A feminist professor attempts to gin up a fake controversy and gets considerable pushback:
Dr. Catlyn Collins is an assistant professor of sociology and of women, gender, and sexuality studies at Washington University in St. Louis. She is also a published author of a book titled Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving.
Her areas of research are gender inequality, work, families, and social policy
According to Glassdoor, the average salary of an assistant professor at Washington University is $105,700.
Add in speaking fees and book sales and it’s clear that she is in at least the top 5% of American incomes.
On Wednesday, she wanted to show the world how virtuous of a person she is, so she Tweeted this:
If you are at all curious, the average salary for an MoDOT highway maintenance worker is $31,788.
So here is this professor, with a Ph.D. in Sociology, shaming a road crew worker who she probably makes four times the salary of and most likely only has a high school diploma and on the job training, about a sign that he did not create and is required by law to put up.
I have a couple of thoughts on the matter.
First:
Why does the sign say men working?
We can go through the history of the English language where “man” or “men” has been used as a genericization of all people, e.g., “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
But the engineer in me says that we know highway safety is a thing. A sign that is too long and complicated to read will be a driver distraction. At highway speeds “Men Working” is two words, 10 letters, and it conveys a message easy to understand.
If the sign were to be written and approved by an assistant professor of sociology and of women, gender, and sexuality studies it would probably say “men women transgender non-binary two-spirit working” and by the time you are done reading that at highway speeds, you’ve plowed your car into the back of a road crew service vehicle.
Even “people working” is longer and harder to pick up at a glance.
You want your sign to be as easily visually digestible as possible to send your message while keeping drivers’ eyes on the road. “Men working” does that in the least amount of letters.
Second:
I have never worked road construction but I have worked outside in heavy labor before.
Here is the annual high and low temperatures for St. Louis, Missouri.
A road crew worker is someone who needs to be able to work in winter below freezing and summer at 90 degrees and high humidity.
One of the the most physically intensive jobs I’ve ever had was at the paint booth at a factory in Indiana. We had to wear our PPE which was steel toe boots, jeans, and a long sleeve shirt under a Tyvek suit (a large plastic bag) in a factory with no A/C in Indiana in the summer, next to a giant pass-through oven to bake on the powder coat we were spraying.
It had to be 120 degrees in the paint booth between the near 100 degrees outside and the baking oven inside.
I remember bringing two 2.5 gallon mini coolers to work every day, filled with ice and Country Time lemonade. The coolers and a new large bag of potato chips would be empty by the time I went home. My shirts would have big white rings from all the salt in the sweat I lost during my shift. And I lost weight doing it.
The paint booth paid well, better than assembly, because it was harder and considered as skilled job (dropping rivets was entry level).
The factory hired women. We never had a woman stay on the paint booth for more than a day.
I’ve worked several jobs like that. Piping inspection engineer at a refinery was another, but substitute the Tyvek suit for a set of Nomex coveralls, and Indiana for Philadelphia.
I’m not saying women are incapable of hard work, I’m just saying I’ve never personally experienced women who wanted to be out in the blazing sun of summer or the freezing winds of winter pouring asphalt.
Go here to read the rest. My sainted mother was one of the most independent persons, let alone women, I have ever encountered. She agreed with my sainted father who succinctly described feminism as “games for rich women”.
@caitymcollins’ tweets are protected and no longer available for unlimited public viewing. I wonder why? Is she afraid of people proving that feminists are inherently hypocritical, decadent and self-indulgent?
PS, when I hear a “man” saying he is a feminist, I always wonder where his testicular courage went? Into the estrogen zone? Self-emasculation, besides being painful, is shameful.
“There are too many male engineers.” I’ve been hearing that my entire career.
Why do engineers call their project – “their baby”?
Answer: Because they can’t have one. 🙂
I don’t think we realize just how much more teachers/professors make today than in years gone by. When I was in high school, we had ‘career’ days where various reps of different industries would come and talk about those jobs. One of our teachers took the teaching job. He said it clear: teaching is a labor of love. With only some exceptions in the poorest regions, you’ll likely make far less than most of the kids’ parents who you are teaching. That’s hardly the case today, where the average income of a public school teacher is easily above the average income, and in some cases much better. We won’t even discuss college professors (also scientists it’s worth noting – I worked in investments at a bank for some years, seeing people’s incomes, and those scientists almost to a person were doing quite well today by anyone’s standards).
1. Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women account for all of 3.6% of those employed in construction and extraction occupations. A sociology professor who studies division of labor should at least know where to find this datum.
2. The mean annual salaries for sociologists employed outside the academy is $90,000 per year. That for sociology teachers is about $83,000 per year. The median is not quite 10% off the mean.
3. Again, per the BLS, the most ill-paid occupations in construction are those under the heading “Helpers, Construction Trades, All Other” who are paid an average of $32,000 a year. Construction laborers, NOS are paid $40,000 a year. The mean across the whole set of ‘construction and extraction occupations’ is $51,220 a year. The cash compensation for that generic employee puts them at the 64th percentile of the working population.
