Feminism and Positive Discrimination

This might be controversial in this day and age but I've never really thought of myself as a feminist. I want women to have equal rights with men, but I'm not sure if that is enough to make me a feminist. I (hopefully obviously) support all the women stepping forward in the #metoo campaign and I think it's disgusting that men in such senior positions have been allowed to get away with this for so long. I am also probably guilty of being de-sensitized to it over the years. I accepted that men will wolf-whistle when you walk down the street or grope you in a club, I hate it, but it's always just been the way things are. My worries don't really stem from this though, other than that I think we're all so blinded by the fury that we're in danger of getting carried away.

The only way I think I can explain what I am talking about is with an example which is what started off my anger at "feminism" so many years ago and made me wonder if some people do what is in fact positive discrimination under the guise of feminism. For those of you that don’t know about the UK political system (many Brits do not understand it), in its simplest form imagine the country broken up into hundreds of pieces (the size of a small town). These are constituencies and each constituency has an elective that has a seat in Parliament (an MP). At elections you vote for the political party you want to represent your constituency, you vote for the man or woman you want to be MP for your constituency (not which party you want running the country) although the chances are it will be the same. Then the party that has the most MPs usually (but not always) is the party that runs the government. Confusing? Yes. But you don’t need to fully understand it to see what my problem is.

There are some constituencies where the government stated that there must be only women candidates. This made me so mad. This is not how you run a country. It is positive discrimination, in fact, discriminating again men. What if there was a man better qualified to have that post? What if there weren’t any women that really wanted to do it, but people were forced into it because men weren’t allowed? Women don’t have to do everything that men do. They should have the opportunity to, but they don’t HAVE to. If a woman is best qualified for a job, any job then that should be why she gets it. If nothing else, it’s insulting to say that a woman wouldn’t be able to get into Parliament without this helping hand. I’m sure I’m going to get plenty of people disagreeing with me, and I’m sure I know what they’ll say. But quotas are a bad idea, whether it’s in gender, race or anything else.

Women ARE different to men, we all know this. Women (usually) are more compassionate than men, it’s in their genetic make-up, part of the child raising. They are (usually) physically weaker than men, and they do (often) let emotions play a bigger part in decision making. Men have better spacial awareness. Women are more able to see the bigger picture when men go steaming into something all hotheaded. There are some jobs that are just better suited in general to women, and some better suited in general to men. I am 100% in favour of equal opportunities and equal pay, women should be able to be whatever they want to be, but they shouldn’t be forced into mens’ jobs when there may be men better suited to it. This is discriminating and insulting.