My wife and I did a marathon session of Non-Prophets episodes over the weekend, now that they’ve finally put up the audio podcasts, and in one of the most recent episodes, while talking about the sexism kerfluffle, Matt Dillahunty told a story about a friend’s sister, many years ago, where they had an attraction to each other and, while he was too nervous to make an advance, eventually she wrote on a window “want to fuck?” And apparently, they did.
What I realized that illustrates is the inherent double standard of the modern women’s right movements. What the sister did above is entirely acceptable to most people, but had the situation been reversed and Matt had written that on the window, many women would have seen that as harassment. So which is it? If you want equality, you can’t treat one situation any differently than you do the other.
But do they want equality? That’s a question that seems to hover over various rights movements. I’m convinced that for most, they don’t.
See, I think we do best with just one standard. There should only be one standard for men and women, we ought to be a gender-blind society. There should be only one standard for people of various races, we ought to be a color-blind society. There should be only one standard for people of various sexual preferences, we ought to be a preference-free society. The problem, however, is that there isn’t, and many of these double standards are not put forward by the dominant group, but by the group that has fought for their equality, then doesn’t want to be equal, they want to be better! Not only do they want equal rights, they want special rights on top of them to “make up for” all the time they didn’t have those rights. In looking at the above example, a feminist might not only want the right not to be harassed, which I entirely agree with, but they might want the right to harass and show their sexual freedom, because they had to go without for so long. That I have a problem with. Either harassment is right or it is wrong, but it must be the same for everyone, regardless of gender. If it would have been wrong for Matt to suggest sex on a window, it should also be wrong for the sister to do the same thing.
Equality isn’t always a positive thing either, with the good will always come the bad. Now while I have seen some women, especially women in the military, want the same treatment as men, most, and especially liberal women, do not. They don’t want to be front-line combat troops. They don’t want to be drafted. They want the good, they don’t want the bad.
It’s all or nothing though. Take it or leave it. You want to be equal, be equal.
In fact, another example that just occurred to me, my wife and I watched the G4 coverage of San Diego Comicon a while back and the co-host was John Barrowman, former Dr. Who companion and the star of Torchwood. He’s also gay. Now I have no problem with John, I’ve talked to him many times, I think he’s a nice guy. However, the whole time he was on TV, he was going “look at the ass on that guy!” Lots of people laughed, the first dozen times he did it. If he had been straight and going “hey, look at the tits on that chick!” he’d have been thrown off the stage. Serious double standard.
I’m all in favor of equality, but only if it’s actual equality. If it’s okay for a man to do it, it’s okay for a woman to do it. If it’s not okay for a man to do it, it shouldn’t be okay for a woman to do it. That’s equality. One standard, it’s all we need. We can do the same between blacks and whites, gays and straights, atheists and theists, you name it. Everyone ought to be equal and nobody ought to get different treatment to make up for something in the past.
Equality starts today. Either want to be fully equal or stop whining about it.
