A conversation on TED.com: Actual Equality

Adonis Mata
Austin, TX
United States

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Actual Equality

It is a bright line rule when talking about equality for everyone. Any entity that is considered a human should have the exact same rights as all persons respective to their age e.g., age limit to go to war.

In other words, you have to pick either everyone is equal in all aspects of life or there should be discrimination to certain groups.

So what I propose must happen in order to have actual equality for every person is to abolish laws that are gender/race/sexual orientation specific. As long as these laws, for better or worse, exist it will be impossible for there to be "Actual Equality" for every person.

Related Talks:

Alice Dreger: Is anatomy destiny?

Topics: Gender equality discrimination equality human rights race

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Ray Anon
- +1
Jun 13 2011: Yes, the conviction that it were possible to reduce racism by introducing *more* racism is so utterly absurd that I can hardly believe anyone can honestly fall for it. The same applies to sexism and other superficial criteria, of course. The problem is that many people are unwilling to put the individual above the group. Here in Germany it is not the standing of the individual that is important, but the standing of the group. From such a socialist viewpoint, it seems perfectly logical to commit injustice to the individual for the greater good. So to avoid miscommunication, one should be very clear what kind of "equality" one is talking about. The term is understood in vastly different meanings from different perspectives.

By the way, you wrote an interesting sentence: "Any entity that is considered a human should have the exact same rights as all persons." Why did you not write: "Any entity considered a person should have the same rights as all persons?" This hints at the controversial issue of speciesism.

And how far are we willing to go when it comes to giving up sexism? For example, a famous Monty Python sketch ridicules the idea to fight for men's right to have babies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBOQzSk14c . And yet this is an important remark: Any legal regulation regarding pregnancies should not speak of women, but of pregnants. Even if there were a 100% correlation - which is not the case due to transsexuals -, there would be no reason to focus on the sex of the pregnant person instead of the pregnancy. So this was already a valid criticism before transsexuals were legally recognized.

And even TED is not free from it. It proudly declares here http://www.ted.com/pages/185 that it significantly increased the number of women. Why is there no statement about the number of redheads or blue-eyeds? Because some superficial criteria are considered relevant and others are not. Yet I wonder what income gaps exist between people of different haircolors...
- Adonis Mata
  - 0
  Jun 14 2011: I did not intend to bring speciesism into this debate, but I am glad that what I wrote hints at it because of the simple fact that species that are not human do belong in this debate.
  
  This debate concerns only humans.
  
  Concerning your statement about the law pertaining to pregnancy, I agree that there is "...no reason to focus on the sex of the pregnant person instead of the pregnancy." This is the context I am speaking of when I say 'actual equality,' as my proposition is for all laws to not mention gender/race and to abolish laws that are laws simply to distinguish gender.
  
  In the U.S. there is a law, Title IX, that on paper seems like a good idea but in terms of actual equality, I view it as telling women they are inferior. Title IX deals with sports in universities, private and public, and separates gender into two distinct classes. It is unbearable that something as trivial as sports and games cannot be fixed to give every human the exact same rights. I believe that every person should have the same right as any other person to compete for a position and play for the same team regardless of gender. This can be a very simple starting point to start giving every human actual equality.
  - Ray Anon
    
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    Jun 15 2011: I'm sorry, do you mean that this debate concerns only humans or that species that are not human do belong in this debate? You wrote both, and to me that seems contradicting *confused*
    
    The attempt to overcome sexism - and segregation is an expression of that - will not be easier than overcoming racism. Now it shouldn't surprise anyone here if I say that racism is not based on rational arguments. At best it tries to hide behind pseudo-scientific pretenses, but its heart is the simple drive to uphold clear ingroup-outgroup-differentiations. If there were a way to eliminate the longing for "Us vs. them" thinking out of human minds, we could establish actual equality by tomorrow. But since that is impossible, we probably have to take the same way as the anti-racism movement: Gradually accustoming people to the dissolution of this distinctition until they accept it. The problem is that this took hundreds, possibly thousands of years regarding racism, and even today we still haven't reached the goal.
    
    You call equality in sport a "very simple starting point". I can't quite share your optimism; instead I believe that this will be possible only near the end of the struggle for equality, and that it will be far from being simple to get there. But I agree that this will be an important step for our progress towards actual equality.
    - Mark Meijer 100+
      
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      Host Associate
      
      Jun 16 2011: I'd take it another step further. There are differences great and small between any two individuals, regardless of race, gender, etc. Even identical twins are not identical. So there's no getting around making distinctions, however subtle or obvious, and there are certainly valid distinctions to be made for specific purposes. That is precisely the basis of all our equality.
      
      The fact that people can differ in so many ways, there's no saying who would be more deserving of better or worse treatment than another, or why, and there's even no sense in continuing along such lines of thought. We should always remember that distinctions aren't as clear-cut as we'd like to think. As for example the related talk indicates, even such a distinction as gender isn't as clear-cut as we generally consider it, and the same is true for race, species, developmental stages.
      
      Which is to say that, as long as the discussion is based on the premise that any distinctions can potentially be a rational argument in favor of racism, sexism, or whatever inequality, those arguments will continue to be made. So the next step is to see through and abandon those lines of thought altogether. When we come to see the futile nature of such discussions, the whole thing becomes moot, and the real reason we keep trying to justify inequality becomes clear.
      
      In fact the issue of there being no clear-cut distinctions is true for everything. Reality simply does not conform to any of the neatly defined categories that we like to invent in order to try and get a handle on things, as it were. Or as Alice Dreger puts it wonderfully, nature doesn't draw those lines for us, we draw those lines on nature. Believe it or not, but this is a profound message of enlightenment.
    - Mark Meijer 100+
      
      0
      
      Host Associate
      
      Jun 16 2011: Which is to say that nothing exists inherently according to any concepts we create in our minds, i.e. according to the lines we draw on nature. Nothing exists inherently as male or female, as black or white, as fetus or adult, as human or chimpansee, as alive or dead (all these are mentioned in the talk). For example, buddhists call this emptiness. Which means, empty of inherent existence as defined by any particular concept.
      
      By the way, it is not impossible to address the "longing for "Us vs. them" thinking". It may not be easy, but it is a learned behaviour, and it can be unlearned if we wanted to. This too is a profound message of enlightenment. But most of us wouldn't want to, we like it way too much. It's just so nice and comforting to know exactly who I am and who to point fingers at. Until one starts to see through the veil, that is. Even Alice admits it makes her nervous to see those perceived certainties dissolve.
      
      And there we have it, the real reason for inequality. There is nothing rational about it. It's about perceived (loss of) certainty. Which is to say, it is about anxiety. In a world of concepts, things can appear to make perfect sense. We make it make sense, because we make that world of concepts in our own minds, and we like things to make sense. We do this by virtue of our analytical minds, in and of itself tremendously useful, and it's why we make all those distinctions.
      
      But then we mistake that virtual world in our minds for reality, and that's when those distinctions start to become problematic. This understanding can be so unsettling for all its implications, that we'd do anything to avoid it, even though of course there is no avoiding it and it's constantly slapping us in the face.
      
      Here's more about drawing lines on nature:
      Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aufuwMiKmE
      Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ8WeLrtFnY
      Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RcjATFcbq4
      Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOYIE-RX3No