Rhian

Oh you thought it was voluntary, did you? If it is, then certainly I have no objection. But I think you'll find that when the author says "policy" she means policy.

"Some of my most successful and productive appointees ..."

Appointees to what? London to a brick you are talking about appointments that are not funded voluntarily.

You can see, can't you, that anyone who doesn't understand the difference between rape and making love, between consensual and coerced transactions, is operating at the level of a moral idiot? Can you see that? Or not?

And can you see that anyone who pretends they don't understand the difference when they do is being intellectually dishonest?

Tell you what, why don't we ask Patra whether she meant exclusively voluntary arrangements?

Petra?

Petra

Isn’t it true that:
1. You have no intention of voluntarily funding from your own pocket, or using your own time and money to form a voluntary organisation for the voluntary funding, of the amount you say women should be paid for looking after their own babies?, and
2. You advocate getting the funding by urging the State to physically attack, or threaten to physically attack people to force them to submit and obey because you know they don’t consent?
3. Your premise is that all other things being equal, it’s easier, quicker, and cheaper to employ a man for any given employment, and you deny that women are equal to men, because women give birth to and suckle babies and men don’t?

Yes? That’s all correct, isn’t it?

If not, what part do you disagree with?

JKJ
My reading of Petra’s argument is that the policies she describes are mainly voluntary policies that organisations put in place to support their employees. They are not legally mandated on pain of imprisonment or fines, but managers and recruiters are required to comply with the policies of their employers.

Likewise, a Chief Whip should be familiar with, and comply with, the provisions of Standing Orders. But no one is threatening Buchholz with jail.

Rhian
As I said, so far as they are voluntary, I am fine with them.

Government is not funded voluntarily, so it is nothing for politicians to be generous with other people's money, which is all that giving, or rather ordering, special consideration and privileges to women, by way of Standing Orders, amounts to. The Standing Orders are what Parliament will enforce as concerns its own procedure. It is not acceptable for you to attempt to confuse consensual with coerced arrangements.

We will not know to what extent Petra had in mind voluntary versus coerced arrangements, since she will not answer because she knows she has just made a complete fool of herself and will only add to her jumble of self-contradictions by anything she says, else she would answer my questions, wouldn't she?

The deeper issue here is that Petra is openly arguing that women as a group are not equal to men and cannot hope to perform the duties of their work equally without special paternalistic privileges and double standards.

Thus she is actually arguing that the entire basis of anti-discrimination and equal pay legislation is without justification.

I think both you and Petra need to understand that other people are not a footstool for women to climb up on.

"Some of my most successful and productive appointees..."
Appointments to what body, pray?

JKJ

Allowing breast feeding women to vote by proxy is hardly a special privilege and costs no-one anything.

When I wrote of appointees I just meant ordinary recruitment processes. I have worked in both the public and private sectors and have run recruitment processes in both, but spent most of my working life in the private sector. The public sector processes are more bureaucratic, as you’d expect

Rhian

To the extent that it is allowed to women because of breast-feeding, of course it's a special privilege and sexist.

You can't have it both ways. Either the concessions you seek are valuable, or they’re not. If they are, then you support in principle others being forced to subsidise women unequally because of their sex and reproductive choices, so stop trying to deny and minimise it.

"My reading of Petra’s argument is that the policies she describes are mainly voluntary policies..."

Imagine if a man said to you "My sexual strategy is MAINLY not rape. Apart from all the raping I do, the women consent." What would you say to that?

Well that's the ethical level that you are operating at. You know it’s abusive moral nonsense.

The fact you are using the State as your instrument of force and threats is irrelevant. The ethical question always remains. If the State legalised slavery or rape, that wouldn't make it okay, would it?

You are an educated and sensible person, and I shouldn't need to teach you kindergarten-level ethics. You know what you're doing is indefensible, ethically bankrupt and abusive , and if anyone tried that on you, you would condemn and despise them.

You should be renouncing it and condemning it. Where is your condemnation of Petra for even failing to make the distinction between voluntary and coerced benefits?

The fact is, Petra is pushing a double standard by which women are supposed to be entitled to the benefits of feminism, and the benefits of patriarchy, and men are to have the costs and risks of both. It is appalling sexist hypocrisy and you know it.

Your superficial replies have completely failed to come to terms with the deeper issue. You can see, can’t you, that if groups A and B can do equal work, but …