It's been a busy month, but I wanted to post a photo from last week's Google protest in Seattle.  The protest was just myself and @ishfery, a sex worker I'd previously only met on Twitter.  (And, ornery cunt that I am, I'd wondered if she was real, since "in a post-Alexa world," I've come to suspect all sex worker bloggers who don't post photos of themselves are possibly creepy dudes.)

If you haven't already, check out the Google campaign page on SWAAY.org.

The protest of two went well, and I was certainly happy to not be alone.  Being a lone protester makes you look like some kind of crazy trying to "educate" people about 9/11 being an inside job or something.  One protester is a nutjob, two protesters are lovable underdogs.  While I can make a banner I can hold by myself, it's hard to hold a banner straight and hand out fliers at the same time.  What this photo doesn't show is that I had another sign on my back, hastily tied onto my scarf, reading, "Google Don't Be Evil!"  The reason for the sign on my back was not just so Google employees in the building could see it, but because a little birdy alerted me to the fact that Google Seattle's web cam covered this portion of the bridge.

We probably handed out about 100 fliers, and had some really position conversations.  One woman introduced herself as a budding filmmaker in the early stages of putting together a documentary about the partners of sex workers, and the troubles she was having trying to find people willing to go on camera to talk about those dynamics.  A number of Google employees either emailed/tweeted, or said supportive things in person.  One took a stack of fliers to hand out in the building.  (At the end of the protest, I went to give the reception desk fliers to explain why we were there, and they already had them.)  Everyone was extremely nice and interested, and the only detractor was a homeless-looking older man who told us to get a "real job."  It sounds like the San Francisco and LA protests went well, too, and SWOP Bay Area has some photos online.

I'm now wondering what the next step should be.  It being the Christian holy month, the world is half shut down until early January, so trying to do anything this week would be pointless.  I'm curious if another round of protests is something people are interested in, and when to schedule that.  (Second week of January, I'm assuming, since many people go out of town for Christmas and New Years.)  I'm also wondering about effective ways to utilize internet-based activism as a part of this campaign.  I am steadfastly against pointless, masturbatory "activism" like e-petitions, and with Google being such a massive company that doesn't exactly engage in dialog with the public, it's hard to know where to focus energies.

What I do know is that I'm happy to be working on a campaign that engages in real solidarity with sex workers in the developing world.  Though Google's shitty NGOs do things that harm sex workers right here in America, the brunt of their harm us directed as the poorest and most marginalized people in the world.  Some of the current crop of sex worker "activists" engage in "activism" in the form of attacking people online about which words they're allowed to use and how awful they ought to feel about the erratically-defined issue of "privilege," but it's just bullshit posturing that accomplishes nothing other than making a few people feel self-righteous.  If you surveyed sex workers in the developing world and asked what American activists could do to help them, I'm pretty sure that not one respondent would beg us to spend more of our time bludgeoning each other with freshman-level identity politics and feminist dogma on Twitter.  I love having an issue around which we have discuss the tangible effects of neocolonialism and Western do-gooderism, and what it really means when these NGOs say they want to "rescue" sex workers.  I don't know where the campaign will lead, and if we'll be able to pressure Google into supporting non-missionary, harm-reduction and rights-based services for sex workers, but this is the general direction I'd like to see American sex worker activism go.

My friend Jacob Appelbaum made a comment during his talk about Tor at a nerd convention that stuck with me because it concisely and politely explains what white Western political folk like myself should be doing with our time: "You should consider using your privilege to help other people."

I've spent almost the entire last 5 days researching the groups that Google is now funding.  Please see the campaign page and read something I've put a lot of time info!

Why are sex workers' rights supporters upset with Google?

