"Whats the deal with gender issues anyway in North America? I've immigrated from an Eastern-Block country as a teenager to NA and I've never seen these problems because communism required that all members of the society do essentially the same jobs"
The problem in this country is that we have identity politics, which helped to address real discrimination, but all too often is misused as a tool to obtain power and support from vocal special interest groups.
Perhaps most disturbingly is the rise of the professional identity politician/professor/activist complex, where students are brought in to universities majoring in "Women's Studies", with zero job prospects when they graduate except for teaching more classes or becoming an activist. Suddenly, you have entire groups of people who, although they won't admit it, NEED the problem they are claiming to fight to exist forever if they want an income.
The end result is a constant search for new manifestations of oppression of their chosen group, real or perceived. All too often, its perceived, and even when it's real, these folks have solutions which do nothing more than create new inequalities.
I feel like the dynamics are way too fuzzy to point at one group of people an say "this is the cause of outrage culture, and that is the dominate driver of unexpected inequality flux". The US has a host of initial conditions (heterogeneous population, very young age, combination of high overall wealth as well as extreme wealth inequality) that makes it very difficult to compare apples to apples with much of the world.
It appears that there are only ~2.5k genders studies majors matriculating at any given year [1]. I doubt that's pushing the needle appreciably in terms identity politics. IMO I'd look more too the cognitive dissonance between the gap in achievement of the wealthy vs poor and the taboo in talking about any sort of income inequality in this country as a more potent driver to the under-directed efforts to impose a slanted "equality" in the name of social good.
I had similar suspicions about women's studies. But I didn't really believe it.
Then I read Judith Butlers Gender Trouble to about halfway. It's a book that's canonical in womens studies these days. Holy shit it reads like political manifesto, with sciency stuff only to mask it little bit.
The problem in this country is that we have identity politics, which helped to address real discrimination, but all too often is misused as a tool to obtain power and support from vocal special interest groups.
Perhaps most disturbingly is the rise of the professional identity politician/professor/activist complex, where students are brought in to universities majoring in "Women's Studies", with zero job prospects when they graduate except for teaching more classes or becoming an activist. Suddenly, you have entire groups of people who, although they won't admit it, NEED the problem they are claiming to fight to exist forever if they want an income.
The end result is a constant search for new manifestations of oppression of their chosen group, real or perceived. All too often, its perceived, and even when it's real, these folks have solutions which do nothing more than create new inequalities.