October 23, 2021

"A trans woman who transitioned late, in her fifties for example, who benefited from being treated as a man and paid as a man throughout her career, could really skew the figures."


"It makes the data inherently unreliable. It is unsafe as a matter of principle. The idea behind the sex pay gap is to identify systemic sex-based discrimination and rectify it. That’s the idea. It’s to right the historical wrong of women being underpaid."

Said the barrister Akua Reindorf, quoted in "Biggest firms won’t record sex of bosses under diversity plans/Identifying as a woman is enough in proposals from regulator ‘captured by Stonewall'" (London Times).

Stonewall is an LGBTQ group that wants "woman" defined to include anyone who identifies as a woman and to require companies to make statements about the number of women in their leadership positions. Reindorf is pointing out a conflict between transgender goals and traditional feminist goals. 

56 comments:

Lurker21 said...

Bezos and Gates are free to identify as women, so long as they complete their transition.

And though I generally don't like or approve of personal appearance comments, would Bill really be a less attractive or less convincing woman than Melinda?

Temujin said...

Oh, give me a break. How many people are we talking about? Five? Jesus...give it a break. It's not like there's entire divisions of corporations made up of executive Trans people. Just stop requiring the entirety of the human race stop and genuflect because you are unsure of who you are.

Enough.

mikee said...

The idea behind the sex pay gap, unless I missed something over the last 50 years, was for employers to get more profits by exploiting females via lower pay than men, for the same work.

What the barrister seems to be admitting is that the sex pay gap was a creation of malicious activists seeking to validate their power grab by claiming women are underpaid, true or not.

Beyond that, use of "unsafe" rather than perhaps "inaccurate" or "misleading" to describe data gathering proposals indicates some existing bias in current data gathering that he wants to maintain, which will be disrupted by inclusion of all data. One might think that the whole thing is already a sham of a fraud of a con job, were one at all looking for accurate depictions of salary versus gender, and factors affecting salary by gender. Hmmm.

Joe Smith said...

So the radical Stonewall 'folks' aren't very smart...big surprise.

What if Bezos identifies as a woman for the purposes of the survey?

Math is hard...

rhhardin said...

Women aren't underpaid. If that were true, everybody would hire only women. At today's "equal" pay, you have to force companies to hire them.

Wince said...

Reindorf is pointing out a conflict between transgender goals and traditional feminist goals.

In addition to sports and bathrooms?

It's all about where you land in the grievance hierarchy.

What's emanating from your penumbra said...

People who assert there is a big problem with gender pay gap reveal themselves as anti-science feminists. You see, we're not worried about people currently being treated unfairly due to their sex. We need to "right the *historical* wrong of women being underpaid."

JAORE said...

Yeah. California is going the same route, requiring diversity on boards.
Too easy. I told my wife at the time there will be meetings where executives are brought in and told, "Johnson, we are short on women on our boar. You may identify as a woman or resign. Your choice".

rhhardin said...

A trans woman who transitioned late, in his fifties, who benefited from being treated as a man and paid as a man throughout his career, could really skew the figures.

The person using the pronouns gets to choose the pronouns so it matches what he sees.

madAsHell said...

Stonewall is an LGBTQ group that wants "woman" defined to include anyone who identifies as a woman and to require companies to make statements about the number of women in their leadership positions.

This won't end well.

Bender said...

When everything is X, then X loses its distinct meaning and existence.

You know, it is not only women and girls who are erased, the Ls and Gs are erased too.

A lesbian expected to accept equally both a cis-woman and a trans-woman (who may or may not have even had "bottom surgery" yet), loses all identity as a lesbian.

And a gay guy expected to accept as a gay partner a guy with a vagina loses all identity as a gay guy.

ColoComment said...

Economist Mark Perry takes a deeper look at the purported "sex aka gender pay gap." He suggests that to accurately portray the problem, if any, one must examine it in greater detail and define the problem, if any, more narrowly.

