The Liberty-Hating Feminists & SJWs Are Confused About What 'Societal Norms' Actually Are!

As a result of feminist duress, first the Professional Darts Corporation and then Formula One announced that they will be forcing walk on girls and grid girls into unemployment under the pretext that the tradition is "at odds with modern day societal norms".

As usual, the feminists and social justice warriors driving this are confused about what 'societal norms' are. Societal norms - a term that is problematic at the best of times - are created, not by top down hegemony, but by bottom up local decisions that result in net utility for the decision-makers.

The societal norm that means most of us don't drop litter, spit at one another or play loud music late at night is based on society's aggregation of revealed preferences. In other words, most of us don't like those things so we don't do them. It is the individual search for utility and the collective aspiration for cooperation that decides societal norms - and the irony being missed by those opposed to grid girls is that individual search for utility is far and away the most widespread societal norm that exists.

When feminists and social justice warriors tell us society should be opposed to something freely chosen because it departs from the rubric of 'societal norms', like jobs for women in sport, all they are really doing is forcefully imposing their own beliefs and views on people that have different wants, needs and priorities. They are doing the opposite of what they claim: they purport to be standing up for women, but what they are actually doing is trying to rob a proportion of women of something they value.

Madeline Grant makes an excellent point along those lines in this article:

"One great irony of the ongoing debate is the fact that, while the BBC and other employers are enduring a forensic examination over gender pay, feminist campaigners are backing moves to upset one of the few areas of economic life in which women have a clear advantage – the ability to trade on good looks – or “erotic capital”, to borrow Catherine Hakim’s phrase.

Jobs in pole dancing, high fashion, hostessing and the promotional modelling work, performed by the Formula 1 grid girls, all enable women to trade on their beauty. Often, the opportunities for beautiful women far outstrip those granted men. Fashion modelling, for instance, carries a female premium of anywhere from 25% and 75%."

This kind of short-sightedness stretches far beyond cases like this - the whole business is riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies, and most of them are based on one of two things: they either a) misunderstand how equality of outcome and equality of opportunity have to be traded off against each other, or b) fail to account for the factors surrounding revealed preferences and the liberty and freedom to enjoy them.

For example, they just cannot seem to grasp the basic principle that in a society in which everyone is totally free (within reason) to act in accordance with their preferences and priorities, the result will be a diverse assortment of highly unequal outcomes. Different people will trade on looks, on talent, on education, on risk, on unsociable hours, on physical strength, on interpersonal skills, on entrepreneurialism, and a whole range of other things that are valued differently in the marketplace, and that generate varying salaries accordingly.

Of course, when people are being unfairly treated, there is a human need to leap to their defence. How ironic here that the people being unfairly treated are those women who want to trade on their marketable assets but are being robbed of their income because of feminists' confusion about how societal norms are constructed.

Because, you see, it's the revealed preferences of individuals that make the trading on looks, on talent, on education, on risk, on unsociable hours, on physical strength, on interpersonal skills, and on everything else valuable in the marketplace, possible.

Feminists and social justice warriors need to wake up to the fact that these are the societal norms - and they are based on the fact that society is a multifarious mix of different people who want different things, and not always the same things feminists want or should feel entitled to demand to further their own narrow ideology.