Saturday, August 28, 2010

Sex

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." – George Orwell

Please think back to my "There are no Coincidences in the Media" post. Please keep in mind that I am somewhat of a chess enthusiast (fanatic), and that chess is likely the most well known example of Combinational Game Theory. In any event, the Media manipulation of the population continues unabated... (During my years working in the financial markets I had the unfortunate task of trying to parse the truth from pages and pages of mindless bull sh*t, mistruths, fabrications, and out right, bold faced lies from corporate reports to the public, shareholders, and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. After a while, you get to the point where you ignore what they are trying to tell you and instead seek out from the text that which they were trying to hide or disguise.)

Please read this article(it was on the cover of Bloomberg.com for over a week). Done? Sound correct? Really? Let us take it apart, and game it a little bit.

Let us start with the title: "How Sex Hurts the Workplace, Especially Women"

Fairly broad assumption, and I am sure that in some or even many cases it is true. I think it is also fair to say that "Sex in the workplace" ("SIW") harms men as much - or more; SIW is of no help to men's careers, and in fact has become an incredible liability, and; SIW is highly useful to women. For you radical feminists or liberals, I am merely using a bastardized version of the "Prisoner's Dilemma", a common case study for introductory game theory for undergrads. Feel free to challenge my Gaming... I love to play combinational game theory and would be only too happy to engage an intelligent proponent of this propaganda! BTW, this is not an in depth analysis nor my finest work, just me rambling on a saturday morning. That could change...

The first paragraph states:

Sex in the workplace doesn't just hurt those parties involved. Sure, Mark Hurd's recent scandal produced three obvious casualties: Mark Hurd, Hewlett Packard and its shareholders, and even, to an extent, Jodie Fisher. But in the barrage of press attention since the news broke, little mention has been made of a large group of other casualties: high-achieving female executives.
Under no circumstance was Jodie Fisher harmed by anyone other than Jodie Fisher. I am curious as to what Ms. Fisher's net worth was prior to the settlement and after. If it was significantly enhanced, she must be classified as a beneficiary. Mark Hurd and Hewlett Packard were unquestionably harmed.

Paragraph 2:

Women's careers tend to stall out in upper-middle management and female executives need the support and sponsorship of C-suite men if they are to stand a chance of climbing the highest rungs of the corporate ladder. Sad to say, in the wake of the Hurd ouster, sponsorship is going to be in even shorter supply. However tangled the Hurd/Fisher narrative becomes, a large proportion of male leaders who read the story will have one and only one takeaway: "Poor guy was fired for dining alone with a junior woman. No one is even alleging a sexual relationship. How crazy is that! It makes me want to avoid ever being alone with a younger female colleague." So said one C-suite male I talked to.
Women's careers tend to stall out in upper-middle management? So what? So do those of their male counterparts. This is the way it is for 99.9% of workers. Making the final cut to the top 5 or 10 executives of a 10,000 to 100,000 employees, in technically driven companies such as Intel, GE, or Exxon usually requires significant technical training - given that less than 15% of engineers are women, and that roughly 15% of senior executive are women would seem to suggest that the representations of a "glass ceiling" are somewhat disingenuous. In the case of Physicians, women represented nearly 28% in 2006, over 30% today, and will absolutely, positively outnumber men by 2020. Is there no sex occurring between physicians, nurses, their patients, hospital administrators, etc...? Why no mention of it? Because sex between this industry's participants has no political value to the author's position. I mean come on... was it not a given in times past that a not insignificant number of the women who became nurses did so to meet a doctor? No? Take a gander through the wedding announcements of newspapers up until the mid to late 1970's. Not a few of the women's family's announced it as "Jane Doe marries a Doctor". Of course this was before the explosion in compensation in the finance industry... if it weren't so politically incorrect, such announcements would likely read: "Jane Doe marries a hedge fund manager". These marriages are a POSITIVE for society, no matter how you try to slant it.

I will not quote paragraph 3. I will comment what many feel confident about claiming is the case at the CEO level: CEO's do NOT run the company; rather the company runs the CEO. It is accurate to say that CEO's are INSTRUCTED what to do and what course to take by consultants, lawyers, accountants, and their board. They need to be able to understand the nature of their products and their markets, but in the end they are hanging on for the ride. Given that, it might not matter who runs the place... might as well be the cleaning lady. Except that the CEO is usually the company's public face and leader and number on salesperson... cosmetics (looks) matters here, too.

