What is Equality?

[smdzTheCakeGodL]

Welp, this is a thing xD

There is a lot of worldwide controversy going on nowadays about what people are considered "equal", so I decided to create a debate thread on here because why not? (plus I'm a bit curious as to how many people on here agree, how many disagree, and what arguments the people that disagree have xD)

I don't believe that every man shall be created equal, I believe that every PERSON shall be created equal, no exceptions. I am a 100% pro-gay marriage anti-racist feminist, and again, no exceptions. I believe that it doesn't matter if you love someone of the opposite or same gender, you should still be able to marry the person you love. I believe that it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman, you should still get equal pay. I could go on and on about all the different groups that are being discriminated and not treated as "equals" by some although they should, but I'll leave it as it is and talk more about my opinion when those things come up.

As you can tell I strongly agree with the idea that each person is created equal, but tell me what you guys think :3

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

Basically the same thing you described, everyone should simply be seen and treated as human.
We don't allow things like sex, gender, sexuality or race divide us.

Which is why I'm an Egalitarian, and strongly against feminism's recent trend of bashing and vilifying people for being male, white, cis or straight.

 

[ASTA]

From a moral perspective, campaigning for equality is a noble and just cause to fight for (especially if you're a genuine humanitarian with a penchant for espousing liberal sentiments and not some random asshat that's just following the sociopolitical bandwagon of the contemporary era), but it's a futile effort unsupported by simple deductive reasoning and outright obliterated by the unyielding tyranny of science.

We aren't born equal and we never will be. Any person gifted with two functional eyes and a smidgen of common sense should come to this empirical cessation.

 

[Infinatis]

I agree. No one is born equal. A kid who is born in countries like Uganda and a kid who is born in England aren't equal since they were not born in the same conditions.

 

[Infinatis]

Which is why I'm an Egalitarian, and strongly against feminism's recent trend of bashing and vilifying people for being male, white, cis or straight.

That makes me mad (today's feminists). Before everything was nice. Then suddenly anyone that doesn't agree with them 100% is an abuser, rapist and should rot in hell (from some radicals Ive met). And we shouldnt condemn them either. I really dislike the term "feminazi". You shouldnt compare a group of people who want to have equality to a group who were genocidal maniacs. So Im Egalitarian

 

[O|NoSoul]

I have a feeling it'll become a bit of an echo-chamber in here. Everyone loves to say they want equality for all because of their sympathy for others and whatnot. There won't be much of a debate here, really. What exactly are you offering for us to debate, even? Whether we want all people to be equal? It's already a foregone conclusion that everyone here will say 'yes.'

Whether it's a matter of people not being equal, that's also a foregone 'not everyone is equal.' Let me ask people's opinions on what should be done to elevate the most oppressed to that of the 'normal' as some would call it.

 

[ASTA]

Let me ask people's opinions on what should be done to elevate the most oppressed to that of the 'normal' as some would call it.

Eliminating the stigma surrounding eugenics would be a stellar start.

 

[O|NoSoul]

Eliminating the stigma surrounding eugenics would be a stellar start.

May I ask why? I, of course, agree. ALbeit, I may catch some hate, or you may even think me along your lines of thinking.

The stigma against eugenics may be because of the connotation of the word in use by the Nazis of the past, but eliminating its association with Nazi science, it is just gene manipulation to make a human or other such organism not suffer from a debilitating condition. Imagine if all the parents living with children suffering from downs syndrome, severe autism and other such genetic disorders or physical deformities could instead have a way of making sure their child didn't grow up being an outcast from society for something they had no hand in other than conceiving the child and the child just having the raw deal of being born with the condition.

Obviously, I'm a far cry from a scientist, so I don't know the specifics of eugenics and whatnot, the limitations of genetic manipulation. I am saying that if we could find a way of eliminating the disorders that effect a lot of humanity both physically, emotionally and socially, then it will be a step towards a better humanity.

