User:Ianfurman/sandbox

Gender_equalityThe Shakers, a celibate evangelical group founded in America in 1774, practiced equality of the sexes soon after they began organizing into their own separatist enclaves. The head of the Shakers' central ministry in 1788, Joseph Meacham, had a revelation that the right of sexes should be equal, so he brought Lucy Wright into the ministry as his female counterpart, and together they restructured society to balance the rights of the sexes. Meacham and Wright established leadership teams where each elder, who dealt with the men's spiritual welfare, was partnered with an eldress, who did the same for women. Each deacon was partnered with a deaconess. Men had oversight of men; women had oversight of women. Women lived with women; men lived with men. In Shaker society, a woman did not have to be controlled or owned by any man. After Meacham's death in 1796, Wright was the head of the Shaker ministry until she died in 1821. Going forward, Shakers maintained the same pattern of gender-balanced leadership for more than 200 years. They also promoted equality with women's rights advocates. In 1853, Shaker brother William Leonard wrote that Shakerism brought an end to the “degradation and oppression of women,” and suggested that the public discussion of woman’s rights, as well as other reforms, originated with Shakers and was due to their recognition of God as both male and female. In 1859, Shaker Elder Frederick Evans stated their beliefs forcefully, writing that Shakers were “the first to disenthrall woman from the condition of vassalage to which all other religious systems (more or less) consign her, and to secure to her those just and equal rights with man that, by her similarity to him in organization and faculties, both God and nature would seem to demand." Evans and his counterpart, Eldress Antoinette Doolittle, joined the fighting for women's rights and advocated on speakers' platforms throughout the northeastern U.S. in the 1870s. A visitor to the Shakers wrote in 1875, “Each sex works in its own appropriate sphere of action, there being a proper subordination, deference and respect of the female to the male in his order, and of the male to the female in her order [emphasis added], so that in any of these communities the zealous advocates of ‘women’s rights’ may here find a practical realization of their ideal.”[2] The Shakers were more than a radical religious sect on the fringes of American society; they put equality of the sexes into practice. They showed that equality could be achieved and how to do it.[3] In the wider society, the movement towards gender equality, especially in Western countries, began with the suffragette movement of the late-19th century, which sought to allow women to vote and hold elected office. There have been substantial changes to women's property rights, particularly in relation to their marital status. (e.g, Married Women's Property Act 1882.) In the 1960s, a more general movement for gender equality developed based on women's liberation and feminism. The central issue was that the rights of women should be the same as men. Specific issues were continued to be focused on. Main article: Convention against Discrimination in Education Changes to attitudes to equality in education opportunities for boys and girls have also undergone a cultural shift. Main article: Anti-discrimination laws Over time, there have been significant changes in attitudes about equality between sexes, which have resulted in more legislation. Some changes came about by adopting affirmative action policies. There was also a change in social views, including "equal pay for equal work" as well as most occupations being equally available to men and women in many countries. For example, many countries now permit women to serve in the armed forces, the police forces and to be fire fighters – occupations traditionally reserved for men. Although these continue to be male dominated occupations, an increasing number of women are now active, especially in directive fields such as politics and high positions in business. Similarly, men are increasingly working in occupations which in previous generations had been considered as women's work, such as nursing, cleaning and child care. In domestic situations, the biological differences between men and women in relation to activities related to child bearing are more commonly shared where possible, and the role of child rearing is not as widely considered to be an exclusively female role, so that a wife may be free to pursue her career after marriage and following childbirth. Another manifestation of the change in social attitudes is the non-automatic taking by a woman of her husband's surname on marriage or combining names as in the Spanish naming customs. Many people consider that the objective of gender equality has not been fully achieved, especially in non-Western countries. A highly contentious issue relating to gender equality is the role of women in religiously orientated societies. For example, the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam declared that women have equal dignity, but not equal rights, and this was accepted by many predominantly Muslim countries. In some Christian churches the practice of churching of women may still have elements of Ritual purification and the Ordination of women to the priesthood may be restricted or forbidden. Some Christians or Muslims believe in Complementarianism, a view that men and women have different, but complementing roles. This view may be in opposition to the views and goals of gender equality. In addition, there are also non-Western countries of low religiosity where the contention surrounding gender equality remains. In China, cultural preference for a male child has resulted in a shortfall of women in the population. Feminism in Japan has made many strides and resulted in the Gender Equality Bureau, but Japan remains low development in gender equality compared to other industrialized nations. Not all ideas for gender equality have been popularly adopted. For example: despite Topfreedom,the right to be bare breasted in public frequently applies only to males and has remained a marginal issue. Breastfeeding in public is more commonly tolerated, especially in semi-private places such as restaurants.