I’m reminded of how outraged feminists were about the inequality when men possessed a significant majority of college degrees[1], but in the present day, after the myriad of programs/grants/scholarships exclusive to women got it to the point where women are now significantly more than half of college graduates, and men are in the minority, suddenly feminists aren’t concerned with that inequality anymore.
One of the many reasons the claims that feminism was for everyone and that there was no need for male-focused advocacy (and that, in fact, such advocacy was inherently misogynistic) because feminists ‘had it covered’, always rang hollow.
One more quick example, an anecdote from my own personal life: a feminist friend was complaining about required reading materials for high school classes not being 50/50 re the sex of the author, but being majority male authors, which was disadvantaging the girls. When I pointed out that girls already are objectively significantly ‘ahead’ of boys in those subjects, so why was she pushing for the gap to grow even wider, her only response was to get angry.
An actual egalitarian would care about a significant imbalance in either direction that’s caused by bigotry/prejudice, regardless of who’s got the short end of the stick.
In any case, I think it would just be a nicer thing if we were nicer to all people that are disadvantaged, or just people in general. Tearing others down doesn’t lift you up.
Yes, this is actual egalitarian thinking. Special interests who don’t care about inequalities that benefit ‘their group’, or stop caring when an inequality that affected ‘their group’ now favors ‘their group’, are not forces for equality/fairness.
I’m reminded of how outraged feminists were about the inequality when men possessed a significant majority of college degrees[1], but in the present day, after the myriad of programs/grants/scholarships exclusive to women got it to the point where women are now significantly more than half of college graduates, and men are in the minority, suddenly feminists aren’t concerned with that inequality anymore.
One of the many reasons the claims that feminism was for everyone and that there was no need for male-focused advocacy (and that, in fact, such advocacy was inherently misogynistic) because feminists ‘had it covered’, always rang hollow.
One more quick example, an anecdote from my own personal life: a feminist friend was complaining about required reading materials for high school classes not being 50/50 re the sex of the author, but being majority male authors, which was disadvantaging the girls. When I pointed out that girls already are objectively significantly ‘ahead’ of boys in those subjects, so why was she pushing for the gap to grow even wider, her only response was to get angry.
An actual egalitarian would care about a significant imbalance in either direction that’s caused by bigotry/prejudice, regardless of who’s got the short end of the stick.
Yes, this is actual egalitarian thinking. Special interests who don’t care about inequalities that benefit ‘their group’, or stop caring when an inequality that affected ‘their group’ now favors ‘their group’, are not forces for equality/fairness.
And this difference only became significant when the GI Bill became a thing, allowing men in the military to get a college education for free, which imo is the least the government could do for men after conscripting them, something women never had to deal with. In 1940, the difference in the college graduation rate between men and women was negligible, a measly 1.7% (5.5% male and 3.8% female). ↩︎