It's well known that men generally are stagnating economically, while women are catching up. In many metro areas, single women out earn single men.
And so I came across this paper[0], which had some interesting research about that. And what struck me was this: there's an explicit assumption that men have worse socio-emotional skills than women, and that can be used to explain the gap.
By itself, I don't take any issue with it. It's true. But if you turned it around and explained the CS gap starting from the assumption that men are disproportionately represented among the upper levels of spatial and mathematical abstraction skills, there'd be an uproar. Petitions would be signed, scalps would be taken. I say that as someone who thinks much of those differences can be explained by childhood socialization.
And you're not even allowed to talk about it. I'm hesitant to post this comment, for fear someone might hunt me down and dox me to my employer. (Even now, I ponder if I should be making a throwaway account.)
In real life, I had been willing to have conversations about this because I find it an interesting and nuanced topic. But now both sides have taken to treating anyone who doesn't take a stance of complete agreement with their respective ideologies as the Enemy.
It's creating a class of people who know just to shut up and withdraw from any discussion about the topic, because there's clearly no good that can come from it, either socially or professionally. Even academics. And I genuinely don't get why anyone would want that.
This account began as a throwaway. I used to comment with my real name, in the days before the war broke out. In the days when pg used to comment here regularly. The days when, if someone disagreed with you, they'd tell you so, or why you're wrong, or maybe that you're a dumb-dumb. Now, if you don't follow approved talking points in your social media communiqués, you're in real danger of being pilloried, and - as these things go - you're more likely to be attacked by fellow members of the party. I've identified as left-leaning my entire life, but I've never for a moment feared this sort of personal sabotage from a right-leaning person. This is a pursuit of ideological purity at any cost.
As a leftist, yes. I understand to be on the left means to strive for equality of power among people, economic and social. To be on the right means, at best, not to care about power inequalities between people.
I cringe every time when other people think that feminists and SJWs (I would prefer to call them by different terms but I don't know any) are leftist. They are only in a certain very narrow sense, which makes them often to be on the right, paradoxically. They often do not care about oppressed white males. But if you do not care about some oppressed group, then you don't stand for equality.
Feminism became to be included in the left, because in the past, all women were oppressed. It's no longer the case, and some feminists do not actually care about equality of other groups.
Some biologist put it nicely in a discussion: The left (as a broad political movement) might suffer from a predatory problem - being joined by someone who is oppressed, but doesn't actually want equality, only power. But that's the nature of the game.
And this conflict is nothing new, either. Noam Chomsky, a giant of the left, has been affected by it in the 70s, when he defended free speech of a Holocaust denier.