Google announced last week that they are making the largest-ever corporate donation to "ending modern day slavery": an impressive $11.5 million dollars. We applaud and support Google's desire to fight slavery, forced trafficking, and exploitative labor conditions, but Google's funding recipients include three NGOs that cause serious harm to sex workers in around the world: International Justice Mission, Polaris Project, and Not for Sale. As small sex worker support services struggle for funding to serve their communities, it is offensive to watch Google shower money upon a wealthy faith-based group like the International Justice Mission, which took in nearly $22 million dollars in 2009 alone. (In contrast, the St. James Infirmary, a San Francisco clinic that provides free healthcare to sex workers, operated on only $335k in 2010.)

Does Google know what their money is really supporting? Let's take a look at what you won't read about on the front pages these groups' glossy web sites.

Continue >>>

Also, I'll be protesting outside of Google's Seattle building on Wednesday from 2-4pm (on the bridge next to it, to be specific).  There are also protests in other locations, too, so check the campaign page.  Please join me so I don't have to feel like a lonely sad protester.

This morning, I saw a tweet from a nerd that I knew was going to mean bad news: Google is donating $11.5 million to "fight modern slavery".  And what have we learned that politically-loaded phrase usually means?  It means "fighting to imprison and further criminalize vulnerable sex workers in the developing world."

Looks like the next campaign idea I've been looking to find for SWAAY has just popped up.

In the next few days, I'll have a better idea for a response to Google getting into the anti-sex worker business under the banner of "stopping sex slave trafficking," but for now, I'd appreciate any more information on the groups I'm not familiar with.  For one, I'm not sure if I even have a full list of the organizations Google is funding, so if you know someone at Google, I'd appreciate having them check.  Google's own charity giving web site has the list below, but I'm not sure if it's a complete one.  It's not exclusively anti-sex worker groups, but IJM, the Polaris Project, and Not For Sale are known foes.

ActionAid India
Aide et Action
BBC World Service Trust
Slavery Footprint
International Justice Mission
La Strada International
Not for Sale
Polaris Project
GoodWeave

Please post information in my comments area, I want to flesh out this subject so we know who exactly Google is funding, and what those groups do to sex workers to "save" them.  If you're not already familiar with how Western NGOs hurt sex workers in the developing world, please browse the video collection at Sex Workers Present, which is mostly from South East Asia.

"On the subject of ethics in sex work research, we usually think of the insensitivity and careerism of researchers whose interest is in obtaining information they will take credit for.  I want to point to another problematic angle: the issue of whether those being researched are honest with researchers.  Why, after all, should people who are being treated as objects of curiosity tell the truth?

[...]

To put it another way, keeping secrets may help sex workers gain independence or control over projects to help them.  Talking about sexual risks with people who think it's wrong to ever take any risks may cause them to treat you as irresponsible.  Admitting the desire to stay in sex work after getting out of the clutches of abusers can render you ineligible for victim-protection programmes.  The best policy may be to omit certain information from responses or to put on the expected front.

-- Dr Laura Agustín, in Alternate Ethics, or: Telling Lies to Researchers on lauraagustin.com

If you don't already follow the funny/sad/personal Sex Worker Problems blog, I will agan remind you to do so.  There was a post with a question about how to explain gaps in your resume if you move out of sex work and apply for straight jobs, and I shared my two cents about one could tackle that problem.

I’m almost 28, and I’ve been a sex worker since I was 18.  I have no plans to leave sex work any time soon, but the “what would I tell potential employers” thing always seemed like a no-brainer to me, so long as one doesn’t mind lying.  Here are two completely plausible lies that a potential straight employer has no way of disproving...

Read the rest here.

Here's my seasonal public shout-out to the awesome people who bought me awesome gifts from my Amazon wishlist, including books written by two of my favorite Twitterfolk: @pennjillette and @evgenymorozov.  Thanks to JV, HD, MM, SB, and BJ!  (Please include your email in the "gift comments" field so I can send you a thank you email.)

