RL asks, we answer:
What I took issue with was his thinnly veiled assertion that the history and biology made it right and that women should just accept their position as cows.
“It’s been that way for millions of years, and only just the last few decades have people like you begun to believe differently.” – George.
My example with the king was showing how most people on this site, I strongly suspect, wouldn’t agree with that line of reasoning if applied to other areas of longstanding (but generally overturned in modern times) historical precedent. Thus, why should women necessarily accept their biological and historical position?
1. Because the human race will end if they do not accept their biological position. Women, to their credit, are not indifferent to this, as the fear of nuclear war and global warming shows. Nevertheless, it is the Western woman’s refusal to accept the biological demands which God/Nature/evolution has placed on them that is on the verge of guaranteeing the loss of every so-called advance that women today currently cherish. As we are already seeing in Europe, if a society becomes insufficiently interested in sustaining itself for whatever reason, other societies will readily move in to replace it. This is not exactly a new phenomenon.
2. Since very few women are both interested in and capable of a productive career in theoretical or applied sciences, any prospective technological solutions would likely be primarily dependent upon men. As I alluded in my column yesterday, a brave new technological world is just as likely to degrade women’s position in society as it is to enhance it, if not more so.
3. Because women are biologically disadvantaged and will always be personally vulnerable to individual male power and aggresiveness. This is one reason why the serious gender feminists push lesbianism. Without completely breaking all contact with men, it is impossible for a woman to maintain a position of superior power without the tacit acceptance of the men supporting her.
As for questions of right and wrong, that obviously depends on your perspective. The West’s Judeo-Christian cultural tradition clearly indicates that women have a duty to accept their special position, which is not a bovine one but rather one of supreme importance. If one rejects that, as many obviously do, then one cannot really make any judgment on the matter without first defining the morality with which one is doing so.