to not be insistant that the sexes are equal?

[elmoandella]

why do we have to be equal in all aspect of life??

we are not the same.

women are better at some of life's tasks. men are better at others.

obviously there are exceptions to this.(women with high levels of testerone for eg. tend to have a more "male" attitude and way of doing things)

i was raised by a liberal mother who did everything for herself. raised 5 kids while running a business. with no childcare and as a single parent for the most of that time we were growing up.

i was encouraged to do follow lead and be successful.

however, it seemed a very unhappy life.

i have to ponder the idea that perhaps she would have had a much more satisfactory life if she hadn't been so determined to be equal and get her own way.

is it really so terrible to just accept women may sometimes, in certain fields of work, get paid less.

I also dont see why so many women strive to equal there partner in pay.

what is wrong with your other half being the greater earner. it is half the battle then when you go for maternity leave. you will be able to relax a little and enjoy it. than worrying that the main salary is cut drastically as the female is the higher earner.

i know a few on here will want to flame me. but i would actually like to see a reasonable debate on why so many women are so determined to do everything.

tell me why you want equality so badly.

convert me!!

Of course you are being unreasonable, at least about the pay.

Same work, same pay, end of.

Don't be bloody silly.

PS I am a man.

i looking to be enlightened as to what we be so fantastic that i would want to champion for equality.

yet all i seem to be getting is flamed.

can we please turn this conversation back and someone tell me what their ideal of equality would be?

I'm with GrimmaTheNome on this one.

People have different skills, and talents and aspirations. What is important is that people aren't prevented from utilising these things because of their gender, or race or sexual orientation or any one of the multitude of things that people use to discriminate against each other.

I don't understand why you need it that way around.

What is so fantastic about inequality that you want to settle for it?

the genitals thing, as put by MI, is crucial. equality is about treating irrelevant/spurious/made-up/imagined differences as just that. equality is also about taking into account real differences. and the flip side of all this - when you fail to do these things - is called discrimination. discrimination is the failure to ignore irrelevant differences - and the failure to take into account relevant ones.

hence

• we don't assess a person's ability to do a particular kind of job on their gender/possession of a particular set of genitalia (any more than we would assess their ability on the colour of their skin) - we do it by looking at how good they are at x, y and z.

• we do provide a visually impaired person with appropriate software that they need in order to do their job. just as we provide women with maternity leave.

I too read the op and thought it was a joke, but I don;t think it is.

'Obviously some of them aren't as good as men at things like spelling and grammar....'

Still trying to formulate a reply to THAT one

captain - i made it clear in op i was looking "to be converted" and not flamed.

have you posted just to provoke an arguement.

So, Elmoandella, I take it you are nver going to use your vote, never own a cheque book or bank card, never drive a car, never refuse your husband sex (in fact, you mustn't refuse any man sex, but if any man other than your husband decides to have sex with you, you are a bitch if you refuse and a slut if you let him, and if he rapes you it's your fault because you were out without your keeper and had your hair/ankles on show.) If you don't cook very well or do 'enough' housework it's OK for your keeper to mock you, humiliate you in public, beat you up or throw you out of your home, is it?
ALl these things are things women deserve, because women are not really people they are appendages who exist only to service men sexually, domestically, and emotionally.
Is that really what you want?

Society doesn't recognise and reward different skills equally.

It may well be that on the whole women can be generalised as having one set of competencies, and men another, but the way that our society is ordered pushes the lion's share of the financial, power and status reward towards skills seen as 'male'.

That's not some cosmic natural order of things, it's a social construct.

I don't understand why you seem so determined to position yourself as 'less than', as well as 'different'.

elmo - I will rephrase my last op to give you a direct answer to your question - what would be my ideal of equality.

it would be a world where irrelevent differences are treated as irrelavent*. and where relevant differences are treated as relevant. it's actually not that difficult.

*I am loosing the ability to spell, but that's not important right now

I have never yet posted just to provoke an argument! I am possibly the least argumentative soul on mumsnet, but you are not making any sense to me - it's a non-question that you are asking. I'm trying to explain, but dipping in and out while playing 'garages' with my 2 yo.

[shit - maybe my loss of spelling ability is important....is it becoz I is a woman? ]

yez. It's yr hormonz.

Hatwoman - you are proving xenia right - stop it immediately

captain. good point about social construct.

yet women let men do this too them in first place.

elmoandella, if I posted something saying "can't we just accept that races are unequal, why are you all so insistent that black people are treated the same as white poeple", would you expect people to try and convert me, or would you just expect them to challenge me on my racist assumption that one race is inferior to another?

Because I would expect the latter and you mustn't be too surprised that people can't be arsed to explain too much about why women are as valuable as men, as most of us take it for granted that we are.

Elmoandella, you need to stop hanging out with the dog-collar-wearing, hairy-legged angry lesbian group at your local university! Your ideas about what feminism means and what feminists and women in general want seem to be terribly old-fashioned!
Surely your mother was unhappy because she was struggling to raise 5 children on her own, not because she was a woman. Do you think it would have been more fun if she's been a man?
You seem to be making some very strange assumptions about women's motivations for working and wanting fair treatment in the work place. What (for example) makes you think women are desperately trying to match thier partners salary?

Elmo, you posted a controversial and provocative thread. There have been plenty of compelling arguments made on here that would have 'converted'you should you be open minded enough to listen.

madam thank you. thats the kind of thing im after.

what do we really look for when searching for "equal"

i like your view on it.

Elmoandella, did the africans "let" the whites make them slaves as well?

right. i'm off to nurture my children.

glad to see there were a few who had been thinking along the similar lines to me.

shall try and think of equality along madams idea. it makes sense to me. and that appeals.

Elmo, perhaps you would do better to ask yourself what are the reasons why men and women are not equal today?

I'm sure many of the posters on this thread could give you loads of historical reasons but I'll start: using aggression to assume dominance over women.

Anyone else?

When you consider it from that angle can you honestly say that the status quo is acceptable?