I hate to do a topic even remotely similiar to one that I just wrote about last week, but this article was on CNN today and it seemed completely irrational. For those of you not rushing over to check out the rantings of this needlessly large ex-Secretary of Education had to say, then allow me to paraphrase: basically he was saying that women have come a long way in terms of obtaining an education and developing their own careers...which by all means is great for them. However, he goes on to take a shit on men (especially between the ages of 18-34) of how we don't obtain as high paying jobs, we aren't as highly employed, and we're socially immature (with all of our video game playing, women banging, etc.)
Females reading this will respond with a resounding "Hell yeah dat shit's tru!" as they read through the CNN article watching their Big Brother or Real Housewives of Who Gives a Fuck. The point isn't so much that these facts exist, the issue is the old idea that statistics can literally say anything.
In 1950, 5% of men at working age were unemployed, while today that number is 20%. The article fails to mention the number of women employeed today but the point is irrelevant since their primary role in those days was to be a housewife. What this doesn't account for are the various policies that companies have implemented and other types of government legislation that have come about since then. The climates in the working world are much more cautious about these things now, and have implemented variations of Affirmative Action to ensure that their work place is balanced. Now obviously there are implications from that like let's say a white man and a woman (of many race) both apply for a job with a similar GPA, work experience, etc. That job most likely will go to the woman, especially in IT, where women are becomming a scarce resource.
The issue that he raises with the social immaturity- how men are more immature these days and spend too much time on video games, listening to music, etc. is kind of an irrelevant argument. Guys back in the 50s-70s might not have had video games that they wasted their days on, but think back to those times (at least what you see in movies and such)- those guys loved the SHIT out of fishing, hunting, drug use, and cars. Now how is that much different than today with more guys being into video games/into technology, being musicians, etc.? These things that he complains about are called "hobbies", and generally they're things that people do in their free time.
The main point of this isn't really to defend guys necessarily, because that's just too overdone and never really results in anything. The real point I'm trying to make is that these arguments can never really go anywhere, because nothing constitutes as the majority when you're referring to an entire gender as "being lazy", "less employed as compared to women", because the researchers never examine the issue any further. They never look at the "why" of why men are less employed than they were before...they just leave it to the reader to deduce that it's because of the second statistic they present, the percentage of men who play video games. It's a complete inductive logical fallacy and that is why these "Fuck This Gender It's Gay" articles will never hold any weight.
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