Lady Amarant,
I explained earlier that much of difference
in pay is NOT because women are paid more for the SAME job.
That very rarely happen in Canada and I'm sure in the US.
They are in fact most times doing different jobs, for different amount of times.

There is still a certain systemic bias in job categories that
should paid the same, but aren't. Most the problems
in those areas comes from what where women's job ghetto
(like data entry) VS similar men's job who often where
in more unionised.

In Quebec, a few years back,
in Government, they did an accessment of job
functions and readjusted pays for jobs that were deemed
equivalent (it cost a bundle). The increase was between
3-15%.

In private industry, THEY DON"T HAVE THE MONEY,
to pay men higher than their economic worth (the old boy's club).
The company will die if they do this. Only very strong union
contracts can prevent these capitlist adjustments from
happening quickly. And if unions think they can save
themselves this way, well their actions will put their
company in danger so eventually they'll be out of
a job or will have to pay women as much.

Discrimination is economically untenable. The margins
of profits and the competition on products and services
has never been tougher and there is no place for dead
weight or giving more money than what you can
give back to the company.

I seem to be repeating myself but that the MAIN
reason discrimination will stop. Not because of
some touchy feeling reasons, but because
everybody's needed and in many cases women
will be both the most educated and qualified for the job
and that's what the company needs.

Wages are only part of what unions do, not even the big part I don't think.  Its much more to do with work rules and working conditions and what people have a right, and have no right to ask you to do.  No union puts wages so high that it puts itself out of business, though they do request that people get paid what they are worth, and that the workers have a right to some (not all) of the money being made.

Quote from: ell on April 18, 2008, 05:25:46 PM
Mmm hm, but lots of mothers don't want their boys to femme out, and are very careful about the chores they assign. as far that goes, i busted my booty doing boy chores as a youth. give me a break.

i didn't cook, iron, or do laundry, but mom didn't mow the lawn, do heavy gardening projects involving large stones and railroad ties, drill a well, clean the pool, work on the driveway, wash the car, work on the car, rake the leaves, clean the rain gutters, remodel the basement, replace plumbing pipes, move heavy furniture, paint exterior walls and fences, fertilize & water the lawn, clean the garage, etc., &tc.

Sheesh! anyone who says that men have nothing to do around the house is, well, really full of it awfully wrong.

-ell

ps.
however, i think my mom suspected that i was going to femme out eventually, anyway. but she really tried to slap me out of it, bless her heart.

Didn't work that way at my house.  My mother was happy to have me do anything I was willing to do.  Vacuuming, mopping, laundry, ironing, cooking, baking, sewing, I did it all.  And I did all the boy chores, too, including digging a ditch for a new water main.  And nobody said anything, whether I played with my doll house or my erector set.  Ya, weird family.

Quote from: ell on April 18, 2008, 01:27:55 PM
as i was telling one who is near and dear to me,

You know, love, you don't have to beat around the bush unless you want to.

Quote from: tekla on April 18, 2008, 11:04:35 PM
Wages are only part of what unions do, not even the big part I don't think.  Its much more to do with work rules and working conditions and what people have a right, and have no right to ask you to do.  No union puts wages so high that it puts itself out of business, though they do request that people get paid what they are worth, and that the workers have a right to some (not all) of the money being made.

Hi, Tekla,

I am asking for your comments regarding unions like the United Auto Workers, United Steel Workers, Maritime Workers, Longshoremen; did these unions cause the demise of the industries in which their members were working by fighting for better wages, benefits, working conditions, work rules, seniority rules, etc?  I grew up in a very strong union area of Pennsylvania and I don't really know what killed so many jobs.

The UAW and CAW are working in ghost factories; Bethlehem Steel's plant in Baltimore has been sold to a foreign investor.  Sometimes I wonder what role the unions had in the demise of American industry.