Again, what I am not advocating is euthanasia for people who already are beyond the reach of any help genetic manipulation could do them.

 

[Koschei]

Which is why I'm an Egalitarian, and strongly against feminism's recent trend of bashing and vilifying people for being male, white, cis or straight.

That makes me mad (today's feminists). Before everything was nice. Then suddenly anyone that doesn't agree with them 100% is an abuser, rapist and should rot in hell (from some radicals Ive met). And we shouldnt condemn them either. I really dislike the term "feminazi". You shouldnt compare a group of people who want to have equality to a group who were genocidal maniacs. So Im Egalitarian

Feminism is all about equality between genders. So the people who bash men or whatever, are a part of that group who call themselves feminists, though what they preach isn't actually feminism. Just thought I'd add that. I'm a feminist, and the general consensus seems to be that those people (who exclude trans women or hate men or the like) aren't actually a part of the serious feminist movement.

Every group has that one loud-mouth subgroup that just mucks up the reputation of the rest of the group.

Anyway, people aren't born equals, but they deserve equal chances of living their lives to the fullest. Poor explanation is poor, but basically what everybody else has been saying.

 

[Saito Hajime]

I think a better question would be "equality of opportunity or equality of results?". You see, while equality is actually easily defined, the question is whether we should be engineering society in a way that everyone ends up in an equal or near equal state, or whether we should simply give people equal opportunity to seek their fortune and desires in society without guaranteeing that they will in fact achieve anything.

Often you hear that minorities are under represented in professions and such. Should measures be taken to make it easier for them to take up those professions, or should we simply leave things as they are? That's a question of equality of opportunity vs. equality of result.

 

[Infinatis]

Feminism is all about equality between genders. So the people who bash men or whatever, are a part of that group who call themselves feminists, though what they preach isn't actually feminism. Just thought I'd add that. I'm a feminist, and the general consensus seems to be that those people (who exclude trans women or hate men or the like) aren't actually a part of the serious feminist movement.

Every group has that one loud-mouth subgroup that just mucks up the reputation of the rest of the group.

Anyway, people aren't born equals, but they deserve equal chances of living their lives to the fullest. Poor explanation is poor, but basically what everybody else has been saying.

I used to be a feminist then I took an arrow to the knee I got harrassed and bullied by that subgroup (which is growing each day)and by people who think all feminists are so called "feminazis"

 

[O|NoSoul]

I think a better question would be "equality of opportunity or equality of results?". You see, while equality is actually easily defined, the question is whether we should be engineering society in a way that everyone ends up in an equal or near equal state, or whether we should simply give people equal opportunity to seek their fortune and desires in society without guaranteeing that they will in fact achieve anything.

Often you hear that minorities are under represented in professions and such. Should measures be taken to make it easier for them to take up those professions, or should we simply leave things as they are? That's a question of equality of opportunity vs. equality of result.

There used to be- in the US, at least- affirmative action. I don't know if it's still around, but it basically did what your question mentioned, as in, made it easier for non-caucasian people to get into college and get into jobs and whatnot. Personally, I think it would be better if we had equality of opportunity rather than hand people success. Handing people success does nothing for the employee/student and nothing for the employer/college/uni. All it does is lower standards in order to make an unskilled worker or unready student. It's comparable to the way that public schools will just go ahead and push students on to the next grade despite them showing a lack of skill needed to excel not only in the grade they were in but the grade they will go on to.

A deeper level to this is even if we did keep the standards as high as they are, there still will be people unable to meet those standards due to reasons that may be out of their control and force them to deviate from the path most kids go through. My father had to drop out of school to take care of multiple child members of his father for reasons I don't know. He otherwise excelled at things like writing and the language arts and was average at mathematics. Combined with the area he lived in, he fell in with gang culture. Somewhere along the line, he got his GED, straightened up, joined the National Guard and now works full-time like everyone else. Due to his ownership of a GED instead of a high school diploma, he is barred from many jobs and is saved by his previous work experience and credentials.