My cool new books:

* The Art of War by Sun Tzu
* The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays by EP Thompson
* The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom by Evgeny Morozov
* God, No!: Signs You May Already Be An Atheist and Other Magical Tales by Penn Jillette
* Working Sex: Sex Workers Write About a Changing Industry edited by Annie Oakley
* The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future by Cynthia Eller

I turn 28 this month, so as always, I shamelessly encourage birthday/Festivus gifts from my wishlist on Amazon.  Click on the menu to sort by priority, as some items are higher on my list than others.  I'm currently salivating pretty heavily over the $85 Breaking Bad shoes, hint hint.

(PS: If you buy any of these books through my links, a portion of the price goes to SWAAY.)

"...I got a job as a 'featured extra' in a brothel scene for the pilot of a TV show starring an Australian Dane Cook equivalent.  Over several takes with each camera angle, I had to walk by as he tells my character, 'Sorry you knew your uncle too well!'  The entire crew went wild the first time they heard it.  Everyone in the room was all, 'BRA-VO!' like he was the Neil Armstrong of sex worker incest jokes.  The general public—the same people who think Sasha Grey shouldn’t be allowed to read Dog Breath to kids—are probably going to think it's totally hilarious and 'edgy.'  I didn't laugh once at any of the lines in two days of shooting.  Comedy is my passion, yet I felt like an old schoolmarm.  I was one of the only people who couldn’t see the emperor’s new clothes...

The opposite of bro jokes isn't a humorless PC academia bubble; it's good jokes."

-- Kat, in The Morning After Podcast on titsandsass.com  (Also see her personal blog at katstories.tumblr.com)

In a similar vein: Danny Wylde recently wrote about serious gross creepiness he experienced while working in a mainstream entertainment environment.

If there's one thing the Occupy movement has taught us, it's that lots of people have a very poor grasp of logic.  For example, the most common rebuttal to my disagreement with Occupy is something like, "Oh, so you love fascist police states?" or "Why do you hate the poor?"  This one is called false dichotomy - creating two fake "sides" and painting your opponent as having only two choices.  (Another example: people who claim you're either a feminist or a misogynist, and that there is no other option.)

To help my readers better understand common fallacies of logic so they can be better debaters and thinkers, I figured I should illustrate them using arguments we commonly field as sex workers.  Hat tip to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe and Michael C. Labossiere at Nizkor.

Argument from ignorance: claiming that something must be true because it can't be proved to be false.

"There are no good studies on how many child sex slaves are being tortured by pimps and traffickers in our city, so we can only assume it must be in the tens of thousands."

Appeal to belief/popularity: arguing that if a belief is common, it must be true.

"Everyone knows that the watching porn turns men into rapists and abusers."

Related: Appeal to common practice.

"Okay, maybe our numbers aren't perfect on how many men rape their wives after seeing pornography, but sociology isn't a perfect science."

Argument from personal incredulity: if someone can't understand an issue, it is impossible for anyone to understand it.

"I would find it extremely degrading and oppressive to show a stranger my body for money, therefor you couldn't possibly not feel degraded and oppressed by your work."

Begging the question: asking a fake question that can only result in answers that make your opponent look bad.

"Have you always believed that raping people for money is acceptable?"

Argument from authority: a supposed authority believes something, so it must be true.

"Many professional feminists with PhDs believe that all sex work is sexual slavery, so that must be the correct position."

Purposefully confusing correlation and causation: two factors occurring at the same time does not mean that one factor is the cause of the other.

"Ted Bundy admitted that he loved pornography, therefor, pornography caused him to murder people."

Guilt by association: discounting a position because it is has something in common with beliefs held by "bad" people.

"Sexual predators and pimps wish there were fewer laws regulating the sex industry, why are you on their side?"

Red herring: introduction of an irrelevant issue to distract from topic at hand.

"Sure, you say you're in favor of adults having the right to perform in porn if they choose, but what about the helpless children who are raped in abused in the production of child pornography?"

False continuum: claimed inability to see any difference between two concepts, such as consent and non-consent.