4. The foregoing does not include fringes, which average $13,000 per worker per year in this economy. These are dominated by company medical insurance, so vary less from worker to worker than do wages and salaries. Assessing these two according to their total compensation rather than wages and salaries would place them more proximate to each other in the compensation strata.
I don’t have historical data on hand concerning the compensations of teachers at any level. I do recall reading a biographical piece on the biologist Barbara McClintock which retailed a bit of her correspondence, in which she indicated she was frustrated with her salary, which in 1940 stood at $3,000 a year. (Her rank was ‘assistant professor; she was a spinster, then 38 years old). The Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that nominal wages and salaries paid to employees in 1940 amounted to just shy of $50 bn. The Census Bureau’s data from 1940 reports that there were 45.5 million employed people in March of that year. So, Dr. McClintock’s salary was 2.73x that of the average employee. (Fringes accounted for 5.5% of total compensation in 1940 v. 20% today). If your cash compensation today were 2.73x that of the average employee, you’d be paid $157,000 a year, which is considerably more than is typical for a sociology professor. Of course, professors accounted for a much smaller share of the working population at that time, Dr. McClintock was in the hard sciences, and she was working at a public research university; an impecunious private college I suspect paid it’s entry level biology teachers less. Still. tend to take with a hunk of rock salt the notion that faculty were comparatively ill-paid back in the day.
Addendum. The mean annual salary for sociology professors places their cash compensation at the 87th percentile of the working population.
Caitlin Collins tweet reminded me that intellectual deviants are flourishing in the Midwest. How “nice.”
So she interrogated a random man who was out in the snow doing an honest, tough days work to prove nothing. Well if they closed the sociology department at her college I’m sure the world wouldn’t notice so I’m not how she came to believe in her own importance. We need our roads to be maintained who cares about the signs, we don’t need useless sociologist professors talking rubbish.
Feminist have blurred the line between the sexes. It’s a shame because women have talents that men don’t and vise versa
“It’s a shame because women have talents that men don’t and vise versa”
Precisely. I see that daily in the law mines.
Feminist have blurred the line between the sexes.
They’ve done no such thing, and you can examine data on the working population, time studies of household division of labor, and data on higher education if you want to see the actual choices the broad mass of men and women have been making.
What they have done is import into public discussion a sort of gamesmanship you ordinarily see in unproductive domestic arguments and to have influenced public policy in unsalutary ways (by trading in half-assed renderings of half-assed social research). Both of these do their part to promote dissatisfaction and dysfunction in human relations (though there was of course plenty of that around before anyone had ever heard of Carl Friedan’s horrid wife).
Not defending this woman’s attitude in any way, she was certainly a jerk, but a sign that says “Road Work Ahead” or “Work Crew” would communicate the same message as “Men Working” without even a smidgen of sexism…on the other hand, why should a city street department or state DOT throw away perfectly usable signs just so twits like her aren’t offended?
She looks like a scold.
(That’s right, I said it. Who are YOU to judge my lookism?)
I remember a feminist rejoicing because the manholes in San Francisco would be renamed Person holes. I thought that was the stupidest thing I had ever heard of. Everything has to be politically correct now.
“Road Work Ahead” or “Work Crew” would communicate the same message as “Men Working” without even a smidgen of sexism”
I will guarantee you that there wasn’t even a smidgen of a thought of sexism when those signs were printed or put up. She’s just ticked because she can’t stand up to pee.
“without even a smidgen of sexism”
By now we should realize that the minute we go down that path, we’ve lost the battle. One of the reason we’re where we are is because each time the ball got moved a yard, at least some would say ‘that seems reasonable.’ Until we’re here.
Let her do the road work instead of whining on Twitter.
Social media has dumbed down the world.
“without even a smidgen of sexism”
There is no such thing as ‘sexism’. The use of the term is rhetorical gamesmanship.
She’s Just ticked because she can’t stand up to pee.
Also because not one man on that road crew thinks enough of her to whistle.
Sign should be corrected:
“Men working; ignoramus talking.”
I don’t understand what the fuss is about. Our dear Dr. Catlyn Collins was merely doing field research. Someone should inquire when she plans to publish a paper on ‘The Intolerable ‘Micro Aggression of MEN WORKING’ Signs’.
Gender neutrality.
Obumsteer wanted Federal restrooms to be gender neutral so our “little girl living in a mans body,” could sit down and pee next to your daughter in the stall. How forward thinking. (burp )
As if the push to feminize men isn’t bad enough then comes along this baloney.
Caitlyn is offended. Mean sign has her Depends in a bunch. Oh no.
It doesn’t matter how much money you earn nor the number of degrees attained. The sin of pride devalues both.
She’s just another twit with a bad case of broken filter syndrome. Every thought seeping out of her becomes valid and publishable. AOC has it as well.
( Two types of people exist. Those with humility. And those who will soon have humility. )
“I remember a feminist rejoicing because the manholes in San Francisco would be renamed Person holes.”
That’s so funny. Because women too should be afforded equal rights and opportunities when it comes to going down the “person hole” to enter the sewerage system.