That's but one story of how life derails people from their expected paths and can make it hard for them to find what most would call success. The equality of opportunity vs equality of result is a good way to put it, and I'm in the camp where I know that standards are turning people away from certain paths to success and while some people think they should be lowered I still hold that they shouldn't. Hear me out here, I still acknowledge and know firsthand that there are extenuating circumstances that take people away from the path most employers/colleges/uni's like their applicants to go through, my argument is that we should keep the standards where they are across the board and work to eliminate the things that make it hard for people find those opportunities. Finding ways to eliminate the things that perpetuate gang culture, finding ways to eliminate poverty, finding ways to make it easier for people to be rehabilitated from drug addiction, where we treat it as a crime first and an aftereffect of poverty later, finding ways to make the quality of education available to low-income children better, etc.


If we find a way for people born in low-income neighborhoods to not be tempted by the gang culture and see it as the only way for them to get out of their neighborhoods, then we can make steps for employers to accept them not as an act of charity, a la affirmative action, but as just another applicant. The high standards are driving people away and that is working to push them towards gang culture, drug use and drug dealing as a way to survive, in the case of gang membership and affiliation; a way to earn money, in the case of drug dealing; and a method of escapism, in the case of drug use.

We shouldn't be taking the easy way out and handing people jobs and slots at a uni. We, as a society, need to pull up our sleeves and make ready to put in the work to make our society better, not just slap a band-aid on the sucking chest wound that is the problem of poverty, drugs and gang violence.

Sorry if I sound like the idiot in the room.

 

[Kestrel]

People aren't born equal and if we're truly honest, we don't want equality. You take pride in something you are good at. People often pursue passions and careers in which they have some degree of natural talent. We flaunt the things we got. How we were born affects what we are given and I cannot blame anyone for using these traits to their advantage. What we are good at and bad at is part of our identity. If you desire true equality, that means sacrificing part of that.

I might believe your race, sex, beliefs, etcetera should be irrelevant if you have X capacity to fulfil Y need. However, they do influence your compatibility with certain tasks. Let's use sex for an example because it is an easy one. When I studied psychology, I was surrounded by women. Those enlisting for the army on the other hand, tend to meet the exact opposite gender ratio. This ties in with how most of us think. Most women are more suited to tasks that involve empathy, whereas men tend to deal better with risk. As said before, if you can reach the required standard, nobody should care about your sex. Your ability to meet that standard however, may be influenced by your sex. Be this a mental or physical advantage. That's why we separate men and women in many sports competitions, for example. It's not just as easy for one sex to to thrive in the same field as the other. It is hard to say true equality exists when we have sexual dimorphism.

That does not mean men are better than women or vice versa, it just means one is more suited to one task, and the other more suited to another. And if you're a woman with the will and strength to make it as a soldier, or a guy with the empathic ability to make it as a social worker, all the more power to you. Chances are though, you'll have to work for it a little harder than average. What we should strive for, rather than true equality, is an equal benchmark. If you have X ability to perform Y task, you're a-okay.

As for equal reward... Equal work should deserve equal reward, regardless of sex/race/etc. However, one should understand there are other factors in place besides sex/race/religious beliefs/whatever. If you're a soon-to-be mother, and likely to be taking a maternity leave, it is only logical you won't be considered as highly for a promotion because who then will be in office if you're on maternity leave? If you have a problem with that, discuss how you're going to share parenting duties with your partner. If you're a Muslim and want to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, that's great, just don't count on getting paid if you don't come to work for religious reasons. However, on that I would say it's unfair Christmas is default for free days. I think it would be more reasonable to be able to save those up, and use them for something else.

As for the LBGT-stuff, you can love, marry or fuck whoever you want, as long as they're consenting adults. And also I don't really care about your sexuality or gender-identity unless I want to pursue a romantic or sexual relationship with you. And that's as far as I want to go addressing any of that.

So, there's my view. Please don't make me regret posting, people.

 

[ASTA]

May I ask why?