"When money is involved, there's no such thing as true consent, so no one is actually consenting to sex work and it's all rape."

Over generalization: declaring a position based on very little or select information.

"The only prostitutes I've ever noticed in my city are the drug addicts turning tricks on skid row, so all sex workers must be transient drug addicts."

Appeal to consequences of a belief: something must be true because a person doesn't like what it would mean if it weren't.

"Decriminalizing prostitution must be bad for society, because I would hate to live in a world where sexuality is accepted as a commodity."

False dichotomy: reducing a complex issue to only two black-and-white positions.

"You say you're against shutting down Backpage.com.  How can you think it's acceptable for pimps to be trafficking in child sex slaves?"

No true Scotsman: dismissing evidence you don't like as not real.

"Sex workers are oppressed and beaten by their pimps on the street, so you must not be a real sex worker.  You are not representative."

Appeal to emotion: making an argument based on feelings.

"Would you want your own little girl being sold by a pimp on the internet?  Unless we stop the traffickers, your family could be next!"

Non-sequitur: an argument that doesn't make sense at all.

"This strip club must be shut down because here is a school several blocks away."

Misleading vividness: appealing to an especially dramatic example.

"A 13-year-old girl was rescued by police after she was kidnapped and forced at gunpoint to sexually service hundreds of men to earn money for her captor, who regularly raped and beat her.  Therefor, any scenario that involves selling sex is inherently exploitative."

Slippery slope: claiming if you accept idea A, you must also accept idea B.

"If we decriminalize sex work and accept the practice as normal, then we'll have to do so with other forms of sexual deviance, like pedophilia and bestiality."

Straw man: rebutting an imaginary position that is easier to debate than the real issue.

"These pro-trafficking activists think that sexual slavery is a choice, but we believe in human rights and human dignity."

Middle ground: the belief that the truth must be somewhere in the middle.

"Some people say that watching adult pornography causes men to rape children, and some people say that's not true at all, so the truth is obviously that watching porn only causes men to rape children half of the time."

Tautology: restating your premise as its own evidence.

"Sex work is degrading and wrong because getting paid to have sex is immoral."

Ad hominem: attack the person, not their argument.

"And what would you know about anything?  You're just some stupid whore."

The moving goalpost: continuing to change the way you qualify proof or correctness as an opponent chips away at your argument.

"Okay, so there may not be 300,000 child sex slaves in America like we've been claiming in all of our fundraising materials, but even if there are only 3, it's still a massive problem that warrants just as many donations and grants."

[Update: If you're a fallacy nerd, check out this lovely infographic on Information is Beautiful.]

Firstly, I apologize for the lack of uppity pro-ho materials on my blog lately.  I haven't been as motivated to explain the same things over and over, as I have been defending porn and sex work for almost a decade now.  (Fuck, I am so old now.)  The thing is, there's no such thing as a new argument against sex work, although there are more and more studies suggesting things like the benefits of porn consumption, or that "secondary effects" of adult businesses are a myth, or that it's just not true that millions of underage sex workers are trafficked little girls being exploited and controlled by pimps.  It's like debating the Bible - there will never be any new arguments in favor of creationism, but there's always more evidence in favor of evolution - once you know how to rebut all their arguments, all you can do is repeat yourself, which can get boring.

Now, moving onto my annoyance of the season: the left's current love affair with the utopian notion of "free" college for everyone.  Perhaps the most commonly articulated concrete demand from Occupy protests has been for "free" college for everyone.  (The most common vague demand is "end corruption" but since that's an abstract concept with no definition or proposed solution, I can't really be expected to discuss it seriously.)

How on earth could anyone be against "free" college?  If I'm against "free" college for everyone, it must mean I hate learning and knowledge and poor people, right?  Lefty people recoil in horror like I'm some kind of hard-right Tea Partier, but above fiscal conservatism, my beliefs about education are actually due to my deep and flagrant disregard for the presumed authority and superiority of academia.

