Discrimination

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15490760

'There is a substantial and growing body of evidence to back up the claim that children born in certain months do better at school because they are the oldest in the year'

I have seen this before (famously in Malcolm Gladwell's bestselling book), and it is a very sad thing. Why can't people educate children according to maturity, not age? Surely a good educational system pushes children through lessons as they learn the subject, not according to an average schedule?
Things like this make me sorely tempted to support nuclear family life, simply because of the opportunity for home-schooling children, and therefore allowing children to proceed at their own pace.
I only started making it into sports teams at 15 or so, and never the firsts, and according to research on school years, that's an impressive enough achievement, given that I'm an August birthday.
It's shocking that a segment of the population can be systematically denied access to sporting achievement and training (training because only the best at a young age are selected for further sporting coaching, and their superiority then becomes self-fulfilling). If being born in August changed the colour of a person's skin, this would have been a cause of national outrage decades ago, but discrimination is never thought of as an abstract problem that people should avoid in any setting. It seems to be only specific to race, sex and perhaps class and religion.
Many people would laugh if I were to claim that I have suffered discrimination. As a white male from a (relatively: i.e enough to count as rich but not rich enough to get anything special in life) privileged background I am the evil oppressor. And yet as an August birthday cursed with shyness as a child and unusual opinions on religion, relationships and social conformity (this last one remaining an opinion, and mostly invisible), I have been liable to quite serious isolation and lack of equal treatment. I have not suffered as much as maybe even 70% of the population, but I nonetheless object to the idea that there is therefore no injustice to be corrected. All discrimination is the same.
It's difficult to legislate for social relationships, and so I don't think there's much room for a legal solution to the judgemental attitudes people have towards me, but that does not mean that someone who thinks I should lose my job because I don't necessarily believe marriage and female purity to be good things is not as wrong as someone who thinks another person should lose his job because he sings Allah's praises in his spare time.
Both opinions are repulsive, and for the same reason.

I do think that sexism, racism and these other discriminations do not deserve special treatment. That itself is unwarranted discrimination! Discrimination, in its illegal form, should be an abstract concept of using inappropriate characteristics to bias what ought to be a fair contest. Outside of the law, it remains a problem of judging people for characteristics that are not illegal or harmful. I know that I can slip into society in a way that a victim of racism cannot, because I can at least hide my opinions and desires (and even shyness, to an extent). That doesn't make me happy with the situation.

If I were to judge a banker on the sheer naked greed he displays, I might judge it not to be a virtue because of the negative effect I perceive it has on society through a variety of routes. I am open to being persuaded that it is a virtue, although I've had that argument (not with a banker) and am not convinced.
When I am judged for, say, thinking that the notion of female purity is an arbitrary and pointless imposition on people's sex lives, it is an absolute moral condemnation with no justification. In so far as there can be any, it is that the more people question such ridiculous cultural bulwarks, the less likely they are to be obeyed, and so anyone with a particular inclination that way, or who is somehow invested in the current cultural imposition, will feel less comfortable if my opinions are allowed.
But feeling comfortable when your opinions are widely shared is not an adequate basis for judging someone's worth. The whole purpose of an open and free society is that people can hold a diverse array of opinions, as long as those do not involve destroying the openness of society. And yet many westerners seem to think that actually the greatness of our society is not its openness, or its freedom of speech, but the fact that people tend to say what they've been trained to hear.

I wish people understood what tolerance and openness mean. I think that a central aspect of these is moral relativism (to which I often return when writing these posts), because without it of course one will judge others inappropriately. So much discrimination remains un-noticed precisely because it hasn't got a big name for itself such as sexism or homophobia. It happens in small ways when someone sees 'the wrong pair of shoes', judges a shy person as rude for being unengaging, or a girl for her choice of clothing. Most of our moral ideas have been passed into law, except for people's many and varied concepts of purity and arbitrary standards of behaviour (when they don't harm others). These standards are indeed arbitrary, and a basic understanding of moral relativism will prevent people from judging others on the basis of their own unjustifiable beliefs.
There is a world of difference between
"I wouldn't do that." and
"You shouldn't do that."

People can pay all the lip service they like to tolerance, freedom and 'meritocracy', but without the basic acknowledgement that purity is a chemical concept, not a moral one, and that moral relativism is unavoidable, lip service is all it is. The odd campaign might obtain a small break for one special behaviour that requires tolerance, such as homosexual activity, but until people actually incorporate moral relativity into their beliefs and education, all that our anti-discrimination worries will get us is discrimination against only those minorities who are too small even to campaign as a noticeable group.
There is an infinite range of activities and beliefs (near enough), and an impressive enough array of possible characteristics. We need to teach people about discrimination as an abstract concept, not as something that happens to blacks, gays and women.

