They are. Perhaps I wasn't making myself clear: they are not a social group in the sense studied by sociologists and historians who study power, racism etc..
> I would say it has a very direct and explicit power effect on them as a group.
It does not. Power is basically influence. Whether or not nudists are allowed to take their clothes off in public beaches bears zero impact on their influence in society (e.g. the money they can acquire, the high-position jobs they can get, the political office they can be elected to etc.)
> but so we could also say about burka wearers being denied access to beaches has no effect on the power of the Muslims in society.
No, because Muslims are discriminated against outside beaches because they're Muslim. Nudists are not. Therefore, like segregating buses, this sends a signal.
> Looking at nudists and transgenders, its questionable which group causes more reaction from people who defends their cultural views by denying others.
Again with reactions :) This is not about reactions, not about feelings, and not about identity. I am talking only about power. The reaction to the way transgenders dress is only relevant in this context based on their existing status in society. If I (not a transgender) would walk outside wearing women's clothes on Halloween and would get laughed at, it is completely different -- in this context of power -- from a transgender who gets laughed at, because of the transgender's existing status. Same goes for Muslims.
> punishing injustice than fairness
It is not about punishing past injustice. It is about correcting (stopping) an ongoing injustice. You don't have a car because I am currently still holding on to it.
> Just because difference feminism believes that its for the greater good doesn't make it less of a contradiction.
I think you're obsessing too much about the details, and I can't help you because my value system is not disturbed by the same things that disturb yours. Unless I were a veteran feminist activist considering a certain political tactic, I just wouldn't worry about the differences between "difference feminism" and other forms of feminism. The differences between different feminist activities are much more subtle than you make them out to be.
I care about politics in the large -- who wins, who loses -- and not so much about the ethics of every single law. I have never studied the philosophy of law or ethics, so I can't contribute much there.
> No one want to see signals that some groups they identify with are worth less all day long. Its harmful.
Right, but sociologists -- again -- don't study what's right or wrong, and are not concerned with how people feel. If men were actually made significantly less powerful than women in society, or if whites were actually made significantly less powerful than whites, then that would be something that's very interesting to historians and sociologists. As this is currently far from reality, these things you talk about are simply outside the scope of most of social science. I guess they're in the realm of ethics.
If transgender people were not allowed to wear clothing of their choice, or act outside their born gender, no discrimination could happen (in the context of power). Same with Muslims. Identification is required for the form of discrimination you are talking about, and that which is illegal is not done in the open.
But here I would say that the definition being presented here do clash with reality. Making the act of doing identifiable faith, transgender, or other self-identity illegal in order to protect those groups from discrimination is not exactly how society in general view discrimination. The closest we get is the argument behind uniforms, where the idea is to hide peoples social group identity and strengthen the new social group. While partial effective, I have also heard that humans are quite good at identifying social groups even when hidden. It would imply that nudists are not so blessed from discrimination as you describe, and as a minor note I also recall quite a few movies where a nudist family is found out inside a gated community.
> You don't have a car because I am currently still holding on to it.
In that example society will provide cars to anyone that needs it. I have a car, and you have one.
The stated moral question was if society should fix material situations for everyone rather than exclusively those that are in a material situation because of past discrimination.
I will also remind that in this made up example, the suggestion solution was to treat everyone equal from this point on. Any existing discrimination are to be stopped, be those positive or negative.
> if men were actually made significantly less powerful than women in society ... As this is currently far from reality
A fact I disagree with, especially in local context but also on a global scale. Money and work positions are useful proxies for power, but they are an imperfect representation and devalues all other form of influence that exist. For example, living 10 more years in average is a quite power property, and extends influence of the social group.
The race situation is more clear in the local context of US, but less so on a wider scale. Money is again used here as a proxy, but comparing money in one nation to money in a other nation is imperfect. Mots nations are not ruled by the richest person in that nation. Its also very questionable to compare a poor farmer influence in one nation with a poor farmer influence in an other. Influence at international politics tend to be limited to a small number of people.
To take a trivial example from game theory, a seller and a buyer discussing price. In the classic example, the agreed price represent the result of sellers power vs the buyer power. Since its trivial, control, influence and cause-effect reflects the same values, so if the price is low it means the buy both has higher power and more control over the price.
But then we add a second seller. The position of the buyer has increase and we would say that the buyers power has increased. Inter-group competition influence the result, but the buyer aren't in control over how that competition plays out.
Then we add an government entity that adds regulation which incidentally limits supply. This increase the sellers power, but is completely outside the control of the buyer and the seller. This entity has no stake in the outcome of the transaction, derive no power from it, but got full control.
When talking about power disparity, we need to define what resource the groups are competing over, but also acknowledge that it won't tell us anything about who controls the outcome. To do that we need to define cause and effect, and that require more than just looking at the result. As a political matter, I believe that government intervention should focus on power disparity when it impacts the lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and it should do so by addressing each individuals need. It should focus on control disparity for everything else.
> I believe that government intervention should ...
That's politics, and is really not my thing. But even if you are interested in social science solely from the political perspective (like an engineer who's interested in science just so they can build what they always wanted to), I think you should separate the more descriptive elements (the science) from the prescriptive ones (technology), as the latter do not always directly flow from the former, and also require a good dose of ethics, which is may be very personal.
You say that the social science concentrate on areas where it is meaningful, but much of what we have discussed is focused on the end result. Do the property owners have, in the average, the upper hand in negotiations and do they get their way most of the time. Its an odd place to stop asking further question and not ask the question that really matter, which is what model can predict the price tomorrow.
The big benefit of such model is that such theories can be tested, and later used in prescribing ways to influence the outcome.