With an adequate amount of public proponents for a formal eugenics initiative--one enhanced by suitable advancements in various genetic engineering technologies (genetic screening, elite sperm banks, and gene therapy to name a few), a nation could see a 15 point or more increase in the median IQ of its population within one generation. IQ, which represents a person's g (or general intelligence) score, correlates profoundly with an with their academic attainment threshold, the prospect that they will be saddled with an unplanned child, their likelihood of committing a violent crime, their health, and a sizable selection of neurodevelopmental disorders that they may pass on to their unknowing offspring (such as autism and mental retardation).

Aside from an individual's assorted personality traits and their resourcefulness (someone with an IQ score of 150 but with absolutely no drive, no social skills, and zero associate connections whatsoever probably isn't going to reach their limit for socioeconomic success), IQ overwhelmingly determines how well you're going to do in a country throughout your foreseeable lifespan. With eugenics, a nation's maximum level of civilization can be augmented, crime can be reduced, superior technical advancements can be made at a greater frequency, and inequality can be retarded to a marked echelon.

Eugenics can do in one century what takes natural selection and evolution 10,000 years to pull off.

It makes the future generations actually have MORE than their forebears did, so that particular sappy wish that mothers all throughout the world utter to their children can actually be forged into tangible reality instead of just being a moralistic and heartwarming pipe dream in 2015. Eugenics, if used in a humanitarian fashion, isn't unethical; on the contrary, eugenics is the most altruistic gift that a person could bestow upon any given human population.

I'm going to focus on my country of origin for a moment, but aside from the political clout that corporations wield over the federal government, much of the economic inequality within the US principally stems from the fact that the majority of professional college degrees are being snatched up by the cognitively gifted. These eminent men and women are able to seize or generate wealth with comparative impunity while the lion's share of the US' population struggles with a shrinking middle class and an increasing mound of insurmountable debt. The intellectual elite habitually mates with other innately perspicacious people, ergo the genes that are responsible for their brainy brawn remain in fixed limbo within the upper tiers of America's stratified social system.

America's job market is demanding STEM specialists, not burger flippers, forklift drivers, or factory hands, but the key issue is that the "old human models" aren't being phased out of the gene pool fast enough to keep up with civilization's onward march. They're subsidized by the welfare state, American charity, and their menial jobs that are on the cusp of being "improved" through the wide scale application of automation. Their rate of reproduction is substantially higher than that of the academic crème de la crème as well. Natural selection has effectively ceased in developed countries. In fact, dysgenic breeding has been underway in much of the industrialized world since the 1800s.

At some point, this is going to cause a royal shitstorm of unprecedented scale (and that's assuming that the US' dominant white demographic doesn't opt to don AR-15s and pitchforks in response to the changing color of America beforehand).

Everyone knows that you have to update your PC's software to enjoy the latest programs or hardware.

Humans are no different.

 

[O|NoSoul]

With an adequate amount of public proponents for a formal eugenics initiative--one enhanced by suitable advancements in various genetic engineering technologies (genetic screening, elite sperm banks, and gene therapy to name a few), a nation could see a 15 point or more increase in the median IQ of its population. IQ, which represents a person's g (or general intelligence) score, correlates profoundly with an individual's academic attainment, the prospect that they will be met with an unplanned child, their likelihood of committing a violent crime, their health, and a sizable selection of neurodevelopmental disorders that they may pass on to their unknowing offspring (such as autism and mental retardation).

Aside from an individual's assorted personality traits and their resourcefulness (someone with an IQ score of 150 but with absolutely no drive, no social skills, and zero associate connections whatsoever probably isn't going to reach their threshold for socioeconomic success), IQ overwhelmingly determines how well you're going to do in a country throughout your foreseeable lifespan. With eugenics, a nation's maximum level of civilization can be augmented, crime can be reduced, superior technical advancements can be made at a greater frequency, and inequality can be retarded to a marked echelon.

