How Equal Do We Want the World? – Dan Ariely

@Tildeb

It’s very frustrating because seeing bias is always easier when looking outwards and very difficult looking inwards.

Absolutely. One of the side-‘benefits’ of holding a minority position on a contentious issue can be greater sensitivity to issues that cloud said issue. Good for self-reflection, not so good for fixing the people still clinging to protective biases.

A while back concerning a post about feminism here at DWR, I made mention of the idea that gender discrimination would end only when most people stopped using gender as a meaningful identity. I was taken to task by several commentators for daring to question this gender narrative.

I had to do a little searching to find the post in question. It was a reblog of Jadehawk on Puala Kirby I do believe.

Considering the acrimony of our debates on geo-politics, this exchange seems positively sublime. There are a few things going on in that particular thread – I think some clarity with regards to what is expected on the level of the individual and then on the class level could have gone a long way toward clearing up the issues presented.

I was using Rawls’ approach in that consideration that as long as we continue to award importance of quality characteristics to gender identity, we empower the flip side of well intentioned affirmative action (well intentioned positive discrimination assuring the continuation of negative discrimination because we are continuing to use gender as a meaning identity of a group rather than where it quite properly belongs: with the individual).

The short answer, now is that I basically agree with you. Gender is an oppressive construct and should be dismantled ASAP. Longer; concerns are that individual and group identities are not the same and should be treated differently.

A woman who has the characteristics we define as leadership qualities is no less a leader than a man in the same role. How she and he are perceived in society doing the same role is quite different – bitchy in her case and assertive in his for an example. So any *individual* can take action and demand stuff and be super-proactive – but the change she/he affects is local and temporal.

Action, and mobilization as a class takes time and many co-factors all zinging about on the same frequency (like herding cats using only harsh words) to get change happening on a societal level.

Using a Rawlsian analysis is a fantastic tool for ferreting out biases and self-serving arguments, we seem to be in agreement there.

in the vulnerable position of having to join some country operating under sharia law and only then consider how much legal tolerance and acceptance we should offer to those trying to bring about this condition in Western secular liberal democracies.

Well said. :)

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