It concerns me when people confuse the idea of gender equality and rights (which I think most reasonable people agree is a good thing) with the idea that men and women's lives have to be the same in all aspects.
I think it is much more harmful to impose a dogmatic belief that forces everyone to lead identical, mono-cultured lives and denies individual choice.
What if I want to go to a single-sex school? Who are you to deny me that choice?
It's not that they "should react the same", it's that - ideally - they shouldn't have to act differently to be treated equally.
I'll concede that imperfect but effective solutions are probably necessary to help foster this sort of equality in the long run, though, and the more people who step up and take responsibility for pushing the change (regardless of gender), the better.
Men and women don’t have to be exactly the same for them to have equal rights. Maybe certain people aren’t smart enough to separate those two concepts, but that doesn’t mean we should be at their mercy regarding what we can publicly admit is true. We don’t have to dumb ourselves down like this.
Absolute equality is not realistic. People are not equal, individuals are different from eachother. And I say that as someone belonging to a minority group. However, I am convinced that equality can not be forced. Differences are what make us interesting.
And yes, there are differences between the sexes, no matter how you twist and/or turn it. Trying to ignore those is unrealistic and a fair bit naive.
If you think that treating genders equally has nothing to do with accepting variations in social norms, then you're missing pretty much the whole purpose of the "treat women equally to men" thing.
Gender inequality is almost wholly a social problem, not a biological one. And
Society treats people differently depending on who they are. Men have certain privileges not afforded to women. If examining situations in a social context, this cannot be ignored. There is a reason this conference was BOASTING about having 20% women attending.
We cannot treat everyone as if they are the same if the playing field is not level.
In a vacuum, there should be no difference. But we do not live in a vacuum.
Yes! Men and women are of course equal. They're just different, and different people choose to do different things. Why is that so fucking controversial?
Even acknowledging the basic fact that males have more diverse expression is touchy these days on its own, I find; possibly because people are upset that men and women won't simply be hammered into the same form.
Oh stop it already. This gendermainstream bs is getting pushed out because there is a agenda behind it.
Genders are in fact different, its nature its good that way and it should stay that way. But there is a open agenda that is out to make everybody equal. And I am not speaking of equality in a rights sense like PAST feminism was about and reached its goal in the west. These people can not stop the see sexism everywhere but its in fact only nature everywhere.
Genders are different and I really hope they stay different and will not artificially turned onto a weirdo sauce of people who get a kick out of "I am not 'defined' by gender roles" but ultimately become unhappy. You can not have a formula of what 'should be' and expect it to work for 2 very very different kinds of people.
I honestly appreciate the efforts of Swedish people to promote equality, but they're a little misguided. Boys and girls just are different, and it's not only a matter of culture; in fact, I've always thought that cultural differences between men and women arose almost exclusively from biological differences that result in different behaviours (of course, each culture evolves those role differences in varied ways). Sociology sure has better insight to that than me.
The thing is, there are a lot of gender-neutral toys and games. Just not every one is. It's OK to me: the point of equality is not to remove differences, but to avoid mistreat and discrimination because of them.
While we should treat genders equally with respect, we should not pretend genders are interchangeable. Men are not good moms, for us and all species. Women have a much harder choice than men with work, and we should not pretend they don't.
People often forget that some gender differences are what make each gender powerful.
Gender equality should not be about expecting the same features in both genders, but about having the same rights.
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