A Light Is Seen

Jeff Fecke:

Until we let boys onto the paths of their choosing, we're constraining just how free girls are to choose their own paths. Until we free masculinity to be as varied and expansive as femininity, we're placing an ultimate boundary on femininity itself.

He seems to be getting closer to the point where he will start to agree with what I said back in October.

To strive for all humans to be treated equally is frustrating. Being what we are, we attach our certain circumstances to our declarations, whether it be for our gender or for our ancestors or for our religion or for our nationality. It ranges from men’s rights, women’s rights, sexual preference rights, hyphenated-American’s rights, yet it boils down to the same thing. We want the right to be free to choose. To be free to decide. To be what we so desire to be, without anyone to gainsay against us or stop us from making the attempt.

And that is the true basis for equality: freedom. So long as you do not actively cause harm against another person with your choices, a truly free society should never stand in your way.

While part of me would love to spread the old snarks about blind squirrels and stopped clocks, the rest of me realizes that to do so would be counterproductive in the extreme. Here he is, one of the most rabid male feminists in the blogosphere, making the argument regarding the next logical step to the core argument of feminism: that one's gender of birth need not determine one's entire existence in the eyes of society.

Admittedly, he describes this situation using the traditional language of feminism. Yet that cannot be escaped completely. Jesus of Nazareth was a good Jewish man, and he couldn't entirely get away from using the words and phrases he learned as a child. And just as the teachings of the Nazarene were called by a different name to distinguish between itself and its predecessor, so to will the teachings of this brand of feminism be called something else entirely in order to distinguish itself from its own predecessor...

Equality. Pure, undiluted equality. A society where we are free to decide on the lives that we so desire, unconstrained by the slightest modicum of social concerns based on race or gender or creed or anything else, is the ultimate goal of human equality.

I can only hope that Jeff will realize the ultimate goal of his philosophy, as well as realize that you cannot have a philosophy of equality while still attaching gender-specific titles to it. For as long as you fight for one group's rights and ignore the rest, you cannot pursue equality.