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/details-in-bls-report-suggest-that-the-gender-earnings-gap-can-be-explained-by-age-marital-status-children-hours-worked-etc/

...unless, of course, the real purpose in using the broader claim is to overweight the woke-y accusation of sex/gender oppression/discrimination, as opposed to y'know, actually trying to resolve a genuine disparity.

Quaestor said...

Stonewall is an LGBTQ group that wants "woman" defined to include anyone who identifies as a woman...

That's biology, man. It's a lot harder to cancel than, say, a job description. Ya gotta repeal those laws of nature 'n stuff.

But I'm cool with this what-I-say-I-am-I-am thing. It opens opportunities otherwise closed by life choices, talent, IQ, and that bitch Mother Nature. You can have it all right now! Just say the words, man... er, woman... er, thing.

But it's gotta be fair, you know, equity 'n stuff.

Good morning. I'm Doctor Quaestor, brain scientist and rocket surgeon. Just lie back and relax. This won't hurt a bit.

M said...

After decades as a girl and woman I finally agree with the third wave feminists on something. Feminist screwed themselves when they allied with the LGBT. Women’s issues are not gay issues let alone trans.

loudogblog said...

I know a few young, gay men who decided to transition to identifying as female. When I look at them I wonder if they are actually going to be discriminated against now because of that. Before, they just looked like awkward young men who might be gay. Now they show up to work with brightly colored hair and fingernails and way too much makeup. (And it's pretty obvious that they're biologically male.) I can totally see future employers looking at them at a job interview and thinking, I don't want that in my workplace.

Big Mike said...

Catering to what the LGBTQ group wants led to two teenaged girls in Loudoun County schools being sexually assaulted by a teenaged biological male, one of them anally raped. LGBTQ can burn in the deepest pit in Hell for all I care about their agenda, and their enablers with them.

BarrySanders20 said...

I am woman. Hear me greive.

BarrySanders20 said...

I am woman. Hear me greive.

AlbertAnonymous said...

A “trans woman” who competes against an actual woman in a sporting event can really skew things too…

AlbertAnonymous said...

A “trans woman” who competes against an actual woman in a sporting event can really skew things too…

What's emanating from your penumbra said...

Control the definition and you can control the narrative.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/09/22/rape-cdc-numbers-misleading-definition-date-forced-sexual-assault-column/16007089/

gilbar said...

In One of Heinlein's Novels (Friday);
the comrades in the People's Republic of California realized that people with College Degrees, had Higher Salaries than those without....
This, Of Course; was UNFAIR!!!
They "fixed" the problem, by issuing "Degrees" to All citizens of the State.
Problem SOLVED!!!

Here in "The Real World", we are "fixing" the gender gap; by declaring that our CEO's aren't Men at all! They are Chix With Dicks.
Problem Solved!!!

Come to think of it; we have "fixed" the College Degree pay gap the same way! By issuing Gender and Race Study "Degrees" too!!

gilbar said...

Serious Question
WHY would a "feminist" want to advance MEN? seems contraindicated

of course, that leads to a Serious Followup Question
WHY would a "queer" want to advance Islam? Seems suicidal

Fernandinande said...

"The idea behind the sex pay gap is to identify systemic sex-based discrimination and rectify it."

Uh, false?

The idea behind the sex pay gap is to contrive phoney ideas about systemic sex-based discrimination and use them as an excuse to create bureaucracies which will meddle in private business with useless and destructive social engineering like requiring companies to make statements about the number of women in their leadership positions.

That's because

"The American Association of University Women found that when you control for differences between men and women of occupation, college major, and length of time in the workplace, the gap reduces to just $0.07 on the dollar. This finding was corroborated by the U.S. Department of Labor, which found back in 2009 that the adjusted pay gap is somewhere between $0.05 and $0.07 on the dollar."

Skippy Tisdale said...

"Stonewall is an LGBTQ group that wants "woman" defined to include anyone who identifies as a woman and to require companies to make statements about the number of women in their leadership positions."

