UPDATE! Due date for posts has changed to 6 p.m. EST on March 20, 2012
It's Women's History month and International Women's Day is March 8. Women's rights have been all over the news recently, from bills in Congress and state representative bodies to crass "jokes" by national broadcasters. The idea that women are or should be equal to men has become a polarizing topic of discussion on the national stage.
Ted – no matter what you say there has been and still is prejudice against women and some would even like to take away some of the progress that has been made when it comes to women’s rights. I get the point that you are not a proponent of women’s rights. You aren’t going to change my mind about it and it appears I won’t change yours. Looks like it’s time to disengage.
You missed my point entirely. I am actually a proponent of women’s *rights*. I’m an opposition to men’s *wrongs*.
But if any group, proponent of anything, asks for the impossible, then they need to be informed that it is impossible- and that maybe, just maybe, they need to reframe the argument.
Instead of equal pay for women, for instance, how about equal pay for equal work for *EVERYBODY*? No more letting those illegal immigrants undercut us, no more letting the big crony corporatists get away with running their sweatshops out of sight out of mind in Asia or Africa- no more letting them use us for consumers while telling us “Americans are too expensive to hire”!
I would like to think it is possible to treat the genders equally under the law without forcing men to become women and women to become men. It’s pretty clear that the genders are NOT equal in all respects- men are better at some jobs, women better at others- and it is a shame that our post modernist society requires everybody to be of equal worth in everything to be held in equal esteem. What ever happened to respecting people simply for being human?
Ted – the problem I have with what you said is that I don’t think we can or should be that general. I know men who are good at things that aren’t generally thought of as masculine and vice versa. I think we should treat people as individuals. If a person is capable and good at something then they should have the opportunity no matter what their gender. The idea is not to force someone to be what they are not ….. the idea of saying all women should_____ …. or men aren’t good at_______ … often forces people to be or not to be what they are. Unfortunately women (as have other groups of people) been oppressed and marginalized when it comes to rights and opportunities and until that wrong is righted we need to continue to fight and push for women’s equality and to find ways to protect women from being discriminated against.
We had a chance in the 1970s to end the oppression- the Equal Rights Amendment. Instead of passing it, we started this silliness of trying to expect men to understand fine differences of emotion and women to deny their fertility and motherhood and work in a career for .75% of the pay of a man. And that ends up just oppressing *both* genders, and is far more generalized and further away from individualism than we started with.
the anti-ERA movement was based on strong support among Southern whites, evangelical Christians, Mormons, Orthodox Jews, and Roman Catholics, including both men and women
Yes it was- due primarily to this insistence on not respecting the talents of each gender.
It just occurred to me a concrete example is in order: I as a man will never be good at gestating an unborn child and giving birth. I simply do not have the physical equipment to do so. Yes, that forces me to be what I really am. Am I marginalized for doing so? Am I oppressed for doing so?
Ted – and no woman is saying they are oppressed because they don’t have a penis or produce sperm. Why do conversations like this always end up trailing off into the ridiculous? It feels like one is trying to make someone else shutup.
It is the insistence on “total equality” that creates the ridiculous situation. The genders simply will never be equal- because the genders are NOT the same, by design. Why can’t we respect God’s design as is?
taking your logic into account you could say the same thing about men – all men are not equal and the same thing about women – all women are not equal – and the same thing about children etc. … but your logic is not on point. The point is not to try and make everyone the same – the point is to give women the same opportunities that men have to and to protect them from being discriminated against just because they are a woman. Do you think that women should be paid less than men when doing the same work?
Women will never have the same opportunities men have, and men will never have the same opportunities women have, *because* they have different talents and different physical equipment to work with.
You can remove ALL discrimination from the law (and we should)- but you will NOT be able to change that fact. EVER.
I personally don’t feel it is right that *anybody* is paid less than anybody else for the same amount of work- that’s why I’m against CEOs being paid above 10x minimum wage (instead of the 400x they currently get). But I would point out to you that in this day and age of global competition- that means the men are less employable (because no self-respecting capitalist will ever hire the more expensive candidate for the same position- EVER. That’s money right out of his bonus).