Paragraph 4 (here it gets good):

Research out this fall from the Center for Work-Life Policy shows sponsorship to be the critical promotional lever for women in the marzipan layer, the layer just below the top layer of management. No matter how high achieving, an upper middle-level female executive will fail to find career traction unless she is sponsored by a powerful senior executive — who, more often than not, is male and married.
Anybody know who the Center for Work-Life Policy is? What their political leanings, if any, are? I'll give you 2 1/2 guesses... Please notice the name of the Author of the article: Sylvia Ann Hewlett. Please note the name of the individual speaking for, and running, the Center of Work-Life Policy: Sylvia Ann Hewlett.

I am going to go out on a limb here... my bet is these folks are one and the same. Self-referencing to support a position completely unsupported by "Jeffers' game theory"... This is almost hysterical! You just can't make this stuff up! SHAME ON BLOOMBERG FOR publishing this Drek.

Paragraph 5:
Which is where sex enters the picture. Consider some data from the CWLP study: Thirty-four percent of executive women who participated in the survey that underlies the new study claim that they know a female colleague who has had an affair with the boss. (Indeed 15% of women at the director level or above admitted to having had such an affair themselves!) They also perceive that these liaisons sometimes yield a payoff: of those who know of an illicit affair, 37% claim that the woman involved received a career boost as a consequence.
According to the AUTHOR'S study (lololol!!) 34% (not 34.2635% ?) of executive women claim THEY KNOW that the boss was sleeping with her/their competition. Really? Exactly, how DO they know? Were they dumpster diving for used condoms? Staking out no-tell motel's? Hiring PI's to get the goods? And this stuff passes for news?? Worse, for a "study"?? WTF!!??

Here's the ONLY reason the 34% MIGHT be accurate. Note that 15% of women admitted to having "such affairs themselves". Well, it is reasonable to hypothesize that some women had engaged in such "affairs" without admitting it. Perhaps 19%? 15 + 19 gives us the 34%... I would be willing to suggest that only half of those that had such affairs were willing to admit them... Hmmm.... 37% claim the competition received a promotion as a consequence? Given the percentage of alleged affairs, the ability to blackmail men, the career boost for the 34% that HAD the affairs, and the not insignificant number men's careers destroyed by their lover's betrayals... at least not those hidden by succumbing to blackmail... it is somewhat of a mathematical miracle that only 15% of upper management offices are staffed with women... more on that later...

Paragraph 6:

Despite this apparent upside for individual women, illicit sexual liaisons often backfire and wreak serious damage in the workplace. For example, they are hugely demoralizing for teams. The CWLP data show that 61% of men and 70% of women lose respect for a leader involved in an affair. Most poisonous of all, when a junior woman is having a sexual dalliance with the boss, 60% of male executives and 65% of female executives suspect that salary hikes and plum assignments are being traded for sexual favors. This can have a disastrous effect on morale and productivity. Forty-eight percent of men and 56% of women feel animosity towards the involved couple, and 39% of men and 37% of women see a fall off in productivity as the team splinters. Talk about collateral damage!

"Despite this apparent upside for women"? LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLO!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! Clearly, the author is gifted in the use of understatement. Yes, Ms. Hewlett it IS apparent, isn't it? Even more so when one really thinks about it and reduces it to its possible outcomes, which, being quite limited, is really quite easy to do.... "illicit sexual liaisons often backfire and wreak serious damage in the workplace" - why does the author define them as illicit? Were these, in fact, quid pro quo circumstances of prostitution? Really??!! 15% of the corporate women in this "study" were selling sex for corporate advancement??!! Oh, my word! What about relationships that resulted in marriage, family, and children? Were there NO POSITIVE OUTCOMES for the community? Never? Has the author ever worked in a Corporate environment? For those who have not, there is a great deal of hanky-panky going on. Is it always "illicit"? Always "wrong"? If so, are only men to be held accountable? Why no mention of the countless Lawyer's that married their secretary, and the Doctors that married the nurse they worked with... Get a grip, Sylvia. People, that is men and women, have sex with the people they spend time with. Frequently, the only people corporate employees meet are their co-workers, especially when these people have located from small towns or college to New York, Chicago, San Fran....

