I indirectly realized what DEI was, realized a fundamental aspect of lefty thought, and that apparently I’m not a lefty.
The story starts with Gender Neutrality. A little while ago, the Trump Administration made military testing Gender Neutral and I watched as there was tons of opposition by the lemmy lefties. So, over the last few days, I dug more in to it and, sure enough, the vast majority of lemmy lefties are viciously against Gender Neutrality. Highly for gender Equality; but highly against gender Neutrality.
I came up with various iffy reasonings, like that Gender Neutrality is a removing of gender instead of respecting chosen genders; but meh. The interesting thing is what I noticed under the surface. The main reasoning for hate against the gender neutral military tests is that it was assumed they would be passed by a larger amount of males than females. This is where I started to realize DEI. The lefty approach is to manipulate the tests so women have easier tests and males have harder tests; thus resulting in a genderbalanced military.
So, in a job, same approach. If not ‘enough’ minorities are in a job, manipulate the variables so that there are more.
So what is this? The lefty way to create equality? Unbalance the playing field just right so there are equal amounts of different types of people? The cost of Equality, gained in this way, is removal of Neutrality (sexual and ethnic).
Anyway, this was a fascinating realization; and I had kept hearing about DEI and suddenly deeply understand it along with the fight against it. So what is the best approach?
My initial thought is that periods of DEI alternating with periods of not DEI seems best unless the culture is high in appreciation of diversity with a norm of naturally bringing in diverse types of people. The reason for alternating times of DEI and not DEI is so that the norm of diversity can be created through DEI, and then, through a period of notDEI, evolution can occur naturally without artificial forces. It’s like training wheels. Without change, some people are blocked from where they want to be. So DEI it up to allow them to be where was previously blocked to them. But remove DEI every once in a while and see if that “norm of naturally bringing in diverse types of people” has arisen yet. If it has, the training wheels are no longer needed; because the goal is not to forever force people to ‘do the right thing’, but to have a culture where the norm is to naturally do it themselves.
Anyway, I naturally prefer Neutrality, which I realize now blocks the lefty ability to create Equality. Really is fascinating. Thoughts?
The reason people oppose “gender neutral” physical tests is that they will be inevitably written in a way that emphasizes those physical traits men have an advantage in, rather than those areas women have an advantage in. It’s like how men’s shirts are sold as “unisex.”
You should read about how the US Air Force learned the hard way about the flaw of averages. They tried to design cockpits to fit the average pilot. Instead, they ended up designing cockpits that fit no pilots and severely hampered combat effectiveness.
You use terms like “manipulate variables.” Sane people would recognize that as just removing unnecessary and illogical barriers that prevent equality. Consider an example like construction. One of the reasons there are so few women in construction is that job sites are designed entirely around male bodies. Materials like cement come in bags that are sized to what the average man can carry, even though there is zero reason smaller bags couldn’t just as easily be used. And that’s just one example. A DEI approach wouldn’t be to put some artificial quota on construction hiring and say you have to hire as many female as male construction workers. A DEI approach would be to say, “ok, let’s actually rationally look at all aspects of this job. There’s a whole lot of things here that are sized and designed the way they are simply because the male body is assumed as the default. We can change these without harming construction efficiency at all. And by doing so, we can greatly increase gender equity in the construction trades.”
The problem is that you see a field that is built at a crooked angle, and you blindly assume that it is level and true. For generations we had hard social and sometimes legal rules about what careers women were allowed to occupy. And that became baked into the practices of many industries. DEI is about interrogating these and finding ways to remove artificial and unnecessary barriers to equity, not this cartoon quota version that you seem to believe in.
I don’t know about everything, but some bulldozers have adjustable seats. It’s not exactly 1932 before differing body types were discovered. And women can definitely use a drill or a nail gun or whatever else.
They are not sized. Women can use equipment just the same as men. That’s not why they don’t go into construction.
