is 'difference' ever not just an excuse to oppress?

[MitchyInge]

don't think have ever heard people truly in favour of equality refer to difference between sexes

makes me feel grumpy about the whole idea of women being different from men, how do you separate perceived differences from thousands of years of social conditioning anyway?

There are biological differences. Pregnancy and breastfeeding.

Other than that, as the saying goes, there is more difference within the sexes then between them.

in answer to the title - IMO DEFINITELY NOT! Followed another thread onto some debate programme called "The Big Questions" (BBC1 Sunday morning) and there was notorious misogynist Christopher Hitchens making great play of the difference between the sexes. For some reason when anyone talks about this supposed difference it's considered heresy to disagree with them.

I would love to challenge these people to a battle of evidence, in which I ask them to come to me with the stats for the total wide differences between men as a group, and women as a group, and they chicken out at the last minute because the dog ate their homework. In my view "difference" is a clever catch-all word that allows discrimination to continue (the aforementioned debate was about "women bishops - more trouble than they're worth?")

you might be interested in a related thread here

aha! thanks

this is a newish area for me, I actually got lost on my way to the tack room

am going to save that thread for tomorrow, hopefully it won't depress me with lots of 'oh we are so much more intuitive sensitive and emotional than our robust and more stable male counterparts' and other such nonsense

I don't think you need to worry about too much of that . Although there is another thread in here somewhere where the OP was trying that tack (see what I did there ) here...

There are biological differences between the genders to say otherwise is naive and showing a lack of biological knowledge as well as lack of sight

Ooh do enlighten us sammy

Well yes different body parts. Funnily enough though I don't think people can be referring to such things when they talk about the important "differences" between the genders that make it ok for men to do some things and not for women. That's why I sometimes have conversations that go like this:

them - "but men have always been bishops, they're naturally more authoritative"

me - "why, is it a bring your own sceptre party nowadays?"

otherwise known as the "do you drive with your dick?" argument.

Gender not really a biological thing tho is it sammy

A male of the same size is 15% stronger then a women because male muscle is denser.

Still doesn't mean an employer should brush women off before they have even walked in the door due to the job they are applying for being manual labour.

the female applicants might well be built like brick shit houses, thus stronger then the avarage or weedy guy the job would otherwise be given to.

So in a way it sometimes is a form of oppression, altho the differences are there, unnecessary assumptions are often made to the determent of women.