Wing Walker

Back in the day, when unions were strong, and America was doing well, both the union workers, as well as their bosses, were doing OK.  Now, with the plants offshored, the labor outsourced, I look at how the managers and bosses and owners are doing, and they seem to be fine.  Doing just great.  Corporate executive compensation packages have never been higher.  They are still living in huge houses, in nice suburbs, sending their kids to private school.  The areas where the middle class (back when we had a middle class) used to live, those union towns, have been destroyed just as if they had been bombed.  And your suggesting that in asking for a living wage, health care and a retirement account, while making sure that they could survive their job and they were not worked to an early death did it to themselves.

It was not the workers who exported jobs and factories and outsourced labor to third world nations (note: we are not outsourcing to Europe in this way at all) where environmental standards don't exist, where job safety standards are non existent, where there is no requirement to pay for health care, taxes, retirement, or any of that.  Seems to me, that was a management decision, not a labor decision.  With Congress and the Administration in cahoots with the people who own American industry who yank their leashes.

 

Hi, Lisbeth,
I did all the house chores from a very early age, which began as following my mom around the house until I could voluntarily do a lot of housework.

"Hee, hee." Mom and I would sometimes sit before the wood stove and put our feet in the oven to keep our feet warm as I learned how to do crocheting, how to sew, knit, and even some hooking (as in rugs). I also learned how to cook, from my mom, one the best of tutors, a chef who cooked in the cookeries in the lumber camps. 

My mom was one tough little woman. There was no power *like in electricity* back then. The bathroom consisted of an out house. The lighting consisted of a Coleman lantern. The winters were long, harsh and very cold and with lots of snow out there. But my mom and I were quite comfy in the old homestead. Mom and I also shared the outside chores like wood chopping and fetching water from the lake in two ten gallon enameled containers on a sleigh.

What was really neat was when the both of us would go outside and knock the ice off the eaves and put it in containers to melt and use as bath water. But the chores would always turn out to be fun, like pushing each other in the snow or having snowball fights, ya mom was like a big kid herself.

I took my baths in the middle of the living room floor in an old washtub. We could get some power for short periods of time if mom or I could get the dad blasted generator to work.  This mechanical beast resided in the woodshed. I would also help with the laundry which was done in an old wringer washer, for some reason I was fascinated at watching the wringer suck the clothes through while the wrung out water would come draining back into the washer.

I believe my mom knew about me although she never mentioned a word.  What good would it have done back then, not even being aware there was such thing as transsexualism, let alone as finding anyone to talk about it. So it just remained my our unspoken little secret.

My mom and I were close, bless her soul.

So were the life and times of Cindy.

Quote from: tekla on April 19, 2008, 12:22:00 AM
Back in the day, when unions were strong, and America was doing well, both the union workers, as well as their bosses, were doing OK.  Now, with the plants offshored, the labor outsourced, I look at how the managers and bosses and owners are doing, and they seem to be fine.  Doing just great.  Corporate executive compensation packages have never been higher.  They are still living in huge houses, in nice suburbs, sending their kids to private school.  The areas where the middle class (back when we had a middle class) used to live, those union towns, have been destroyed just as if they had been bombed.  And your suggesting that in asking for a living wage, health care and a retirement account, while making sure that they could survive their job and they were not worked to an early death did it to themselves.

It was not the workers who exported jobs and factories and outsourced labor to third world nations (note: we are not outsourcing to Europe in this way at all) where environmental standards don't exist, where job safety standards are non existent, where there is no requirement to pay for health care, taxes, retirement, or any of that.  Seems to me, that was a management decision, not a labor decision.  With Congress and the Administration in cahoots with the people who own American industry who yank their leashes.

 

I appreciate your comments and I agree that it was not a labor decision.  Earlier this week I learned that Hershey Foods is having its York Peppermint Patty made in Mexico, resulting in a loss of job in PA. 

The board's first duty is to the shareholders and they perform it well, maybe not entirely ethically, but they do watch the numbers and assure themselves of their bonuses and stock options.

