrage by an eyeblink. AIUI the argument is currently founded along the lines of showing that the evil that men do to women is worse than the evil that women do to men, and \* therefore\* woman is the nigger of the world. I’m not quite following the chain of logic here, but I must admit it does make it convenient when you want to ignore trivia like the 19000+ British fatalities on the first day alone of the Battle of the Somme, which might put the goings-on in the Congo into some sort of perspective; and it also means you don’t have to harp on all that men do for the common good. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/86 "2009-02-18T22:33:39Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Well, not always, and usually not for mysterious reasons, but most wars in history have been decided on by men and men who were forced to fight were forced by other men. There have been exceptions, but women have rarely been in any position to “do” war to men nor have we often had the power to prevent it. So what? We’re not talking about who inflicts more violence. If you want to say, “Man is the Killer of the world,” you’ll have a much more defensible position (although it’d still need some tweaking). But we’re not talking about who inflicts the most violence; we’re talking about who suffers the most. A man does not suffer from a male-inflicted gunshot any less by virtue of his shared sex with the killer. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2009, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/87 "2009-02-18T23:33:05Z")
So, can I hire an army of women to do plumbing, or work in a coal mine or whatever? Then I’ll pay them 90 percent of what men get. They will still make more than what all the other male oppressors are paying them, I get to pocket most of the rest, and business will be booming because I am the cheapest game in town. Its a win win win! ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/88 "2009-02-19T01:23:05Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > So what? We’re not talking about who inflicts more violence. If you want to say, “Man is the Killer of the world,” you’ll have a much more defensible position (although it’d still need some tweaking). But we’re not talking about who inflicts the most violence; we’re talking about who suffers the most. Well, I guess I’m confused as to what _you’re_ talking about, because the quote from you that I was replying to said “Similarly, war is not just something that men do to men for their own mysterious manly reasons.” That particular sentence certainly struck me as being about who declares war/commits acts of war, not who suffers the most from war, and what’s more I don’t think it’s true. For the most part war IS something that men do to other men. Women rulers have declared war and women warriors have fought in wars, but there haven’t ever been very many of either. I agree that this is something of a hijack of the original topic, but you’re the one who brought it up. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/89 "2009-02-19T02:18:25Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Well, I guess I’m confused as to what _you’re_ talking about, because the quote from you that I was replying to said “Similarly, war is not just something that men do to men for their own mysterious manly reasons.” That particular sentence certainly struck me as being about who declares war/commits acts of war, not who suffers the most from war, and what’s more I don’t think it’s true. For the most part war IS something that men do to other men. Women rulers have declared war and women warriors have fought in wars, but there haven’t ever been very many of either. > > I agree that this is something of a hijack of the original topic, but you’re the one who brought it up. I hate having to retrace thread history, but I think it’s necessary here. People have posited that women suffer more than men. War was brought up as a counterexample. People argued that war didn’t count, presumably since men were the ones inflicting the suffering. I’m saying it’s irrelevant who’s inflicting the suffering. As for the point about whether war is something men do to men for mysterious manly reasons, of course it’s only true to the extent that FGM is something women do to women for mysterious manly reasons. Plenty of men have supported FGM and persuaded their spouses to continue the practice. Plenty of women have supported militarism and persuaded their spouses to continue the practice. But again, it’s all an irrelevancy: if I suffer, the sex of the person inflicting the suffering is generally irrelevant to the extent of my suffering. As long as men are the overwhelming casualties of war, and as long as war is such a pervasive aspect of the human experience, it’s difficult to convince me that women experience the vast majority of human suffering–and even if you could convince me of that, you’d have trouble convincing me that such a point is relevant. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/90 "2009-02-19T02:24:41Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > Once dad drops off the sperm, his “work” is done if he wants it to be. That’s just not true, at least in the western world. > [@](#): > > And it doesn’t change the fact that women suffer the vast majority of the pain and suffering of humanity as a whole, That’s simply incorrect. > [@](#): > > while doing the vast majority of the most important work necessary to the species. That’s just not true, at least in the western world. > [@](#): > > By the way, the thread title is not: Women in the US are the niggers of the world. That’s true. The title of the thread probably should have been “Women are the niggers of the THIRD world,” in which case I think you would have a point. People in much of the third world need to accept the superiority of western culture. My opinion only. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/91 "2009-02-19T02:46:28Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > As for the point about whether war is something men do to men for mysterious manly reasons, of course it’s only true to the extent that FGM is something women do to women for mysterious manly reasons. Plenty of men have supported FGM and persuaded their spouses to continue the practice. It is my admittedly limited understanding that a man doesn’t _need_ to persuade his wife to continue the practice of FGM. In cultures that engage in this practice, a man would typically have the authority to make such decisions for his daughters without needing his wife’s consent. If the wife felt strongly one way or the other then she might be able to persuade her husband to change his mind, but as head of household it would ultimately be his decision to make. This was certainly the case with my Kenyan classmate. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/92 "2009-02-19T03:10:05Z")
FWIW, I am not convinced it’s possible to say that one group or even one individual has suffered more than another. How do you quantify suffering? But as I said in my first post in this thread, if the question is which sex on average has had more power and freedom then I don’t think there’s much room for debate. It’s possible to think of many situations where a particular woman or class of women would have more power and freedom than a particular man or class of men (e.g. daughter of the plantation owner vs. male sharecropper or field slave). But both historically and in many cultures today almost any man would have more power and freedom than his closest female counterpart. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/93 "2009-02-19T06:28:19Z")
> [@](#): > > **Left Hand of Dorkness** : As long as men are the overwhelming casualties of war, and as long as war is such a pervasive aspect of the human experience, it’s difficult to convince me that women experience the vast majority of human suffering–and even if you could convince me of that, you’d have trouble convincing me that such a point is relevant. I do not believe in resolution by war. But if there are to be armies, then women must be allowed to volunteer for any job that they are capable of doing. That includes combat. It is men who make the decision to go to war and men who make the decision to keep women from participating in combat. In overwhelming numbers, it is men who volunteer to go to war and men who give there lives. It is grieving mothers and wives who survive them. Too often the widows have children to raise on their own. They too are casualties of war. Suffering is not done in groups. It is experienced by individuals. But try to imagine a daily life in which people of your gender are talked about as if they were slabs of meat. Imagine going to buy a car and knowing exactly what you want and you can’t get the salesman to talk to you. He will only talk to your spouse who knows nothing about the car you want. Imagine going to a media store and buying a TV. The salesman goes to look up your account and looks you right in your very masculine eye and asks you if you are “Alice.” How would that make you feel? Why can’t stores and salesmen recognize me as a human being with my own name and my own thoughts and my own bank account and choices to make? _I am not my husband!_ Would you want someone to treat you as if you were only found in the universe somewhere under your wife’s name? You haven’t died for your country yet. I have endured humiliation thousands of times. Meanwhile, the women will continue to clear the table where the men eat and wash and dry their dishes while the men sit and talk. ---
**Author:** ![dgrdfd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@dgrdfd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dgrdfd)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/94 "2009-02-19T07:02:09Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > But try to imagine a daily life in which people of your gender are talked about as if they were slabs of meat. > > Imagine going to buy a car and knowing exactly what you want and you can’t get the salesman to talk to you. He will only talk to your spouse who knows nothing about the car you want. > > Imagine going to a media store and buying a TV. The salesman goes to look up your account and looks you right in your very masculine eye and asks you if you are “Alice.” How would that make you feel? > > Why can’t stores and salesmen recognize me as a human being with my own name and my own thoughts and my own bank account and choices to make? _I am not my husband!_ Would you want someone to treat you as if you were only found in the universe somewhere under your wife’s name? > > You haven’t died for your country yet. I have endured humiliation thousands of times. > > Meanwhile, the women will continue to clear the table where the men eat and wash and dry their dishes while the men sit and talk. ![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/zxtn6-XQupM/maxresdefault.jpg)https://www.youtube.com/embed/zxtn6-XQupM?