One thing I would clarify is that there are still many different cultures in existence. Although most cultures are converging due to the global economic hegemony enforced by the US, they still maintain highly significant differences.
For instance, in many Muslim countries, your argument wouldn’t apply as much for a wide variety of reasons, including the prevalence of arranged marriages.
Furthermore, each generation actively produces its own culture and it can sometimes change rapidly due to changing environments. I agree with you that culture is built around human biology and in some ways remains similar across all human communities regardless of time or location. However, within that general framework, the possibilities are almost infinite, as we can see just by observing history.
So, in this specific context, I would argue that while it’s essentially inevitable that men will take on the more dangerous and difficult roles in any given culture, the actual manifestation of that tendency can come in many different forms. Western society manifests the male disposability phenomenon in a particularly harsh manner, in my personal opinion.
I think that many other cultural lineages may have traditionally held less demanding/dangerous expectations of masculinity. A relevant factor is that all Western nations have military traditions going back millennia, whereas many other regions of the planet do not share such an extensive history of warfare. All Western cultures essentially trace their roots back to the Roman Empire, in which basic mechanics of the male gauntlet which you speak of had already been firmly established.
If the possibility that a man will treat a woman badly (everything between belittling and straight up murder) is high enough, it is a life insurance to expect every man to be dangerous until proven otherwise. Its the same logic as “don’t talk to cops”.
No, it’s not life insurance. It’s pathological paranoia that doesn’t effectively improve one’s safety. If you go through life with an incredibly simplistic model of judgement, where any interaction with men or cops is dangerous until proven otherwise, you are simply trading one set of risks for another. There are many situations where a certain cop or man could be in a position to help or protect you, and you might fail to recognize that.
If you’re not making any distinction between “belittling and straight up murder”, then you’re really just handicapping your ability to distinguish people who are actually violently dangerous from people who are just normal people. Most people act like assholes on a regular basis, but that doesn’t make them dangerous.
This is a consistent and very unpleasant fact of the world that white men will treat anyone of any other demographic as less than equals.
Citation needed.
In all seriousness, I understand your point and respect you for trying to deconstruct the mechanics of privilege.
But I just factually disagree with your assertion. I would argue that every human being has an inherent preference for people that they perceive as similar to themselves in some way, and this can result in bias along racial or gender lines. However, this arguably applies less to white men than any other demographic, because such behavior is so consistently condemned and shamed when exhibited by white men.
In contrast, people of other demographics are less frequently made aware of their own biases, because calling it out has not been construed as some kind of ethical imperative, as it has with white men.
It’s also well documented that women have a much stronger in-group bias compared to men.
In essence, women can be characterized as “If I am good and I am female, females are good,” whereas men can be characterized as “Even if I am good and I am male, men are not necessarily good.” This sex difference in cognitive balance suggests that a mechanism that promotes female preference in women does not similarly contribute to male preference for men.
That’s not my main argument, it’s merely a supporting clause.
OP asserted that
white men will treat anyone of any other demographic as less than equals.
I countered that by pointing out that it’s obvious that any human being tends to prefer people who they consider similar to themselves. That’s my main argument.
And if that is true, then attempting to frame such behavior as particular to white men is just silly and unproductive.
I obviously can’t definitively measure the amount of social stigma around white male prejudice, but I don’t need to. I’m not saying that white men are definitely less biased than other demographics, I’m merely pointing out that it’s a distinct possibility, even as you all indicate that they are the demographic most deserving of condemnation for such behavior.
Now, one could make the argument that even though white men may not be especially biased, the effects of their bias may have greater impacts on other demographics due to the disproportionate amount of power they collectively wield. I think that’s a fair point, but it doesn’t really hold any ethical implications, it’s simply a description of a material reality.
However, your anecdotal experience is just that. I have been subject to exponentially more racist abuse from black individuals than from individuals of any other race. Does that indicate to you that we should be “pushing back” against black racists? Obviously not, because my personal experience is not enough to draw any conclusions about society as a whole.
In fact, you’re condescending me right now. You’re implying that your personal judgment supercedes my rational argument. I provide sources and construct an argument, and you respond “this is news to me” (condescending and dismissing my argument) and proceed to explain that what I’m saying can’t possibly be true, because it contradicts your personal viewpoint.
I agree. People tend to ascribe inherent traits to other groups, when in fact observed behaviors can usually be traced not to inherent dispositions, but to specific environmental conditions that incentivize said behaviors.
For instance, a white man in our current social environment who exhibits a confident, assertive attitude is well situated to succeed. White men are expected to be competent and often rewarded for appearing competent, so they sometimes attempt to exaggerate their competence in order to meet the perceived expectations.
Doesn’t your paper you linked imply it isn’t so obvious?
Yeah sure, in the absence of any other data.
If you refuse to acknowledge that people like people similar to themselves, you’re not being honest with yourself, let alone me.
What is the systemic problem/problematic behavior that you are trying to solve? You clearly believe that white men are especially discriminatory towards other groups, which isn’t crazy, although I disagree. But are you so naive to think that if we replaced the powerful white men with powerful hispanic women (or any other combination of race and gender), racial and gender-based discrimination would suddenly end? I’m just pointing out the inconvenient truth that the system would still be biased and unfair, just with different winners and losers.
In my view, the fact that some white men are biased for or against certain groups is completely insignificant and irrelevant to solving the problems that society faces today. It’s the fundamental structure of the economic and political system that naturally results in the few individuals at the top of the hierarchy expressing a large degree of control and domination over the rest of the society.
It has nothing to do with subjugation, it’s just preference. I prefer to spend time with my family, I’m not subjugating other people by doing so.
But in the context of a corporate oligarchy where my absurd wealth means that my family is unfairly enriched to the detriment of the workers that I employ, it becomes subjugation. It’s not humans, it’s the socioeconomic system that exists that is causing all of this suffering and needs to be supplanted.
This is a very reassuring response to my comment. I wasn’t overly concerned in the first place, just thought people should know. But even if I had been, your response would have reassured me. Good luck 👍
It was Dessalines. He has strong personal feelings about anime and especially lolicon, which is why hosting the anime community on lemmy.ml is an unwise choice, imho
In that case, I suggest you shut down the community. At this point the core userbase and mods have moved to another location and this community only serves to confuse noobs and casuals.
I don’t blame you for not wanting to research the veracity of pedo claims, but this is within your control as admins. If you have a community that is unmoderated and frequently taking up admin time and resources, simply shut it down.
alt text: 18 of our 40 employees are located in the Philippines. Insanely competent, great judgement, and $5 per hour. If you run a small business and don’t have overseas help you’re at a disadvantage
Allowing people to immigrate into a developed country, make way more money than they would at home, get put up in company housing, and send the majority of the money back to their families seems like a pretty good deal for all parties.
Sounds like you just played a more limited array of sports. Football is honestly not easy without uniforms, but possible especially if 7v7 or something.
But playing ultimate Frisbee, capture the flag, etc without uniforms is essentially impossible. Remembering who is on your team isn’t even the hard part. It’s more because you need to make quick decisions and recognize who is open immediately.
So yeah… that’s how uniforms work. I would be baffled if they weren’t the norm.
Did y’all use uniforms in World War II? No wonder the Germans were able to slice through your defensive lines so easily, you couldn’t tell who was on which team.
Rite Aid is banned for five years from using artificial intelligence (AI) facial recognition to try to curb shoplifting, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said Tuesday. In a press release, the age…
The articles you linked don’t support your conclusions. Sure, retail corporations will obviously attempt to frame the narrative such that it is advantageous to them. But you’re acting as if the fact that corporations have (possibly) overstated their losses indicates that shoplifting is not an issue?
The stats I’m seeing
Shrink totaled $112.1 billion in losses in 2022, about 1.6 percent of companies’ sales, up from $93.9 billion the year before
External theft accounts for about 35% of that figure, consistently
So shoplifting is costing greater than 0.5% of total sales annually. That’s far from negligible, considering the razor thin margins that most retailers operate with.
Shoplifting reports in 24 major cities where police have consistently published years of data — including New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas and San Francisco — were 16% higher during the first half of 2023 compared to 2019, according to the Council on Criminal Justice analysis.
However, excluding New York City, the number of incidents among the remaining cities was 7% lower.
The rise in shoplifting in NYC has been so massive that it has overshadowed the mild decline in shoplifting in other cities.
Walgreens said organized shoplifting was the reason it closed five stores in San Francisco in 2021.
Perhaps one reason why shoplifting rates in some cities has declined is that many stores in bad areas have been closed in the past several years in order to reduce shoplifting. Imagine that: companies complain about increased shoplifting > companies close problematic locations > shoplifting decreases. Granted I have no evidence to prove this hypothesis, but it certainly seems plausible.