Eugenics can do in one century what takes natural selection and evolution 10,000 years to pull off.

It makes the future generations actually have MORE than their forebears did, so that particular sappy wish that mothers all throughout world utter to their children can actually be forged into tangible reality instead of just being a moralistic and heartwarming pipe dream in 2015. Eugenics, if used in a humanitarian fashion, isn't unethical; on the contrary, eugenics is the most altruistic gift that a person could bestow upon any given human population.

I'm going to focus on my country of origin for a moment, but much of the economic inequality within the US principally stems from the fact that the majority of professional college degrees are being snatched up by the cognitively gifted. These eminent men and women are able to seize or generate wealth with comparative impunity while the lion's share of the US' population struggles with a shrinking middle class and an increasing mound of debt. The intellectual elite habitually mates with other innately perspicacious people, so the genes that are responsible for their brainy brawn remains in fixed limbo within the upper tiers of America's stratified social system.

America's job market is demanding STEM specialists, not burger flippers, forklift drivers, or factory hands, but key the issue is that the "old human models" aren't being phased out of the gene pool fast enough to keep up with civilization's onward march. They're subsidized by the welfare state, American charity, and their menial jobs that are on the cusp of being "improved" through the rampant application of automation. Their rate of reproduction is substantially higher than that of the academic crème de la crème as well. Natural selection has effectively ceased in developed countries. In fact, dysgenic breeding has been underway in much of the industrialized world since the 1800s.

This is going to cause a royal shitstorm of unprecedented scale down the road at some point.

Everyone knows that you have to update your PC's software to enjoy the latest programs or hardware.

Humans are no different.

...I agree.

 

[Persephone]

 

[Jorick]

There really is a debate to be had on the topic of "what is equality?" Such a debate is currently happening on a large scale in society in fact, and @Saito Hajime already highlighted the major sides: equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcome. Saying people should be equal is nice, and most would probably agree, but the actual manifestation of equality is a complicated matter.

On the one side you have people who support the equality of opportunity over equality of outcome. These are the folks who generally (in my experience at least) shun the term feminist and call themselves things like egalitarians and humanists. The idea is that everyone should have an equal opportunity to do whatever they want with their life. If somebody wants to be an astronaut, then all that should matter is how hard they're willing to work toward it and whether or not they meet the physical and mental criteria; their race, sex, gender identity, sexuality, etc. should not factor into their eligibility. It might be harder for them to achieve the goal because they were born into poverty or something, but so long as they work hard for it they should have just as much chance as a rich kid does to become an astronaut. Equality of opportunity acknowledges that people are different and have differing abilities and desires, but that shouldn't mean they have to do certain things or cannot be allowed to do others, so long as they meet whatever requirements are necessary. Many would argue that equality of opportunity is very near at hand in the US and most other western nations thanks to all the work that has been done to help the disadvantaged, such as college scholarships specifically for poor and minority individuals and laws and court rulings enforcing equality in employment (not talking about affirmative action here, more along the lines of the laws that say you can't fire or refuse to hire someone because of race/sex/etc.) and so forth.

On the other side you have those that think equality of outcome is more important. These people generally (again, just based on my experience) embrace the feminist label and tend to be big into the social justice movement. The idea here is that every group out to end up with equal presence and representation in all areas. They make arguments about how less than half of CEOs of big companies, members of Congress, people with Engineering and Mathematics degrees, and so on are women. Ditto for various racial minorities, sexual orientations, and so on making up a lesser percentage of those groups than their percentage of the general population (for example, ~13% of people in the US are black, but the percent of black CEOs and so on is a lot less than that). They seem to think that the fact that people start off in different places in the rat race that is life is bullshit and caused by oppression and should be counteracted; most want to give lots of help to disadvantaged groups to bring them up, but there is a very vocal subgroup that would prefer to tear other groups down so that everyone kind of meets halfway. These folks tend to pay more attention to top level census results and raw data collections rather than looking at why exactly there might be fewer of X group doing Y thing, because equality of outcome means that only the numbers really matter in the end. I've never seen anyone of this group say that they think equality is anywhere close to being reached, because they can point to all sorts of statistics as proof of how many things are not meeting equality of outcome standards, so of course a lot more work needs to be done.