Catlyn has sigend her own academic death warrant. Universities are businesses. STudents are customers. Any employee of the business who does anything-esp like Catlyn has done-to hurt the bottom line gross revenue – has made themselves unemployable. She will never get tenure at a top tier university. Hard enough to do this in a non-income producing artificial major like bullstudies anyway. Science is science and women’s studies is not. Imagine if her and her ilk take iver-then the next revolution, fomented by “men’s studies” profs? or the subset, normal white men men studies prof? Guy McClung, Texas
PLEASE! don’t tell me that because 0.08 % of a population of humans choose to wear one sock every day but saturday that that is ‘normal’
File under “Notes From The [So-Called ] Higher Education Apocalypse.”
She’s another liberal lunatic we [for mental health purposes] should ignore. Or, if you’re like me. I quietly stand up, go out, and buy another box of bullets. It just feels right.
Catlyn has sigend her own academic death warrant. Universities are businesses. STudents are customers. Any employee of the business who does anything-esp like Catlyn has done-to hurt the bottom line gross revenue – has made themselves unemployable. She will never get tenure at a top tier university.
The woman is clueless, but in manner and degree perfectly normal-range for an academic and perfectly normal for a soi-disant feminist. It’s doubtful she has much interest in getting tenure at a ‘top-tier’ university. The private research university which employs her would likely satisfy the overwhelming majority of academics. She’s got a book out and she’s published a half-dozen peer-reviewed in the last several years. If she loses her job, the smart money says it will be due to institutional politics or the granular features of what she’s published.
She’s a sociologist who doesn’t do quantitative work and whose research programme is devoted to studying what women do with their time. El snoozo.
I would wager @caitymcollins is a member of @birthstrike on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/BirthStrike
Two things about these androgynous feminists: (1) no real man would want them and (2) since they don’t reproduce, they’ll eventually die out.
These fools inhabit such cesspools as Twitter because they love echo chambers.
There is no such thing as ‘sexism’. The use of the term is rhetorical gamesmanship.
Sure there’s sexism. People are people, there’s any kind of stupidity you can come up with; American culture just doesn’t have a lot of anti-women sexism. (It has a lot of political discrimination, and the progressives try to enforce their sexism, such as this moron thinking she has some right to speak “for” me or the guys who agree with her who would insist they are better able to speak for me than I am. There’s also overt, objective promotion of sexism against males, although it’s waived if they are useful for the political cause, so I’d say it’s more political discrimination.)
I’d love to drop her into El Paso without any of those nasty males to help her live a normal life, on a low-to-median income, and see how she copes with folks who really do things like cheat you because you’re female.
(They’ll also cheat you because you’re not the right class, thus the income limit.)
Philip-
while not as dramatic as what he did for gun sales, Obama probably made for the biggest jump in home schooling of anybody I ever saw with that stupid rule. Our homeschool group in Seattle went from a half-dozen moms to literal dozens asking about the weekly PE class; the retired gym teacher who did it (it was like three hours a week where someone else was in charge of the bigger kids, gets them use to listening to a coach type) started up multiple extra classes (she had equipment, you provide the location, then five bucks a family) and still had more work than she could handle.
“People are people, there’s any kind of stupidity you can come up with”
Comment of the week Foxfier! Take ‘er away Sam!
Sure there’s sexism.
Nope. It cannot be defined. It is a rhetorical thrust meant to put you on the defensive.
I would wager @caitymcollins is a member of @birthstrike on Twitter:
See her page at Washington University in St. Louis. She’s not androgynous. In fact, she’s too dolled up. (Dyed hair).
https://sociology.wustl.edu/people/caitlyn-collins
Her book has a long list of gushing acknowledgements, among them one to her husband. Evidently recently married. Reference in the penultimate sentence indicates children are expected.
This woman isn’t a bad-attitude dyke. She’s just something of a dingbat.
I would wager @caitymcollins is a member of @birthstrike on Twitter:
See her page at Washington University in St. Louis. She’s not androgynous. In fact, she’s too dolled up. (Dyed hair).
https://sociology.wustl.edu/people/caitlyn-collins
Her book has a long list of gushing acknowledgements, among them one to her husband. Evidently recently married. Reference in the penultimate sentence indicates children are expected.
This woman isn’t a bad-attitude dyke. She’s just something of a dingbat.
Foxfier.
Great point. Homeschooling is a natural antidote to fend off asinine pagan propaganda which intends to make Christ a myth, eradicate moral truth and implement deviant behavior as normal lifestyle choices. I love our homeschooling community in Wisconsin. I miss them.
Pitching in $ and sharing in tasks that benefit the teachers and their livelihood is community. Christian as well. God sees to it’s survival and it thrives because it rooted in Him.
*grins at Donald*
Glad you like it. Sometimes that rueful knowledge is all that prevents a temptation to hatred; after all, I’m a people, too. 😉
*******
Art:
abusus non tollit usum.
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Philip-
indeed; a living example of the natural value of subsidiarity.