A Good Example of People Not Believing Their Own Rhetoric
If Prof. Suzanna Danuta Walters didn’t exist, Jordan Peterson would have to invent her. (Or rather, the kind of fictional nemesis Jordan Peterson’s critics attribute to him, actually is real: it’s this lady. Seriously, look at her list of publications.)
In a Washington Post op ed titled, “Why can’t we hate men?” she writes:
Women are underrepresented in higher-wage jobs, local and federal government, business, educational leadership, etc.; wage inequality continues to permeate every economy and almost every industry; women continue to provide far higher rates of unpaid labor in the home (e.g., child care, elder care, care for disabled individuals, housework and food provision); women have less access to education, particularly at the higher levels; women have lower rates of property ownership.
And then she concludes:
So men, if you really are #WithUs and would like us to not hate you for all the millennia of woe you have produced and benefited from, start with this: Lean out so we can actually just stand up without being beaten down. Pledge to vote for feminist women only. Don’t run for office. Don’t be in charge of anything. Step away from the power. We got this. And please know that your crocodile tears won’t be wiped away by us anymore. We have every right to hate you. You have done us wrong. #BecausePatriarchy. It is long past time to play hard for Team Feminism. And win.
I looked at several of her photos and I’m pretty sure Walters is white and grew up in the United States. (She got her degree from CUNY.) So why couldn’t an educated woman from Ghana ask Walters to resign from her position at Northeastern and as a journal editor, to give more opportunity to people of color who have been victimized by colonialism? I mean, Trump got elected on Walters’ watch; she’s not exactly lighting it up.
I can’t believe she thinks black men should step aside for white women. She sounds racist. Is that how this game works?
The game is to say the thing that gets the most attention without costing your job. Notice the Wikipedia entry, it wouldn’t exist outside of this article. The only facts other than the article are when she got her PhD, her job and her prior publications. 30 years of work doesn’t get her in the public eye, but a high emotion low fact op ed gets her a Wikipedia page.
Suzanna Danuta Walters: I have a better idea: I do not hate anybody
I do not think op-eds should encourage hate. I wonder what the WaPo is thinking.
You know, I often disagree with Bob Murphy.
I wish Bob Murphy would write more about the disaster that is property zoning, and the unfairness that is routine criminalization of push-cart or truck-vending. The propertied class believes in free enterprise, except when it doesn’t. it is rank hypocrisy.
I wish Bob Murphy would make those issues his big ones for the next two years.
So what? I do not hate Bob Murphy. In fact, I like Bob Murphy (at least his web-persona).
Also, Murphy never authors a hate piece. Ms. Walters could take notes.
It’s not Bob’s job to harp on your personal pet issues.
Andrew you really missed the point.
I didn’t miss the point, I’m sick of Cole, a notorious inflationist, commenting on every damn economics blog on the internet with what I can only assume is the marketing copy for his next book, because it’s painfully rehearsed and repetitive.
Kevin Erdmann will come out with a book on this topic, and it promises to be excellent. Buy many copies and pass them around!
Anyway, I am sorry if you have to read so many comments by me on the pinko-perversion that is property zoning, and the overt crushing of free enterprise that is the criminalization of push-cart vending.
But this war on commercial freedom goes on daily in every city in America—but is never a topic.
A man needs a crusade. Think of Don Quixote. Sing “The Impossible Dream” with me.
And have a beer, dude.
Benjamin,
You bring this up all the time at various blogs. I’m curious to hear why you think food truck vendors are bigger victims than (say) nonviolent drug dealers.
Because “non-violent” drug dealers sell a product they know is harming and killing people, while the food cart vendors are selling tacos?
SD I think marijuana is safer than a lot of the food I’ve seen people selling on NYC sidewalks…
And I meant that they don’t throw food truck vendors in cages for decades.
Bob Murphy:
Thanks for your question—but I am not sure of the premise of your question.
I would legalize recreational drugs, and they could be sold in push-carts, or trucks, or motorcycle side-cars along with food, clothing, electronic gear, smartphones, kitchen utensils, guns, books, anything the public wants to buy.
Of course, ground-floor retailers (who can only operate in space zoned retail) have effectively wiped out the push-cart vendors.
Thus, we have effectively closed off an avenue to self-employment for millions. We believe in free enterprise and free trade—just not for guys who want to start up a low-capital business on city streets and sidewalks.
But global free trade? Oh, let us abjectly genuflect to the hoariest of totems in the economic pantheon.
I hope you really target property-zoning and push-cart vending for a couple of years. There are enough pompous poseurs pettifogging about global free trade and how awful the minimum wage is.
We believe in free markets (except when we don’t.)
Anyway, I like you. No hate here. I like women too.
Do you believe in the “free market” where someone can rob you at gunpoint? It’s a free exchange… the masked man made an offer, “Your money or your life!” and you decided in your personal scale of preferences that your life was worth more than your wallet. Perfectly normal free exchange there… it must be a win/win because you voluntarily gave over the money and the other guy voluntarily let you live. Everyone benefits, surely you recognize that you would be worse off dead?
Oh what’s that? There are rules you say. Really? That money belongs to you, and you don’t think others should be allowed to take it like that.
So you believe in freedom (except not too much freedom).
You want to be able to own your property, be that money in your pocket or your truck, or your ground floor retail business, and you want to be able to trade that property only on your terms, without other people just coming along and interfering in ways you don’t like.