I fall on the equality of opportunity side of things. As much as people might like to deny it, people are in fact different at a basic level. There are undeniable biological differences between men and women. There are also some less pronounced differences, also at a basic biological level, between people of different races. There are biological differences between different people of the same gender and race as well. We all start at a different level purely because of our DNA, so of course people are not the same. After the genetic differences, we also have all sorts of fun social differences. We all grew up with different experiences and perceptions, and that adds another few layers onto the whole individuality thing. By the time we get to adulthood there is just so much shit that flies in the face of the naive "we're all exactly the same" mantra that it's not even worth considering. This is why I feel that opportunity matters far more than outcome. We all have these vast differences, so why in the hell should all areas end up with perfect demographic representation? Forcing people to fill the slots necessary for the numbers to line up would be some oppressive nonsense.

Ranting examples of problems with equality of outcome

For example, why exactly must the number of people with Engineering and Mathematics degrees be split perfectly down the male and female line? Study after study after study has shown that on average men are more interested in these areas than women. The only way to get an equal outcome for these degrees would be to force women to pursue them, and that would be some bullshit. There's nothing holding women back from pursuing them, shown by the fact that women do indeed acquire them, they just do so at a lesser rate than men. Is it also unfair that a lot more women are getting Biology, Teaching, and Nursing degrees than men? Should we force men into those fields to even out the numbers? I think most would agree that would be ridiculous, and I feel the same about Engineering and Mathematics. People have different interests, and they should be allowed to pursue them out of their own desire. Trying to make people conform to demographics is just foolish and more likely to cause damage than make anything better.

Another example of the trouble with equality of outcome can be seen in the whole gender wage gap myth. Yes, it is in fact a myth. The whole "women make 78 cents for every dollar a man makes" (that's the figure used in the US, it probably differs elsewhere) idea is a gross misrepresentation of the real statistics that has been blown up by reactionary goofballs who care more about crying foul than actually looking at the facts. People looked at the raw data for full-time worker earnings (which is not the same as wages) and found that the earnings of women in the US working full time came out to 78% of what men earned, so they decided that this outcome was not equal and needed to be changed. First off, they messed up big time by saying this means there's a wage gap. Wages are what someone is paid per hour/day/whatever of work, and it varies wildly from profession to profession; earnings are how much total money a person brought home after taxes. Saying "there's a wage gap, women are paid 78 cents to the dollar of a man" implies that a woman doing the same job as a man is paid 78 cents per dollar he makes, which is flat bullshit. We already have a multitude of laws that make that illegal, and few people are slimy or ballsy enough to try it. Studies of wages paid for men and women working in the same job with equal levels of education and experience have found that they actually are equal for the most part, with discrepancies coming from commission pay jobs and men being more willing to aggressively negotiate for higher starting wages than women. Second, they try to claim that it's some sort of systematic oppression that needs to be corrected, and that's also some nonsense. Ignoring the wage misnomer, economists and sociologists and a bevvy of other -ists have examined the gender earnings gap and concluded that the vast majority of it can be explained by simple preference matters. Women tend to dominate low paying fields like teaching, men tend to dominate high paying fields like engineering. Men work overtime more often and take less time off than women on average (even before counting maternity leave). Women tend to prefer nice benefits packages over higher pay with less benefits even if they would end up at the same value. All this adds up to make the earnings gap mean basically nothing. It's just a bunch of equality of outcome people being bad at statistics and wanting to push a narrative of oppression over the facts.

