Damian M. Schloming ideas and information

Naomi Wolf on rape: "...ours is increasingly an age of geopolitics by blackmail."

This website is to allow me to present intelligibly my thoughts and insights on various social, political, historical and even scientific issues I've been studying in the past two years. 

Some of which I have background knowledge of due to having been involved with and interested in various political movements many years ago. 

My political viewpoint leans towards libertarian, except that I am not completely happy with the way some of them think. Libertarians want limited government and civil liberties. As a matter of principle, that is excellent. But then libertarians seem to suffer from this ingrained bias of Western Culture that you can somehow intellectually decide that government "should be" a certain way and then the perfect society can then be achieved by some legislative body sitting down and crafting some written rule decreeing that that is how society is to be from now on.

 

Actually, I think government and the larger society it is embedded in is more like some kind of living beast that you can train or that can morph in one direction or another, but it can't be so easily manipulated or changed as we think. Written rules don't have the exact effect they literally intend, but instead enforcement of the rules and all sorts of other considerations regarding government bureaucracies results in all sorts of ripple effects or unintended consequences. As a result, the most free society does not necessarily result from the one with the nicest and most free sounding written constitution or constitutional rights guaranteeing liberty. A very good example of this issue is the liberal Warren Court expanding all sorts of fifth amendment procedural and technical criminal protections for defendants. Liberals saying they want to do this might be arguing this is to help the poor. The opposite is the truth. This is to help defense attorneys, and why is that a bad thing? Because criminal procedures and technicalities of the liberal Warren Court only resulted in defendants having protection IF they could hire an expensive enough attorney to do a good enough job PRESSING them. Public defenders are part of the corrupt court system, they deliberately do a bad job so as to make sure well heeled defendants find it worth their while to pay extra. Huge sentences ALSO give well heeled defendants more incentive to pay extra. Thus, defense attorneys representing rich criminal defendants have a vested interest in maintaining the strict sentencing policies responsible for Mass Incarceration. Furthermore, there was a law school bubble which burst, and now law schools are doing poorly because lawyers are not finding it worth their while to spend so much money on a law degree. Fact of the matter is, those liberal Warren Court protections indirectly increased legal fees for defense attorneys, thereby contributing to the upward pressure on college tuition and law school tuition, simply because the amount of money attorneys could make from a law degree made it more worthwhile. 

It also is true that the regulatory state increased in many other ways, increasing demand for attorneys in other spheres besides the criminal justice system. But I am going to talk about the criminal justice system here for now to use it as an example.

This is just one example showing how a policy that, examined in the most superficial way you think it's designed to help criminal defendants overall in the long run has the exact opposite effect. Because these protections are ones that only can be accessed by those with the money to pay for top dollar attorneys. And, it isn't always necessarily related to the facts of the case. The attorney usually has an incestuous relationship with everyone else in the court system, so much so that basically if you pay the right attorney enough money, you will get off because he is friends with all the judges and prosecutors, and parole officers, etc.

And for me to say that could lead to others thinking it is rather awful to have a court system so incestuously corrupt. Except, these are all nice people who know each other and court systems have ALWAYS been like this, more or less. And they always will be this way. Government is incapable of being perfect. Understanding its inherent imperfections such as this are necessary when it comes to avoiding passing laws which interact with such a culture in a way to produce very bad outcomes.

 

After all, we have always had government and, for some reason, it would appear if we always have had it, that is because we need it. The inner workings of government are so awful, you discover after you observe it, it can easily lead many to think we should just abolish it. But, given that that is impossible, the best alternative is to understand it as inherently flawed, and realistically think of how to make things "the least bad."

This is what I have thought for a long time, yet only recently have I stumbled across some law professors who subscribe to a movement called "legal realism." It turns out they think exactly the way I do, and see the same flaws in our society (or in the thinking of popular culture which leads to wrong-headed policies in our legal system) that I see.

Oddly enough, they seem to describe themselves as leftists yet they are not the kind of ordinary mainstream leftist most people would understand to be "of the left." Which is strange because I never would have thought of myself as a liberal -- but not a conservative either. But maybe this is because of certain strands of liberalism I have been exposed to which are quite awful. 

In any case, why categorize oneself? As I study and learn more about society, I like to share various insights and not limit myself to any one "box" or "category" that I pigeonhole myself into.

On Zero Sum Feminism and Math Gender Gap

April 05, 2014  /  Damian Schloming  /  Source

 

http://forums.avoiceformen.com/showthread.php?9397-Systemic-Sexism-in-Academia&p=85645#post85645

 

This is all zero sum feminism.

I watched the first one.

Her description of academia as very hostile to women makes it sound more like it's just very competitive, it requires a lot of sacrifice, and women just find it not worth it. Also, male professors who are "know it alls" and act very knowledgeable are very popular, whereas women teachers who are sweet and motherly are popular, and women teachers who are "know it alls" and knowledgeable and expert are unpopular and get bad remarks from students in student surveys. 

