Are Men and Women Equal?

quit_being_a_wussy · 2014-02-25T05:04:53+00:00

Well I will just dive right into the whole equal socially thing if I may.

I think once you realize how diverse men and women are within their own genders you realize we are equal. Look at the idea that women are emotional and men are logical. It is my belief that people are simply emotional over things they are emotionally invested in. So women come across as emotional because they may care about things men don't and men come across as little babies who need to be coddle because women don't understand the things men are sad about. Men view other men as logical when they both agree on things and women view women as logical because they often agree on things too.

Edit: Words.

polyhooly · 2014-02-25T17:41:20+00:00

There are some subjects in which men, as a group, are stronger than women, and some subjects in which women, as a group, are stronger in than men. These are general trends. They are not rules. They do not apply to individuals. Next, some of these difference are social, some are not. We should not just blindly accept any difference in men and women as inherent.

The word "equal," in regards to people, is not synonymous with "different." It denotes status. Status denotes worth. In patriarchal societies, men are the default human beings. This means that women are measured against men, and where they are not identical to men, they are seen as inferior. Even in places where women excel over men, such as verbal skills, are deemed as not as important as the aspects in which men excel. Whether or not you agree with my assessment here, this is why people have an issue with framing the question of differences between men and women as one of equality, because in a culture that vales the contributions of men over women, women will always be the inferior ones. This does not mean that groups, such as feminists, believe there are zero differences between men and women.

AdmiralVonJackass · 2014-02-25T06:22:27+00:00

Let me preface this by saying I believe free will is a myth. We are driven by our biological urges, and use everything at our disposal to fulfill them.

Men and women are biologically different. Same species, different urges. They are not equal in their wants, thus their habits and behavior will also differ. You can also say this about members of the same sex. Individuals will fit into different classes of wants and habits.

With such variety being in place, striving for equality in all things would be futile. Everyone is starting at a different point, and playing different games. What society can hope to do is give everyone the opportunity to play the game that they want. When a woman chooses to play a man's game though, she opens herself to the same consequences that a man would suffer.

If a woman wants to enter a man's world, or vice-versa, I don't see why anyone would want to stop them. Really though, these are the urges of a minority, and I don't see why they are given so much consideration.

What is so distasteful about the idea that not all human beings are equal? A cat is not equal to a tiger, I do not find offense in this. They are both felines. I merely expect different things from both creatures, because they are biologically different.

Sometimes individuals defy the expectations of their biological class, and not only do I accept it, I celebrate it. It is a sign of a quality character to be able to surpass your basic circumstances, and I respect those that do so.

There is no cartoonish racism or misogyny fueling my ideals, but rather a desire to interpret reality in the most effective way possible.

Vodkas21 · 2014-02-25T06:03:24+00:00

These are my observations, I don't believe men and women are equal and that's not limited to the most obvious physical differences.

All the top entrepreneurs, innovators, top performers in arts and culture and politicians are men. Even in sports like chess where physical differences mean nothing on how well you perform are dominated by men.

This comes down to the differences in how we think men have a stronger drive to excel, this probably comes down to the fact that women are the ones that select the mate and men are the ones that demonstrate higher value.

As for the chess example it comes down to the difference in our intelligence, men have wider bell curve distribution which means we make up more of the retards in society but we also make up the majority of genius' in society, whereas women have a smaller bell curve distribution. Chess is a game typically played by those with more intelligence so the top % of men have more intelligence than the top % of women that's why they struggle to compete in games such as chess.

Those_Who_Remain · 2014-02-25T11:50:22+00:00

There are physical differences between them, that can't be denied. Mentally...these differences seem to be far smaller than TRP is suggesting. But in terms of equality, men and women should have the same opportunities and rights.

[deleted] · 2014-02-25T05:05:25+00:00

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AFormidableContender · 2014-02-25T21:47:39+00:00

The problem with asking this question is that there is a distinct difference between real world value and philosophical value.

In every day life, there are shitty women and shitty men and there are high quality women and high quality men.

