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Comment by velis_vel | Hacker News Reader

> It seems doubtful that the answer to social inequalities is to make special privileges for each group to match the special privileges already enjoyed by others, as opposed to working more towards an ideal of equal treatment for everyone.

If two people are running in a race, and one of them has been running the past 4 miles with a 50-pound weight on their back, taking the weight off isn't going to make the race fair. You've either got to give them some kind of help or put a weight on the other person's back.

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The mentality of the world as a competition between different groups of people, where either men win and women lose, or men lose and women win, doesn't seem particularly helpful either. A race implies winners and losers, so I think this is a bad analogy. An idea of "let's treat men worse for a while as revenge for years of male-dominated history" isn't very sophisticated, no particular offense intended. Also, giving special privileges to all the known groups will just disenfranchise the people not associated with any particular groups (in this case, one might consider trans people). Human equality (or even including non-human-persons equality) would seem a better ideal than just male-female equality.

If we're actually intelligent creatures, let's try and fix the underlying problems instead of just pushing them around for someone else to suffer from.

I can't upvote this enough!

Most people have a weight that's not obvious to others. One person runs with their 50 pound sexist society weight. Another runs with their 50 pound tormented in school and has no one to turn to for help in moving past it weight. Another has a 50 pound echoes of institutional racism weight. I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Everyone could do with programs to help unload their weights. No one needs or deserves more weight.

No you don't, doing so only breeds more animosity. There's a reason why men get touchy over female hires and promotions that are framed in the context of diversity and women's rights. Hiring or promoting someone primarily for being female, especially if they aren't the best candidate, is stupid.

Whoever downvoted this, I suggest they look into the criticism of "colorblindness" in regards to racism, and consider if an analogy can be made here as well.

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