Comments by "cchris874" (@cchris874) on "Men's Rights vs Feminism: Is Toxic Masculinity Real? | Middle Ground" video.

  1. The wage gap has been debunked in the specific sense that it has been seriously misrepresented by feminists, and indeed most people. The wage gap as originally presented is simply an aggregative statistic adding up the full time wages of all men and the full time wages of all women. That produces an average where men as a whole earn more than woman. The CAUSES of this gap was never the subject of this statistic. So to assume that a wage gap is automatically and exclusively about unfairness or discrimination is to distort the meaning of the "wage gap." In reality, I think most reasonable people who have studied it will concede that while discrimination may indeed be a big part of it, so are many other factors such as what kind of work men and women choose, how many hours they work, and other demographic differences. So when we hear "women only earn 69 cents on the (men's) dollar," implying all of this is discrimination, that's just another example of bad statistics and simplistic sloganeering.
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  2.  @sydneyfreeman-coker1179  "...they stop short of thinking about the way that pervasive ideals of gender..." I am open to that definitely. Most of us have grown up with gender norms so ingrained they come 2nd nature, and I am much more aware of this than when I was growing up. At the same time, I think for the most part today's feminism takes as axiomatic that biology has little or no influence on how gender norms come about. But from a scientific point of view, that's an unjustified conclusion. Similarly, it may be unjustified gender norming, if you will, to conclude that the male ideal (allegedly) of status and high income should be seen as primarily a result of better access. Maybe the obsession with status and wealth should not be considered a particularly healthy goal. it typically requires being married to your job and making a lot of social sacrifice. Many women have found that lower pay translates into a more balanced life. Dominance tendency, and hierarchy, for example, might well have a biological element that differs in terms of gender. So it's possible that social privilege is not all that's operating here. My own guess is there's a complex mix of social/biological factors.
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