Can we get a breakdown of this group's demographics? Than would be most helpful.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

trans women breaking the glass ceiling is cheating.

Don B. said...

I somehow doubt the London Times would seek legal opinions from a statistician, so why give credence to a barrister in this matter?

Don B. said...

Let's start asking statisticians for legal opinions--should be interesting!

Jeff said...

The idea behind the sex pay gap is to identify systemic sex-based discrimination and rectify it. That’s the idea. It’s to right the historical wrong of women being underpaid.

Except that women aren't underpaid. Nor are minorities. Simple logic, aka basic economics, says that in a competitive economy, employees get paid their marginal product. If an employee is contributing more to the firm's bottom line than he or she is getting paid, some other company can profit by hiring the employee away for a somewhat higher wage. Firms don't compete only in product markets, they also compete in labor markets.

The logic applies whether employees are male or female, black, white or brown. It can't be overemphasized: In a free market, businesses that don't pay people what they're worth don't stay in business! An intelligent employer doesn't care what color or sex you are. All that matters is whether or not it's profitable to hire you.

Employers who ignore this will lose out to employers who don't. It's really that simple, and pretty much all the wailing, laws and regulations about employment discrimination are nonsense.

RMc said...

"A trans woman who transitioned late, in her fifties for example, who benefited from being treated as a man and paid as a man throughout her career, could really skew the figures."

Just how many men-becoming-women-in-their-fifties does this guy think there are? Hundreds? Thousands?

Drago said...

RMc: "Just how many men-becoming-women-in-their-fifties does this guy think there are? Hundreds? Thousands?"

There is quite a large effort behind subsidizing this behavior so expect much more of it over time.

And if you don't like it and say so out loud, just be aware the LLR-lefties are going to call you a white supremacist domestic terrorist.

JustSomeOldDude said...

Real world example from a couple decades back. My wife works at a DoD installation that included one trans woman. The installation always included the trans woman, who worked in a high grade position, in their diversity stats. It was a very big deal back then because so few women were in high grade positions, and this one was one of very few. Totally ticked off my wife because "she" made all her rank as a "he", before transitioning. My wife subsequently is a very high grade there, but she still laughs at the old men who used to tout their gender diversity bona fides by rolling out the trans.

J. Farmer said...

Yeah, just think of all the trans women who transitioned late, in her fifties for example, who benefited from being treated as a man and paid as a man throughout her career." You could be talking about as many as five or six cases.

Now that straight white women and gay white men have outlived their usefulness, the transgendered are the newest posterchildren for queer activists. And at its core, queer activism is basically the social-political concerns of a coterie of Jewish butch-lesbians in the academy. You could think of their worldview as ethno-gynocentric. Or maybe just anti-shiksa.

StephenFearby said...

The Federalist 10/23

Twitter Locks Republican Congressman’s Account, Claims Calling A Man A Man Is ‘Hateful’ ‘Violence’

Twitter locked Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Banks out of his official account early Saturday morning for a Tuesday tweet observing, “The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man” — a reference to transgender federal official Rachel Levine.

Twitter’s ban notification to Banks explained that calling a man a man “violate[s] our rules against hateful conduct.” The Twitter ban statement also claimed accurate descriptions of human biology “promote violence.”

"...The Biden administration selected Levine as assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after Levine’s disastrous run as Pennsylvania health secretary. Levine’s tenure in Pennsylvania included withdrawing his own mother from a nursing home while promoting the dangerous and deadly policy of forcing nursing homes statewide to accept COVID-19 positive patients.

Levine also presided over one of the worst COVID-19 vaccine rollouts in the country, and during his Senate confirmation hearings affirmed that he supports mutilating children’s genitals in sex-change operations."

https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/23/twitter-locks-republican-congressmans-account-claims-calling-a-man-a-man-is-hateful-violence/

Joe Smith said...

