@God the Great:
“You guys have been rather harsh on poor little Daryn.”
Yes. But in my opinion, we haven’t been unduly harsh. He’s blowing what little facts he has out of proportion, making incorrect generalizations, and coming to biased conclusions.
“Men and women ARE different.” Maybe. On average, men’s and women’s brains tend to process input differently and place emphasis on different things. So what? I don’t believe that we are as different as some people make out. How much is biology and how much is culture? It’s impossible to say. I have worked with both men and women, and every so often a man will say something to me that makes me conscious of this difference. This happens very rarely, however. And anyway, if a woman’s way of looking at a problem is so different from a man’s, doesn’t that make it more important to have women in the workforce? It is good to have different viewpoints. As you say, “we complement each other.”
“Men might be better at some things and women at other things
” but that’s simply an average. There’s a big difference in saying that and generalizing that to say that there are things that all women are simply incapable of doing, such as inventing something complex. On average, men do better in higher math than women. Does that mean it’s OK to assume that I can’t do calculus simply because I’m a woman? No! Evaluate me based on my accomplishments (e.g my work experience, my Master’s degree), not on my gender.
Blanket bullshit statements like: “Men base their decision's on logic, woman's are based on emotion” are pretty much dismissing all women’s opinions as illogical and hysterical. And unimportant.
You say that Daryn is correct when he says that “equal rights have destroyed our culture.” Funny, I didn’t realize that it had been destroyed. You mention “hard-line feminists.” Do you mean women who think of all men as evil oppressors and all women as innocent victims? Yes, that is sexism. Yes, they are wrong, just like Daryn is wrong. But that is not equal rights. And one of their goals, to attempt to reduce the prevalence of unconscious dismissing of a woman’s abilities simply because of her gender, is laudable, if not their methods nor the extreme that some take it to. But as with any good idea, there are people who will take it to the illogical extreme.
I agree that affirmative action of any kind is unfair, and in some cases actually produces the opposite result as was intended (women who are hired on the basis of their ability are assumed to have been hired exclusively on the basis of their gender to fulfill a quota). We are, however, trying to do something radical: force a change in attitudes in a culture to change an injustice. Generally, without some sort of drastic act, those in power tend to stay in power and the disadvantaged tend to stay disadvantaged. You said that “it's a men-dominated world.” If you have any better ideas for how to change this, please let the world know!
You concluded by saying: “equal rights, equal obligations.”
But there is one more essential component: equal opportunities. And we’re not there. Yet. And if people like Daryn have their way, we never will be.
