Real Equality.

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Hey I am a woman and no offense taken here. I have never seen a lady's restroom dirtier than a guy's restroom. I worked as a janitor and still do but I am currently not cleaning restrooms and both restrooms have managed to stay clean at work when I would clean them.

There are nutters in all walks of life, so it is quite impossible to say something that at least one person won't find some way to take offense to it. And sometimes someone being offended is THEIR problem to deal with, not yours. Some people will take offense to anything. Like Joe Pesci's character in Goodfellas. Some people can even turn flattery into an insult, in their own mind. Trying to appease these people is pointless.

As for toilets, if 99 people use a toilet and leave it clean, nobody notices, but the instant one person leaves it in a state of disaster, THEN everyone notices. Plus, ANYONE is more likely to be a slob if they're not expected to clean up the mess, or be held responsible for it, and people are often less likely to care for things that aren't theirs.

Some internet trolls are just being edgy on the net, but other internet trolls are actually like that in their real world daily life, too, and find ways to take anything and everything as an attack. There's no point in trying to appease them, getting to be outraged over something IS what they want.

Some people just like to provoke people and start fights. They start a fight with one person, then start a fight with another person, then turn the two people against each other so you can watch them fight, maybe get other people dragged in, too. Quite a lot of that happens on here. People like that often hide behind terms like "devils advocate" or "impartial critic" to justify antagonizing both sides and provoking arguments between them.

After all, there doesn't actually have to be a movement against straight white hetero males if a small group of provocateurs can make a concerted effort to troll enough people to make it LOOK like there's a movement against said people - just enough to create what appears to be "evidence" of a larger movement. You don't need 200 people at your rally if you can take 10 different pictures of the same 20 people in different clothes.

I love how just about everyone other than MG seemed to ignore all of my other posts outside of the last one, but whatever. I should have steered clear of this discussion as soon as it was moved to the dumpster fire of PPR. I'm done here.

In theory yes, but in practice this area of the country is very different.

There is a difference between equality of action, and equality of result.

Equality of action would be giving two people identical pairs of shoes, even the same size, even though one of them has feet twice as big as the other. They've been treated "equal", but it still only helps one of them. The result is not equal.

Equality of result is recognizing they have different feet, and so giving them different shoes, with the end result being they are both equally shoe'd, even though you technically treated them "different", cos they didn't get exactly the same shoes for both of them.

Conflating the two is not difficult, especially if you mistakenly believe everyone is on equal terms to begin with. Life is not now, nor has it ever been, "fair". Equality is about redressing some of that unfairness and inequality that naturally occurs in the real world.

It's also not hard to believe that one's own situation is the most deserving - we all tend to prioritize our own survival. But many times, the things which are "denied" to us, are actually needed more by others, who do in fact have it worse. But propaganda keeps banging the drum that all of these benefits are just going to lazy people who want a free gimme-gimme handout, or to minorities just cos politicians want to treat minorities "special" for whatever agenda - and while it is true that people like that do exist, getting people to believe that as the rule rather than the exception only serves to turn people against each other. If I can convince you that everything is fair even when it isn't, then cries of injustice merely come across as demands for privilege - and removal of that inequality gets branded "injustice".

It's very difficult to do "equality of result" right.
Being a woman in STEM, I felt offended by many gender-affirmative actions - like it was insinuated that I'm inherently disabled in this field and couldn't successfully compete with boys on equal terms - which was false.

In a shoe fitting metaphor, I wouldn't like some decisive body to give me a pair of shoes. I would like a well-supplied shoe store where I can try on a huge variety of shoes to find something fitting my unique feet. I want this shoe store to have as broad offer as possible and I want everyone to have equal access to it.

The main thing that interferes with equality of result is jealousy and greed. People tend to get their feelings ruffled when they think someone else got more than them, especially if they don't "deserve" it. In practice it's pretty easy. Give people what they need. Bam. Done.

As for the shoe metaphor, that's kinda exactly my point. It's "equal" if I give everyone the same exact pair of shoes, but it doesn't help everyone equally, cos everyone is different. The solution is, as you said, let everyone pick their own shoes - but then you get people whining about "how come he got better shoes than me?!" or "but what if everyone picks $200 jordans?!" or "his shoes cost twice as much as mine, I should get TWO pairs!" instead of just being happy that everyone has shoes.

Fulfilling the need is easy. Satisfying the EGO is the hard part. You can give 2 kids literally the exact same toy, and they'll still fight over which one is "better". Adults do this too.

While I can understand how you could take STEM incentives personally, that's still you taking it personally - It's there because they recognize that *some* women may need help getting into stem, for reasons unrelated to an "inability" to do it, and this puts a system in place to be able to help them - it doesn't mean they think YOU, or ALL women NEED it. It's recognizing that some women may be behind in sciences and maths due to having been discouraged from taking it in primary school in favor of things like home-economics, band, or typing - or one of many other reasons - but not because they CAN'T do it, but simply to help them offset other / previous inequalities of opportunity.

It's like how, just cos a school offers services for the disabled, that doesn't mean they think I PERSONALLY CAN'T do school on my own, simply that SOME people MAY need help for legit reasons, and this makes it available.