James Bloodworth has a good post at Left Foot Forward on why we oppose gender segregation at public events.
As long as neither gender is put at a disadvantage by imposed segregated seating – i.e. men and women will be ‘separate but equal’ – Universities UK don’t see any problem with it.
To get an idea of just how absurd this is, imagine for a minute the justified furore there would be if racial segregation were permitted on campus on the basis that black and white people were ‘different but equal’. Imagine if gay people were separated out from their straight friends on the basis that they were ‘difference but equal’, with those refusing to move booted out of the lecture hall for no other reason than their sexuality.
You know this would not be permitted, and yet it is with women. Why?
Because it’s different. It gets a partial exemption, or sometimes a full exemption. Why? Because it’s so hard to give up the subordination of women. Why? Because sex, and family life, and habit, and all sorts of things related to that. Because it’s up close and personal.
Religions get an exemption for hiring all-male clergy, after all. Why’s that? Why do you not see them any longer barring Other Races, when you do see them quite cheerfully barring women? Because gender inequality goes deeper than the other kinds. Why does it? Because it’s there, I guess, like Everest. Humans like to sort and rank and evaluate, and gender is the first criterion most people encounter.
Or to put it another way, I don’t know, but it does.
What about mixed race people? Would they segregate based on actual skin color? (That would only be interesting in that it would be illustrative of the continuum of such a basic physical trait.)
Now…make me a sammich! 😉
That will never not be funny, and by “never not be funny” I mean, ugh, seriously? I’m so sick of the “make me a sandwich” meme, even in ironic jest.
Wy not sit on a fence forever? It gets painful, that’s why. Some things do, over time. Maybe you will find out.
What is it about gender that makes people insist on changing the subject to race to highlight the “no clear division” problem?
‘Cuz everyone knows that there’s a clear gender divide, duh! And a clear divide in biological sex? Let’s not suggest that segregating people based on breast or butt size might be illustrative of an unworkable continuum, despite the hyperventilating of conservatives over visible breasts and butts being the reason such segregation is, in their view, necessary.
Hanuman’s Hairy Knuckles, we don’t need anyone on our side who thinks you have to change the subject to race to find an example of an unworkable continuum in a trait used to justify discrimination!
Resist the temptation to agree with me if you can’t come up with anything better than changing the subject.
Crip Dyke @4, I have yielded.
Your sardonic tone is duly noted, but yes, that concept has huge cultural weight, and will remain perpetuated while almost all art and literature depicting identity and relationships is predicated on it.
(Also, men’s and women’s toilets)
Also, what’s the VERY FIRST QUESTION everybody asks when a baby’s born?
(Okay, a baby doesn’t have many features in the first minutes of life to differentiate it from any other baby, granted. Maybe that’s what people ask because that’s the only variable. But with the answer comes the definition of a great deal of that baby’s life…)