Philosophically speaking, however, there is a large and important difference between the intrinsic respect due to men and women as animals/creatures of nature. The man has a far higher maintenance of life; he requires the knowledge and skills to feed himself, cloth himself, make a comfortable life for himself, attract women in an active fashion, and compete with all the other males. There is no safety net for me...we either succeed or we fail.

On the other hand, women really don't have any maintenance of life whatsoever. They're biological value is determined at birth because nothing matters but their physical appearance and their life is basically an exercise at not losing value as opposed to creating value like men's are, and even if they fail, they can simply attach themselves to stronger men and suck value out of others as opposed to creating themselves. At the end of the day, they're only purpose is being a baby factory.

I don't think anyone can claim, with any intellectual honesty, that women are wortht he same as men in an overarching philosophical discussion of gender.

rulenumber303 · 2014-02-26T16:28:47+00:00

Left to their own devices many men seem barely capable of eating enough fibre to avoid roids before 40 and clearing away coffee mugs before they grow fruiting bodies of mold. Left to their own devices many women seem barely capable of earning enough money to keep a roof over their head. I'm not about to award a winner's prize to either gender kthx.

I think that the societies that make best use of their human capital are ones that assure a high degree of equality of access to opportunities.

Also, usual disclaimer... I think both red and blue have part of the truth.

fasterfind · 2014-03-03T21:20:21+00:00

People are equal. Women and men are not.

GaiusScaevolus · 2014-02-25T14:18:28+00:00

Are people equal?

KittyHamilton · 2014-02-25T09:02:52+00:00

There are probably some innate behavioral differences between men and women as groups, but I doubt they are significant. Social factors influence behavior so much attributing anything purely to biology is risky business.

RedBackJumpingSpider · 2014-02-26T06:59:02+00:00

Men and women aren't equal, no. The genitals and some other regions are different. However, let's say all men have an unexpressed gene on their Y chromosome that sometimes causes them to be short. Some global event mutated it and now 50% of all male offspring are 4 feet tall. Would me not women now be taller? On average, women would, but when looking at an average woman and an average man without the hypothetical mutation, the man would be taller. Whether men and women according to a statistic are better or worse in any way is a rather meaningless concept except relating to statistics. Some women are better than some men and some men are better than some women. I don't live in a world based on percentages like I'm a conscious calculator.

Tl;dr Men and women are individuals. Show me one male and one female that are exactly equal, and then I can say men and women are equals. Until then, some men are better and some women are better.

TheSliceman · 2014-02-26T18:26:42+00:00

Yes. Equal but opposite.

BabeOfBlasphemy · 2014-03-01T21:12:21+00:00

Humans aren't biologically equal and to think they are is to ignore reality. But to assume these differences mean one gender is inherently less apt to be sentient, intellectual, artistic, etc is utter horse shit. Our greatest potentials are best served in a society that views our varying gifts as complimentary synergies that our beneficial to the survival of our species if we work together. We should thus be given equal opportunity, equal education, equal representation, and equal regard as humans.

l_lecrup · 2014-03-01T23:27:54+00:00

It's not the case that men outperform women physically 99% of the time. You're thinking of physical tasks that men are trained to be better at doing from a very early age. Young boys are doing pushups and being taught that their masculinity is tied in with their upper body strength, young girls are taught something completely different about the value of their bodies. So you can't do the control experiment.

You all but admitted that you think an unequal society is a good thing. Lemmeguess, you want to be on the powerful side of that inequality?

shitlordlucy · 2014-02-25T18:48:07+00:00

Purple here, I think men and women both bring an equal amount of good/bad things to the world on average (I do think it differs by individual, to an extent) but I think they are still different (again, ON AVERAGE).

[deleted] · 2014-02-25T23:10:11+00:00

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MissPearl · 2014-02-26T18:47:14+00:00

TL;DR- You probably need to define equality first, before I can tell you what I think it is. Legally equal and the problems both genders have are our collective problems.

