Comments on: Finding solutions

By: Rod of Sydney

Rod of Sydney — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 04:38:11 +0000

Shelley, don’t twist my statements (a below the belt tactic). I never said woman were not capable of problem solving – only that there are more opportunities for them to opt out on average than there are for men. They can rely on men to bail them out – provided they have something to offer – an attractive helplessness is one. I will repeat again, woman who problem solve and stand on their own 2 feet do very well. My hypothesis is that the percentage that do represent the percentage that reach leadership positions. All fair. Quotas based on 50:50 percentages are meaningless and unfairly benefit woman. Also please don’t feel sorry for me, I enjoy the company of many people men and woman, including flirty, assertive, leaders, followers

By: Shelley

Shelley — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:13:11 +0000

Rod, you’ve obviously had bad experiences with women and I am sincerely sorry for you; but since you seem to be relatively intelligent, can you not see that not all women are eyelash batting parasites? And not all men are as superior as you claim to be.

Some of your statements really are complete nonsense; particularly that of women not being problem solvers. That’s what we spend our lives doing.

I am bemused by men who see feminism as some kind of enemy force, and any serious issue raised by a woman as a personal attack. What on earth are you so afraid of?

By: Rod of Sydney

Rod of Sydney — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:37:19 +0000

Liz and Jen, thanks for the responses. I see feminism as a lobby group. Same as BEE. Listen but watch the agendas by the individuals involved. Making Malema rich doesn’t help disempowered youth. Giving mediocre female engineers promotions to fill quotas doesn’t make for better mine shafts. I have no objection towards giving the disempowered a leg up, but not the educated and middle-class, they must fall or rise on their own merits.

Furthermore I object strongly to the misuse of statistics in making comparisons between men and woman.
1) Equivalently educated men make higher starting salaries than woman…. never balanced by: remote, unsavoury job (which pay more) are mostly taken up by men AND men graduates are mostly older having had other life experience AND men graduates in engineering have been dismantling cars since grade school and start with a practical knowledge leg up engineering careers…
2) There are more woman graduates than men graduates but they earn more…. NOT balanced by what subject they graduated in. I have a range of science, business and art qualifications and solving calculus is a little harder than pontifying over the history of the feminist movement.
3)All that life-work flexibility around children that employers allow for. Sure great idea but if it costs money/productivity/not being available at key times, the recipient earns less -fair. Now build that into your statistics.

I dislike untruth: There are lies, damn lies and statistics. Play the ball, not the man.

By: Liza

Liza — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 03:13:06 +0000

@ Rod of Sydney.

I think I just identified a problem. The problem is that I (and many other women) have stopped trying to upbraid people for making statements such as the one you just posted. I gave up and simply chalked it up to “no point saying anything, it won’t change their closed little mind”. Perhaps that is the problem. I should stop playing the “easy card”, because it is easier to ignore you than to argue with you.

So, please, do us all a favor and open your eyes to see women for a little more than eyelash batting sex object. It may be hard, but hey, you are a man, a problem solver. Solve the problem that is you.

By: hds

hds — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:30:36 +0000

Ah, patriarchy. One of my favorite undergrad words along with “paradigm shift” and “problematize.”

Well done, Jen, will you get to travel to NYC for the conference? Don’t stay in Manhattan, make sure you get into Brooklyn and the Bronx. And Harlem’s Cotton Club is still legendary.

By: Jen

Jen — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:39:09 +0000

@Rod of Sydney, have you ever been outside your little cubicle of man-love and woman-hating? you may find that it’s a very different world from the 50s when you went in there in fear of the Abomb.

By: Antony

Antony — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:55:26 +0000

They need to contact Clara Masinga, Founder of the Kgautswane Community Development Centre; the recipient of the State President’s Baobab Award for self-reliance,and Community Builder of the Year and Decade – who is currently in Germany describing how the women of this remote rural area of Limpopo have energised and engaged themselves to the point of acceptance by the Local Traditional Leader as women in heir own right – not as tokens or dependents.

By: Rod of Sydney

Rod of Sydney — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:46:48 +0000

“It seems solution-less, until someone comes along and shows you how to do it. Have you ever faced a problem and had no idea how to solve it?”

In general men problem solve and woman… act the helpless woman. Those that don’t of course earn the same as men. Men who don’t problem solve earn less……. Blame the fact that trading sex / fluttering eyelids for taking the easy road means that woman have an “easy card” – until they are unattractive that is – unless they have a son who can bail them from then on…..