Gender Equality, Or: We need more girls in science, damnit
by hulk
Izzat recently said something about some UN sicko going around Africa taking pictures of himself raping women. He even labeled the pictures as rape. Then she said something to make the article humorous, that she thought the UN was one of the last bastions of democracy and humanity. HA! After laughing my ass off, I remembered what the article was about. UN sicko. She said something to the effect that there needs to be equality between men and women. That struck me. She said she was waiting for it. When will it happen? Better question: Can it happen?
Exactly at what point are men and women “equal”? Under the law, they’re equal. In fact, there’s a slight bias in the courts when it comes to custody and marriage law, at least in the US. In the rest of the world, they negotiate from a slightly weaker stance, especially so in developing nations. Yeah, the US is pretty much where they have it best. And despite some misstatements (“women only make 79 cents where men make a dollar”) and outright lies (“hundreds of thousands of women die each year from anorexia”) I’d say they’re treated equally in the US. There are issues such as pornography and sexism but I think the sexist tide is starting to turn. Pornography’s not going away anytime soon. We need to be careful about playing the victim game here, but you could make legitimate arguments about the general sexual predatory nature of men and how that can make women uncomfortable or end up with them being harassed (“Hey baby, nice rack!”). Of course I’d argue the sex drive thing is programmed in. And women definitely have it too. Sex just doesn’t sell as much for them, so there’s less advertising. Their ads are more like, “Do you have heavy flow?” whereas male ads are “Buy this, and hot blondes will sleep with you!”