Sacks and Leving: Equal Rights Amendment Yes, 'Women’s Equality Amendment' No

(Sacks' and Levings' conclusion) --

"The intent of the ERA during its heyday in the 1970s was to eliminate sex discrimination, and at that time sex discrimination was a significant problem for women. Now gender bias and discrimination—in practice, if not in the law—cut both ways. The Equal Rights Amendment, because it seeks to end any bias or discrimination based on sex, is appropriate. The “Women’s Equality Amendment,” which ignores many of the worst gender-based injustices, is not."

I support these media spokesmen for MRA's, but this article exposes their naivety about feminism and its true intents.

The ERA was never about anything other than taking power away from men. The newly renamed bill is a confession of that truth.

Feminism is ideologically a "zero-sum" game -- in order for women to gain power ("equality"), men must lose it ("equality.")

Feminism is a pathology -- it starts in the adolescent socialization of girls during their "friendship wars" when they settle into a polarized mindset of -- "well, if you're HER friend then you can't be MY friend!"

Women are not evolved thinkers.

They have little capacity for self-reflection.

No sense of fairness or justice.

To expect a cat to fetch your slippers is foolish indeed.

Philosophically speaking....

Funny I see more so-called men's rights activists lobbying for the female status quo than obtaining and maintaining rights and protections for men.

I don't see that MrReality, even from the passage that Roy cited. Of course that's probably because I basically agree with the men who said it, although I think they're overstating the problems that women faced in the 70's.

As far as I can tell, every MRA here is working as hard as possible to eradicate the misandric "status quo". I don't believe I've ever met an MRA who was trying to maintain that status quo - that's why they're MRA's. MRAs are trying to change our situation. If they weren't, they wouldn't be MRAs.

So, as I said, please explain what you mean, cite another example, etc. I just don't "see" what you're suggesting.

I'm not being deliberately argumentative, I just want to know what makes you believe this.

Changing the name of it is not the important issue.

The ERA demands special protections for women, e.g. affirmative action. These protections result in discrimination against men. The purpose of the ERA (or whatever else one calls it), is protrayed by feminists as attaining "equality", which most people naturally take to mean equality of opportunity (also known by legislators as "formal equality"). But what is actually at stake is not equality of opportunity, it is something called "equality of result" (aka equity; "substantive equality"). The feminists are working magic with words here. They know people will associate "formal equality" with something like "equality in theory"; whereas they will associate the phrase "substantive equality" with "actual" equality, i.e. "substantial".
So to the ignorant public and legislators, only the latter is worth attaining, and that is what feminists are seeking. In sum, the passage of the ERA as it is currently written, will further institutionalize discrimination against men (ref: "Legalizing Misandry" by Nathanson and Young).

Sacks and Levering do not seem to be aware of what the ERA entails; in their discussion, they seem more interested in DV and custody issues.

-ax