PwnSauce3k

To anyone who's replied "But it's a FACT that men are worse drivers, blah blah blah..." That's the entire point of the rant in the first place. Before I get into that, though, let's get some other key factors out of the way: 1. You can set up a "study" to produce any kind of statistics you want, to "prove" whatever "facts" you want. 2. Studies designed to match one factor (gender) with another (car accidents) produce only correlations, and do not "prove" causation. As others have rhetorically questioned -- being divorced makes you a greater risk behind the wheel? Bull. Ok, so, for the sake of argument, let's just assume that it's possible to derive absolutely true factual conclusions about groups as large as an entire race, gender, or age bracket. It is a "FACT" according to all the accepted metrics, that certain ethnicities perform better academically than others. But private educational institutions cannot make admissions decisions based on these "FACTS." It's "racist." It is a FACT, and I won't use quotes here, that only women can get pregnant. Duh. The risk of a woman between, say 21-30, needing to take several months off of work is very real. What can a business do to hedge their bets against taking a loss in productivity? Almost nothing. It would be discrimination. And the idea expressed earlier that getting pregnant is a "necessity?" ... Ridiculous. It's a choice. The whole point is the hypocrisy. As soon as I finish this rant, I'm gonna go write a rant about how bad and biased statistics piss me off, but for now, if we're all going to trust that the Powers That Be use valid metrics to measure everything from intelligence-by-ethnicity to car-safety-by-gender, then it just exposes the negligence, spite, ignorance, however you want to explain it, of the fact that men pay more for insurance than women. I'm a male in my 20s and I'd take a driving test in a heartbeat to prove my individual risk level (or rather, lack thereof) on the road. I pay a pound of flesh to my car insurance company every month, and I'm getting dizzy from the blood loss. It's almost as much as my monthly car payment. And I've shopped around. If it is legal precedent that men should automatically pay more for insurance because according to a known positive correlation they tend to be more dangerous, then should it also be a legal precedent that a women should automatically be turned away from careers as police officers and firefighters, because, according to a known positive correlation they are too physically weak to carry an uncoscious human being out of a burning building, or be reliably counted on to subdue a criminal? Oh no, THAT would be sexist! When we're talking about "facts," remember we're talking about statistical correlation. A simpler word for this term is "generalization." and when you're making a generalization about gender or race, you're stereotyping. Which I'm not condemning. There's a reason they exist. But what pisses me off is the hypocrisy about how when there's a societal practice in place you don't like, you whine about unfair stereotypes. When the issue doesn't happen to press your particular buttons, it suddenly goes from being an unfair stereotype to a "statistically proven fact." Oh, and before anyone accuses me of being guilty of what I just accused others of, I don't know if the whole intelligence/ethnicity women/physical weakness thing holds up anymore than you really do. We've all seen news shows and read magazine articles that make us feel like we know, but come on, really, get off it. Seperate rant. Sorry. I only raised those examples because those are known to press people's buttons.