Today's Gender Theme: "Real men don't need permission"

Yesterday we discussed the problem with men who want to become women (and, conversely women who want to become men--without even going through the application process). Today we address the question: Is it okay to be a man? With society, I mean.

And we will address the issue by quoting a very interesting article in the American Spectator which has pulled yet another lesson out of the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts. In fact, so many lessons have been seen in the Scott Brown victory, that we are now officially wondering if there is anything it doesn't mean.

In any case, here is William Tucker, writing in the American Spectator:

There's lots of reason Scott Brown won Teddy Kennedy's old Senate seat this week -- health care reform, cap-and-trade, the deficit, exasperation with Democratic rule. But there's one other that shouldn't be missed -- he ran as a guy and it's OK to be a regular guy again.

Of course, there are some of us who never thought we needed anyone's permission to be a regular guy, but there you go.

Here was a guy who drove a gas guzzling pick-up truck. I'll have to admit I was shocked to find this out. I mean, can a guy get elected in Massachusetts if he doesn't drive a Volvo? In fact, it was a surprise to me that trucks were allowed in Massachusetts.

Tucker expands on his recent observations about the fact that men are losing jobs faster than women. He argues that this is partly due to the fact that service jobs are overtaking manufacturing jobs, in which men formerly thrived, and undoubtedly he is partly right. He points to the Huffington Post, which claims that government jobs and jobs in industries that serve the sick, the elderly, and the disabled are replacing jobs that involve hard, manual labor:

Does that sound like decline or what? At this rate we'll soon have an entire economy based on pushing each other around in wheelchairs. (Note also that half these sectors get their entire income from the government.)

But if you combine this with the fact that women are now more prevalent than men in higher education, you have to start to wonder if the more pressing problem is that men are getting stupid and lazy.

In fact, NPR recently ran a report talking about the problem of women who make more than their husbands--and how they wished it weren't so. They are better educated and more gainfully employed.

Surely someone can tell us how the Scott Brown victory explains this.

The fairer sex is also more focused in school, which is why they do better

Here's more information that someone in the Amazon Section of the Bureau of Gender Equity needs to squelch right away. It suggests once again that males and females are ... and I will try to put this in the most gentle way I can so as not to disturb the tender sensibilities of those among the our intellectual classes who get all upset and weepy when such things are suggested ... different:

Gender differences in the distributions of cognitive and non-cognitive abilities might be important in explaining gender differences in the propensities to go to and graduate from college. Gender differences in the means of cognitive measures like IQ are minor, but the degree of variability in cognitive abilities appear to be greater among men than women.

However, the main ability differences between men and women are in the non-cognitive arena. Non-cognitive abilities affect grades and test scores by affecting how much attention students pay to instruction from their teachers, how organized they are in doing homework and preparing for exams, whether they get disciplined for inappropriate behavior at school, and in various other ways.

Oh wait, this reflects well on women. Nevermind.

Did feminism help cause income disparity?

From Carpe Diem:

In regard to the appearance of French economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez in President Barack Obama's budget ("The Obama Rosetta Stone," by Daniel Henninger, Wonder Land, March 12): In their use of statistics of the top 1% of income earners, Messrs. Piketty and Saez make the same false assumptions that the Internal Revenue Service does. In 1980 income disparity began to take off in the U.S. leaving the top 1% of income earners with a greater share of the income pie. Like the IRS, these French economists use "household" income as their measure.

But consider that 1980 was about the time when large percentages of college-educated women began to enter the workforce. Many of these professional women would go on to marry other professionals. This in effect created a doubling of "household" income for many families.

At the same time out-of-wedlock birth rates and divorce began to skyrocket creating large percentages of single-parent households. It should be no surprise that a two income household has a much higher income than a single-income household even if all workers make exactly the same income: