Is Gender Equality a Myth?

[samlad]

I always think that a woman with her hand in her knickers can coerce a man more than another man holding a gun to his head.

In terms of equality, men and women are psychologically and (obviously) physiologically different, so there will always be some gender-bias in many cases. For example, it would be inappropriate to allow a male PE teacher teach a female class. Why is that? Apparently the female PE teacher in my high school was a lesbian, so should she be allowed access to the female changing rooms because she may be aroused by the female body? Should a gay male be allowed access to female changing rooms because he may not find half-naked females attractive? Of course not, but there is a conflict between gender and sexuality bias here. Similarly, many women would rather have a female gynaecologist inspecting their nether regions over a male, but that doesn't stop men being gynaecologists.

I do think in terms of pay, people should be paid the same for doing the same job, I will agree with that. This discrimination isn't just gender based, in my old job in retail, as a deputy manager, I was paid more than some managers and some supervisors were paid more than me. Of course we were contracted not to discuss our salaries, but people did, and the fact that they put that in a contract would reinforce that this was happening, otherwise there would be an official standardised pay scale within the company.

Then again, I have read that female porn stars are paid more than male porn stars, and I also see that on sex cam websites, women are tipped by viewers far more than men and have a higher audience. On many dating websites, women are allowed free memberships because there are about 10 times the number of men signed up and they need women to level the playing fields.

In my opinion, when it comes to sexuality, women hold men by the proverbial bollocks, but when it comes to skilled or manual labour, men have the pay-scale advantage. Gender is a contributing factor, not the main factor, in a very large, unfair problem. In terms of opportunities (work, socially, love, etc.), we are always restricted in some way, by it in terms of skills, experiences, looks, personality, presentation, popularity, reputation or whatever. I think gender equality is a complete myth and it will never happen. We are a far cry from Victorians now whereby a woman was a man's property and he could use reasonable force and lock her up to control her -that is the extreme and we have thankfully come away from these times and attitudes- but there will never by a balanced gender utopia unless we force androgyny upon the world and call each other by a combination of letters and numbers as opposed to male and female names