This banning culture is getting ridiculous

The "gender" pay gap is not a problem because it doesn't exist.

I can only assume you mean the gender pay gap as in the pay gap between people in equivalent employment. The discriminatory component still 'exists' and is in the region of about 5-8% as far as I know, which is still unacceptable. You're also implying that that's the pay gap that campaigners are talking about, which simply isn't the case. It's a wider issue.

Yes, but people still quoting statistics (even Obama did so in a recent speech) which have been proven wrong doesn't really help their wider cause, does it?

So we were wrong to ban guns.

You want a society were anybody can ge ttheir hands on guns then?

TIL totalitarianism = banning an explicit pop song in a school.

The next group of black people I see I am going to insult their race as it is my right due to free speech.

The average earnings of women in the US are 22% less than the average man's earnings. In what sense has this been proven wrong?

I've got fed up of seeing people decry how our rights to freedom of speech are being taken away from us, and in the same breath saying the gender pay gap is not a problem, making racist remarks, treating women as objects or perpetuating demonstrably false myths about differences in cognitive ability between different socio-economic groups.

The average earnings of women in the US are 22% less than the average man's earnings. In what sense has this been proven wrong?

Yes, they earn less but are not paid less because as far as I know, it's illegal to pay a women less than a man in the exact job with the same requirements. However, you will earn more if you work overtime and do not take any leave (such as maternity). Men on average spend more time at work and paternity leave is way shorter than maternity so the man earns more.

There's also the fact that many women choose, on completely their own terms, to be stay at home mothers. They also are more likely to choose careers which pay less. For example more women will do courses like fine art and english lit, which are hard to land a job with.

I don't see a problem with this if everyone is happy.

The average earnings of women in the US are 22% less than the average man's earnings. In what sense has this been proven wrong?

Social media has magnified the problem. In the old days people would shrug their shoulders and move on with life. Platforms like Twitter and Facebook have made it trendy to show outrage

So we were wrong to ban guns.

You want a society were anybody can ge ttheir hands on guns then?

So we were wrong to ban guns.

You want a society were anybody can ge ttheir hands on guns then?

Would you like to have the power to stop people from spouting opinions contrary to yours? Would you like to be able to control what people say and think by using punitive governmental force as a threat?

There are many, many things I dislike that people say. There is no doubt that I'd like to hear people stop saying all these things. However, I do not want anyone to be banned from saying them. I do not want to influence people by sheer force of power and fear. I would be delighted if people heard my views, and on completely their own terms, came to agree with them. I, however, would not like to force people to pretend to agree with them.

It seems though, that in the eyes of many today, if you don't like certain a word, phrase, opinion, song, film, TV show, video game, or publication, then you must therefore want it banned.

Whenever I see someone complaining about something such as the phrase "man up" being banned in schools, or pop songs being banned on campuses, or public figures being banned from debates, I can always expect to see a response that constitutes something along the lines of: "So you think they/it have/has a good influence on society?"

That is beside the point. The point is that we don't want to live under the regime of little totalitarians who have appointed themselves the arbiters of what other people can and can't say, think, watch, listen to, or read.

And no, people such as myself do not want to be totalitarians. I would not like to use the state to punitively enforce my opinions. I would not even like to gather up hundreds and thousands of supporters to pressure a publication (that I do not purchase) to stop printing something on one of it's pages for it's own paying customers. I am very happy to criticize things and I hope that people come to agree with me, but I would not be happy to try to force people to live in my personal conception of some utopia against their will.

It is precisely the comparison between the average earnings of men and women which distorts everything. It paints a picture that women are, on average, paid 78% of men's wages in the US for tasks which are the same.

I'm sure there are newspapers that interpret the statistics inaccurately, but it's pretty clear from Whitehouse statements that all aspects of the gap are considered undesirable. There are actually two paragraphs in this report (https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/equal_pay_issue_brief_final.pdf) that put it quite nicely:

"The real question, though, is why men and women end
up in different occupations in the first place. It’s not clear
whether we should account for differences in industry
and occupation in wage gap decompositions. If these
differences stem from preferences, it is reasonable to
account for them. On the other hand, if men and women
choose different jobs because of discrimination, industry
and occupation should not be included. In many
situations, the line between discrimination and
preference is ambiguous.

Take the example of computer science, where the share
of women is lower today than it was in 1985. This gap
doesn’t start when workers are making career choices;
rather, it results from a series of events and decisions
that begin at very young ages. A recent OECD report finds
that even high school girls who score high on math and
science tests report low levels of confidence and
proficiency in math and science. And once in college,
women pursue science and math degrees at lower rates
than men: in the 2013 school year, women received 57
percent of all bachelor degrees, but only 35 percent in
STEM fields. Even among women who begin a sciencerelated
career, more than half leave by mid-career,
double the rate of men. Forty percent of those who leave
cite a hostile or “macho” culture as the primary reason.
Given why women leave these fields, at least some
occupational differences appear to be driven by negative
factors that prevent the full range of talented Americans
from succeeding in the workplace."

This caricature that the world's most important government is not intelligent enough to be aware of all the factors behind a statistic is simply false. This report, may I add, also highlights the importance of affordable childcare in giving families the ability to have both parents in work, something that's also been identified by the Conservative government. It's quite funny to think you may be less effective at detecting societal injustice than a government accused of penalising the poor through cutting tax credits.