I am against "free" college because most people don't need college

While everyone would prefer to have a high-paying job and be a millionaire astronaut rock star brain surgeon, there will always be a huge demand for less-skilled labor, even as we lose some of those jobs to overseas factories and technology.  According to the list of the largest employment sectors from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, only one in the top ten (nursing) requires college education.  The others - retail sales, cashiers, office clerks, food service, waiting tables, customer service, janitors, laborers, and secretaries aren't exactly careers that require a lot of advanced training.  Saying that everyone should have a degree so everyone can have a high paying job is like saying everyone should be rich - it sounds fun, but in reality, it's an untenable concept.  Not everyone can have a job that pays $50+ an hour, and even if we did pay that to janitors and sales clerks, the market would adjust and make everything that much more expensive, negating the value of that higher pay.  Everyone likes to believe that they are special and gifted and brilliant and deserve college, but in actuality, most people are average (that's why it's called "average"), plenty of people are below-average, and all those people still need jobs.

And after all, if everyone has a degree, no one has a degree.

I am against "free" college because college degrees has been devalued by the very people who insist on the importance of "free" college

Thanks to the expansion of liberal arts education and the efforts of largely left-leaning academia, degrees don't mean much now.  College degrees in my dad's era meant you must have some serious training in objectively useful stuff like science, engineering, medicine, or business, but now, anyone with a student loan or trust fund can fritter away their time earning a degree in knitting or feminism or contemplating what it means to exist.  The British have an awesome phrase for this: a "Mickey Mouse degree," meaning a degree in some silly subject that has no use in the real world.

The other day, I was curious what it takes to get a degree in women's studies or feminism, since such people largely seem to be nitwits with no comprehension of things like statistics or biology.  Look at this list of fluff required for bachelor's degree program at the University of Washington.  Anyone who has at least a C-average can be a women's studies graduate, no pesky math classes required beyond the single "Quantitative and Symbolic Reasoning" class required of all UW graduates, in which they only need to earn a grade of .7, which is a D-.  And that's not even a math requirement - it can be met by taking astronomy.  So remember, when you see someone with a feminism/gender studies degree from UW (and presumably other colleges), you're looking at someone whose most strenuous degree requirement was getting a D- in a freshman-level science class.  And then they wonder why they can't find high-paying jobs.  (It must be The Patriarchy purposefully oppressing them, right?)

I am against "free" college because I don't support the idea that college is the only or best way to learn about every topic

I find it strange that the left, which in the past has embraced "unschooling," free schools, and learning skills on a peer-to-peer basis, in recent years has decided the only and best way to learn about anything is at college.  By rallying for "free" college, the left's argument hinges on the idea that college is the only road to success and knowledge, which is just plain false.  Most of my friends are not college graduates, and that includes the number of people I know in the non-ho world who make over $100k a year.  The thing I've seen, across almost every single field, is that you don't need a degree if you're a smart and reasonably tenacious person.  To me, the only reason to pay for an official education is if you want to go into a field which requires a degree, like medicine or engineering.

I am someone who has managed to teach myself - a school dropout - how to do everything I need to do to run a small business.  (And yes, there's a lot more to what I do than just taking off my clothes.)  I don't think the ability to learn things on your own is so difficult that plenty of other people couldn't tap into if they tried.  I know so many other self-starters who have built successful careers and small businesses on their own, without needing degrees, as well as many who regret wasting money on college because they think their degree was largely useless.  I'm a believer in skill-sharing and learning directly from each other in a cooperative and hands-on environment, which I consider a much more "radical" perspective than the current left's mindless brainboner for all things academia.  (In this vein, I am happy to back Kio Stark's new book on Kickstarter, Don't Go Back to School: A handbook for learning anything.  A Yale dropout and teacher at NYU, go check out what Kio has to say in case you're wary of my "bias" as a non-college person.  I don't know her personally, but her partner and geek entrepreneur Bre Petis is awesome, so I'm guessing Kio's awesome, too.)

