I dislike this line of argument which consists of comparing proposed gender segregation at talks to historical racial segregation in the US. It reminds me a great deal of the misuse of the Holocaust to oppose just about anything a speaker is opposed to. It’s using a universally recognised Bad Thing to oppose something with which it has few things in common. It’s using an emotional response to that Bad Thing as a substitute for argument. To me, the mere fact of exploitation of said Bad Thing feels disrespectful to all parties concerned and rather makes me want to distance myself from people making this argument than the reverse.
It’s also a line of argument which ignores the fact that gender is not really all that similar to race in all sorts of ways and that the history of gender segregation and separate gender roles is very different from racial history. It ignores huge amounts of gender segregation and differential gender roles that are completely prevalent and accepted in society to pick on a particular incident. There’s a huge irony to the signs protesting ‘school segregation’ when, as I’ve already noted, Ophelia hasn’t been waging a campaign against girls’ and boys’ only schools (or against girl guides or gender segregated sports teams). If you do decide to start doing so, Ophelia, I hope you stick to developing an argument against those things in their own right. Or, if you want to use analogies to historical social wrongs, you could actually work out a line of reasoning supporting that rather than flashing images that are supposed to be emotionally charged at us.
NB: I realise it’s Maryam’s graphic, but it’s reproduced here.
theoreticalgrrrlsays
Pen,
I hate when people minimize sexism and misogyny with the argument that there are more important forms of discrimination out there.
Pensays
Theoreticalgrrrl – me too. The relevance of your comment to mine, please?
theoreticalgrrrlsays
Why is it wrong to compare racism with misogyny, like Maryam has done with this photo? It’s not for emotional charged, non-rational reasons, it’s based on facts. Segregating women from men at Universities is based on the Islamic belief that women are inferior, subhuman and dirty. The same belief was behind black and white segregation in the U.S.
I dislike this line of argument which consists of comparing proposed gender segregation at talks to historical racial segregation in the US. It reminds me a great deal of the misuse of the Holocaust to oppose just about anything a speaker is opposed to. It’s using a universally recognised Bad Thing to oppose something with which it has few things in common. It’s using an emotional response to that Bad Thing as a substitute for argument. To me, the mere fact of exploitation of said Bad Thing feels disrespectful to all parties concerned and rather makes me want to distance myself from people making this argument than the reverse.
It’s also a line of argument which ignores the fact that gender is not really all that similar to race in all sorts of ways and that the history of gender segregation and separate gender roles is very different from racial history. It ignores huge amounts of gender segregation and differential gender roles that are completely prevalent and accepted in society to pick on a particular incident. There’s a huge irony to the signs protesting ‘school segregation’ when, as I’ve already noted, Ophelia hasn’t been waging a campaign against girls’ and boys’ only schools (or against girl guides or gender segregated sports teams). If you do decide to start doing so, Ophelia, I hope you stick to developing an argument against those things in their own right. Or, if you want to use analogies to historical social wrongs, you could actually work out a line of reasoning supporting that rather than flashing images that are supposed to be emotionally charged at us.
NB: I realise it’s Maryam’s graphic, but it’s reproduced here.
Pen,
I hate when people minimize sexism and misogyny with the argument that there are more important forms of discrimination out there.
Theoreticalgrrrl – me too. The relevance of your comment to mine, please?
Why is it wrong to compare racism with misogyny, like Maryam has done with this photo? It’s not for emotional charged, non-rational reasons, it’s based on facts. Segregating women from men at Universities is based on the Islamic belief that women are inferior, subhuman and dirty. The same belief was behind black and white segregation in the U.S.