If we are just going to be serious here, the morphology of females differs significantly from males, and there are well documented behavioral biases that have been shown to predate or even defy socialization time and time again.
Just because some people -want- men and women to be interchangeable in all respects does not mean that they are, or can be.
Women bring a critical set of biases and skills to the human condition, as do men. There is technologically no escape from sex determined role differentiation at a statistically significant scale without dooming humanity to population decline and rapid extinction.
Even if it were possible, is it wise to ignore the wisdom of millions of years of evolution, hard won by countless suffering and deaths? Should we blindly lunge toward an ill tested notion of “equality”, ignoring the sociopolitical and cultural risks we now are bearing witness to, undercutting the very ideals of self determination and individual freedom and allowing an easy entry point for totalitarian aspirations?
The simple, inescapable truth is that statistically, men hold the monopoly of coercive force on the planet, and all rights that women enjoy are therefore in effect granted by men. We don’t have to look far to see what happens in societies where this kind of affordance is considered unwise.
Whether one wishes it were so or not, the overstepping of women towards the erosion of reason in deference to compassion, while admirable in some measures, is propelling us towards a reaction by men and women alike that erodes the plausibility of the hypothesis that women should be trusted with power in hierarchical society.
I’d like to add that I am not making a personal value judgment here. I am a man, but life has shown me the great value that women can bring to nearly every endeavor both directly and indirectly.
I do not suppose that the role of men is somehow more important or significant in creating a just and prosperous society, but that rather the roles of women and men are of equal importance and value, specifically because those roles tend to be distinct and irreplaceable.
> some people -want- men and women to be interchangeable in all respects
That's a generalisation that loses all sense.
For example, you're building giant pyramids out of human corpses. Based on experiments and precise calculations, you know that you need x.y% more female corpses than male corpses, and get really angry when suppliers try to argue that men and women are equal in all respects.
Obviously, this is not the important question. We should ask questions about your activity as a whole instead.
(It might seem that my example is a bit over the top, but people around us do things that are just as bad, and with real enthusiasm.)
Gender issues are not just abstract, they are tied to problems people see in the society. It is not fashionable today to just state that someone is a swine to behave in some manner (and the answer would usually be that you are not allowed to limit anyone's freedoms), so dumb pathetic fences of bureaucratic states are used, and the talk about progress, benefits, equality, shared future, etc. floods the stage. However, you personally still either think that something is right, or that it's wrong.
During “millions of years of evolution”, in many places any woman walking alone without male relative or servant could be treated as a potential free sex toy. It was simply “evident” that anyone could try to rape her, and “everyone” knew that — men, women, kids. It was “natural”, and even the commandment about neighbour's wife could easily be seen as excluding “no one's” or “everyone's” wives, so it was even sanctioned from above. Obviously, it all stemmed from the heads of certain people, and changes introducing consequences mutated that “natural order”.
By the way, the figure of noble male saving damsel from the jerks is considered noble because... he could've joined the party, but choose not to. What a hero! Simple-minded people continue to see things the old way to this day when they expect heroines saved by the hero to have sex with him immediately. Because what are other options, really?
You’re right that my generalization was overly broad when taken out of context, as you have, but I don’t think that anything I was saying can be interpreted in good faith to mean that I assert that things were better in pre history or even 50 years ago.
I am a supporter of legal equality for women, of course, and of women having the social agency and opportunities to choose the path of their life on an individual basis.
That has nothing to do with the abandonment of reason for empathy, which I see as threatening and highly dangerous to the cause of female empowerment. You don’t have to use your imagination to see how that works out.
