Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ora!ora!daemon
From: carioca@ucscb.ucsc.edu (fOoDFoOdfOoDiTYfooD!)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: equal rights?
Message-ID: <6543@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Date: 15 Sep 90 04:44:28 GMT
References: <3781@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Organization: Santa Cruz Committee for Pacifist Linguistics
Lines: 32
Approved: ambar@ora.com

In article <3781@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> tberan@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Tom Beran) writes:
>dire situtations tend to remove most of the social veils (like equality).

Remember that it's the Iraqi government that's deciding who stays and
who goes, not the US.  Iraq has a far more patriarchal culture than
ours, and I don't think the Iraqis even try to create an appearance of
equality between men and women in the same way we do.  To the Iraqi
government, it probably seems perfectly logical to free the women
along with the children, since they might see it as a lower blow to
hold women and kids hostages, they might believe women would be less
capable of dealing with the stress of being held hostage, or they
might believe it crueler to separate the women from their children.

I for one am happy that some of the hostages are out, and don't care
what gender the freed hostages are.  I'd be much happier to see them
*all* freed, but at this point we should take what we can get.

>equality (for women) still means (and most men will tell you this):
>1. if it benefits me, treat me as an equal.
>2. if it doesn't benefit me, don't treat me as equal - treat me better
>3. if I'm not equal, but it benefits me - you're obviously discriminating.

At the risk of giving in to baiting, let me ask you this: Why, then,
do people want women allowed in combat?

-Leslie
-- 
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 Leslie Devlin   carioca@[ucscb/ucscf].UCSC.EDU  foodity@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us 
  - How many UCSC students does it take to screw in a light bulb?
  - Only one, but it takes six years
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