What The Devil Do You Want?

Question: Do feminists really want equal rights?

Well, I would say that I think that a fair portion of them actually want more rights and privileges than men have; They claim that females are simply better than males and thereby males are unnecessary and evil. These kinds of women suggest that they do not need men at all because they are so useless. This kind of view is essentially placing one kind of sexism with another, which is certainly no better than the original sexism.

Another portion of women, on the surface, want equal rights though they are really thinking in terms of pay and opportunity. Many women do not want to lose the advantages that they have over men. These women would surely take the equal pay and opportunity but likely opt out of having to receive the same penalty for the same, having to reject the sympathy given to them in domestic violence cases, and having to deny the greater priority given to them in child custody cases. additionally, they would likely not want to take on some roles that men do; for instance, they would not want other men to expect them to pick up the tab at a restaurant.

There are also women who do want equal rights, and fight for precisely that. I think that they are on the best side of this issue, and I think that they should be given the equal rights that they are asking for. Men and women should have equal rights; in fact, all humans should have equal rights (as a side note, they do have equal rights from birth, society simply oppresses some of them more than others.

Question: What can we do about patriarchy?

The issue of patriarchy can be dealt with in an upfront non-violent resistance. Given that society is comprised only of individuals, any justified social issue of equality which affects a large portion of society can be dealt with in an effective manner. The strike method, can be largely effective, I find. It doesn't work when a person is replaceable like a teacher or factory line worker, but when a large portion of society refuses to take part in basic societal functions, the society is forced into a submission. If women wanted equal rights and were not given it, they could, instead of going along with the game, choose to opt out of it; they could choose to not go to work, not clean the house, not make dinner, not go shopping, not wear immodest clothing, not wear make-up, not sleep in the same bed as their spouses, not get married, not engage in sexual activities. This comes at the expense of doing severe damage to society, this sort of action would drive legislature to quickly fix things, given that men would have to pick up the slack. Men would be forced to come to a compromise and grant equal pay, rights, and so on.

This method also applies to all minorities; imagine if immigrants decided to not work until they were treated equally, Americans would have to pick up the jobs which they do not want. The immigrant refusal to work would result in less food being harvested, and thereby causing some hunger and forcing society to change. The LGBT community and  Allies could enact the same approach.

Deceptive Subconscious

Response to Katie - full post here

Regardless of whether or not your thoughts are real, the universe is more likely deterministic. Additionally, given that you do not have power over your subconscious, if it is controlling you then you are not a subject of free will because you have no power to change what you think. Also, the very act of having made a decision doesn't meant that something has free will. The question, then, is what is causing your subconscious to deceive you as it does. If we can decided that it is a bunch of electric signals, which are governed by the universe, we can also decide that you do not have free will because the predetermined movement of electrons is what is causing you to act as you are.

Ethics of Spider Killing on a Sliding Scale

In response to Andrew - full post here

I think that it's interesting that you brought up the ethics of killing spiders. As Avery mentioned above, sentience is on a sliding scale, and we have to weight various sentience levels against our understanding of morality. As he also hinted at, there are people who are against the killing of mosquitoes or even blades of grass; the Jains are an example of such a group. Some people that I have talked to have suggested that the ethics of killing plants is the same as the ethics of killing animals, so they choose to kill both. Now, back to spiders; I think that killing spiders, based on your conclusions about the disease carrying mosquitoes, is certainly less ethically correct than killing mosquitoes.

As a note, I do not kill insects when I can avoid doing so. I think that people are well within their right to kill mosquitoes, ticks, and other harmful insects. However, I think that the killing of other harmless insects is unnecessary; beetles, like lady bugs for instance, cause no harm, so why kill them? Also, some spiders like those within the Portia genus have exhibited an ability to learn and problem solve. I think that, unless the insect is a inconvenience to you, it may be morally wrong to go out of your way to kill one.