Wheldrake
Posts: 477
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Leanan However, anyone who really and truly believes that men (or women, or X race of humans, or GLBT people...) should be deemed inferior by all of society, and/or be the subject of discrimination that's written into law is really nothing but a bigot. It's *exactly* the same thing as being a white/black/male/etc supremacist. I think it depends on what you mean by "deemed inferior". The proposition that all men are somehow genetically or intellectually inferior to all women does amount to bigotry, and is pretty obviously incorrect. The proposition that men are slightly inferior on average in some specific abilities (I think I've seen this argued for verbal skills, for example) is easier to defend and supported by some psychological studies. However, the data are apparently conflicting and hard to interpret, and some of those same studies also show that men are slightly superior on average in some areas (spatial skills, in particular). One could also believe that men and women are approximately equal in their abilities, and still prefer to live in a society in which men were inferior in the sense of having fewer legal rights. Personally, I think it would be kind of neat if a small, sovereign country run on female supremacist principles could be established somewhere. I'm not talking about a femdom fantasy resort like the Other World Kingdom, but rather a functioning society in which women were simply the more powerful sex. In an extreme version of the idea, men would be mere chattels, but a more moderate version would give men a social position a bit like that of women in Victorian England (with lots of important differences of detail). Only women would be allowed to vote, and women would occupy virtually all of the important positions in society. The government would be exclusively female, and women would predominate in academia, business, and the legal and medical professions. Occasionally the all-powerful "old girls' club" might allow an exceptional male to have a decent professional career, but on the understanding that he would be quickly forced out if he stepped too far out of line. Most men would either keep house for their wives, or find work as manual labourers or in the service industry. A very few men could carve out prestigious careers as entertainers or athletes (why do I suspect that the hockey league might be especially popular?), but even they would be answerable to the female executives who owned the film studios and sports teams. Everyone in the country would be an adult who had freely chosen to immigrate there (for TOS-related reasons, I think we'll have to assume that everyone used 100% effective birth control all the time). If such a country were established, I don't think I'd necessarily pester my Mistress to move us there - I'm too attached to my academic career. But if she really wanted to go, I wouldn't exactly complain too much. I'd be curious to know if others would be tempted to come with us. Remember, this isn't about declaring men to be objectively inferior - it's just a question of people choosing to live in a society with a particular balance, or rather imbalance, of power between the sexes.
|