Sociologists Circle Jerk

If there is a profession that offers less utility to society than sociologist, I don't know what it is. Case in point is an article in The Atlantic criticizing our gendered expectations of those in service industries.

Titled How ‘Service With a Smile’ Takes a Toll on Women, the essay is by sociologist Adia Harvey Wingfield. Service workers are expected to be pleasant to their customers. This, according to Wingfield, "reinforces workplace gender inequality."

To solidify her argument, Wingfield provides testimony from three other sociologists. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild wonders "who 'owns' emotions when organizations can require workers to feel happy."

Thus professions like flight attendant are seen as a natural job for women, "given the expectations of nurturing attached." Yes, for women, or homosexual men.

I thought the whole argument for bringing women into the workplace is to take advantage of women's particular gifts, talents and capacities. Tomorrow the citizens of Iowa will caucus for the most important workplace in the world. One candidate for the job, Hillary Clinton, has based her entire campaign on the fact that as a woman, she will bring a unique skill set. Whatever unique aptitudes she may possess, the last thing I think of when I hear her name is "nurturing."

Sociologists like Wingfield and Hochschile and Louwanda Evans are constantly bitching about men being held to different standards in the workplace than women. Perhaps this is due to the Feminist Prime Directive: all of society's resources must be managed by women.

Yet another sociologist cited in the article, Jennifer Pierce, contends that there are gendered expectations for women in the legal field. "Male attorneys— generally speaking— are allowed and even expected to be aggressive and domineering, [but] that does not extend to female attorneys." We don't want assertive female attorneys, really?

Since sociology is the study of society, I would recommend otherwise useless practitioners start planning for the inevitable disruptions in the workplace.

Waitresses are by and large going to be replaced by apps. What restaurant is going to bother with women agitating for paid time off for PMS and their menstrual cycles, when they can just replace them with an iPad? The only interaction with a human being will be the hostess who seats them and runs their food.

It will happen, just as it happened to bank tellers. Disruption will happen to lawyers, too. And the sooner it happens to sociologists, the sooner these women can drop the agitation and busy themselves with babies.