The claims of the author in this paragraph are not only unsupported by common sense AND the scientific method.... they are indicative of the unhealthy mental state of the author and those engaging in the "study" (at least in my view, which is admittedly unsupported by the scientific method, too). What were the questions that were posed in this "study"? You don't think this author would lead her subjects, now... do you?

"This can have a disastrous effect on morale and productivity..." the author does not back up her assertions nor question how the 60% of men and 65% of women arrived at the conclusions that, in all likelihood, the author led them to in the first place. Nothing like having an agenda and then seeking data to support it...

Using the author's own dividing lines, we have 4 distinct groups...

1. Women who engage in "illicit" affairs;
2. Men who engage in "illicit" affairs;
3. Men who eschew "illicit" affairs, and;
4. Women who eschew illicit affairs.

Now, let us compare outcomes, or "game" this:

1. Women who engage in "illicit" affairs can gain promotions AS WELL AS legal settlements from these affairs, irrespective of WHO initiated the affair (please don't tell me that all of the affairs are initiated by men, women engage in seduction as well as men)... ergo, females have ZERO accountability, i.e. nothing to lose, and much to gain;

2. Men who engage in "illicit" affairs DO NOT receive promotions as a result, nor cash, nor make other gains, and have the added liability of legal and career consequences.

3. While both groups eschewing this behavior make no gains, and could be harmed by it (though I sincerely doubt to the extent claimed by the author).

Given male propensities and the rewarding outcomes to females... does any rational examination of the facts lead one to believe that SIW would ever cease as a result of punitive outcomes for men only? And is stopping sex in the work place even a desirable outcome for society? Really? Good grief, from what I read, Americans have so little sex in the first place... now Ms. Hewlett is agitating for even less? No wonder we are in such a collective foul mood...

What is Ms. Sylvia Hewlett's agenda? What motivates her to produce this nonsense? Why is Bloomberg publishing this DREK? Why isn't there more outrage at this shameless attempt to manipulate the masses?

Lastly, this is not an attack on any group or any individual other than Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Bloomberg. I can do this trick with each and every article from ALL of the major news aggregators. Each and every one of us is under attack at ALL TIMES by the agenda's of the various special interest groups and their laky's in the media. Unfortunately, these kinds of lies sway courts, other special interest groups, corporations, universities, etc... and that is exactly what they were intended to do.




25 comments:

PioneerPreppy said...

Its a mirror of feminism as a whole Greg.

Just as you pointed out in the last comment on your last post with men being replaced by the government it works the same with jobs and the private sector. IE women have all the choices and options with none of the responsibilities.

I have seen it over and over at my very blue collar warehouse job. In the last 5 years they have managed to fire all of the male supervisors for everything from sexual harassment to pop inspections. In more than a few cases the men have been involved with female supervisors who retained their positions while the men were fired.

In fact up until last year they had gotten rid of every white male and then believe it or not they started in on the black males. I honestly did not think they would but they did manage to get rid of three in short order. All replaced by women of course.

Eyes are opening I think.

And before Bur can say it has nothing to do with energy I will again point out that all this is possible only because of cheap energy. Cases of female empowerment are not new but in the past it only came about due to a large slave or underclass. Oil serves that purpose this time around.

A Quaker in a Strange Land said...

There are quite a few other special interest groups other than the feminists that are running the exact same media-propaganda playbook.

I don't know which group started it, but none of them would do it if it didn't work.

I will point these out as I see them.

A Quaker in a Strange Land said...

I would very much like to hear a critique of my analysis, even though this was "short and dirty", from someone that disagrees with me, and not for the purpose of argument.

I would be sincerely interested in their point of view and how they might support it.

CindyGimmesum said...

Being a woman that slept my way to the Sr. VP level in the financial sector I will say your post offends me. Although anecdotal evidence can be flawed it does appear that there are some studies, see the CWLF for further research, that support my position. The most troubling aspect of my career progression is being so close to the pinnacle of success in the finance sector with sagging looks and body parts to match and now being in a position (excuse the pun) where no one wants to marry me except for money.

Where is my recourse, where do I go from here. No CxO will have me now? Oh well, it looks like hot, young interns are the only thing left for this old bag.

Cindy (a.k.a. a regular poster by another name)

bureaucrat said...

(Hmm, only 5 comments -- mine being irrelevant -- and 2 of them were Jeffers's. Can we go back to energy now? :))

bureaucrat said...

From Tom Whipple today ...

