We’ve legislated equality. We’re done now right?
Wrong Answer Binky; legislating equality is just the first tiny step, because equality has many parts to it, including justice and fairness. Illustrated below:
We’ll be heading in the right direction when women do not have to deal with garbage like this:
In 2006, researchers from the University of Maryland set up a bunch of fake online accounts and then dispatched them into chat rooms. Accounts with feminine usernames incurred an average of 100 sexually explicit or threatening messages a day. Masculine names received 3.7.
–From the article Why Women Are Not Welcome on the Internet by Amanda Hess.
I recommend following the link and reading the article, it is very informative and details the experience of being female and possessing an online presence.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
10 comments
January 23, 2014 at 9:27 am
syrbal-labrys
This is why my online screen name meant “axe”…I was very rarely harassed or threatened.
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January 23, 2014 at 11:49 am
ojmo
The graphic captures the difference between “equality of opportunity” and “equality of outcome” rather nicely, and why we need more of the latter to achieve justice. Of course, a conservative would disagree and say the first panel is precisely what we need, no less and certainly no more.
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January 23, 2014 at 11:53 am
The Arbourist
@ojmo
It is funny how conservatives do that in so many situations. As long as the game is tilted in their favour it is all sunshine and roses. Suggest that the rigged game is somehow unfair or unbalanced, let the histrionics begin. I think it would be educational for them to be put in a situation where they are the in the underprivileged class and then they can experience having their legitimate concerns hand-waved away.
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January 23, 2014 at 1:00 pm
ojmo
If only :twisted:
It’s funny too how when they get themselves in trouble, as in the financial crisis, they’re the first to beg for a handout.
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January 23, 2014 at 5:24 pm
bleatmop
It makes perfect sense for the conservatives to act the way they do. When you have one set of standards for you and those you consider your peers and another set of standards for everyone else their actions become perfectly aligned with what we see in reality. We see this in many situations such as the welfare for the rich, none for the poor and the my abortion is the only moral abortion tropes that have become a part of our society.
For example, my mother in law recently sent me a chain letter shaming people for being on “big government social assistance”. In it it shamed these people, saying that they should not get money but coupons for rice and beans, that they should be forced to sell their homes and cars before income came to them, and that they should all be forced to have routine drug screening. This might seem like a typical conservative jerk just spreading propaganda until you know the rest of the story; that being that she has recently been laid off at work and is currently complaining to everyone that her EI benefits are going to run out at the end of the month.
Yes, she get screwed over by her previous employer, and no, I don’t think she deserves to lose everything. In fact, I’m quite in favor of her getting more EI benefits. However the hypocrisy of her sending me that email while getting “big government” social assistance drives me up the wall. That she doesn’t get the connection that beliefs in this shite and propagating it is what enables conservative governments to cut off social assistance to save money (to give back to the rich), ultimately screwing herself over.
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January 23, 2014 at 6:26 pm
Reneta Scian
“There is nothing more unequal than equal treatment of unequal people” – Thomas Jefferson. I do not believe that justice is connected to equality in the way that picture is depicting. It’s not equality to treat everyone the same, and justice doesn’t come in and fix that. Real equality requires we recognize people by their specific needs and uplift them all to equal status, not just given blanket treatment. Justice, to me, is when a society maintains order equally across the board, and does not dole out punishment unequally, anymore than it doles out protection. Justice is a part of equality, but by no means does it speak for equality. Sadly, justice is not blind in America, and there can be no true equality until it is. But equality alone should include the differential treatment of some people based on their exceptional qualities (disability, age, income bracket, et cetera), or qualities that require unequal treatment to achieve true equality. Perhaps though, that part of equality is where the necessity for equality overlaps with justice.
As for the internets, I’m no stranger to being threatened because of my gender, and it’s a sad, sad sign of the time.
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January 25, 2014 at 7:59 am
The Arbourist
@Reneta
I think that is what the picture is illustrating Reneta.
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January 26, 2014 at 5:56 am
VR Kaine
I think the liberal/conservative argument comes down to 1) who’s supposed to be supplying the boxes, and 2) how.
Is the tallest boy supposed to be providing the boxes simply because he’s the tallest, and is he being made to provide them by force?
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January 26, 2014 at 8:48 am
The Arbourist
If the tallest wants to keep his head, then he should do his or her best to make society a reasonable place for everyone to live.
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January 31, 2014 at 10:19 pm
VR Kaine
“keep his head”?
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