Not disagreeing with your sentiment, but your example is pretty flawed. Adjusting construction equipment and materials to be woman sized effectively means the vast majority of construction workers would experience a loss in efficiency:
where they used to carry one bag of cement per trip, they now have smaller bags that are likely not to be exactly half as heavy and big so they could carry two, and must make extra trips. Smaller and more easily handled machinery is now either unwieldy for the men or less effective than the “big” versions. Having equipment and materials for both genders is also, obviously, impractical and expensive.
Adjusting construction equipment and materials to be woman sized effectively means the vast majority of construction workers would experience a loss in efficiency:
Do you not see the glaring glowing neon flaw in that logic? If we had designed the entire construction system around women and their particular physical advantages, and 90% of construction workers were women, then accommodating men would mean reducing the efficiency for the vast majority of construction workers. You’re justifying inequality by citing inequality.
And obviously there are some advantages to being able to carry a larger load in one go. But people aren’t hauling sacks of concrete around all day with their bare hands. If you need to lift more than a few bags, you use tools like wheelbarrows and lifting cranes. The male advantage here is only in the loading step. And that assumes that men and women will load the same number of bags at the same rate. Women tend to be better at persistence tasks like long duration walking. It’s possible that while men can lift more cement in a single lift, they’ll tire more quickly than the women lifting the smaller bags.
But that is just one example. Women have advantages in finesse and dexterity that men lack. They have smaller hands that can fit in tighter spaces. If we designed engines around the bodies of women, they would be completely unmaintainable by most men. Engine mechanics would be 90% female. And when the men complained, the women mechanics would just scoff and say, “it’s impractical to design engines around both male and female hands. If your giant gorilla hands can’t do the job, then you have no business working on an engine.”
There are many tasks involved in construction. For some of them, we could save money by optimizing them for women. For others, we could save money by optimizing them for men. Currently however, they’re all optimized only around men.
The goal instead is universal design. You design things so that people regardless of body size can do the jobs. This is how most heavy construction equipment is actually designed. Instead of sizing pedals, seat heights, etc for the average male body, they make things adjustable. Does this cost additional money? Yes. But it also drastically increases the pool of potential machine operators.
And that is what’s really lost by optimizing things for one demographic group at the expense of others. You drastically decrease your pool of potential employees. From simple supply and demand, this inflates your labor costs. Someone who could be one of the most conscientious, intelligent, and productive workers never gets a chance to demonstrate their skills simply because they can’t lift a bag of cement that was sized for a male body.
Is see the point you’re trying to make, but it also ignores the reality that many, dare i say the vast majority, of women are less inclined to those physically demanding jobs that are “typically” male such as most blue collar work. The reason they don’t do that work as much isn’t just cultural, or patriarchal societal expectations.
Most of them don’t want to, so the whole thought experiment of reversing the roles is a bit moot, even ignoring the obvious stupidity a society would display by deliberately using the physically weaker, reproductive bottleneck for the more demanding and dangerous tasks a civilization needs done.
This is of course ignoring the fact that we aren’t just rational little colony ants doing only the thing we were biologically designed to do, and instead have free will and wishes and desires that don’t match the rational patterns, such as women working “male” jobs.
Ultimately the only real solution in my opinion is making exoskeletons for all laborious jobs, then any man, woman and child can lift a truck on their own.
A large, large, factor in not wanting these jobs is also why these jobs are taken over by cheaper migrant labor. Sure a someone could get up on roof, with a nail gun, and do roofing all day. For the same money, and likely better benefits though, they could get an office job. The office job doesn’t wear their bodies out by middle age, and they can work from home, or stay in a climate controlled building all day. So, over all, office job wins out. Now the construction yard has to seek out people with fewer possible opportunities to get laborers.
Then you also factor in more cultural stuff, like the fact that women report significantly higher rates sexual harassment, and other forms of mistreatment, in construction work, why would women want to be on the construction yard? The population at large is far less willing if they don’t feel like they have to, and they also get treated worse than other work sites?
How dare u use logic and common sence that should be illegal.
Did u think about ur example at all?
The goal of the construction manager is to build the shit they need as cheap as possible.
To build object abc will take n kg of concrete. It takes x minutes for a worker to walk y distance. A bag has weight z kg. It costs money to employ a worker to work let’s call this q $/minute. So the total cost of labour just to move the concrete is: q * x * n/z. Now as the project manager u want that equation to be as low as possible. So let’s look at the 2 possible scenarios here
Male scenario: z is larger so less trips therefore cheaper.
Female scenario: z is smaller so more trips therefore more expensive.
So let’s assume that people get paid the same for the same work. So we can equate the male and female version for the equation.
q_m * x * n/z_m = q_f * x * n/z_f
So either u make z_m = z_f
Or u make q_m > q_f
So what do u wanna do? Make bags smaller and and pay men more than women or keep bags the same size and only employ people capable of carrying them who will most likely happen to be men.
Or do u fundamentally believe that not all people should be payed equally for the same work?
Or u could implement something into the equation let’s call it i
i * q_m * x * n/z_m = i * q_f * x * n/z_f
So now we can balance this by adjusting i. Now u may think this is a great solution until u realise i stands for the inequality factor.
nice equation. Lovely seeing the ‘i’ just as I’m realizing how it works. thank you
You’re missing the point and pedantically obsessing over one example. You don’t need equations to know that being able to carry more in one load has some advantages. Yes, men can carry more in a single load, but women tend to be better at tasks like long duration walking. Or imagine if all uniforms were sized for women because companies can save on materials cost. The point is there are other examples where if we designed construction entirely around women’s bodies, then men would find that they are completely unable to work in the construction industry. For each example of optimizing to a gender, companies could save some money by doing so.
For example, consider hand size. Women tend to have smaller hands then men. Imagine if we designed machines to be maintained by the hands the size of those of the average woman, tight spaces that most men would find impractical to work in. And this would mean engines could be smaller and require less material. If a man complained, we would then just mock him and say, “ha! Look at your giant cave man hands. Engines don’t have a gender, you woke fool. If you can’t do the job, stay back in the kitchen. Men are too irrational, emotional, and aggressive to work around heavy construction equipment anyway!”
Or consider something like an office. Offices typically have the temperature set at the temp necessary to keep a man in a suit cool, resulting in women freezing. Imagine if we had built the professional world around the bodies of women instead. You know, if we set the ceilings in offices at 6’, we could cram more floors inside shorter buildings. Most women could get along just fine with this, while most men would constantly be bumping into the ceiling as their heads rise a bit as they walk. Taller men would have to walk around all day with their necks crooked. If they complained, the women would just say, “ceilings don’t have a gender. If you can’t handle the requirements of an office environment, get back in the kitchen where you belong!”
That’s all sound when you’re in a labour camp, but I’d hope in actual construction you’re either only moving a few bags and it doesn’t matter, or you’re moving so many that a powered transport (e.g. a forklift) would be more logical than moving them by hand. Which gets us to the next “problem”: forklifts are probably also designed for men, but I’d wager swapping out the seat is not insanely hard.
Bruh, anyone can drive a fork truck. Shits adjustable, because there are small people and there are also big people.
Exactly. Fork lifts are designed around principles of universal design. That is my entire point. The problem is many areas of construction and other industries are NOT designed with universal design principles in mind. They’re designed around the male body, designed assuming male as default.
Great, then there’s no issue!
Forklifts are sexist? That’s a new one. Gg
Lol, if that’s all you get from my reply, lmao even
If u can’t come up with a valid example for an online argument I highly doubt anything u say can stand up in the real world.
Prepare the be shat on by the entirely of lemmy. Your about to be called a fascist or a Nazi. You have made one mistake and that is applying logic and common sense to the world.
The main issue is that the word equality has been taken and corrupted by the left to mean equality of outcome. However its original meaning was purely that of equality of opportunity. Equality by the lefty definition us fundamentally anti equality.