My intuition is that this strategy (closing stores) is less effective in NYC because of the subway system. Unlike most other US cities, mass transit and density enables criminals to access any and all neighborhoods in the city, so closing individual locations simply causes the thieves to target another location.
“The overall data doesn’t indicate a great shift in the average shoplifting event, but the brazen ransacking incidents, coordinated on social media and captured on video, clearly suggest that there is a sense of lawlessness afoot,” said Adam Gelb, the CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice.
Nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in New York City last year involved just 327 people, the police said. Collectively, they were arrested and rearrested more than 6,000 times
I wonder how many times they shoplifted and got away with it, if they got caught 6,000 times in one year. There is a concept known as the dark figure of crime, which refers to the hidden figure of unreported crimes that is not captured by the official statistics. Whether the criminal got away with it cleanly, the victim didn’t want to go through the legal hassle, the cops didn’t feel like filling out a report, etc, crime statistics are inherently unreliable (with the exception of homicide)
By the end of 2022, the theft of items valued at less than $1,000 had increased 53 percent since 2019 at major commercial locations, according to a new analysis of police data by researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Over the past five years, shoplifting complaints nearly doubled, peaking at nearly 64,000 last year, police data shows. Only about 34 percent resulted in arrests last year, compared with 60 percent in 2017.
A spokeswoman for Walgreens, Kris Lathan, said the company had created a “major crimes unit” to assist authorities with investigations.
IIRC, corporations aren’t known to waste money, so the expansion of internal security departments and shoplifting prevention strategies seems like pretty good evidence that the problem is real.
In conclusion, corporations suck and I hate them, but there is a fairly significant shoplifting problem in America right now.
I’ll never return, regardless of what Reddit does, but I don’t blame you for your position.
I’d just say don’t give up yet, I think we have a pretty large chunk of people sitting on the sidelines temporarily, waiting to see if Lemmy actually becomes what it aspires to be.
Also I don’t mean to be rude, but it would be nice if Tildes users just came to Lemmy and helped us build here. I’m sure many Tildes users use Lemmy anyways. Tildes is just way too small (like 10% the size of Lemmy) and even if it did take off, it would probably turn out the same way as reddit. But that’s just like, my opinion, man.
Yes, as we know, the notability of national accomplishments diminishes as a function of time… other nations would never consider being proud of anything their ancestors accomplished before they were born. Lmao
If you don’t have enough things to be proud of as an American, which nationality would be good enough to meet your standards?
While I understand and respect the dunking in light of his detrimental effect on politics and sanity in general, I feel it’s disingenuous to imply he’s stupid. He’s just smart enough to be dangerous
I don’t think him saying dumb stuff on his podcast is good evidence of a lack of intelligence. The podcast is an entertainment product, not an IQ test. Also, the likelihood of anyone saying something blatantly wrong/stupid is nearly 100% if you record them long enough and make them talk about a wide enough variety of topics.
I don’t even wanna be defending Joe Rogan but it’s just obvious that he’s not below average intelligence, and pushing that propaganda contributes to the pervasive failure of the left to understand the grievances of the right. It’s not as simple as all conservatives being idiots.
Anon has nerdy hobbies (sh.itjust.works)
Is there a good Lemmy community for comparing amps, headphones, speakers, complaining about Audacity, etcetera?
The Perception Paradox: Men Who Hate Feminists Think Feminists Hate Men (msmagazine.com)
degree in bamf (mander.xyz)
Breadtube (Solarpunk) - A community for leftist videos, with a particular focus on Solarpunk and Anarchist content! (slrpnk.net)
Here’s the link in instance agnostic forms:...
why? how? (lemmy.ml)
Saying the quiet part out loud, with pride (sopuli.xyz)
alt text: 18 of our 40 employees are located in the Philippines. Insanely competent, great judgement, and $5 per hour. If you run a small business and don’t have overseas help you’re at a disadvantage
Anon is struck by the state of the education system (sh.itjust.works)
>be me...
Rite Aid banned from using AI facial recognition to curb shoplifting (thehill.com)
Rite Aid is banned for five years from using artificial intelligence (AI) facial recognition to try to curb shoplifting, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said Tuesday. In a press release, the age…
Is this too credible? (sh.itjust.works)
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty — Official Cinematic Trailer (www.youtube.com)
I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for you. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty arrives on September 26th on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.
Reddit Activity Plummeted After The Protests (www.garbageday.email)
Excerpt:...
Holy shit, no way! (lemmy.world)
Anon talks about Joe Rogan (lemmy.ml)