I'll agree, Thought, that our main quibble seems to be over semantics. But those semantics are far more important than you might think. The difference between "discrimination" and "oppression" is similar to the difference between being "angry" and being "pissed the eff off."
Only if that is not a valid indicator of job performance. Those would seemingly be very valid considerations for a strip club, for example, where the product being marketed is physical appearance. Of course, then there is the question of if strip clubs could exist in a society with no sexism.
Of course they could. Strip clubs, and porn, while we're at it, serve an important biological function. This boils down to personal choice though. Even today, women aren't forced into these professions, and if they think its demeaning or below them, then they shouldn't do it. I've heard a lot of anecdotal evidence to the end where women go into these professions due to emergencies or lack of funds, but really, there are dozens of opportunities out there even if the only thing you have is a high school diploma. You just have to quit looking for an easy way out.
As a side note, however, there are still organizations that are oppressive to women in the United States. The Boy Scouts of America and the Girl Scouts of America are two such organizations that come to mind. This oppression isn't on the federal government level, or indeed even state government levels, but it still exists.
The boy scouts aren't oppressing women by only allowing men in. Its the Boy Scouts, for crying out loud, its a youth club.
I'm curious; we have a black president, so does that mean blacks are no longer oppressed or discriminated against in the US?
I don't think they are either, for the reasons you mentioned above.
If one makes a case that blacks are suppressed by white society or white CEO's, then I can make the equal case of white oppression by the black community at large, plus groups like the ACLU and the NAACP.
If a white man had been in OJ Simpson's shoes back in '94, with a jury consisting of people from L.A., would he have been convicted? Let me answer that with another example, if Rodney King had been white and was beaten up by a group of black cops, would the state of California and Los Angeles have bent over backwards to convict them, even trying them twice?
My point here is that, compared to race relations, the gender gap seems like gumdrops and ice cream. While sexism is still a problem, I think we need to take care of the hemorrhage before the cut on your finger.
I actually like this metaphor, as it helps to explain things easier. If the US was a human body, race relations would be a brain hemorrhage and the gender gap would be a cut on the finger. If you deal with the cut first you'll probably die, but if you deal with the hemorrhage without treating the cut, you'll be dealing with an infection.
But I would like to think that electing a black man as president was a
huge step forward. Only in America can the son of an African immigrant and a white Kansan, both of whom lived in poverty, move upward to the highest office in the land. And only in America can the people, only seven years after a brutal attack and war with a man named Hussein, elect a leader with the same name.
And that's just in 50 years, without mandated "social justice." If that doesn't give you hope for the future, then you're a lost cause.
