> Terribly sad, maybe the next generation of feminists will be able to break out of the box they've made for themselves, and devote themselves to more general philosophic introspection.
And maybe the next generation of people who get riled up about Aaron Swartz and Weev will spend equal effort and bluster getting riled up aggressive prosecution of kids in the Bronx. And maybe the next generation of people who have online protests about SOPA and PIPA and CISPA will exert similar efforts opposing laws that make it easier for companies to pollute.
Or maybe people will continue to be people, and have issues near and dear to their heart that affect them and not feel like they have to fight for every perceived injustice out in the world.
okay, but if you campaign for the well being of women by appealing to notions of gender equality, you must ultimately equally believe in the well being of men.
whether you expend equal energy on both causes is up to you. it may say something about what you really believe though.
That doesn't make any sense. Are people who believe that gays can be equally good marriage partners and parents as straight people obliged to spend just as much energy on causes related to marriages among straight people? Does their focus on marriage issues for gay people mean that they somehow think that straight people aren't as suitable for marriage?
You missed the point and created a strawman to argue against. Gay marriage has no bearing on straight marriage so your analogy falls flat.
Men and Women (gay or straight is irrelevant) are inextricably linked as human beings that face the same problem of creating a future together that supports equality. To focus on one group ignores 50% of the solution.
> Men and Women (gay or straight is irrelevant) are inextricably linked as human beings that face the same problem of creating a future together that supports equality.
Exit claimed: "okay, but if you campaign for the well being of women by appealing to notions of gender equality, you must ultimately equally believe in the well being of men."
The fact that women fight for women's issues on the basis of gender equality is no different than the fact that gays fight for gay issues on the basis of equality w.r.t. sexual orientation. In neither case does the implication follow that just because people fight for their own group on the basis of equality with other groups that they should necessarily be concerned about the issues of concern to those other groups.
I believe strongly in environmental justice, and think poor people deserve a clean environmental equally with rich people. That doesn't mean I care or spend much time thinking about pollution in the Hamptons.
> The fact that women fight for women's issues on the basis of gender equality is no different than the fact that gays fight for gay issues on the basis of equality w.r.t. sexual orientation.
Yes, it is. Men and women are two halves of the whole that makes up Humans. And any progress in the area of equality among Humans must ultimately involve both.
Exit's argument was a continuation of the original argument posited by RyanZAG, for which he was down-voted in spite of a meaningful contribution to the conversation. Down-votes are for useless or off-topic replies, not for when you simply don't agree.
From RyanZAG's original comment:
> I have no idea why this has to be so gender specific. Every argument works equally well in terms of fathers as well, yet she doesn't even take that second to even consider the issue. She doesn't think to write about people, but only about women.
It really doesn't, and this part is bullshit: "it may say something about what you really believe though."
If I'm a gay guy fighting for marriage equality, my lack of efforts to fight for marriage issues affecting straight people does not "say something about what [I] really believe" about whether gays and straights are equal.
It's an utterly bullshit argument. Women are pretty much the only group where people say "well if you believe men and women are equal, why don't you fight for mens' rights?" Nobody says that to gays fighting for marriage equality, or blacks fighting for racial equality. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say it harkens to sexist notions. Men are expected to watch out for #1, but women are expected to be motherly and crap and care about the welfare of everyone.
>Women are pretty much the only group where people say "well if you believe men and women are equal, why don't you fight for mens' rights?" Nobody says that to gays fighting for marriage equality, or blacks fighting for racial equality.
What? You get pretty much the same argument against affirmative action. "If you care about black children in poverty then what about white children in poverty" etc., and all the (in many cases quite sensible) arguments that aid should be based on need rather than race.
People might say "if you care about black children in poverty then what about white children in poverty" but people almost never say that to black people. It's always a statement of policy in general terms, not a targeted criticism to black proponents of a policy.
In other words, people might think that we as a society need to care about poor white kids as much as poor black kids, but nonetheless black people generally don't need to make excuses about caring more about black children than white children. Nobody accuses them of secretly thinking that blacks are better for doing so.
The difference is that men's issues and women's issues are really tightly intertwined. You cannot put pressure on men not to have work-life balance and not to be the one looking after the kids without also pushing women into becoming the main carer for them, and likewise you can't lift that load from women without some way for the men to pick up the slack.
Sadly, what generally happens is that once activists for women's rights have categorised something as a men's issue, they stop caring about it. So you get articles like this one which never question the underlying assumption that women are the ones that need to compromise their careers in order to raise a family, and that men have no interest in doing so. The article talks about women being locked out of positions of power because of this - if we could change things and make it just as normal for men to put their career goals aside to raise kids, that'd have huge implications, but that's a men's issue and hence ignored.
> whether you expend equal energy on both causes is up to you. it may say something about what you really believe though
The clear implication is that focusing on issues pertinent to group X (e.g. gay marriage, society's insane expectations of women), it means that you must care more about people in group X than people not in group X. Which makes no sense; if you have a buggy codebase, you focus on fixing the bugs, not dividing your time equally among all the mostly-already-functional bits.
>if you have a buggy codebase, you focus on fixing the bugs, not dividing your time equally among all the mostly-already-functional bits.
In this case that's the point -- work/life balance is not a problem for "women" but a problem for "humans" -- so why concentrate on solving it for women or framing it as a "women's issue" if the same analysis and solutions go for men too?
And maybe the next generation of people who get riled up about Aaron Swartz and Weev will spend equal effort and bluster getting riled up aggressive prosecution of kids in the Bronx. And maybe the next generation of people who have online protests about SOPA and PIPA and CISPA will exert similar efforts opposing laws that make it easier for companies to pollute.
Or maybe people will continue to be people, and have issues near and dear to their heart that affect them and not feel like they have to fight for every perceived injustice out in the world.