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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   30842 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

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Right -- of course the people selling food in 'food deserts' are prioritizing products with high demand in the area. How else could it possibly be? "Hey let's open a market in a heavily-black area but instead of selling them the fresh organic produce they want we'll only offer processed foods." Does anyone think this kind of oppression is actually happening?

Same with reddit's daily complaint threads about how 'the fashion industry' refuses to sell women dresses with pockets. Inevitably someone links an outlet which does offer that but is doing poorly because no one actually wants them.

Or for that matter the 'pink tax' on women's items such as razor blades.

"The products are the same but they charge more for the ones marketed toward women!"
"So if the products are the same, buy the one marketed toward men."
"...No I like the pink one better."

The market is in the business of selling you what you want at a price you find acceptable. There is no conspiracy by rich white men to get in the way of that process.

...Except maybe the war on drugs.

"The products are the same but they charge more for the ones marketed toward women!" "So if the products are the same, buy the one marketed toward men." "...No I like the pink one better."

This is a complete misrepresentation of the claim. This is the equivalent to

"It's hard to unsubscribe. The link is hidden in small white-on-white text."
"Ah, so you admit there is an unsubscribe button! Why are you complaining?"

Misrepresenting your product to trick consumers into paying more or buying something worse for the same money is bad. The companies that do it should be at least shamed, if not addressed with legal action, even if savvy consumers can manage to spend extra time to work around those tricks.

  • -10

It's worth mentioning that the Pink Tax probably doesn't exist.

Unsurprisingly, feminist academics who look into whether women are arbitrarily charged more because of sexism tend not to be the most dispassionate researchers.

I'm reminded of the Obamacare debacle, which still fills me with rage. People (correctly) pointed out that women pay more for health insurance, and (incorrectly) said that this was an unfair "woman tax". It was politically brilliant, reframing the fact that women live longer as a societal injustice - against women! And it was 100% successful; Obamacare made gender-based pricing illegal, and now every man in the country is subsidizing the health care of every woman in the country. Forever.

I once saw a TV segment (might have been with John Stossel) where they interviewed a dry cleaner who had significantly different prices for men's and women's shirts. The owner said that the reason for this is that they could put a men's shirt through the machine and everything would be fine, but if there was so much as a hint of a stain remaining on a woman's shirt, the woman would be back in complaining and demanding they fix it and/or provide a refund. So they actually cleaned the women's shirts better.

Of course, when men are tricked in such ways the progressive line is that the men themselves are demonstrating a moral failure rather than being victims of misrepresentation. How convenient that we don't talk about women's fragility in falling for such misrepresentations and instead focus on how bad the people taking advantage of them are.

Classic hyperagency/hypoagency. Men need to adapt to fit society (or they are failures who need to be mocked for their fragility), whereas society needs to adapt to fit women (or else it's failing women and victimising them). Feminists malignantly prey on and reinforce this double standard all the time.

They're not the same though. Even though the color may be something trivial to change at the factory, it's still a different product. The customer is willing to pay more for it in fact.

Though in reality women's shaving products are usually not literally the same thing. They often include a rubber cushion which is less common on men's shaving products.

How much extra time needs to be spent to work around these tricks when the men's razors are right next to the women's razors?

Why aren't they charging men more then? Or do you believe women are less savvy than men?

I think the difference comes down to shopping behavior- either that of men vs women, or that of women shopping for themselves vs their husbands. Anecdotally women want to buy their stuff in person, but feel comfortable just ordering stuff for their husbands online at the best price available.

Normies have the idea that a price is based on cost, plus a certain amount of profit. Charging more for a product because the customers are less price sensitive rather than because the product costs more to make is considered cheating the customer.

Rationalists may not think that way, but everyone else does. If pink razors cost the same to make, but women are willing to pay extra for them, charging extra is dishonest.

Differences in price due to color are common and accepted, if not liked. Right now for me the same Levis 501s are $39.99 in Dark Stonewash, $41.99 in Medium Stonewash, and $49.99 in Olive Night.

Usually the "pink" items complained about are slightly (or even considerably) different anyway.

  1. The main reason why similar items targeted towards men and women sometimes have different prices isn't for the purpose of trickery, it's because prices are heavily determined by factors like economy of scale. People value product differentiation enough to sometimes buy the more expensive product, so companies make it, and then they charge a price that recoups the money they spent on manufacturing/shipping/etc. another product line.

  2. The actual overall "pink tax" seems to be approximately zero:

Gender-Based Pricing in Consumer Packaged Goods: A Pink Tax?