I graduated from high school in 1969.  I lived in a town where it was possible to find a job and make a home, or so it seemed when I was younger.  That was just my illusion.  It was a coal town that never recovered after the coal, railroads, and manufacturing left.  The population has shrunken by half and the economy is based on transfer payments and pensions.

So much for lost dreams in America.

Wing Walker

I'll go off tangeant here, but hey, off base is my middle name (got a weird mother ;-)


America was doing well post war
because the rest of the world had been ripped to shred
by 2 world wars. Germany was the first world power at the turn of the century
(they had just overtook the UK), the US overtook everyone post WWI.

Protectionisms almost ripped the whole world wide economies in the 30's and
the US didn't recover until WWII. Then, with the rest of the world down,
US firms had record profit margins for the next 20 years, which enable
everybody to hop on the gravy train. The interior US market was booming
with huge population boom linked to a sudden prosperity due in part
to Keynesian like massive capital outlays during the war
with laws in place to control inflation (which normally would have happened in such cases),
after more than a decade of doldrum.

Unions where able to gain so much because company's could give it to them.
The interior US market was protected and prices where higher than
there should be which kept margins high (which as I mentioned is
one of the big reason for the old boys club existing, they could afford it
many folds). There was some trade deregulation
because people knew that total protectionism caused too many problems
in the 30's, but tarrifs were generally high which mean even places with lower cost
of production could not compete with US production. Though in the early post
war era, there was basically no one left to commerce with (which explains
why the Marshall plan was launched (there was quasi starving in the immediate post war
in continental europe).

By the late 60's though, this system was starting to unravel, lack of competitivity
was undermining US productivity and the old european powers and Japan had
regained their footing and exported a lot again (they had much higher productivity gains).
The protected US market also fostered inflationary pressures and the US dollar
was under attack, by the late 70's (the height of unions by the way). The US economy
was at its worse with high inflation, low productivity and a credit crunch which curtailed
investment in industrial machineries (which ironically enough were mostly used in union
based manufacturing), setting up the subsequent decay.

Of course, there's the whole backdrop of social unrest, which was partly linked to soaring
poverty rates, especially in inner cities. Blacks who had found employment in the post war boom
now where the first to feel the crunch of the manufacturing industry's quick demise. Since there
was still much discrimination in education and white colar work, most had no immediate backup.

The US hit its worse economic patch since 1933 in 1982, with a very severe recession,
which most of all hit the manufacturing sector very very hard. Many industry
in those sectors never recovered from that (though they may have died later if that
wasn't the case.

Following this, the US policy makers,
saw its advantage of going from manufacturing economy to a knowledge economy, the
switch occured in the 80's and is probably one of the reason for trade deregulations
all through the 80's to now.

The argument,
protecting the manufacturing industry through protectionism
would hurt US consumers more and more as they became less and less competitive
on cost. Investing to keep them marginally competitive would still end up costing
tons of layoffs (since they would need to be X times more productive) and
this money would be better spent on investments in
more knowledge based upcoming industries. That's the decision
**Stockholders** do, they are the ones who decides
which industry they want to invest in and that decides what company has the
money to pursue its capital expansions. Most stockholders are not fat
cats, but are us, money managers manage our money and we want
the best return on it, which means investing in industries with
the best future prospect (that's why tech was all the rage in the 90's).

Same thing with government, they pursue trade regulations because they think
its better for US citizens to buy cheaper goods abroad and with the rest of
their money gained through some other employment than fading industries
they can buy or invest in something else. Since most money is spent on
services, most of this money is actually spent inside the US, not
on foreign goods (so, its produces US jobs). So, opening trade
increases job locally. Some question that these service jobs
are less paid than the union jobs they replaced. But, that's
a false comparaison, those well paid manufactuing
jobs were unsustainable in the long term.

