Der Gipfel-Trugschluß (Apex-Fallacy)

Eine interessante Bezeichnung für das „Auf die Spitze schauen“ im Feminismus und den daraus folgenden Trugschluss, dass der Mann durchgehend privilegiert ist, ist die Apex Fallacy. Ich würde das mit dem „Gipfel-Trugschluß“ übersetzen, bessere Übersetzungen bitte in den Kommentaren.

Eine Definition zur Apex Fallacy findet sich hier:

.Apex fallacy is the idea that we assign the characteristics of the highest visibility members of a group to all members of that group. This fallacy has a particularly damning effect on the feminist construct of patriarchy.

Women have looked up, and seen that the top of society is made up of men that hold power. They then attribute that characteristic to all men. The line of thinking goes, all CEO’s are men (mostly true), therefore all men are CEO’s (not even close). Feminists fail to look at the men at the bottom of the pyramid.”

Dieser Fehlschluss liegt denke ich auch der Privilegientheorie zugrunde.

Hellen Smith zu diesem Komplex:

Bernard Chapin: Dr. Helen, first off allow me to compliment you on the excellence of your columns and the advice that you have proffered. I greatly enjoy your work. My initial question is, overall, are American women oppressed today?

Dr. Helen Smith: Thanks very much for the kind words. In answer to your question, I would say that women in America today do still have some hurdles, such as sexism towards women in politics and other areas but the sexism is often promoted by those of the liberal persuasion, and often by women, as we have seen recently with Sarah Palin (for an example, see my column entitled, „How to Cope with a Palin Hater“). I think that women are now the new nobility in our society and they expect to be catered to-especially by men. More women than men are going to college, in many larger cities, women outearn men, they win most of the child custody cases and alimony cases, despite men spending more time with their kids and they control much of the wealth in this country.

Bernard Chapin: In contrast, what are your impressions of the male sex?

Dr. Helen Smith: More men tend to be at the high end or low end in our society and because of this, people mistakenly believe that all men dominate in our culture because they see a few men at the top. Professor Roy F. Baumeister explained this in an invited address to the American Psychological Association:

„When I say I am researching how culture exploits men, the first reaction is usually ‚How can you say culture exploits men, when men are in charge of everything?‘ This is a fair objection and needs to be taken seriously. It invokes the feminist critique of society. This critique started when some women systematically looked up at the top of society and saw men everywhere: most world rulers, presidents, prime ministers, most members of Congress and parliaments, most CEOs of major corporations, and so forth – these are mostly men. Seeing all this, the feminists thought, wow, men dominate everything, so society is set up to favor men. It must be great to be a man. The mistake in that way of thinking is to look only at the top. If one were to look downward to the bottom of society instead, one finds mostly men there too. Who’s in prison, all over the world, as criminals or political prisoners? The population on Death Row has never approached 51% female. Who’s homeless? Again, mostly men. Whom does society use for bad or dangerous jobs? US Department of Labor statistics report that 93% of the people killed on the job are men. Likewise, who gets killed in battle? Even in today’s American army, which has made much of integrating the sexes and putting women into combat, the risks aren’t equal. This year we passed the milestone of 3,000 deaths in Iraq, and of those, 2,938 were men, 62 were women.“