Equality is not equality when one side feels they have to put down the other in the process.
I’ll give two examples, though there are many, where women feel the need to exclude men, who suffer equally on an individual basis, in order to bring attention to their own suffering.
Abuse
Breast Cancer
Both men and women are victims of physical, emotional and sexual abuse which includes rape and murder. 1 in 3 victims of abuse is male.
Men are raped, murdered for their sexuality, attacked at home and work and for every male abused, it’s just as serious as when it is a women except men have the added stigma of men supposedly being too strong to be abused.
Men can also get breast cancer. The disease doesn’t discriminate so, why do women sufferers?
1% of all cases are men and for each one of those men, it’s equally as devastating as for women, perhaps more so as it is universally accepted as a women only disease.
Many women are surprised to discover men in a breast cancer clinic, some actually discriminate and demand to know why.
Things only women can get away with
- Women only Gyms
- Women only swimming sessions
- Female sexual harassment of men and, before you argue that the law applies to both. Remember that soft drink advert where the ‘fit’ guy is cleaning the windows and all the women are staring? If that was gender reversed it would have been banned
- ‘Mum’s gone to Iceland’. That overly sexist banner add from the frozen food retailer though I am not sure if it is worse for the women or the men
- Women who claim that men get enough their way so all the above is just totally justified
- 90% of every clothes store
- Mothers day gifts made at schools for mums yet, nothing for father’s day.
- Cubicles at swimming pools whilst men just get one room.
- Preference in parenting from so many sources. In a divorce the assumption and often reality is that the mother gets residency of the children. When children are at school, all letters are sent home to the mother even when there is no mother.
- The assumption that women are natural parents whereas ‘men’ have no natural bond with their child.
- Multitasking … the myth that only women can multitask, it is simply untrue and if the gender assignment were switched, there would be complaints from women.
- Women presenting themselves as the weaker sex in order to get a man to do the heavier work and proudly saying to the man ‘that’s the only reason we have you here’. Let’s reverse that and have a group of men tell a women to do the dishes because, that’s the only reason they let her be there.
There are so many inequalities which both genders persist in repeating and we need to stop this now.
It’s not funny, it’s a form of abuse
When we set someone apart because of their gender we insult them as individuals. All of us have the right to be respect equally to those around us, men, women and those yet to make up their mind.
Equality is exactly that, it is not a war where one side needs to win over the other. In this, we all should come out winners