The manufacturing sector that remained in the US
was the highest value added one (like airplanes and cars). Manufacturing
where humans played a big part, was shipped out). Long term, there may
be robots that can do those lower value added manufacturing and
ironically, this manufacturing could come back to the US because we'd
have the money to buy those robots.

One of the principle of strategy in business is you should concentrate on what your good
at (that's why you don't see very diversified companies). The same goes with countries,
if the US is not so good in manufacturing, they should concentrate on the knowledge
industry where they have been good. The 90's, despite the tech bust (which
is mainly linked to Greenspan, same thing with housing bubble), didn't really dent
the US's prosperity, which is reached by 2000, the best ever in real term
and in social term (like poverty).

Bush, the numbscull has reversed some of this and put the US on some very bad path
economically, but hey I didn't vote for him and there's still much good that can be
done if someone holds the rein and takes the good decisions.

---

OK, now flog me for being so off base.

Keira, you have posted a most detailed reply.  It was well-written and logically presented.  I agree with most of it, including the history and comments about Mr. Greenspan and government policy. 

Wing Walker

Quote from: Tink on April 06, 2008, 05:20:50 PM
I often wonder how people like Christine Jorgensen and Jan morris did it since essentially they didn't fit "their" profile when they transitioned.  Another thing I read somewhere was that at that time prospective candidates for HRT/SRS needed to fill out an endless questionnaire about physical/sexual abuse and sexual orientation.  Any MTF who said they were sexually attracted to women was "disqualified" on the spot, so people started to lie in an aim to get HRT/SRS.

The ironic part of it all is that most pre-op heterosexual MTF's I know became asexual during transition, for we didn't wish to involve ourselves in any kind of sexual activity, having the wrong anatomy and all.  It is not like that guy said...what's his name? ...Oh yes, Blanchard...that hetero MTF's transition to have more boyfriends...   Jerk!

tink

Quite so....
IF anything id rather NOT have a boyfriend... so unlike my mothers view, im not 'dressing as a girl so i dont feel guilty about screwing men!'
i dont WANT to be asexual....
but do you think i can wait till im mid 30s to havea partner?
10 years single might kill me
Tbh, id have fit most of the guidelines, what would have they said about a 5'10 goth girl?

i can do feminine... as long as its black lace 1800s ballgown feminine ^_^
R >
R >

I'm not certain that all of your history and the analysis of it is accurate, Keira. But, something you said on the last page does seem to inform your take on feminism and the economic uselessness of such movements. That was something to the effect that the touchy-feely stuff doesn't matter. That analysis is a matter of taking facts and reading them.

Yet, the entire basis of capitalism as we know it these days is still Adam Smith's mercantilist notion of 'invisible hands' and 'enlightened self-interest.' Yet, it seems to me that quarterly-earnings and bottom lines today have more to do with the working out of policy than any sorts of long-range or even completely ordered, universally applicable and definitive notions of policy. More a credo than science or analysis. I have difficulty seeing the difference between capitalist economics and Roman Catholic dogma.

Smith's original writings were based on a world in which there were thought to be a limited amount of resources which must be hoarded by a particular nation-state so that state could dominate trade and world politics. I think the modern era has certainly shown that foundation to be false, and still economists and capitalists base their policies on a limited resource footing, and tend to neglect altogether their own human being. Of course they neglect the human being of others, just as a lot of your thought in this thread has done.

I think if you go back and read your own response to Zythyra's video of Calpurnia Adams'  list of questions that TSes don't want to hear, you'll discover that the 'touchy-feely stuff' IS important. Certainly important enough that the topic of the video itself was not addressed, rather the topic of whether or not you were better-looking. That seems very emotionally-based to me. Thus, the importance of 'touchy-feely' is more important than you are willing to credit it with being, or so it would seem for yourself.

