Real Gender Equality

Seeing as it is International Women's Day, I figured I should clarify my idea of gender equality. It goes a little something like this: If males get it, females get it, and if females get it, males get it. For everything that exists, for every statement that can be made that includes any connection to males or females, of any age, the syntax should not be any different with the word "male," "men," or "boys," than it would be with the words "female," "women," or "girls." That is all there is to gender equality. If there is an International Women's Day, and it has widespread publicity, the same should apply to International Men's Day. If there is a "Girl Effect," there should be a "Boy Effect." If there is a "Women's History Month," there should be a "Men's History Month." There should be no "women and children first" policies any more than there should be "men and children first" policies. This is what the feminists envisioned--total 1:1 equality across the board, not just "rough equivalence." But is that what we have?

Gender equality should be like writing a novel full of stereotypical characters, changing the sex of every single one of them, and coming out with a story no different than before. Gender equality means that all human beings are people regardless of their sex, that sex is a biological assignment and gender is a cultural construction. There could be infinite genders, even if there are only two biological sexes, and none of those genders should be expected to correspond to any particular sex. Gender equality is not about erasing gender, just about erasing the barriers that hold individuals back from participating in the varieties of human expression, and having their needs responded to. It means that alimony, child support, and full custody, ought to be rewarded to stable men in a divorce once in a while. It means that men ought to be able to mentor girls just as women can mentor boys, because one's biological sex shouldn't determine what child can benefit from what adult.

Gender equality is about being able to say: "X's are typically strong, nurturing, aggressive, and emotional," and seeing that any sex, any gender, could substitute for X without causing you confusion. You should have no idea of what gender is being implied by the words "strong," and "aggressive," any more than "nurturing," and "emotional." If you truly believe in gender equality, these are qualities that any human being can possess. Gender equality does not mean biological sexes are the same, it just means that as far as culture is concerned, they should matter no more than eye color. A blue eye is different than a brown eye, surely, but does it matter what color it is so long as it sees? What is true for eye color should be what is true for gender. The sexes are different, but they should not be valued any differently. I support this extreme equality because it can be used as a thinking tool to disassemble all destructive social evaluations of males and females.

And valued differently they are, as the fetishization of the emasculation of men and boys carries on in popular culture, and the sexual objectification of women and girls continues to persist as well. If true gender equality is what we are striving for, then I will not rest until the fetishization of the devaluation of women and girls is carried out, and the sexual objectification of men and boys begins in full too. Since the existence of feminism does nothing to devalue the importance of men and boys, the same should be true in the reverse, and there should be no "feminism" without also a "masculism." There should be no double standards for men and women, at all--women should earn what men earn for the same positions and the same productivity (whatever the criterion is), and at the same time, women should not be permitted to abuse men, and there should be "Men's" shelters just as there are "Women's" shelters. What one gets, the other should get equally as much, across the board.

We could also just treat people with dignity, uphold that they are valuable, and deserve respect, based on who they are, and not what they are, but that has so far been outside our grasp as a culture. Seriously, if we can't say "International Human's Day" because to do so would be to strip away the significance of the day with a vague "human" label, then "feminism" has a long way to go before it can be considered truly pro-equality. Either we surrender to the total equality formula, stripping everything down to a vague and therefore meaningless "human" level, or we allow only equal distribution of resources and values to both sexes. Because I believe that males and females are equal, but different, I prefer the later.