"Despite the knee-jerk reaction to the Chairman‟s (Bernanke)remarks, many analysts remain skeptical, pointing to falling manufacturing, plummeting home sales, increasing unemployment and high petroleum inventories. Some are talking of a rapid price decline to below $70 a barrel while others are saying that $60 or even $50 oil is in the offing. Last week US stockpiles grew by nearly 9 million barrels to 1.1 billion, the highest level in 27 years. Many are saying that there is little the Central Bank can do to stem the deteriorating economic situation."

Anonymous said...

So much for free love. The bra burners of the 60s have become the prudish, repressive sex police of the 00s. All that sex between men and women needs to be controlled and regulated.

Just look around next time you are at the beach. People haven't worn so much clothing since the 1930s. Men wear trunks to their ankles to prove they aren't gay. Many women are just plain ashamed to be women. What a sad, unhealthy mess.

So much of feminism seems to be re-directed self hatred and anger.

Regards,

Coal Guy

A Quaker in a Strange Land said...

Bur:

If you will be so kind as to read the mission statement for this blog... perhaps you didn't notice... this blog leans toward libertarian political commentary AND energy.

A Quaker in a Strange Land said...

Bur:

Stick around. I am sure to find major B.S. coming from the Right, Left, NAACP, Feminists, Gays, the Military, Congress, the Administration, educators, religious leaders... and, for my OWN ENTERTAINMENT and cerebral exercise I will continue to blog about them.

PioneerPreppy said...

Stick around. I am sure to find major B.S. coming from the Right, Left, NAACP, Feminists, Gays, the Military, Congress, the Administration, educators, religious leaders... and, for my OWN ENTERTAINMENT and cerebral exercise I will continue to blog about them.

Impossible:

Every problem in the world today stems from either (ranked most to least) Feminism, Islam or oil. :)

I am only half way kidding.

confederate miner said...

Does cnbc have any way for viewer to provide feedback. They just had a guest Paul Krugman on there. What an idiot. People don't even have common sense anymore much less the capacity for critical thinking! If it weren't for blogs like this one i think iI would go insane. the level of ignorance in country is almost becoming intolerable. Sorry had to get that out of my system.

PioneerPreppy said...

LOL Krugman

The biggest mangina, liberal, Christian hating, white guilt having, Nobel prize winner ever.

Even Obama isn't as bad as Krugman.

Anonymous said...

Coal guy,

You haven't been to the beaches in California... there's plenty of skin to look at :)

tweell said...

Alas, I cannot play devil's advocate here, the logic is similar (but much better stated) to my line of thinking.
John W. Campbell asserted that power doesn't corrupt, immunity corrupts. Power usually provides protection from one's actions, thus the confusion, but immunity from consequences is the key. If there are no negative consequences for women, why not play the sex game in the corporate/government world?

A Quaker in a Strange Land said...

I am not after "women". I am after the disinformation campaign coming out of the media - a media intent on pitting the sexes against each other by manipulation... clearly, there is more than one agenda or client interest in the minageri... This article, like many, many others, is simply a disgrace. An outrageous. I wrote to Bloomberg and provided them my response as well as a request as to how they came to publish this embarrassment.

Let us see what they have to say.

Lavaruna said...

"I can do this trick with each and every article from ALL of the major news aggregators."

-Please do!

Dextred1 said...

I think the interesting thing about feminism is that it obviously goes back to progressive social gospel roots. I say this because most of the founders of the progressive movement had grown up in families with no fathers because of the civil war. These young men raised in an overly caring and nurturing. No masculine ways for them. They took this new softer gently social gospel Christianity out the doors of their homes to save the world. No longer did they need to save men, but just change them into happier people. This loss of the male influence from the casualty list of the civil war is in no small part the main reason for the rise of the progressive in the early 1900's. This new gospel was in direct contradiction to the traditional Christian view that man was sinful and needed a savior. This new gospel emphasized that humans were perfectible and as such could be shaped and molded into what the progressives wanted (liberation theology seems close with it’s emphasis on the powers of the state to correct wrongs).

If you look at these two groups then you will see the current divisions over the constitution. The constitution was written to check the corruption that is prevalent in men's hearts. But the new gospel looked at man as perfectible and as such the constitution only held them back from using the state to "save" them. Obama talked about this last yr saying that the constitution is just a list of negative liberties and he was looking for a more positive list of liberties. I am assuming he is talking about something like FDR’s new amendments proposal (right to work, to health care, etc)

Dan said...