First, you and others ignore that manufacturing is still and will be a large sector of the economy. That it is done in China, India, Bangladesh and increasingly in poverty stricken African and Central Asian states simply means it has declined in relation to  formerly industrial nations of western Europe and North America. But, I'd be willing to bet that once wages are acceptable in those countries back to levels on a par with Asia and Africa then the industrial jobs will once more arrive on these shores.

That's the difficulty relying on the good graces of capitalism to provide for anti-discrimination and the raising of consciousness. It's not interested. It's interested in the piling up of wealth and the defeat of others who would pile-up wealth due to what is always perceived as a fixed pie size. That also doesn't appear to be rational in the least.

The entire structure of your 'morality through wealth' and 'enlightened self-interest' argument collapses when one basically posits that a completely amoral system will somehow manage to privilege moral choices. It's never done so before, leaving morality and ethics to be fought over by the masses it wishes to safely occupy with other things it sees as being unimportant. The tactic tends to have worked out quite well. Globalization has done much to make it so.

The difficulty with your argument that an economic system somehow moots any discussion of human value is an old and tried formula that basically has shown us that the system preserves itself and rids itself of unnecessary 'baggage.' To wit: the efficacy of human feeling and aspiration for anything other than the continuation of the system itself.

Nichole

I live in Canada by the way,
and I'm not advocating savage capitalism as a whole at all.
I think government can do things better in some cases
where the good of the collectivity as a whole has to be
taken into account in the economic balance (like healthcare
and the environment and providing a minimum safety net
for those affected by the shifting capital investments of capitalism).

When Asian salaries will be too high, part of manufacturing will go back
to the US in the form of highly automated processes (requiring high knowledge
but not producing much jobs), the labor intensive work will move on to Pakistan or
Nigeria and then in turn will become wealthier.

In fact, much of the problems right now in the way wealth runs around the world
is not linked to capitalism but government intervention (ironic). Like Corn being
used for fuel!! Trade barriers that hit the poorest nations. Subsudies by rich
nation to grow crops making African nation's export crops uncompetitive, etc.

Another issue in the current food shortage is the switch in countries like
China and India from staple crops to more resource intensive
and higher value food products like meat. Since meat requires more resources
and people in China and India and others in the South-East have more money
to compete for those resources, there will be more demand for a staple
products to produce meat and that will drive up the price of the staples.
Unless your ready to stop eating meat yourself, I don't think we can in good
faith say anything about those emerging nations wanting to get what we
have. So, as a result, the poorest in Pakistan, the Philippine, Africa, Haiti
run the risk of being hungry.

That's compounded by global warming which renders already marginal lands
which have been overexploited too hot and too dry for cultivation and
then as vegetation that anchors the soil dies, the soil is ripe for desertification
(like the dust bowl).


I'm not saying capitalism will right all wrongs, I'm saying that if its guided
adequately, like in many countries with a certain social compact with
its people (like Canada), it will reduce discrimination because capitalism
values Capital, which humans of all creeds, races and gender are part of.

Modern capitalism doesn't believe it the fixed pie size, the ammount of wealth
everywhere is much much higher now than it has ever has been. It is misdistributed,
but that has been the case since forever. Until WWII, there was I believe
a fixed pie mentality which was in part responsible for the massive trade restriction
of the 30's which almost led the world to destruction in the subsequent WWII
and cold war. But, that's been unraveling very slowly since then. It takes
a while for everyone to notice that their fate is actually tied more and more
with everyone else's fate; economically, environmentally, etc.

Its human foibles, not capitalism that creates most discrimination.

I'd say, on the whole, true capitalism with its need for all hands on board to
be healthy and productive,
if balanced with regards with the rights of every person and communty,\
makes the best mix possible.

Those that fight globalisation are fighting for the past, because there is no
stopping it. The problem is not globalisation, but those as the US, who fit
their own hegemonist agenda into it.

Hey, I'm a optimist :-). We'll get a handle on this living together in peace and harmony
eventually.