First let's quickly review the definition of a "Social Justice Warrior". They are generally kind and decent people with kind hearts and good intentions. But despite these positive attributes they share a level of irrationality unintentionally masked by their own sincerity. I mean equality in itself is a good thing, correct?
Well, usually YES but in some cases it depends on the context.
SJW’s tend to lean a little farther to the political Left than your run of the mill Liberal. A Liberal tends to favor “equality of opportunity”, which is in itself a decent a noble cause. SJWs on the other hand tend to gravitate toward a notion of “equality of OUTCOME”. There is a critical difference between these two philosophies.
Equality of opportunity is rational because it focuses on the “input” of a given project with a desire that it will positively affect the “output”. Equality of OUTCOME on the other hand, disregards this critical first step of input and ONLY focuses on OUTPUT. This is a gross violation of the first Law of Thermodynamics, which you might remember from science class as The Law of Conservation of Energy. This states that energy can NOT be created nor destroyed in a given system. At the most, it can only change in form.
An excellent example of this resides in the current hot takes on the US Women’s very much deserved World Cup title and their disparity in pay between their division and the men’s.
Now the difference between genders in sports is an icky topic that for men like myself, we don’t like to discuss it much. It is an awkward subject that makes us feel a little uncomfortable if not a tad guilty.
For whatever reason and I do not know why, men were designed a little bigger, faster and stronger on average than women on this earth. And due to that, they tend to perform at a different level. Not “better” per se. Just “different”. By no means am I using the word “better”. If we want to talk about who is better, if you consider which gender commits the most violent crimes, workplace violence, spousal abuse, drug trafficking, fraud, etc., I think it would be fair to say the ladies are crushing the men in overall quality of humanity.
What does this all mean? I personally love the fact that we have women’s divisions in sports. I can watch women’s college softball all afternoon. I also enjoy watching them play volleyball, ice hockey during the Olympics and the occasional soccer match. I remember 1999, jumping up and down in my living room when Mia Hamm and her crew defeated a ferociously talented team China for the World Cup. I’ll even argue that women’s volleyball and tennis is actually more exciting to watch due to their abilities to return the serves and create some exciting back and forth. Men’s leagues tend to be an extreme serving competition and rounds are over before they even start. (snooze)
The most recent championship, which I sadly missed due to recovering from surgery, is equally as exciting. Congratulations, ladies. You are all bad asses and you make us all proud. But out of this recent title has reemerged the narrative of the ladies not getting paid the same amount as the men’s division. I mean on the surface, it does seem a little unfair. Our ladies have won FOUR titles and our men, ZERO. This year the men didn’t even qualify for the tournament. Our ladies on the world stage most certainly stack up better against their competitors than our men do against theirs. So why the pay disparity?
First we have to remember that pay is not based on championships. That is what trophies, medals and belts are for. Pay is one of the OUTPUTS we just mentioned above, an output that is contingent on the initial input. The men’s FIFA league generated 6 billion dollars in revenue this year. The women’s generated 131 million. Those numbers are not the fault of the men’s league nor any possible level of sexism existing in the upper offices. It is a direct result of the input. The input is ticket sales and merchandising.
You can complain all day long about men spending more money on attending sports in a men’s league more than those in the women’s. But the problem here is not sexism because the women are doing this as well! Women attend more NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB games on average than they do ANY of the women’s sporting leagues. This despite women in the US making up about 51% of our population. For those not good at math, that is slightly more than HALF.
So ladies, why are you not buying tickets to soccer matches nor purchasing player jerseys? That is the input. If you start selling out soccer stadiums, the revenues will increase and the women’s soccer team will get paid more. You can’t increase their pay to a level that causes the league to operate at a loss. They would no longer be able to operate. And is it fair to force the men to take a pay cut down to the level of what the women are making? I mean I suppose you could argue in favor of that. However if they have done nothing wrong so why punish them? If they are pulling in ticket sales, why is it important that they surrender a portion of their salary to subsidize the women’s division?
By the way, I should point out that female models on average earn far more than male models for the same work essentially. There is a simple explanation for this. Women make in the upwards of 85% of all consumer purchasing in the US. A significant percentage of this is apparel. Their side pulls in more revenue. The models earn more, period.
So in closing, look, I don’t disagree with the notion that I’d love to see a world where everyone makes an equally large bit fat salary for the same jobs. But that is Utopian and irrational because it discounts all of the factors that go into the equation that actually generates that money in the first place. If there is no input, you can’t expect an output. And you certainly can’t demand a higher output of cash from an lower input of sales.
Let’s spend a little more time understanding the input and what changes we need to make there and THEN we can begin to see a more desired output.
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