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From: geb@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu (Gordon E. Banks)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: gender-blindness and equality
Message-ID: <8910051922.AA07504@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu>
Date: 5 Oct 89 19:32:18 GMT
References: <8910041344.AA27103@mimsy.UMD.EDU> <46465@bbn.COM>
Sender: tittle@ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle)
Reply-To: geb@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu (Gordon E. Banks)
Organization: Decision Systems Laboratory, Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.
Lines: 14
Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu

In article <46465@bbn.COM> Richard Shapiro <rshapiro@BBN.COM> writes:
>
>I don't understand why people keep making this point. It's simply
>incorrect. Non-advocacy (or gender-blindness) means maintaining the
>status quo, and if that status quo discriminates against women, than
>non-advocacy means discriminating against women. Is this really so
>hard to understand?

Apparently so, since you have just made a logical contradiction. If
the status quo discriminates against women, then ipso facto it
*cannot* be gender-blind, now can it?  If you are gender-blind, there
is no basis for discriminating.  I think what you really meant to say
is the status quo would leave women in their relatively poorer
position, which you would like corrected by "affirmative action".