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/95 "2009-02-19T07:35:37Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > I do not believe in resolution by war. But if there are to be armies, then women must be allowed to volunteer for any job that they are capable of doing. That includes combat. It is men who make the decision to go to war and men who make the decision to keep women from participating in combat. In overwhelming numbers, it is men who volunteer to go to war and men who give there lives. > > It is grieving mothers and wives who survive them. Too often the widows have children to raise on their own. They too are casualties of war. > > Suffering is not done in groups. It is experienced by individuals. But try to imagine a daily life in which people of your gender are talked about as if they were slabs of meat. > > Imagine going to buy a car and knowing exactly what you want and you can’t get the salesman to talk to you. He will only talk to your spouse who knows nothing about the car you want. > > Imagine going to a media store and buying a TV. The salesman goes to look up your account and looks you right in your very masculine eye and asks you if you are “Alice.” How would that make you feel? > > Why can’t stores and salesmen recognize me as a human being with my own name and my own thoughts and my own bank account and choices to make? _I am not my husband!_ Would you want someone to treat you as if you were only found in the universe somewhere under your wife’s name? > > You haven’t died for your country yet. I have endured humiliation thousands of times. > > Meanwhile, the women will continue to clear the table where the men eat and wash and dry their dishes while the men sit and talk. I think people’s expectations of retail floor sales people are often quite interesting. There’s no excuse for rudeness, but if a male - female couple presents themselves as a purchasing team a salesperson has to decide to to approach the situation. The last thing they want to do is piss the customer off unnecessarily, and if 90% of the time in the salesperson’s experience a man is leading/controlling/advising the purchase of particular (in this case technical) item it’s only human nature to tend to engage the primary expected decision maker in initiating the qualification of needs. In residential real estate sales quite often the male half of the purchasing team is virtually ignored after introductions while the (usually female) salesperson concentrates primarily on the female partner’s decision making wants and needs. If a couple walks into a wedding planners office or boutique how much attention do you think the salesperson is usually going to pay to the man vs the woman, even though he may have definite opinions about how the wedding should be conducted. Is he being oppressed and dehumanized by the salesperson focusing on his fiancee? A particular sales process may be flawed, but (in most cases) it’s all about selling the product as effectively as possible, and you don’t do this by aggravating people. If you want to moan that this is some sort of objectification you are quite correct, but it’s objectification based on the experience of the salesperson as to how the transaction will proceed (and has proceeded in the past) most efficiently, not some desire to oppress your self worth as a human being. If I walk into a sales scenario (especially one where sales people are part time and/or not particualry well paid or educated) where the decision maker is usually not my gender I feel that I have some degree of responsibility to state clearly what my sales objectives are to the sales person. waiting for them to be sensitive and astute enough to code switch, and pick up on the fact _this_ sales scenario is in the 5-10% that are potentially different or I’m going to feel dehumanized is a passive-aggressive setup. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/96 "2009-02-19T07:37:28Z")
The West is just one step ahead of the rest of the world, and the rest of the world is a pretty bad place to be a woman. I have lived in a culture that much resembles the 1950s. Although people may talk about equal rights, everyone will admit that women are weaker and less intelligent than men. Jobs for women are listed separately and are openly less lucrative than jobs for men. Subjects like “Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend?” are considered routine at job interviews. Female students are advised not to enter fields where they might make more than their potential husbands. They are strongly encouraged to enter the lowest paying majors. Women are expected to wear constricting girdles and painful high heels, and are constantly bombarded with extreme beauty ideals. And in general they are treated as children. A giant teddy bear is considered a perfectly appropriate gift for a boss to give to a 30 year old professional woman. I know, because thats what I got for Christmas from mine. I have lived in a culture that resembles some time earlier. Women have no choice in who they marry, and are often married before the age of 14 to older men. Their husbands often have several wives, and usually many other women on the side. Adultry is illegal for women, and legal for men as long as it does not take place in the marriage bed. Husbands usually will not permit their wives to have ID cards, so women cannot travel freely. But even if they could travel to escape, say, an abusive husband, their family would probably not take them back. Women are expected to scrounge up their own money to feed their children, but are not usually hired into salaried positions. They eat separately than men and are given inferior food. There is no word for “unmarried woman” in the local language- only “young girl”, “married woman”, “old woman” and “prostitute.” They cannot receive reproductive health care (including birth control) without their husband’s permission. They basically have no choice or control in their lives. All around the world, women suffer the most poverty. They suffer the most infectious disease. They have the least amount of self-determination. America is by far better than many places, but these things are still with us. They are part of our history, and their shadows still darken our culture. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/97 "2009-02-19T11:19:50Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > But as I said in my first post in this thread, if the question is which sex on average has had more power and freedom then I don’t think there’s much room for debate. I agree with this. **Zoe** , your post is a sloppy appeal to emotion and a statement of “I Win Because Of My Experience.” I’m sorry, but that’s not worth responding to. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/98 "2009-02-19T11:43:42Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > Imagine going to buy a car and knowing exactly what you want and you can’t get the salesman to talk to you. He will only talk to your spouse who knows nothing about the car you want. I wouldn’t be ecstatic about it, but I would not decide that men are the “niggers” of America. > [@](#): > > Imagine going to a media store and buying a TV. The salesman goes to look up your account and looks you right in your very masculine eye and asks you if you are “Alice.” How would that make you feel? I would laugh at it. “Yes I’m ‘Alice.’ for the morning.” Actually, I’m a father and it regularly happens that moms will call my house to set up activities between their children and my children. Almost all of the time, the caller will ask for my wife, on the implied assumption that I have no responsibility or authority for arranging my childrens’ schedule. More often than not, such people don’t even know my name and don’t really care about it. They just refer to me as “Jenny’s dad” or whatever. People just assume that arranging activities for children is within the mom’s sphere of influence and buying cars is within dad’s sphere of influence. > [@](#): > > Meanwhile, the women will continue to clear the table where the men eat and wash and dry their dishes while the men sit and talk. Later, if a menacing stranger appears at the door, who will confront that person? If there is heavy snow that night, who will fire up the snowblower and clear the driveway? (I bet most women have never mixed oil with gasoline as required for a 2-stroke engine.) If the woman’s car won’t start the next morning, who will dig out the cables and jump the car? etc. etc. The point is that it’s not as though women do all the unpleasant tasks in life. ---
**Author:** ![HumanMonkeyGod](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c67d28/32.png) [@HumanMonkeyGod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HumanMonkeyGod)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/99 "2009-02-19T19:40:29Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > As a species, it is our moral duty, no matter what our sex, to be aware of the ongoing injustice that women endure. If we are contributing, whether we are men or women, we must stop. Perhaps if this sentiment were more widespread we could apply the term “civilized” more accurately to the pretentious small fraction of the human population that’s drowning in technology and “social values”. ETA: it’s not just about the injustices to women, it’s to humans as a group. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2009, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154/100 "2009-02-19T20:48:51Z")
> [@catsix](#): > > Thing is, when you add up all these ‘individual’ women, you tend to get exactly the kind of satistics you seem to have a problem with. Y’know, the ones that say ‘in general women are paid less due to these factors.’ I have posted this before. It is SO easy to interpret statistics in a manner which suits your point. I found this example to be an eye-opener. > [@](#): > > LIES, DAMNED LIES AND… > > Some years ago I came upon a piece of news which I found amazing and which gave me a whole new view of statistics. It was a long time ago and I do not remember the exact numbers but I remember enough to rebuild a similar example. I am making up all the numbers but they serve to illustrate the point. > > At a certain university statistics showed a higher percentage of men were accepted than of women. 65% of men who applied were admitted while only 52% of women who applied were admitted. This was taken as clear proof of discrimination and something had to be done about it… So the university conducted further research to ascertain which schools specifically were discriminating. They centered on schools A and B and found out that: Of a total of 100 male applicants, 80 had applied to A of which 60 (75%) were accepted and 20 had applied to B of which 5 (25%) were accepted. The overall acceptance rate was thus 65%. > > When it came to the women, out of 100, 40 had applied to A of which 32 (80%) were accepted and 60 had applied to B of which 20 (33%) were accepted. The overall acceptance rate was thus 52%. > > BUT now we see what would seem impossible and that is that even though the overall acceptance percentage of women was lower than that of men, when analyzed by schools the percentage of women accepted is HIGHER in every single case! (80 Vs. 75% in A and 33 Vs. 25% in B) > > It turns out no school was discriminating. What was happening is that more men were applying to the college which was easier to get into while more women were applying to the college which was more difficult to enter. But in every case it was more difficult for the men to enter even though they had a higher overall acceptance rate. Of course, we could now say men were being discriminated against but that does not favor our preconceived notion so it is not proposed. But when it is women who appear to be accepted in lower numbers then the first thing that comes to mind is “diccrimination”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-woman-is-the-nigger-of-the-world-thank-you-john-lennon/486154.md?page=6)