BTW, sooooooo fucking tired of everything 'trans.'

This subject has been beaten to death.

Is there nothing more important in the world?

Give it a fucking rest already.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

gilbar, are you sure that's from Friday? Because I'm pretty sure it's from The Number of the Beast.

(Reread Friday last year; haven't read TNOTB for over a decade, but I know I remember the "Let's give them all college degrees!" shtick from long before I encountered Friday.)

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Don't let men define what a woman is.

That's been the problem all along, right?

Bob Boyd said...

If a woman wasn't really a man all those years, shouldn't she have to repay all that man money to her employer...with interest?

cubanbob said...

To the extent that there is a pay gap it's primarily that women tend to want to marry a man the earns more and if she has kids she either has work less hours hence less pay or have the father work less hours as once there kids someone has to devout hours to care and feed them. Not saying the dad doesn't help but come monday to Friday both can't work less hours unless both are willing to reduce their standard of living. Single woman and married woman without kids earn essentially the same as their male counterparts.

cubanbob said...

This woke nonsense is going to come to a head soon enough then implode as people get tired of the nonsense.

Jeff said...

If a woman wasn't really a man all those years, shouldn't she have to repay all that man money to her employer...with interest?

Not only that, if she was really a woman all those years but her income was higher because she was outwardly a man, doesn't that mean that the pay gap for all of those years before her outward transition was overstated?

Ted said...

When reporting on a transgender person, the media will often refer to events that occurred before they transitioned as if they were already the gender they transitioned to. (For example, "'The Matrix' was directed by the Wachowski sisters.") It's as if we're saying that a transgender woman was always a woman, but spent her early life passing as a man. But is this the way transgender women themselves see it? And if so, how do they feel about having benefited from the male "disguise" they lived in for most of their lives?

Howard said...

Pontiac is retooling to build new woke muscle car: the Trans Man and Trans Mam

John henry said...

Since Bezos only earns about $89,000 in salary from Amazon he would have little or no effect.

I'm not sure if he earns anything now, come to think of it. Didn't he step down a year or two ago?

John Henry

cfs said...

You will be required to care and support the alphabet people! It's not enough to let these mentally ill people roam freely to attack anyone that disagrees with them, but you must give them positions of power, and you MUST allow them to influence not only you, but your children as well! Give them your children so they can corrupt their minds and convince them they are something they are not. If you resist, they WILL call the authorities and report you for wrong-think. Your voice will be silenced. They will also call your employer and demand that you be terminated from your job.

I blame universities, and mainly law schools, that embraced the narrative that the Constitution and laws must be changed to accommodate everyone's "lived" experience.

You thought that since you tolerated the crazies in your office all would be well and they would not come after you. Tolerating is not good enough, you must celebrate the mentally ill. Welcome to your future!

gilbar said...

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...
gilbar, are you sure that's from Friday? Because I'm pretty sure it's from The Number of the Beast.

he might mention it in The Number... but

Friday , Chapter 15
For example three years ago, a grassroots economist noticed that college graduates earned, on average 30% more than their fellow citizens that lacked bachelors degrees. Some an undemocratic condition is anathema to the California Dream, so, with great speed, an initiative was qualified for the next election. The messure passed, and all California High Graduates and/or Citizens attaining 18 years were henceforth awarded bachelors degrees. A Grandfather clause backdated this 8 years"
page 141 of my delray paperback

Guess how long it took me to find the book? and the place?

2 minutes for the book (it was on the second row of heinliens
4 minutes to find the place (it's As soon as she gets to California from brit can)

A neat advantage of having a coma from a traumatic brian injury, is that i had a chance to read ALL of heinlein's books for the 1st time, twice (since i'd lost my memories of the books.

The bad part was, i'd invariably remember the ending by half way through... BUT, i did have the joy of opening 25 books or so, and reading the opening lines for the first time.... twice

Since 3/5/2000 (TBI day), i've read and reread them all at least 3 times (last on was glory road last june)

Leora said...

