partTimeParent:

A couple of additional thoughts on the matters you raise.

1. Women work shifts too in unglamorous jobs - both paid and unpaid. For example: nurses; some factory workers; cleaners; waitresses and bar staff; some female security workers, coppers, taxi drivers and ambulance workers; shelf fillers; workers for telephone call centres and 24 hour counselling operators; residential and hospital workers such as cooks and laundry staff. Unpaid: carers of aged and disabled people; mothers of little children; homemakers - whose hours can be considered to be from 7.30 am or so to 9.00 pm at night when the last dish is wiped and put away; the lunches cut and clothes laid out for school kids and those in the household going to paid work.

2. Not all work that matters attracts a wage and it's the performance of those many, many unpaid jobs that makes it possible for other people to focus on going to paid work. If only men do the lowly and
difficult jobs, as you claim, then we would expect to see many more of them wiping the butts of children and adults alike; washing associated linens; helping people shower, dress, eat and attend to any other personal needs - all of which is not light work; cleaning house and all the other drudgery that makes a home a home.

Btw: I am not a homemaker myself - I am the family financial support and have been for many years. The difference between you and me, it seems, is that I am fully appreciative of the many tasks my spouse undertakes that makes it possible for me to focus on career and return to a relaxing and pleasant home. I earn the money but I don't consider it 'mine' because his efforts mean that he is working for it too.

PynchMe
Firstly Good on you to carry the bread-winning burden that mostly men do, and to accept it without complaint like men (generally) do.

You have missed the changes in our socety over the last 30 years... Ting up the LHMEU (the union that looks after cleaners etc... most are now men... the lowest of the low infact, migrant men.

I can't remember when I last saw a female taxi driver. The only female working in construction is the recent fashion to get women to hold the lolly-pop stop/slow signs. I do vaguely know one female in security.

Call centres are about 60% female, but that is at least clean, comfortable airconditioned and safe. Not like the really lowly jobs I mentioned. 98% of people killed at work are men.

But every "lowly" job you mentioned that women do, are actually men's jobs. With very very few women in them. The worst jobs are reserved for men... like the 'n!ggers' in 1950's America, today's 'n!gger' is simply a man.

98% of people killed at work are men

partTimeParent;

If men feel victimized, then perhaps they are - by other men. Whatever the burden in lower paid; more dangerous or unpleasant jobs - it's also men who hold the vast majority of power positions that control the economy and the polity.

- but you seem to miss my main point. Whatever paltry wages men are paid, there is a whole working class (mainly women) who get no pay nor recognition at all. Those are the people as I said who support others to go to work and who do the bulk of the work caring for children, the elderly and the infirm.

pynchme:"If men feel victimized,"

Men don't feel victimised except in a narrow band of activities, we're just very aware that women aren't victimised either, depite the best efforts of the weak-minded and entitlement-junkies to pretend otherwise.

As you plainly don't like men, you and your grrrlfriend should simply pretend we don't exist. Shop in "grrrls only" stores, buy only food grown by grrls, make sure your toilet is drained by a sewer constructed and maintained only by grrrls, running to a sewerage treatment plant run by grrrls. You'd best make sure you only allow your garbage to be collected by a truck driven by a womyn and taken to a dump staffed by womyn.

While you're out and about, make sure you only fill your car (naturally, you'll have one exclusively womyn-manufactured) with fuel refined at a plant run by womyn from oil that was pumped out of the ground by womyn on a rig that was made by womyn from steel that was refined by womyn. No doubt you'll take it to an all-girl carwash when it needs cleaning.

Good luck.

Oh g'day Antiseptic. I take it you're bored and looking for an argument as a bit of entertainment. I won't be able to respond quickly; but I'll respond when I can.

You already know that I am an ordinary heterosexual; long term married woman with three young adult children that include a son who is a soldier.

So without going off on one of your loopy side steps, please explain how you deduce that I have a "grrlfriend" (do you mean lesbian?) and "hate men".

PynchMe;
TWO POINTS
1: "If men feel victimized, then perhaps they are - by other men."
Yes, of course, but does that make discrimination any better?
This is the point that feminists (like you) don't get... because feminism is now a hatred cult.

Do I have to hate unions because I hate inflation? Do I have to hate china because I lost my manufacturing job?

Feminists like to point out that at the top of the heirarchy are men... but forget that at the bottom are also men... Feminists like to point out that women at Uni were rare until the 1960's but forget the millions of men ordered to their deaths (yes by other men) in the two world wars.

Feminism claims the power of victimhood for all women, but forgets that the bottom of the heap according to every quantifiable, measurable measure, are men.

For starters,
- men live shorter (due to suicide, preventable illness, susbstance abuse, neglect, dangerous work - an 80 year old man has an equal life expectancy as an 80 year old woman... men's AVERAGE shorter lives are due to PREVENTABLE causes),
- Young Men earn LESS than women (and in every age group women earn MORE than men, after adjusting for work experience, qualifications, and industry (You have to pay extra to get anybody to work late at night, in dirty dangerous or yucky jobs)

Men suicide at 4 times the rate as women (Officialy, unofficially after adjusting for the 'probable suicides' that are recorded as drug OD's, car "accidents", and shooting "accidents".

Boys are systematically discriminated against at school, so that boy's have dropped from matching girls results to being 20% lower. Now two thirds of Uni students are girls. It's clever discrimination, boys don't enjoy "talking", they enjoy "doing", so school activities are all about "talking". Boys are bored and then diagnosed as ADHD... 80% of ADHD are boys.

2: "(woomen) who support others...caring for children (get lower wages).

Yeah, the dreaded "Work-life balance" Terrible!

PartTimeParent@pobox.com