' G E N D E R   E Q U I T Y '

Who said that the two sexes are interchangeable?

If your point is to imply that no one here has literally made this statement, you'd be quite correct. But I think it's reasonable to conclude that this is a fair summation of the principle behind "integrate VMI" and "let girls join the Boy Scouts" and "women in combat."

I give those who hold these views (and the other such views) the benefit of the doubt--I presume that they have some intellectual basis on which to propose the destruction of traditionally sex-based public institutions. Otherwise those who call for the elimination of all public distinctions between the sexes would simply be reacting out of emotion or predjudice, and I won't accuse anyone of that without hard evidence.

So if there's some guiding principle behind the deliberate feminization of male institutions, what is it? On what rational basis is the self-ordering of our society to be modified by the coercive threat of government force?

According to the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education, that basis was "equality." As we were recently reminded [in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg's opinion for the Court forcing the Virginia Military Institute to accept female cadets], the high court's opinion was that those things which were kept "separate" could never be "equal." You would think that such jurists would know better than to commit the logical fallacy of concluding the premise... but they did it anyway by simply presuming that all persons were "equal." And every person who touts this decision as support for the elimination of all public "separateness" joins them in that error.

But what can "equal" mean in hard fact but "interchangeable?" If two things truly are equal in every way, then in every case it must be possible to replace one with the other with no observable difference in results--else they cannot be considered equal.

And so must it be for human beings. If men and women are truly "equal," such that it is not merely illegal but unethical to permit public institutions separated by sex... then it can only be the case that they are interchangeable. If they are not interchangeable--that is, if men and women are different in ways that matter in the public sphere--then they cannot ever be considered "equal," and Brown v. Board of Education was a flawed decision and an unusable precedent.

So it's "interchangeable" or nothing. No other basis supports forcing reality (e.g., the success of the U.S. armed forces in combat, the success of the Boy Scouts in promoting citizenship and leadership skills, the success of VMI in instilling in young men a sense of honor and pride in service) to kneel before unquestioned theory.

Only the unchallenged premise of "interchangeability" is an adequate defense for using the law to ignore reality. It was just as ridiculous for King Canute to order the tide back out to sea as it is for our courts and chief executives to order women to be men... or vice versa. If men and women really are publicly interchangeable, then those who advocate eliminating all separations should have the courage to call for the logically ultimate change: the enforcement by our courts of a woman's immediate right to a co-Presidency.

I nominate Jeane Kirkpatrick. *grin*

One final note: As others here can verify my having said before, it's my view that men and women are more alike than different in all the ways that matter--namely, in being human. For me, that's reason to be happy; it means that we can perceive the world differently but understand one another well enough to communicate those unique perceptions. I think we all benefit from recognizing those differences, and we lose when they're mistakenly ignored.

And aren't we all supposed to celebrate "diversity?"

Bart, the flaw in your logic is using "equal" as a synonym for "interchangeable."

As you'll see below, when the words are properly defined, they are synonymous. The flaw lies on the part of those who don't properly define the meaning of "equal."

just as we are not by law to have second-class citizens, we are also not to have kings and nobility and inherited titles. All are under the law equally regardless of lineage, creed, race, sex, etc.

This is partially true... but it means less than you seem to think.

The problem is the phrasing. (That is, with the inadequate definition of "equal.") When you define "equal" to mean "every citizen is prohibited from holding titles of nobility," that is true. But it is also a limiting of the vast field of possibilities of human behavior and ability. We may be equal in this particular legal sense, but that does not imply that we are also equal in every other sense.

In the particular case you suggested, yes, "All are under the law equally." That law, anyway! But when you say "the law" without distinction, it suggests "the body of law in its whole," as though lineage, creed, race, sex, etc. were not distinguished legally.

But this is obviously not so. What was the legal justification for "minority set-aside" contracts? How can public universities publicly tout their race-and-sex-segregated dormitories if we are all "under the law equally regardless of lineage, creed, race, sex, etc.?" How can "affirmative action" be defended legally if "the law" permits no distinctions becase we are all "equal?"

I hope it's clear that it cannot. It might be possible to defend the legality of affirmative action... but no one who truly believed in the "equality" under "the law" of the races could do so with any logical consistency whatsoever.

The problem is expressed in George Orwell's observation in Animal Farm that: "All animals are equal. (But some are more equal than others.)" The irony rests on the recognition that "equal" doesn't mean what those who use the word loosely imagine it to mean. A loose definition lets one get away with moral preening for not letting those darn men at VMI exclude women, while still allowing the same person to defend segregationist policies. A loose definition of "equal" is equivalent to "interchangeable" because it actively blinds itself to all distinctions ("lineage, creed, race, sex, etc."). A loose definition permits tautological constructions such as "All men are created equal. [That doesn't] mean that we all have the same abilities or will all succeed or all fail in all the same ways. It doesn't mean we are interchangeable. Only equal."

A loose definition is a bad one... and this is especially so when that definition is going to be used to affect the rights of hundreds of cadets, tens of thousands of Scouts, and millions of citizens who rely on a competent military defense.

A tighter--that is, better--definition of "equal" asks, "What qualities are we comparing?" It should be obvious that, if everything was compared, nothing could be equal (no matter how you define the term) to anything else. Therefore the only way in which any things can be equal is if you carefully define the qualifications you're going to compare.

That doesn't mean that they will be equal--just that carefully limiting the items observed is a necessary condition to reaching a finding of "equality."

And here, I think, is the heart of the disagreement. If I accept that the only way to truly be "equal" to someone else is to carefully specify the basis on which we're to be compared, then I have to accept two significant consequences: 1) I can't just claim "equality"; I have to examine reality to make an objective comparison, and 2) Reality might not come out on my side.

For some people (Mss. Steinem and Allred come to mind), the loose definition of "equality" is better because the need to reverse the oppression of women is a higher ethical imperative than is the acceptance of reality. If a tight definition of equality became expected, and men somehow were shown under that particular definition to be "better" than women, it would probably be used to further oppress women... therefore the loose definition of equality will be advocated at every opportunity by any means possible.

Thus the use of Brown v. Board of Education, which held only that racial segregation was impermissable in public institutions. The same error made by the justices there--the sloppy definition of "equal"--is now used to support any group which thinks its rights are being abridged.

(A word about this decision, by the way. I consider it to have been the right thing justified with a not-as-right-as-it-should-have-been opinion. The result was sound; the argument used to support it--the "'separate' cannot be 'equal'" theory--was not. That egregiously vague use of "equal" is the "flaw" I refer to--not the result itself.)

Unless someone can present a sound argument for accepting a definition of equality that permits unequal things to be lumped together (like VMI cadets or girls in the Boy Scouts), I don't see any alternative to defining "equal" by the examination of reality--and living with the results.

"PAY EQUITY"

And we still only make - what is it - $.74 on the dollar? That's if we're Anglo. For Black women I believe it's around $.57, and about $.54 for Latinas. I wonder how many Americans believe that the Civil Rights movement produced equality.

Well, I know we recently saw that farce of a "National Pay Equality Day." But as I've discussed in this forum more than once, this supposed "74 cents for every dollar a man gets" and so on is a shameful distortion of statistics for political purposes.

When our news organizations breathlessly repeat such claims, it is incredibly tempting to think that they must be telling the plain truth. Honestly, I would find them convincing myself if I hadn't run into the rest of the story (which doesn't get mentioned by media types who want to be perceived as rescuing the oppressed). So I don't blame you for buying it. But it's not accurate.

Here are a couple of the facts which don't get included in most news reports.

First, women tend voluntarily to prefer service-related jobs which involve human contact over jobs dealing primarily with equipment or data. Only because the market puts a higher value on the latter kind of jobs do those who are willing to do them earn more money--NOT because there is some conspiracy (male, vast, right-wing, or otherwise) to pay women less than men.

Second, the biological reality is that women bear children, and many of those women who can afford to do so choose to work at home raising their children instead of sticking their kids in some day care center to concentrate on maintaining their career paths. By interrupting their careers, women spend less time in the work force, and that lack of experience means they earn less than those--male or female--who work full-time without interruption.

Between these two factors, women as a whole tend to earn less than men. Not because of anything men do, but because of women's own voluntary choices of what to do. For women who have educations similar to men and who are in the work force in similar jobs as men for as long as men, these women earn approximately 97 cents for every dollar a man earns. (This information from a study by a researcher who happens to be a woman. One wonders what she earned for it....)

Concerning equality, two points. One, men and women aren't "equal" biologically, nor do I think it likely that any amount of "civil rights" legislation will alter that reality. Second, women are (as Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman and his wife have put it) free to choose. If they want to go into engineering or plumbing, no one will stop them, in which case they are likely to earn more than someone--male or female--who enters a service profession such as teaching or police work. Women are also free to choose to work, if they like, in which case they are likely to earn approximately what a man in the same position would earn; or to have children and spend some time during the work week at home, in which case they will earn less than someone--male or female--who works full-time.

It may not be pleasant to think that one is forced to choose between family and paycheck... but life is full of hard choices for everyone, not just women. Blaming others for the reality of having to make difficult choices is childish; all it does it make one a better tool in the hands of modern-day class warfare enthusiasts who profit by pitting black against white, rich against poor, old against young, and men against women.

No wide-scale abridgement of civil rights is happening here. The political and media types who bray such claims ought to be ashamed for leading reasonable people to believe otherwise.

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