The idea that men and women are fundamentally, innately different is the basis for all of the other undead sexist cliches I blog about. According to this cliche, men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Men crave sex, women crave love. Men are logical, women are irrational. Men are smart, women are stupid. Men are competitive, women are not. Everyone knew this until feminists came along pretending that women could or should do what men do but they can’t and shouldn’t. All nature proves it. Therefore there’s nothing hypocritical or discriminatory when we judge women and men differently for doing the same things.
As I put it in a post three years ago, “Of course there are fundamental differences between men and women. Women get pregnant and undergo menstruation. Men can pee standing up. Men are more prone to colorblindness. But sexists see vaster, more profound differences, which conveniently explain why men run everything.” They ignore that many of the differences are circumstantial or cultural, for example why some women don’t enjoy sex, or that a woman who’s competitive may be judged more harshly than a competitive guy.
The truth, though, is that there is nothing in the universe more like a human man than a human woman, and vice versa (this also applies to intersex and nonbinary people). We have a massive overlap in skills, preferences, emotional and physical capabilities. Take child-rearing: compared to most animal species, most human men are incredibly involved with their kids (even though women still wind up with the brunt of the child-care). For all the talk about our differences being fixed, diaper-changing tables in men’s rooms would have sounded insane when I was a kid — why would we need them?
Men can clean house, raise kids, cook meals for the family. Women can fight in the military, perform brilliantly in science, right books and be skilled, enthusiastic lovers. Statistic — most men are better than women at X, say — have no relevance to the individual. Most men are taller than most women but that hasn’t prevented me being shorter than average.
The irrevocable differences is one of the foundational pillars for patriarchy — men run things because they’re superior. Women simply can’t be leaders/scientists/CEOs/whatever, men deserve their superior status, now go make us a sandwich.
It’s bullshit. The only reason for not having full gender equality is that men don’t want to share. Equality makes logical sense. Equality makes moral sense, and benefits society more than patriarchy, which forces us into roles regardless of competency. That’s great if you’re a mediocre white man who wants more than you deserve but it’s not good for anyone else, or society as a whole.
Plenty of people in my lifetime have complained that equality is too extreme and feminists should compromise. Equality is the compromise position between absolute male dominance and absolute female dominance.
As Frederick Douglass says, power never has, and never will concede anything without a demand. So let’s keep demanding.
