Men's Group

My observation of human nature is this; if you put two kids in front of a single cookie and tell them to share it fairly, the one breaking it in half will do a conscientious job making as equal shares. If you do the same with two groups of kids, one will walk away with the whole cookie, unless the other group demands fairness.

Humanism breaks down at the macro-scale. "We" will always try to exploit "them", and they will reciprocate. Because of that, feminism needs a counterbalance within the democratic party.

On the left side of american society, we have feminists who want the whole cookie, negotiating with feminists who want fairness too. In that ecosystem, where's the equilibrium point going to settle? I'd prefer an underdamped system to one in which the needle never reaches zero.

I understand a lot of the social psychology; unconsciously, we define ourselves by what we oppose. Republicans represent the top-down, don't question authority, appeal to tradition etc, strongly associated with male leadership. Therefore there's a strong desire within us to represent the opposite. From a pragmatic electoral perspective, this carries a big downside. Married women vote more like men than like single women. Perhaps they see their fortunes tied more intimately to the economic interests of their husbands, than to their own social interests. For whatever reason, when women marry they adopt the voting patterns of their husbands.

We accept the paradigm of being anti-man at our peril, and when laughter is the response to the observation that dangerous jobs pay more than safe ones, that's exactly what it is.

I agree with your point about overemphasis on outcomes. Men and women make their own choices for their own reasons. As groups, they tend to choose in predictable ways. To a degree* those choices have unavoidable consequences, and the pay gap vs the early death gap are two of those consequences. Looking at the outcomes only neglects the reality that individual autonomy created them.

When I look at education, it is apparent that we don't have equality of opportunity. For one example, young men graduating from high school have far fewer, and less well-funded scholarship options available to them than young women, but it really doesn't matter all that much, because the grades they've gotten from their predominately female teachers has been worse than their female peers, despite having better test scores.

* some outcomes are not a result of choices. Boys in school don't choose to get poor grades, thus requiring them to take dangerous jobs to earn an adequate living.