But even if we had a good explanatory mathematical model, it could not be used to predict anything because of a technical reason, although one that seems to be -- as far as we know -- limited by theoretical constraints: our mathematical techniques simply do not allow us to predict the behaviors of systems with so many variables and so many interactions. Even numerical simulations (the kind used in weather forecasting) would diverge very quickly. In fact, measurement alone would likely take more time than the validity duration of the prediction.
The problem is not unique to the social sciences. Even if biologists could understand the evolutionary mechanism in its entirety, it seems like prediction is beyond our means. All we can do is work back from results to causes, and figure out which evolutionary pressures were more powerful. Computer science is limited by similar constraints: we can explain how a bug came to be, but working forward in time and preventing all bugs requires a computational effort that is probably out of our reach. So the social sciences -- except for very special cases in psychology, where the number of variables is kept artificially low -- is content, like biology and computer science, to provide historical explanations only.
But we don't need perfect models. Sometimes its enough just to get a idea over what influence the outcome. The popular science book freakonomics has a famous example where its describe crime and what influenced the outcome. Interestingly, it involved neither actions done to the criminals nor victims.
In the case of race we are both in agreement that there exist a power difference, ie that the outcome is not identical. What we have not talked about it what influence it. For example, is it the material starting point that causes ripple effects and influencing the outcome? If so there should be some validating data from isolated local areas where the material starting point is smaller or greater, result in a detectable effect. If we can't find such support, it would strongly hint towards invalidating such theory.
Sure, this is very common in the social science.
> there should be some validating data from isolated local areas where the material starting point is smaller or greater, result in a detectable effect
Absolutely. What do you think sociology/history/anthropology journals publish? They're full of such studies.
It can be if they have meaningful attributes to differential themselves. To anchor that to social-security-paid maternity, it only relevant as an attribute if it has been considered but then rejected. Such qualification would distinguish it from any arbitrary element of the infinite set, and the qualification can be supported by facts.
> I just want to point out that there are several ways of looking at this, and several reasonable ethics.
This is why I earlier mentioned that difference feminism and Egalitarianism to be like the left and right. Both claim to have the same goal but significant different in values and ethics. Acknowledging the similarities is important, but also understand why most focus is on the differences.
> not an imaginary model of society made of spherical cows
No one has been talking about theoretical society. I could interpret it as an attempt to devalue ethics based on equality, but there we would just hit a wall of disagreement.
> try to see what conditions in real society the law is trying to address, and whether or not you think that would help.
So the law in question clump together women and children and define them as incapable to ask for support. The conditions that brought that law is ridden with cultural values of women, and caused by values that defines women as helpless victims. The local power disparity is very clear, as is the harm.
> If your goal is to minimize harm ... you just need to see which causes more harm: taking corrective action against existing discrimination or not.
Or let me put the same question. What causes more harm: Taking actions that treat people equally, or take discriminate action in order to save money.
> Victims of crimes are not a social group.
This is the second time you define what is and isn't a social group, and I don't find it fact based. To reference Robert Sapolsky, a special skill of human behavior is its ability to be part of multiple social groups at the same time. Victims of crimes is a group that deserve societys protection and understanding. Its not a place where gender should have a seven times impact. Its the other side of the coin that lets race and gender be the most significant factor in determining punishment for criminals.
> I think we have a strong disagreement over facts here.
The good thing with science is that science change when the facts change or when people provide better theories (often praised as the difference between science and religion).
> It doesn't matter how nudists consider themselves; what matters is how they are perceived by society
This is also why not all religions are treated equal. A Muslim friend once said that smaller religions that didn't have 20% global followers in the world should not have their believes respected in the same way. From egalitarianism view I disagree, and its a poor method for harm reduction.
> Whether or not naked bathing is allowed on certain beaches has no effect on the power (influence) of the nudists in society.
Since nudism is generally banned and made illegal in practically all societies except when done in excluded areas, I would say it has a very direct and explicit power effect on them as a group. We could of course say that beaches are minor thing, but so we could also say about burka wearers being denied access to beaches has no effect on the power of the Muslims in society. Just because nudists are a popular group to discriminate against doesn't make it less of a discrimination nor ethical.
Clothing is a central part of practically every culture that exist, similar to gender identity. Native culture is easiest distinguished by what they chose to wear. It is rooted deep in signaling, and can be easily identified in the most common religions to the smallest of sub cultures. Looking at nudists and transgenders, its questionable which group causes more reaction from people who defends their cultural views by denying others.
> sociologists are not concerned with feelings of rejection
Harm reduction is however important, and self identity is a key reason why society at large should be supportive of transgender rights. We should be careful when ever hate, discrimination and disempowerment is direct against people who society defines has having the wrong self-identity.
> An ethical system that would compel me to give you back your stolen car is not necessarily discriminatory towards John.
We are and have talked about equality of results. Retrieving a stolen car is more justified, and as a species we are more geared towards punishing injustice than fairness (Ref: game theory). It does however make it a poor building block for a ethical model, and a bad roadmap for equality. If cars ownership were a essential material state (and it isn't), providing cars for everyone would be an acceptable solution.
> Probably. Why? Because social activists like feminists fight for equality of power.
And here we got a key contradiction between activism done by equality feminism and difference feminism. One pulls one direction, the other in the opposite direction. Just because difference feminism believes that its for the greater good doesn't make it less of a contradiction.
A key message that this kind of gender segregation sends out is that gender-identity is a key attribute for which people should be sorted into. It creates a local power disparity, where women is viewed as worth more than men in some areas, less in other.
> What matters is whether you send a signal that some group is worth less.
This is a key aspect for most political movement, be that new feminism, Egalitarianism, mens right movement and so on. No one want to see signals that some groups they identify with are worth less all day long. Its harmful.