I think that men and women are equal in the sense of deserving equal rights- including all the positive social change I want for women- I want equal paternity leave for men, equal protections from violence, equal access to social programs and support, etc...

I think men being physically stronger than women is largely moot, since most of what humans do is not dependent on physical strength, and more to the point it comes with a number of draw backs- for example needing a higher caloric intake. I think that there has been a long tendency to think in terms of the old cliche about having a hammer therefore every problem being a nail- being male bodied has been treated like the default for problem solving, which has also defined the nature of what is and isn't a problem and how it needs to be solved.

To illustrate, I generally don't consider myself physically superior to men because I can not only easily touch my toes, but get my palms flat to the floor and more men than women have problems with this task. I also expect to live longer, in my case not only with a general average in my early eighties, but with a family history that suggests a good shot at almost a century- female physical structural integrity appears to last longer than male structural integrity but: once again, this is not a sign that my social roles should be radically different from my male peers.

Other factors like the ratio of male to female suicides makes me feel that society collectively fails men and a lot of gender inequality appears to have a social component- starting from birth we expose male infants to more risk and female infants to more socialization, long before sex hormones have effected measurable physical changes other than directing the development of a baby's genitals enough to be able to claim "it's a $gender!"

Social psychology in perception of the other (gender, ethnic group) shows shifts in how we rank the performance of different genders, so you can't reliably say that the way men or women are perceived is going to stay static, much if you study US history you can see successive waves of when different immigrant groups were disliked- nobody calls Germans dirty and diseased anymore, but there was a time when they were seen that way- much like there was a time when the US had to have a court case to decide if Finns were white.

Legal status gets really, really complicated because we're back to the 'hammer' problem. In Canada, where I live, custodial disputes, last I checked, tend to be settled by the courts in favour of both genders, and privately (which is how the vast majority of separating couples do it) in favour of women. We also have some weird legal precedents like allowing three people to be equal as parents (pioneered by lesbian + sperm donor arrangements) and the general feminist causes here include trying to equal out salaries completely, universal daycare, better abortion access and are the birthplace of the "Slutwalk" and the "Don't be that Guy" campaigns (as well as the Toronto MRA protest). I mention this because it's important not to treat countries as interchangeable- likewise Canadian law provides more protection for gender discrimination in both directions, and our sexual assault laws are written to be more inclusive- the US tries to get more into specifics about what is and isn't your nono square and what consent isn't (eg what someone wears).

I don't think people are literally equal in the sense of being clones, but one of humanity's strengths is that we're good at being fairly interchangeable and working on collective projects. I don't think, outside of lactation and muscle density, sex forms enough of a distinction to matter, especially not in a highly technically advanced society, or for that matter, one with dairy animals or tool use. Living with systemic social inequalities because we're all starving to death, or a really strong person with a sword keeps coming and hitting us might be a regrettable but necessary concession- living with them when most people's biggest daily challenge is remembering to close parenthesis and participate more in meetings to get a promotion, or to try to schedule regular exercise and stick to their paleo diet is... stupid.

Canned_Wine199 · 2014-02-25T18:57:23+00:00

Physically, I believe that men and women are inescapably unequal. The average man is stronger than all but the top .1% of women,

Does anyone have sources on this stuff? I hear all sorts of claims like this, some more absurd like that video of that fedora'd pua everyone was making fun of a few weeks back saying "The strongest woman in the world couldn't beat an average man in a fair fight" I really don't think your statement's accurate though, I'd pin it closer to the average man being equivalent to the top 1-2 percent of women, but again that's all just speculation, could be more or less. The differences are certainly greater in the upper body than the lower body, but especially in terms of lower body strength the differences aren't that high. I'm pretty sure a reasonably athletic woman can have as much lower body strength as a man of equal size

Title	Are Men and Women Equal?
Author	GaiusScaevolus
Upvotes	8
Comments	138
Date	February 25, 2014 3:59 AM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/1yv1ar/are_men_and_women_equal/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/are-men-and-women-equal.286164 https://theredarchive.com/post/286164