One area where the equality of outcome perspective isn't totally broken is the prison system of the US. They say that it's bullshit that black people make up a disproportionate amount of the prison population, and the facts back that up (black people are stopped by the cops more frequently than white people, searched more frequently, charged for minor crimes more frequently, falsely accused more frequently, falsely convicted more frequently, etc). However, they conveniently ignore the fact that women get extremely preferential treatment in the judicial system, to the point that they only make up 18% of the prison population despite making up 51% of the general population. Crime and imprisonment is one area in which they seem to be totally willing to accept that natural difference between groups should lead to a differing outcome, but only for gender, and of course that doesn't apply to most other areas. That inconsistency and selective position swapping is another reason why I and many others have problems with proponents of equality of outcome. Equality ought to be universal, not selective, else it's not actually equality.

After writing the above ranty stuff I figured it would be better to shove it in a spoiler and not take up a bunch of page space. Feel free to disregard it, as it's not really important to my overall point.

Anyway, what it all boils down to for me is a simple question: are people free to do what they choose with their life, so long as they are not harming others? That is what equality means to me in this context: that people can do what they want with their life despite whatever identifying labels apply to them. In most cases in western nations, for most identity groups, the answer to the question is yes. In other cases the answer is no, and those are the things that still need to be worked on before we can really say all people are equal. It's not about the numbers found on a census, it's not about demographics, it's about whether or not people can live their lives how they wish. Even people of the most privileged group don't always achieve the goals they want, because life isn't fair. Trying to call foul or oppression because other groups also face disappointment and failure despite having equal opportunity is just nonsense.

 

[Brovo]

Which is why I'm an Egalitarian, and strongly against feminism's recent trend of bashing and vilifying people for being male, white, cis or straight.

Feminism isn't your enemy, fundamentalists are. There are millions of feminists around the world who don't behave like the Tumblrite nutso crowd that speak to this effect, such as @Hellis . You can be a feminist, or an egalitarian, or a christian, or a muslim, or an atheist, or agnostic, or a wiccaotherkindanceswithwolvesfridgenebula, or a libertarian, or a conservative, and still be a decent human being. It's what you do in the name of your belief or ideology that matters, and nothing else. If your belief--left or right wing, religious or not religious, feminist or not feminist--drives you to believe that someone else's freedom of speech or freedom of expression is somehow a threat to you, you are a fundamentalist, and an enemy of civil rights.

Keep this in mind in the future. Feminists aren't our enemy, neither are christians (since I know you and I are both atheists), fundamentalists are. People who believe the world to be black and white and who dehumanize their ideological opposites are our enemy, people who practice the saying "if you're not with me, you're against me" are our enemy. People who pay their taxes and concern themselves with women's rights or what their sky daddy thinks of them are not our enemy: They're just our neighbours, and we are their neighbours.

Anyway, on topic to "what is equality?"

First, there is two primary forms of equality one has to address and understand in the modern world. Equality of opportunity, and equality of outcome. In an absolutely ideal world, I would say equality of opportunity is the way to go: After all, if everyone regardless of sex and ethnicity have equal opportunities, then they can decide their values for themselves and enrich themselves in whichever way they see fit to do so. The monk who lives his entire life sequestered on a mountain has a very different set of values from me, the guy who builds computers and loves writing. We should both, ideally, be able to achieve what it is we desire in our lifetimes without being locked to these courses.

That being said, the world isn't an ideal lalaland. Inequality of opportunity exists, and when corrected, it often takes a minimum of two generations for the corrections to be felt throughout society. The United States alone has a basket full of inequality of opportunity still yet to be addressed for men and women, whites and blacks--if you look to the world scale, it becomes a far more daunting task to try and even conceive of repairing. Especially since, again, individual values drive people to different goals in life.

All we can do is address individual issues as they arrive and are spotlighted. To improve and uplift those in need of equality of opportunity, wherever they may be, without infringing on our civil rights as a collective people. It's not an easy road. I wish there was an easy solution, but there isn't. I wish I could say I had all the answers, but I don't.

Think for yourself and come to your own conclusions. All I ask is that you never adopt an ideology which asks you to censor, devalue, and tear down someone else to uplift yourself. You gain nothing in destruction, fear, or identity politics.