College seems like "special ed" for people who lack the initiative and follow-through to learn how to do things in the real world.  For people not getting medical/science/useful degrees, I can't fathom why they will gladly spend tens of thousands of dollars to read books in groups when they could read those same books at home for free.  It would be a pain in the ass to build a home chemistry lab with a ventilated fume hood and safe disposal for hazardous waste, so I understand taking chemistry lab at college, but fucking literature?  Art?  Philosophy?  Gender theory?  The pro-college people are such babies that they can't figure out how to read a book without it being spoonfed to them on a schedule and being explicitly told which parts of the text were the important bits.  And on top of that, they're supposed to be intellectually superior to me, the drop-out?  I've easily read and written more about feminism, human sexuality, sexual politics, and gender than your average women's studies graduate, but I ultimately win because I didn't flush $50,000+ down the toilet to do so.  (In fact, I've come out financially ahead.)  I guess that's kind of my ultimate fuck-you to the "educated" feminists.

I am against "free" college because it isn't actually free

What people on the left have a very hard time understanding is that "free stuff from the government" isn't actually free or from the government, it just means the cost is diffused over time and to all taxpayers.  "Free" simply means that your neighbors are footing your bills.

I am against "free" college because it's not my responsibility to fund other people's hobbies

On Bill Maher's show a couple of weeks ago, he noted that in 2009, about 37,000 people graduated college in computer science and engineering, and about 89,000 in visual and performing arts.  To use his perfect phrase: "A lot of people are going to college and doing bullshit."  A blog post I read about one man's genuine quest to understand Occupy Wallstreet noted that he couldn't find a single person in Zuccotti park who had a science degree, but found tons of unemployed actors and artists.  Americans going to college these days seem to do so largely to study things of personal interest to them, regardless of whether that degree will help them find gainful employment, which, phrased another way, is called going to college to learn amusing new hobbies.

I love books, I love crafts, I love non-pretentious art, I love discussions about sexuality and gender, I genuinely enjoy all sorts of the stuff liberal arts colleges teach, but I don't believe that I should be forced by the state to pay for other people to read books and navel-gaze and contemplate the "true" meaning of feminism.  When you argue that something should be taxpayer-funded, your argument is that your beliefs should be forced onto other people through the government and under threat of imprisonment and fines if people do not comply.  That's a pretty strong position to take, and while you can say that of all taxes, I'm more in favor of forcing everyone to pay for the maintenance of roads than I am of forcing people to pay for someone to take up fun new craft projects and read classic novels.

Unlike many others who are interested in women's studies and art and philosophy, I have the ability to separate my personal interests and hobbies from things which I believe the government should force others to fund.

I am against "free" college because it will probably cost more

I'm not an economist, so I don't know how to run the numbers on this, but I can only imagine that taxpayer-funded college would cost more.  If tuition is $10,000 a year, how much more is it going to cost on top of that in additional taxation infrastructure and enforcement and school welfare disbursements?  It seems like creating an HMO for schools, which just adds a lot of unnecessary bureaucratic costs to the service of education.  (It would create jobs, on the sole plus side, but if we're going to give people jobs just for the sake of giving jobs, I'd rather we spend that money to employ people to update and modernize the country's crumbling infrastructure.)  So, ultimately, when you're calling for "free" school, you're calling for school to cost more.  If the goal is that everyone goes to college, then not only is everyone still going to be paying for college through higher taxes over the course of their lifetime, but they're wasting money by paying for more red tape around that college degree.

The solution to our current bullshit- and fluff-filled world of expensive college degrees is not to have everyone get an expensive degree in bullshit and fluff, but to point out that the emperor has no clothes in the first place.