Furthermore, women also don't rise the ranks because they take time off in order to take care of their children. 

I also notice the feminist in the first video is a very angry woman and gets very angry about some things at times. 

Some of her solutions include how we as a society have to figure out how to make it so that women spend less time with their children and men spend more time with their children. She also tried to say it is unfair for women to do more housework and spend more time with their children because she is all unpaid labor. Except, no it isn't unpaid labor, since the end result of husbands earning more than their wives is their wives end up spending much of their husband's money on themselves. And if they get divorced, child support and alimony ensue. So, this is not unpaid labor, and I am not sure why they pretend it is -- except, it's pretty clear the choice of some women to stay home and live off their husband's money is a choice THESE feminists want women NOT to be allowed to make. 

Then, as regards students not liking know it all female teachers but preferring sweet nurturing motherly teachers, she thinks universities are supposed to stop basing their hiring decisions on teacher popularity with students, and instead institute some kind of female affirmative action program that outright tells students that their preferences are sexist, therefore they (the customer) is (not always) right but, in this case, WRONG. 

Imagine if feminists tried telling Hollywood they needed to pay no attention to audience preference in their casting of women. 

She also thinks "the system" should adjust to women rather than expect women to adjust to "the system." I'd say -- yeah that is a reasonable position to take, but only if you combine it with "but this means the two genders are not equal, and don't necessarily deserve equal pay." Pay should be based on 'service to society' or 'service to work' and not on presumed entitlement you are owed because you are a breathing living human being. Work is not a welfare program. What these feminists seem to want, in this instance, is welfare masquerading as work. Pretend work where they get paid the same as men, but don't do the same work. And they are white upper middle class and would find it beneath them to make use of the same welfare programs black women use. So that's why we need to go to all this trouble to institute a kind of gender equality that creates "welfare masquerading as work" programs for white women -- something, incidentally, which American society has consistently been doing with the welfare system since the end of the Civil War. And it has often employed the tactic of arguing that black women on welfare need the "supervision" of morally superior white female social workers, as a ruse to provide white women with larger benefits and boost their egos at the same time. That's a big reason why it is crucial that work not be confused with welfare, and if men are willing to put themselves through more inconvenience for more pay -- let them. And if you, a woman, want to be on welfare, then you need to be willing to accept the LABEL and STIGMA of being ON THE DOLE. And too bad if this creates intolerable equivalency between you and those black welfare queens. TOO BAD DEAL WITH IT!!!!! Or else, women can agree to do some of the dirty work too and get their hands dirty, if they want equal pay. 

As for the second video, well first of all this woman does not understand history. In the 19th century, science was actually much more a woman's occupation than a man's occupation, because most men were required to go into occupations where they had to use their muscles, therefore they were DEPRIVED of opportunities to do things like sciences and KEPT OUT OF THEM. Women were the ones to do science more. This has changed since the industrial revolution. However, studies show that women drop out of science if they don't get A's and favor fields with lots of grade inflation, whereas men keep on doing it even if they get a bad grade. Women are more likely to drop out of science if told science is for geeks, whereas men will keep doing science even if told it's geeky. In other words, if you put men and women in the same conditions -- ones where they are subjected to negative feedback or insults -- women will let the negative feedback and desire for approval factor into their decision as to whether to keep going, whereas men won't. 

Now this woman in the video argues that women need a much more supportive structure in order to excel in sciences. Well, in a way yes but she is never going to get any male support for such a thing as long as she fails to acknowledge the fact that men tough it out without such a supportive structure and deserve some amount of acknowledgement and credit for that. Lying is no way of helping women, assuming that is what you want to do -- which I don't think is what they want to do. 

Also, she says there are no gender differences between men and women in math and that women are just brainwashed into thinking they are not good at math, therefore they perform poorly. False. Though discouragement may take a higher toll on women than on men, there still are some gender differences it would seem, especially among the best and brightest in math. But, gender differences in math scores consistently widen in favor of men depending on math subject tested, with men outperforming women the most on subjects requiring spatial, visual, and certain kinds of intuitive skills. Even if society has insidiously brainwashed women into performing less well in "math" by convincing them they are inferior at it, it is a bit of a stretch to argue that this societal brainwashing of women is so well targeted as to brainwash them only in some areas of math and not in other areas of math. 

Failing to acknowledge that fact is zero sum feminism. Because, acknowledging that fact would allow for those small number of boys with exceptional math skills -- again, the gender gap in math is driven by those at the very top -- to get the extra help they need to fully perform up to their abilities, even while additional resources geared towards "fostering a affirming environment" for girls who need that could still be done, though perhaps it would need to be done in the context of sex segregated schooling. 

Ultimately, sex integrated schooling should not have favorable treatment of women. Either they compete on the same footing, or we acknowledge that women are different and they have their own track, which serves to help women achieve an environment more amenable to their preferences, without shortchanging men in the process. Zero sum feminism always wants to use women as an excuse to undermine men.

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