 

[Brovo]

Eugenics can do in one century what takes natural selection and evolution 10,000 years to pull off.

This isn't how genetics works. Things like handicaps and mental disorders can appear in families with no genetic history of such things. People with disorders, health issues, or otherwise, appear specifically because the DNA replication process made an error, this is called a mutation, and is the basis for the theory of evolution. While it is true that if you kept breeding specimens for ideal traits over a number of generations (ex: cattle), your theoretical "master race" wouldn't appear until several consistently chosen mutations were adapted into a large enough genetic pool to constitute sufficient changes deserving of being considered a genuinely superior product as per values determined by the breeder. This, in the scientific community, is known as a species event. This takes thousands of years. At a minimum. You would also have to violate a giant pile of this thing we call "civil rights" to pull it off, since you would need dozens of successive generations for the cumulative effects to mean even the slightest difference.

The more logical--and humane--scientific study to pursue, should you continue to wish scientific progress to the issue of equality, would be biological engineering. We already know it works because we've applied it to our food in things like GMO's. We could use said biological engineering to remove disadvantageous traits at birth, ala GATTACA, such as mental disorders, birth defects, and so on. There are still a number of human rights issues that go along with it, such as the "homo superior" argument, but not nearly as numerous or profoundly disturbing as with the field of Eugenics.

Just figured I'd let you know, because you started to sound like Goebbels there, and Goebbels was not a man of characteristics I would like to see replicated in society...

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

In regards to the Equality of Opportunity VS Equality of Outcome discussion that has been brought up it dawns on me that I forgot to clarify exactly which side I was on.

So just to get that out of the way now, I'm on the Opportunity side.
People do differ, for a vast variety of reasons.

So when I say:

Basically the same thing you described, everyone should simply be seen and treated as human.
We don't allow things like sex, gender, sexuality or race divide us.

I mean that in the sense that we shouldn't be pre-judging/assigning people, and shouldn't be pushing them into fields they don't want to simply because of how they were born or what they experienced.
Treat everyone as an individual level, and let them go wherever they desire (you know, as long as it's not harming others).

But this goes in both directions.
Just like it's silly say to push women into Math who are not interested in it, it is also silly to push women away from it because it's a field where more men tend to favor.
Yes, in the end we will still see differences of outcome. That what happens, humans are diverse and therefore outcomes will reflect that.
But as long as those outcomes came by treating everyone as individuals, and not forcing them into certain groups or roles it's all good in my books.

Feminism isn't your enemy, fundamentalists are. There are millions of feminists around the world who don't behave like the Tumblrite nutso crowd that speak to this effect, such as @Hellis.

strongly against feminism's

Note how I specifically stated "Feminism's" and not "Feminists" in my post. I do recognize that not all individual feminists are like that.

recent trend of bashing and vilifying people for being male, white, cis or straight.

That, and I also did specifically address their shaming against certain groups of people, not the movement as a whole.

You can be a feminist, or an egalitarian, or a christian, or a muslim, or an atheist, or agnostic, or a wiccaotherkindanceswithwolvesfridgenebula, or a libertarian, or a conservative, and still be a decent human being. It's what you do in the name of your belief or ideology that matters, and nothing else. If your belief--left or right wing, religious or not religious, feminist or not feminist--drives you to believe that someone else's freedom of speech or freedom of expression is somehow a threat to you, you are a fundamentalist, and an enemy of civil rights.

Keep this in mind in the future. Feminists aren't our enemy, neither are christians (since I know you and I are both atheists), fundamentalists are. People who believe the world to be black and white and who dehumanize their ideological opposites are our enemy, people who practice the saying "if you're not with me, you're against me" are our enemy. People who pay their taxes and concern themselves with women's rights or what their sky daddy thinks of them are not our enemy: They're just our neighbours, and we are their neighbours.

You're preaching to the Choir here Brovo. :P