[Glice]

I have to say, a large part of my problem with this topic is how easy it is to isolate a position and defend it, regardless of context. I think the fact that there's lots of people talking at cross-purposes (of which I'm one, and being one now) is a large part of the problem - the notion of gender is hard-coded to the idea of identity.

I entirely agree with Ms Fiend's point above about gender being heavily conditioned - this isn't the same as saying you can eschew biology, but performative gender roles are certainly something that can be resisted. I really loathe !£"$%'s point about genetics and biology - not that I consider this a criticism of him, I just think it's very dangerous to be so prescriptive. I don't think it's that far-fetched to say that you can just as easily say men act like weightlifters 'because of testosterone' as you can say that some men are rapists for the same reason. The point being not that biology isn't a part of identity, but I don't think it forms a rationale, or defining epistemic.

I think what I was getting at earlier, and what wellcharge has articulated is that the massive male-centric bias in the upper echelons of pay is bound to impute a massive male-centric skew on general talk of pay; I'm keen to dismiss using this information because we're talking about less than 1% of the population's problems, which run far deeper than 'misogyny' and into a criticism of vulgar capitalism (which I've no real interest in right now). This is an entirely different trajectory to what Ms's Knox and Fiend are getting at, which is more to do with a sense of 'what roles women play' in an international marketplace that stretches beyond the 'developed' world.

So, basically, I'm saying that it's much more complicated than isolating one point; I personally have a lot of sympathy with the problems of talking about this subject, and I don't think it gets solved by pointing to one small part of a very large and diffuse problem.

Which is sort of a non-point, but there you go.