A drunk will drink to anything. If he wins the lottery he will drink to that, if his car breaks down he’ll need a need a drink for that too. The key feature is he needs a drink. A feminist sees the world thru the lens of oppression, if she sees…

Some of these clowns, like Ms. Hewlett, are going to see oppression against their interest group no matter what. The real question is why anyone else pays attention.

Donal Lang said...

It is quite amusing to see how far down the feminist road the US has gone, emasculating many men and any signs of 'maleness' along the way. It is sad to see young men trying to be the so-called 'new man'; metro-male, acting like his girlfriend's sister or best friend, being caring and helpful.
Yet then you find women bemoaning that 'all the men are gay' and 'there's no real men left' etc!

Some years ago my Icelandic girlfirend said she didn't want her 'viking' teenage sons coming to France for the summer because she was scared of how they'd react to 'effeminate' french men (Iceland is very strongly male dominant). They did go, and it was interesting to see that, after initial confusion, their reaction was one of relief that they could stop being so macho all the time.

Perhaps now the reverse is true in America - it's time men were given permission to be male again.

P.S. Guys; its OK, you don't need your wife's permission! ;-)

A Quaker in a Strange Land said...

Dex:

I can't say if you are correct or not... I will say that the unintended consequences theory would say that your claim merits further examination.

When Pioneer first started commenting here, I thought he was a bit too far afield. But since reading his commentary, I began to open links on the web that I normally would have skipped... now it is my opinion that Pioneer is not out of bounds at all. Politically Incorrect... but not inaccurate.

Dex, I need to give your idea some time to percolate in the background...

PioneerPreppy said...

My Job is complete!!! Thanks Greg!!

Really though I maybe politically incorrect by the revisionists of today, but I try to be fair. My core beliefs actually come from diverse sources.

It was an older Polish immigrant lady who really opened my eyes to feminism. She survived WWII immigrated to the US and lived through the rise of feminism and understood it better than anyone I have ever met. I worked with her for a few years and she could point out any move a woman made or any "rule" of feminism and then tell me the real reasons for it.

After that a person only has to go up and look at the NOW website and view all the legislation they have backed and then ask yourself why?

Before that I TA'd for a black History professor who constantly belittled the female take over of the civil rights movement. He used to point out to me who the real beneficiaries were from the various "laws" and how everything was turned on the white man, when in some cases the women were more to blame. He told me what was coming and he was right.

Kinda ironic actually.

Anonymous said...

Donal,

There is certainly a dichotomy in what women expect from men. The whole sensitive, caring caveman thing is not hard to understand, given the current political climate. Women want strong men, but are taught to hate them. On the other hand, everything that women are supposed to hate in men is desirable in the feminist woman. Is there a problem in that? Could there be a source of confusion in there? Have you EVER met a happy feminist?

And yes, we are fed a diet of this feminist drek 24-7.

Regards,

Coal Guy

A Quaker in a Strange Land said...

No Coal Guy... I have NEVER met a happy feminist, nor a happy hyper-special-interest-group-supporter of ANY stripe.

A point well made...

Now, the question is "WHY?" WHy are we being fed this drek 24/7? cui bono? And who is cooperating and what is that they hope to achieve?

Anonymous said...

Divide and conquer plus a heavy dose of distraction = compliant consumers. The few that are impassioned--spend the rest of the time fighting amongst themselves as the smarter wolves take what they want and rig the big monopoly game in their favor.

Limbic reactions continue to be the lever of power, PFC thinking requires more energy and doesn't have the emotional energy that simple symbols/disinformation have to manipulate.

I'm not too keen on arguing with people about mostly fictitious "parties" as they re-arrange the deck chairs and argue about who is going to be the next president of the U.S. Titanic--most of the iceburg remains unseen for now underwater. "isms" of all flavors just seem to be great distractions and a form of modern day tribalism--for those who don't wed their ego's to a sports team or city, there is always an "ism" out there to make one feel validated and righteous in their hateful indignation and attempts at tyranny over others.

-Meiyo

bureaucrat said...

Natural gas in huge abundance ...

"SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Natural-gas futures, wrapping up their worst month in more than two years, are entering the historically weak month of September dogged by confusion over production.

Prices for the most active contract have lost nearly 23% in August, as investors sold off the futures on estimates of abundant gas output."