In 2013 the highest paid female CEO in the US was Martine Rothblatt used to be a man. It feels like cheating to me to include her in pay gap statistics sorted by gender.

cfkane1701 said...

This is my problem with transgenderism: no one who engages in it has "earned" what they claim is their new status as the other sex.

Men who claim they are women have no idea what women go through in their lives as women. Conversely, women who decide they want to be men don't understand that despite our perceived "dominance," it's not easy being a man in today's world.

In my opinion, it's on the level of cosplay, like you see at comic book conventions. Dress up as your favorite anime character. But instead they're dressing up as their favorite sex. The other one.

Like with most Americans, they want all the benefits and none of the responsibilities.

pacwest said...

All this seems like the old saying that when you have a hammer (degree in gender studies) every thing looks like a nail (victimization).

Critter said...

Now that “trans” has gained power as a term, we can expect it to be used in multiple contexts. Some have called Liz Cheney a “trans Republican”. It implies an unnatural association with Republicanism as some believe to be the case of some believed to be changing sexes in an unauthentic way. It is also a way of mocking the “hallowed” trans concept that has heretofore been off limits for anything less than full support. We are seeing the beginning of the downward slide in the trans idea.

BTW, not a personal opinion about trans people. I have no clue how authentic any of it is. Are there authentic cases? No doubt. How many? Who knows, but likely fewer than declare.

MadTownGuy said...

cubanbob said...

"This woke nonsense is going to come to a head soon enough then implode as people get tired of the nonsense."

Unfortunately, it won't happen until they've doubled down on the nonsense and wreaked a whole lot of havoc. By then, what used to be considered 'radical' will seem moderate by comparison.

Ryan said...

I am working on a lawwsuit now in which opposing counsel is an older M-to-F trans female. She is a partner at a large lawfirm and former self-confessed workaholic. Makes lots of money. This IA the exact problem they are worried about. It is a real issue.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

gilbar,

I think you're right; it's in both places. Only I can't find TNOTB at the moment b/c I got sick of it the instant Liz and Lori Long showed up and everyone started getting it on. It's 2/3 of a very good book.

I honestly didn't know about the traumatic brain injury! And . . . while you have all your Heinlein shelved together, I have done the same with Sara Paretsky, Margery Allingham, Catherine Aird, Elizabeth George, Ngaio Marsh, and Edmund Crispin. The Christies and the Rendells and various other mysteries are downstairs in the guest bedroom, but those six are in my office, together with most of a complete edition of G. K. Chesterton.

Hey, look, I'm approaching another writing deadline; I need as many distractions as possible!

Bunkypotatohead said...

It sounds like women could get a nice pay raise if they'd just transition to men.

gilbar said...

Michelle, a deer (stupid deer!) jumped in front of my motorcycle back in 2000
When i got out of the coma (only 3 days), i had Absolutely No past personal memories.
(also, didn't start remembering Present memories for the next two weeks)
It took awhile (a month), before i started remembering my past).
I still remember (from about 3 weeks after the collision); being in the Hospital, and having NO memories of Ever NOT being in the hospital... which seemed perfectly natural, because it'd been that way; for as long as i could remember (about 5 days :)

Over the next year or two, i would recover a block of memories at a time.
So, when i reread The Door Into Summer, i was Very Concerned HOW he was going to find his way back to future.

Currently, the only REAL gap i have, is from the night before the accident to two weeks later. (Which, from what i've heard wouldn't be that fun to remember)

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

gilbar, back when "Bad Boys" was still running (I think it and all other true-crime/cop-ride-along things have been cancelled now), there was this bit in the trailer with a deer being dragged out onto the road: "Bad deer! Bad deer!"

Well, The Door Into Summer is my favorite Heinlein after The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, ahead even of Farnham's Freehold, which is fantastically freaky and yet perfect. The latter two involve cats. Have I mentioned that I love cats?