Well gosh, if there’s gonna be rules, we better write some of this down and put together some sort of structured system to fit it all into place. Hmmm, seems like voting is the way we make decisions about how property rights operate, and the voters keep voting for this Mayor who does not allow food trucks. Guess that’s how rules work.
There’s still a free market in operation, for those people who want to follow the rules. There’s also a collective decision making system in operation to settle questions about what type of property can be owned, where the boundaries are and what counts as an acceptable exchange vs what is considered unreasonable.
You don’t even have to follow those rules if you don’t want. There will be consequences of course, someone might point a gun at your head and say, “Your food truck or your life!” but you consented to that when you drove that truck into a town where the rules said, “No food trucks.”
Tel, that’s not much of a response to an anarchist. We don’t argue there should be no rules, we argue that markets should be regulated by the private sector as opposed to voting for politicians and public sector regulations. Your response is no different than the person that tells us we must not want kids to get an education since we oppose public education.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable for property owners to make rules about who can sell what in and around their town. Since the formal articles of town incorporation generally include some process by which the property owners vote and such rules are made, this information is available to all residents of that town and everyone buying property there.
People who want to live in a nice neighborhood and a quiet town have that preference and that reflects in the way they exercise their property rights.
Go buy up an empty paddock and start your own town full of food trucks if you want something different.
Tel:
Okay, you believe in regulating commerce to obtain community benefits (as determined by the regulators).
So, you believe the state can control development of property in your neighborhood, and criminalize push-cart vending.
So where do we draw the line on regulating commerce?
By your standards, the state has a right to control every aspect of commerce. It just becomes a matter of who has the political power to regulate.
This is how we get to the present-day rank hypocrisy of orthodox macroeconomists wailing about “free trade,” and then going mute on property zoning.
Thus macroeconomics becomes politics in drag. It is about political power. Not about free enterprise.
But hey, nothing but love here, and have a beer!
Standard articles of incorporation for towns in the USA delegate the power to local governance, not the state as such, but it’s a collective decision making body if that’s what you mean. That’s kind of unavoidable once you have more than one family living in a town.
I’m not drawing the line, that’s for the people of each town to decide for themselves. If you can eloquently convince them to vote for food trucks, then let there be food trucks. If they consistently tell you they don’t want food trucks then maybe that’s because they aren’t interested.
It’s not the state, it’s the articles of incorporation of the town itself as a political entity. That’s how people have agreed amongst themselves to manage that piece of property which is the town itself.
In Australia it’s officially the state, but a lot of land use regulations gets delegated informally back to the local government which operates as a state sanctioned corporation (but appeal against bad decisions can go up through certain state courts). I don’t want someone so jam a 50 story tower block right next to my house so I never see the sun and destroying my property value.
The discussion in Australia has come up a few times about moving to a stronger local governance structure but for whatever reason people don’t like it. Many are worried that the Commonwealth will attempt to destroy the states completely. But anyway that’s a digression.
Someone has to make these decisions, and if you don’t put it to the people, then what? The other choice is a King or something like that. We already have a Queen FWIW and she has chosen to keep out of these local matters.
As opposed to the rank hypocrisy of you wanting certain property rights protected when it suits you, but also wanting to be able to mess with other people’s agreed on property rights when you think you know how to run their town better than they do.
Over at Carpe Diem, Mark Perry has been tracking “gender inequality” in higher education for a number of years. I can’t square Mark’s data with Walter’s assertion “women have less access to education, particularly at the higher levels.”
http://www.aei.org/publication/prediction-no-graduation-speaker-will-mention-the-29-gender-college-degree-gap-for-the-class-of-2018/
Women dominating men at college is blamed on sexism as well….
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/12/11/women-are-dominating-men-at-college-blame-sexism/?utm_term=.2b9442d1175b
The more damning piece of evidence for SDW not believing her own rhetoric is the list of things men need to do to really be feminist allies followed by “We got this”. If she really believed that women were capable to the degree that is implied she wouldn’t feel the need to beg for men to alter all of their behaviors to allow for it to happen. “we don’t need men” is a logical consequence of some radical feminist theory, but “men need to do X, Y and Z to allow women to really be women” is not.
This is a really good comment. 60 years ago, feminism succeeded when a woman rose to the top (and yes, it happened back then). Today feminism succeeds when men attrite and withdraw. Almost like, you know, when Peterson suggested to Cathy Newman that she was reacting to him the way she was because of animus possession.
The problem with Peterson is that even the stuff that sounds crazy ends up proving out.
Feminism got taken over by Marxism. They succeed by being divisive, stoking victimhood, encouraging envy, and generally making people miserable. The point of Marxism is to prove that Capitalism has failed, but that’s difficult to do directly so they sneak around tipping a little sand into the gears of each social institution in the hope that something will fall over and it will be Capitalism to blame.
Feminists have every right to be bigots if that’s what they really want, and in turn they give permission to every other bigot in the world to do much the same thing, which they probably don’t want (but maybe some of them do).
Additionally, the strategy of telling men who care about feminism to step away from power is counter productive. The most likely scenario would be a for a man who does not care about feminism(or is antagonistic toward it) to instead assume that power.
If she really believed her article was going to seriously influence men, she would have put more thought into her suggestion.