Identical or Equal?
Origin of the Longest War
One of the most obvious reasons for the origin of gender inequality is the biological difference between different genders. A man’s body is built differently from a woman’s. That’s a known fact. Now either the patriarchal views are
wrong or I missed where it’s okay to give men more rights because of that. Whether it’s a biological difference or the difference in responsibility, or difference in income, every human deserves to be treated equally.
Is inequality the art of being unidentical?
I wouldn’t describe feminism as women's fight to look like, or do everything like men. It’s the fight to have equal rights as men.
One partner may happen to have more power in any number of ways, but for the most part, it’s a relationship between people who have equal standing and so are free to define their roles themselves.
This is a quote by Rebecca Solnit from her book ‘Men Explain Things to Me’. The ‘power’ she describes in this quote could be the power over finances in a relationship, not because of one’s gender, but because of their working or income status. Or it could be one’s ability to run the household better than the other. Power seems like quite a powerful term today, because of the amount of time it has been used to describe what men and only men have. Power could be gained through anything, and the healthy way to gain it is through skills, rather than gender. What this quote by Solnit is trying to convey is, that in a healthy relationship, the partners’ backgrounds are forgotten and they are independent to choose their roles as individuals.
What can we do?
Firstly, understand that when someone stands up and demands equality, they are demanding basic human rights without consideration of gender, not to look and function like men. We need to be accepted. We need to be able to say, “I don’t fit into your stereotypes, but I need you to accept me because I’m just as human as you are and deserve just as many rights.”
Don’t raise your boys differently from your girls. They are all humans put on this world to offer their part. Let’s give them an equal chance to do so.
