Well you can't argue that a proxy vote is a benefit and not a benefit at the same time; or, what amounts to the same thing, a benefit without a cost. We can see what a cost it is by the thought experiment if everyone did it, in which case, the cost would be greater than if no-one did it, all other things being equal.

However I think we can find common ground as follows.

I am not arguing that a sex-specific benefit is, for that reason, a privilege.

A privilege does not mean a condition of work that is the result of voluntary agreement between the parties, whether or not it confers a sex-specific benefit. Employers who make special sex-specific consideration for an employee either
a) do it because they consider that the benefit outweigh the costs, i.e. it is economical, i.e. profitable, which is no-one's business but their own; and
b) they voluntarily undertake a cost or loss for reasons of their own, e.g. they like that employee, or want to help them with raising their baby, or help them with urinating standing up for that matter.

But where the State imposes a condition to favour its pet political favourites for whatever reasons, and forces others to pay the costs, that is what I mean by a privilege.

I don't accept that society is the State or vice versa; and I don't accept the State helping itself and its interested dependants to other people's property, backed by force and bullsh!t, can be described as "we as a society" making decisions. That expression is factually, logically and ethically incoherent for a number of reasons.

Equal pay for workers who have *unequal* costs or risks of costs is not equal pay from an economic or ethical point of view. It's a *legal privilege* for the favoured workers who have unequal costs or risks of costs, and the State to force someone else to pay them equally.

For this reason, all and any State measures conferring sex-specific benefits on women, or forcing people to pretend that women are the same as, or equal to men, when in fact this is not true, are sexist privileges. This includes all the measures that Petra or you support that are provided by, funded by or enforced by the State.

"Of course, many employers will continue to choose to offer parental benefits, including pay, for both mothers and fathers over and above legal requirements, as a way of attracting and retaining staff and treating their employees decently. That makes perfect sense to me."

Certainly I have no problem with it. But it only begs the question why there would be any need for any legislation to threaten employers to force them to employ women or pay them the same as men, if the women can succeed on their own merits. If they can do so, then there is no need for equal pay or anti-discrimination legislation; and if they can't, there is no justification for these force-backed, false, hypocritical, sexist, fascist, legal privileges for females.

JKJ

You say in regard to proxy voting: “ We can see what a cost it is by the thought experiment if everyone did it”. I agree. If everyone did it, this would be quicker and more efficient. The theatre of divisions, and MPs physically traipsing around Parliament to vote may be a nice piece of tradition, but it is a waste of time, and hence money.

Proxies for all, I say!

I agree that society is not the State and vice versa. I also believe, however, that the State is the vehicle by which society meets some of its needs and gives effect to some of its preferences. In a democracy, that process is legitimised though the ballot box. If you don’t like parental leave, vote for a party that will abolish it.

Your argument against taxpayer funding of maternity/paternity pay on the grounds it is coercive is equally an argument against taxpayer funding of anything at all – roads, schools, police, courts, health services. And your argument against sex-specific government spending would equally rule out public health services for men with prostate cancer.

I have already indicated that I am not a supporter of equal pay for work of equal value. Equal pay for the same work is different. Unless pay differences between men and women doing the same job are due solely to the relative costs of employing them, unequal pay is discrimination.

"Proxies for all, I say!"

Indeed. Sack the politicians I say, because we can all exercise a proxy vote as well as any of them, and be more genuinely representative of our views while we're at it.

However assuming it's politicians who are voting in their usual way on their usual pretence of knowing what’s better for people, than people, then you have not established that proxy votes for all, or any, would be less costly than voting in person, since the whole machinery is still kept going.

You merely assume that, if women are to be given the sex-specific benefit of a proxy vote, then everyone else – i.e. mostly men - will just carry on and carry that extra burden and transaction cost on women’s behalf, on a plea of motherhood privilege; and then denying or minimising the extra cost when challenged.

"I agree that society is not the State and vice versa. I also believe, however, that the State is the vehicle by which society meets some of its needs and gives effect to some of its preferences. In a democracy, that process is legitimised though the ballot box. If you don’t like parental leave, vote for a party that will abolish it."

That only begs the question of the legitimate uses or limits of power. You don't specify any. If a majority votes for the oppression of a racial minority, or rape or robbery, can you see something, or anything wrong with that in principle?

The question is how you identify the *principle* by which you distinguish the use of force and threats that is okay, from that which is not. You haven't done that; and I don't think you have any such principle.

But if you do, what is it?

"I have already indicated that I am not a supporter of equal pay for work of equal value. Equal pay for the same work is different. Unless pay differences between men and women doing the same job are due solely to the relative costs of employing them, unequal pay is discrimination."

a) As things stand now, even if the pay differences between men and women doing the same job are due solely to the relative costs of employing them, and even if it’s quite explicit that they are due to the women’s unequal reproductive costs, it’s still a criminal offence for the employer to prefer the man. Do you agree with this violent sexist bigotry?

b) Everything, all human action, without exception, is "discrimination". And discrimination is just preference by another name; only with a negative moral connotation. But here the issue is the justification for any negative moral connotation itself. You are assuming there is something wrong with people valuing male and female differently. But you have not established any reason for this, let alone justification for threatening to have people caged and raped for doing it.

c) The question is not whether equal pay for equal work. It’s whether equal pay for equal work *at equal costs and risks of costs*, as judged by the employer. Anyone who is not in the position to cop the loss and risk, is not in a position to substitute their opinion, and that includes you, Petra, and the government.

d) But here's the acid test. If, in your opinion, the employer's preference is not justified, then your remedy is to employ that worker yourself and make the profit that you allege is going untaken. Thus you will do well at the same time as doing good, won’t you?

The fact feminists don't do this, is because they're wrong and they know it. Otherwise, why aren't you and Petra doing it? There’s a massive world-wide super-profit just waiting for the taking, supposedly. And you're arguing that the capitalists actively prefer making a loss rather than employ at the market rate the better and more profitable worker. And why are they doing this? Supposedly to indulge an irrational prejudice against females that *just happens* to coincide with the factually greater risk of costs owing to the female’s inequality of reproductive costs.

Sorry, but it’s just confused, or facile, nonsense.

e) Even if people are wrong, that doesn't give you a right to use force or threats to try to bully them into obedience and submission with your opinion. There is no general right to force people to pretend that men and women are the same, or to force people to stop people valuing men and women differently for different things. It's none of your business, none of Petra’s business, and none of the government's business.

f) But if you do have such a right, it applies to sexual discrimination in general. According to your theory of morality, people should be imprisoned for sexual preference.

Got that objective criterion, or principle, for distinguishing when one is justified in using aggressive violence or threats to get what you want from the opposite sex yet? Because your whole argument depends on it.

You have not justified any policy for any sex-specific benefit favouring women. And begging the question as to the arbitrariness of policy in general, is no advance on your original problem.

It all only falls back, on examination, to a creed that might is right that not even you or Petra agree with.

So it’s factually, logically and ethically false and hypocritical from start to finish, from top to bottom. It is merely nasty parasitical behaviour, that is all, and it needs to be named and shamed as such, not least for its pathetic sexist hypocrisy. And I think you should be *re-thinking* your views, and rejecting and condemning this kind of abuse and special pleading, not trying to deny and minimise and justify it.