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Comment by r00fus | Hacker News Reader

Having a smartphone is not a right, but the article does highlight a bunch of stuff that we in the Occident take for granted in terms of equality of rights:

"In parts of rural India, village councils, which effectively dictate community norms, have issued decrees barring unmarried women from possessing cellphones"

"In India, millions use smartphones to find jobs, bank, study, order train tickets, interact with the government and more. Offline options require freedom of movement not available for many women, and extra time and cost in traveling, standing in lines and filling out forms"

It would be unthinkable for modern western countries to segregate as described in the article.

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Yeah, we're all about the more subtle behaviors, such as not bothering to study female animal models for a majority of pharmaceuticals over decades, or fighting various aspects of reproductive rights.

i'll take the subtle over the overt any day

To be honest, as someone who literally runs a chat room for people who self-identify as social justice warriors, so will I. Doesn't mean we can't improve. Though this is off-topic for the discussion at hand, so let's get back to it?

I reject your false dichotomy.

And I reject your false equivalency.

Could you possibly identify it first?

The original comment said: "It would be unthinkable for modern western countries to segregate as described in the article."

You replied with: "Yeah, we're all about the more subtle behaviors...."

There are two possibilities: either you think that these more subtle behaviors are at least as bad as the overt segregation discussed in the article, or they're not as bad. If the former, then that's the false equivalency. If the latter, then your reply was pointless.

I think it's different, but I think if you have to waste part of your (I believe) only life fighting for basic human rights, it's wrong. It's especially wrong when those issues so often touch on matters of health, with contribute to an early and unnecessary exit from that life.

Not surprisingly, this has more nuance than the silly black and white options presented by people who have issues.

Perhaps what you should be seeing is the forest and not the individual trees. It was not too long ago that women in the west did not have the vote, I'm sure they would not have been allowed cell phones if they existed back then. Now however they have equality with men in the eyes of the law and are in the main treated as such. Yes there are some areas where improvements can still be made but would you prefer to be protesting for women to have the right to make their own decisions (as opposed to them being made by their husbands, fathers or brothers) or that pharmaceutical trials paid more attention to gender differences?

Is there some reason the answer isn't, "Both"?

The point is that in the West we have made significant improvements in the equal treatment of women and we are continuing to improve. Yes it should be both but to compare the treatment of women in Muslim countries to the suggestions you made is disingenuous at best.

The comment I responded to: "It would be unthinkable for modern western countries to segregate as described in the article."

My response was hardly disingenuous, and I don't appreciate that characterization.

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