Objectification of women

I was, as always, entertained by the latest Private Eye. One of the letters struck me, though, complaining that The Eye should attack live objectification of women, just as it does televised pornography from Richard Desmond.
I've seen these attacks, and mostly they're about Desmond's hypocrisy, not solely because he's a pornographer: they contrast the prurient 'family values' that his publications support with the pornography he also broadcasts. But that's a different subject.
What I object to is that the letter writer regards the sexual objectification of women to be intrinsically wrong, such that linking an activity to it makes that activity worthy of being banned. She has a go at Private Eye for talking about loss of revenue and local economics, comparing pornography to 'the brutal mass rape and murder or women as a means to controlling [sic] the coltan trade'.
If women are co-erced into working in, and then voicing support for, the sex industry, whilst feeling exploited and trapped, it is the co-ercion that is the problem. On the subject of exploitation, however, I have to disagree that there is anything special about it: I am exploited, as is everyone in western/capitalist society, because I need to work in order to earn money. If I earn too little, then it is better for me to be part of a regulated and legal industry where I have options available to me to seek more money for my work. Opposing the industry so that I either can not get this work, or must work illegally, will not help me.

Exploitation is a separate issue from one of working. Anyone can be exploited in any job, and can feel exploited in any job. If a woman values her bodily privacy as worth more than she gets paid in the sex industry then as long as she is not forced to work there, then there is no exploitation.

Secondly, there is the myth of exploitation in the sex industry being based on need. This is the argument that I have already addressed by pointing out the nature of life and capitalism. We all need food, drink and shelter to survive, and we need to work to get these things. Work is forced apon us. That a woman is able to choose to sell her body is a benefit, not a problem: it is one more means to support herself. If a person can either starve or sell her body then she is not being coerced by anyone: there is no wrong being done to her by her customers. In so far as she is being coerced at all, it is by life, just as we all are. A man in that same situation (starve or sell his body) would starve because no-one would buy his body. If anything, that sort of sex industry is an example of life favouring women. but I think it is just an example of the force that compels everyone, man and woman, to find some means of support.

The next argument is that normalisation of the sex industry is cited by women as the reason that they can't become fully equal with men at work. This is well dealt with in research showing that sex is not one of the important factors in determining income, and that if it does, women earn more!
http://www.warrenfarrell.com/pages.php?id=39
http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=1834
Perhaps we shouldn't assume that the workers we interview are omniscient and that what they say is a barrier is really the only hurdle?


But let's move on. Finally the writer says that it's an issue of how we choose to portray and promote sexuality for all. I find this statement genuinely offensive. The writer is implying that we should tell people like me that their attraction for attractive women is dirty and wrong, and we should instead promote her (presumably) ideal of sexual relationship. I can't help but wonder who decided that my desires are filthy and perverted, but that hers are pure and wonderful? If we're going to change how we portray and promote sexuality, it should be to a system that allows people choice, not a system that promotes any one version.

I find the objectification of men despicable. The idea that one can and should muddy something as pure as sex with something as stifling as romance is a nasty one. Sex is no more intrinsically linked to deep, lasting, exclusive emotional attachment than it is to underpaid work. Men are routinely objectified as suppliers of money, comfort, stability, support or romance. It is even customary for magazines and women to talk of getting what you want from a man by withholding or offering sex. That sounds much worse than the open and honest process of directly paying someone for something you want and he (or she, in the case of the sex industry) has. Manipulation is exactly the same only without even any pretence of consent from the other party, and is therefore worse.
[I can imagine a situation in which a woman is forced to do the bidding of a man who then sells her as a prostitute. I think that this is better addressed as slavery, rather than a perfect example of how the sex industry must necessarily be]

Along the same lines, a far greater evil than pornography are romances. Pornography portrays and unrealistic world in which women behave just as men would like them to behave, desire what men wish they'd desire (and what men themselves desire: unrestricted sexual gratification) and on which no other aspect of the drudgery of real life impinges. Romances portray an unrealistic world in which [the important] men behave just as women would like them to behave, desire what women wish they'd desire (deep, committed and exclusive emotional attachment) and on which few aspects of the drudgery of real life impinge.
Romances seem a little better, since they do include 'nasty' men and some nasty aspects of real life. This is necessary for the hero to rescue the heroine from them. Romances however suffer from the additional problems of pretending to be realistic and actually distorting people's expectations (I have encountered many women hoping to be a heroine of a romantic story, but no man who seriously expected to experience a situation from a porn film without paying for it). Given the similarities, it is shocking that I am the only person I have ever known to criticise romances, but there are vast numbers of people who despise pornography for its supposed effects on how men treat women (which have repeatedly failed to be shown in studies).

If we're examining sex discrimination, I will also mention the disturbing portrayal in many films, programmes and advertisements of men as bumbling clowns incapable of arranging anything but a piss-up, and women as clever beacons of enlightenment and perfection. A photo of a pretty model says nothing about her character. It does not say that she is worthless apart from her looks; it takes her looks and leaves the rest unsaid. Similarly, pornography takes attractive women and sells their looks, leaving the rest of the women uncharacterised. Only when it comes to men do we have media portrayals that are typically negative, rather than merely silent.



'postscript':
What I have to say about this is probably echoed in a debate that I haven't yet watched here:
https://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=4143
I could also point out that this is a nice example of when 'do as you would be done by' really does not work. I would not mind being sexually objectified by strangers (or even sometimes by friends). Women (stereotypically/ as a trend) do not mind someone lusting after a deep and exclusive emotional connection with them. But it turns out that some women get offended if they're lusted after exclusively sexually, and some men, such as myself, object to being lusted after for exclusivity.