Let's move on, let's take the initiative to teach and learn from each other, and let's stop embracing the idea that college has a monopoly on learning.  College is indeed necessary for some people, and offers skills that would be difficult to learn on your own (like my chemistry lab example), but it's not the be-all end-all of success or knowledge.  And stop demanding that your neighbors foot the bill for your hobbies, unless you want me to come back at you and force you to pay for me to take up new hobbies of my own.

 

My debates with the pro-"free" college crowd generally go like this: They insist that they need a degree in order to get the high-paying job they believe they deserve; I tell them if so, they should stop wasting their money on their non-useful art/philosophy degrees and get a degree that will actually be a good financial investment; they tell me that they don't care about the money, and they are enlightened and believe in learning for learning's sake; then I ask them why they needed to get an official degree to prove that they believe in learning purely for learning's sake, and why do they say they don't care about money when a minute ago they said that they want a higher paying job; at which point their logic folds in on itself and they stop replying.

Update, argument two: The art college fetishists insist that everyone is entitled to go to college and that they believe oh-so-passionately that useless degrees are a human right.  Then I ask them why they don't channel that passion into spending their own money on footing the bill for others' liberal arts college tuition, and they balk and come up with an excuse as to why they shouldn't have to fund their beliefs, but that I should be forced by the government to fund their beliefs.  Seriously, kids, this is why we have these things called charities.  Anyone can spend their own money supporting the "worthy cause" of their choice, but you do not have a right to force all Americans to financially back your pet issue.

 

I've turned off comments on this post because I'm tired of having to read pointless bullshit from pretentious morons.

"Over the past half century, women have steadily gained on—and are in some ways surpassing—men in education and employment.  From 1970 (seven years after the Equal Pay Act was passed) to 2007, women’s earnings grew by 44 percent, compared with 6 percent for men. In 2008, women still earned just 77 cents to the male dollar—but that figure doesn’t account for the difference in hours worked, or the fact that women tend to choose lower-paying fields like nursing or education.  A 2010 study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30 found that the women actually earned 8 percent more than the men.  Women are also more likely than men to go to college: in 2010, 55 percent of all college graduates ages 25 to 29 were female...

As Hanna Rosin laid out in these pages last year (The End of Men, July/August 2010), men have been rapidly declining—in income, in educational attainment, and in future employment prospects—relative to women.  As of last year, women held 51.4 percent of all managerial and professional positions, up from 26 percent in 1980.  Today women outnumber men not only in college but in graduate school; they earned 60 percent of all bachelor’s and master’s degrees awarded in 2010, and men are now more likely than women to hold only a high-school diploma.

No one has been hurt more by the arrival of the post-industrial economy than the stubbornly large pool of men without higher education.  An analysis by Michael Greenstone, an economist at MIT, reveals that, after accounting for inflation, male median wages have fallen by 32 percent since their peak in 1973, once you account for the men who have stopped working altogether.  The Great Recession accelerated this imbalance.  Nearly three-quarters of the 7.5 million jobs lost in the depths of the recession were lost by men, making 2010 the first time in American history that women made up the majority of the workforce.  Men have since then regained a small portion of the positions they’d lost—but they remain in a deep hole, and most of the jobs that are least likely ever to come back are in traditionally male-dominated sectors, like manufacturing and construction."

-- Kate Bolick, in All the Single Ladies on theatlantic.com

The point of this piece wasn't feminist-bashing, but I love seeing factual information like this in a source as widely-read by lefties as the Atlantic.  It doesn't mesh with the feminist fantasy that they are constantly oppressed in all areas of life, and I'm sure they'll still keep harping on their lie of a vast income disparity.

Feminist propaganda claims that women "earn 70-something cents for every dollar that a man does," which makes it sound like there's some kind of payscale drawn up by The Patriarchy that dictates salaries for people of different sexes doing the same job.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The reasons that men have been earning more money than women is not because of sexism, but because men work longer hours at more dangerous jobs which require more education.  In other words: men make more because they deserve it.

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