Further, we show that segmentation involves product differentiation; there is little overlap in the formulations of men’s and women’s products within the same category. Using a national data set of grocery, convenience, drugstore, and mass merchandiser sales, we demonstrate that this differentiation sustains large price differences for men’s and women’s products made by the same manufacturer. In an apples-to-apples comparison of women’s and men’s products with similar ingredients, however, we do not find evidence of a systematic price premium for women’s goods: price differences are small, and the women’s variant is less expensive in three out of five categories. Our findings are consistent with the ease of arbitrage in posted price markets where consumer packaged goods are sold. These results call into question the need for and efficacy of recently proposed and enacted pink tax legislation, which mandates price parity for substantially similar gendered products.

It is one of those issues that reflects the speakers more than the subject. Why is there a "pink tax" meme? Because many people view the world through the lens of feminism, so when they see a male-targeted product that happens to be cheaper than the female-targeted product next to it they believe this is an injustice and a systematic issue. Feminism's influence as an ideology means the "pink tax" then becomes a political issue, the subject of discourse and even legislation, without ever doing the first step of finding out whether it actually exists. Even if it existed it would probably just be a result of something like women statistically valuing product differentiation more so there's many smaller product lines, but we don't even have to move on to that argument because there isn't a notable difference in the first place.

I can confirm that I have bought womens' razors at times because they were cheaper (slightly) and didn't have the dumb 'lubricating strip' that clogs up with beard if you don't shave often enough.

When prima made that post about radical feminism and self-authorship, I worked on a post about different frames of view determining how people see their own lives and the lives of others. I really should finish that up and post it. Basically my point was just along your lines: feminists believe that the freedoms of men and women are different, and so they have a ready-made reason why things might exist that affect women more than men, and that becomes the default assumption. The null hypothesis is sexism if you have that frame of mind, and you need exceptionally strong evidence to counteract it.

Same with reddit's daily complaint threads about how 'the fashion industry' refuses to sell women dresses with pockets. Inevitably someone links an outlet which does offer that but is doing poorly because no one actually wants them.

This was the only example I know anything about, and it's not that simple. I tried looking up some Reddit threads, and after about half an hour, brand mentions included:

  • Duluth Trading always has good pockets, so if you want pockets for hiking, gardening, and generally being outdoorsy, that's great. Can confirm, I have a coat from them, and I while I look like a giant tomato in it, I can wear it in any conditions between -40F and 40F, due to how many layers it allows me to wear under it. Do I want to fit a hat, scarf, and gloves in the main pockets, and then still have an inner pocket for money and keys? This is the coat for that! Could I wear it to an office job, or a date night? Not unless the date involves hiking in the snow (it frequently has).
  • Someone said that Torrid had one pair of black pants once that offered great pockets, but she has never found them again.
  • A few people mentioned cargo pants, where even the women's versions have pockets.
  • There are a number of brands that sometimes have pockets, but not that often, and will sometimes say on their listing that they have pockets, but they're tiny and poorly placed, such that it's not safe to put anything inside them. If you spend a lot of time and effort, you might find something suitable in a department store. Maybe. Or maybe you just wasted two hours and will leave with no clothing (this is why I stopped shopping for clothing at department stores). Maybe they'll have something, but it will cost $200 and be dry clean only. Hard to guess.
  • Target often does have pockets! The responses being: good for them! (they are not doing poorly)
  • Temu and Uniqlo often have pockets! Good for them! (they are expanding quite quickly)
  • A recommendation for Maya Kern skirts -- comments that other had also bought those, and liked them.

This ultimately doesn’t say too much though. You can't really look at a bunch of women's clothing, check for ones that have pockets, see how well they're doing and then draw any conclusions about whether the lack of pockets in women's clothing is demand-driven or not. It is possible for women's clothing with pockets to sell well and for the lack of pockets in women's clothing to still be demand-driven.

To put forward a simplistic example let's say that 15% of women would want pockets, and that the remainder don't. Let's say that a slightly smaller percentage of women would be willing to pay extra for pockets due to the additional cost of sewing on functional pockets (note that pockets are a pain in the ass; even the non-functional ones are if they have flaps and bindings and the rest, but the functional pockets take a lot more time even than that). If ~13% of women's pants have functional pockets, and the remainder do not, clothing with pockets will still sell well even when the relative lack of pockets in women's clothing is demand-driven, since the supply of that good is appropriately scaled to its demand.

Unfortunately I am not aware of any economic studies on this, likely because the topic is trivial and the answer is obvious. Most of the literature I am able to find on it is ideologically-infused sociology without even the slightest hint of rigour. All I can say is that personally, as a dude, I actually don't like pockets, it doesn’t feel particularly secure and I often carry a sling bag along with me in non-professional circumstances where it would be more socially acceptable for me to do so. I assume that the incentive to just use purses is greater when you want to carry makeup and other items (the women I know pack a ton of stuff in their purses; I'm honestly not sure what half of it is for).

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