Interesting Links for 19-01-2015

[andrewducker]

• Women (and black people) less likely to go into professions perceived to require innate talent
  (tags: women race jobs )
• Steven Soderbergh, copyright hypocrite
  (tags: copyright movies )
• Scottish law on assisted suicide is intolerably unclear
  (tags: suicide Scotland law )
• Does anyone know of a barber in Edinburgh who will give a gent's haircut to a

Comments

[cmcmck]

As ever, the transgender piece assumes we all transition late. Some people may have these experiences, not all do.

I was fifteen, so my experience of what we laughingly call 'the world of work' is much the same as any other woman's (with the same long term desire to kick the patriarchy in a rather tender portion of its collective anatomy)!

[apostle_of_eris]

I read it as considering people who transitioned in mid life as having experience from both situations. If someone transitioned earlier, they wouldn't have the experiences to compare.

[cmcmck]

True, but the assumption that a majority of trans people transition late is one of those 'what everybody knows' tropes and it happens to be wrong and its becoming wronger (if that's a word :o) as attitudes toward treatment change for the better.

They should maybe have said 'some transgender people' rather than 'transgender people'.

[andrewducker]

This is a common theme - and something that people argue back and forth about a lot.

Hence, for instance, #NotAllMen.

[apostle_of_eris]

A couple of months ago, I was rudely slammed as a troll and cut from a conversation for saying that Starship Troopers had value and the inane movie of the same name was rubbish. The official line was that the book was "proto-fascist" full stop, and the movie was a clever parody, or something like that. A 1959 sf novel with no Europeans at all, ONLY People Of Color?

We need new, more realistic definitions of "recovery" and "expansion". The ones which are currently canonical don't match real life.

[ext_2864067]

I'm not sure I'd agree with the argument that the article's writer makes - I think that to say that the 'only soldiers and former soldiers get the vote' regime wouldn't at least lead to a form of fascism, means one hasn't really considered the overwhelmingly probable ramifications of that.

However, I do agree that Verhoeven's film version wasn't nearly as clever as it thought it was. He only seemed to really see the problematic aspects of Heinlein's work, and made his film a commentary on only those.

[helflaed]

I remember discussing the book with my husband who asked what the difference was between a society in which only former soldiers could vote, and a society where there is national service?

[ext_2864067]

I would say there'd be quite a substantial difference, though neither's ideal

[danieldwilliam]

Worstall is the Jeremy Clarkson of economics.

[andrewducker]

He is. But I find that when he's constrained from offering his opinions, and just explains principles, he's very readable.

So I'm 99% sure I wouldn't want him setting the tax rates, but I'm very happy to hear his thoughts about how taxes work.

[danieldwilliam]

Agreed on both points.

[momentsmusicaux]

Would discrimination laws cover a barber refusing to give a man's haircut to a woman? They're refusing to give an equivalent service after all.

[danieldwilliam]

Not sure.

Depends a little if the services are really equivalent. I wonder if there is a defence of requiring too complex a pricing structure to be administered by a sole trader.

I recall there being some discussion about whether a hairdresser was (or ought) to be allowed to not offer afro related hair services at all of its branches. The chain in question had a branch in an area with very few black women in it and hadn't thought it worthwhile training up staff for the rare occasion when a black woman walked in off the street with an afro for a haircut.

Not sure if it went to court of not.

[momentsmusicaux]

Well if you actually asked for the same haircut the barber would give to a man, not whatever foofy stuff they seem to do in women's hairdressers.

[andrewducker]

Denmark and New York have both outlawed gender discrimination for haircuts.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/about-time-women-and-men-got-charged-same-rates-hair-cuts

[vanessagalore]

Regarding "Talent"

My sister and I are both musicians. I tend to doubt that there is such a thing as talent; instead, I think exposure, desire, and discipline combine to form the majority of what we consider talent (although I do recognize that certain neurological baselines of coordination are helpful). My sister finds this idea that there's no such thing as 'talent' to be *incredibly* threatening.

[andrewducker]

It's interesting isn't it. Some people want to be intrinsically "special", others want their own actions to be the deciding factor.

I do think there are traits that make talents easier or harder to obtain. But also that most people could be better (and very significantly so) if they put the effort in.