[4] However, this picture of Western progress with regards to gender equality can be seen as severely oversimplified. Indeed, it is the contentious meaning of the term "equality" itself that makes measuring gender equality "progress" inherently problematic. Newman and White suggest that equality can be understood in three distinct ways: identical treatment, differential treatment, and fair treatment.[5] Identical treatment is the claim that equality means the deployment of generalizing, abstract, content-less reason, unaffected with regards to the gender it addresses.[6] This view assumes that gender differences are entirely socially constructed concepts, and that an underlying, gender-neutral human should be the target of equality. Next, the differential treatment notion of equality is the claim that biological "sex" differences do, in fact, exist as tangible and real, and that structuring treatment around these differences is not unequal, so long as these biological differences are accurately defined (that is to say, so long as differential treatment is not random).[7] The third view, that equality is fair treatment, is in a sense a reaction to both of the previous two claims. Equality as identical treatment assumes that the criteria we use to define human nature is itself objective, neutral, and fair for each human, and differential treatment assumes that there are inherent, empirical, tangible, biological differences that the binary categories of male-female derive from. Theorists like Judith Lorber, Michel Foucualt, Judith Butler, and many more attack both of these essentialist stances, articulating that any claim to an underlying human nature is absurd. In short, this is because what it is to be a human is at bottom a product of constructive discursive discourses. As Judith Lorber puts the point: "the paradox of 'human nature' is always a manifestation of cultural meanings, social relationships, and power politics".[8] Furthermore, theorists like Catharine MacKinnon claim that all circulating articulations of this fictitious "universal human" actually reflect socially male biases.[9] That is to say, unadulterated, objective, pure reason is merely a tacit disguise for patriarchal reinforcement. It is clear, then, how the identical treatment model fails on this view. Similarly, by this logic, the differential treatment is shown to merely use male rationality to define and construct the gender difference - as a result, true equality is precluded. This tacit inequality in our sexual concept poses a particular problem, because Western Liberal Democracies are premised on descriptions of people that describe them as equal, yet this exists alongside a description of women and men that describes them in terms that makes them unequal. So the above claims of this article that Non-Western countries are less gender equal than Western countries must not be so quickly accepted. Since this acceptance of inequality in sexes is perceived as a natural difference between men and women, it thus permeates into society relatively undiagnosed. Disguised as objective, the subjective that bias nature of these claims for equal treatment become particularly difficult to address. This allows the state/laws to appear to be gender-neutral and universally applicable, while ignoring the backdrop of the underlying forces that have structured our legal system and personal cognition in such a way as to promote equality of opportunity for social category male at the price of inequality for social category female. As Judith Lorber says: "it is the taken-for-grantedness of such everyday gendered behaviour that gives credence to the belief that the widespread differences in what women and men do must come from biology".[10] On such a view, then, addressing equality must take on more than formal equality, and become "fair treatment".[5] That is to say, the male paradigm cannot be seen as natural and objective, thus bias and preference and affirmative action to address past discriminations to women should be seen as furthering equality. Lorber describes the "bathroom problem" to articulate the inequality of overarching, gender-neutral laws.[11] She articulates how men's bathroom norms are used as the standard by which to determine how many and how large public bathrooms should be. For various reasons, however, women make more frequent use of the bathrooms than men, and as a result there are too few bathrooms for women, and sufficient amount for men). This tacit structural underpinning of male dominance is particularly dangerous for it creates the space for certain instances of female oppression to be viewed and experienced as the woman’s choice. For instance, a woman might choose not to pursue a job that isn’t compatible with her domestic obligations, while ignoring the structure of the patriarchal family in assigning those domestic roles to her, and furthermore the structuring of workplaces that tacitly stream out women that have this domestic duty in virtue of their strict required hours or inflexibility with days off, etc. As such, the fair treatment model of equality addresses the weaknesses of purely formal/de jure equality in addressing such tacit structural and systematic inequality for women. Brothers_ConflictAfter her father becomes engaged, Ema and her pet squirrel, Juli, have to move in with her thirteen new stepbrothers. She arrives and is met at the door by the eldest son, Masaomi, and the youngest son, Wataru. Upon arriving in the living room, she is embraced by Tsubaki (the fifth son), who is then promptly smacked in the head by his identical twin, Azusa–– the sixth son. Ukyo, a lawyer and the second son, introduces himself while bringing in tea. Ema also discovers that one of her own classmates, Yusuke, is one of her new brothers. Subaru and Kaname (the ninth and third sons, respectively) also walk into the living room and introduce themselves. Ema is then surprised to learn that the super popular singing idol, Futo, is also one of the thirteen; unfortunately, he is currently on tour in Hokkaido and she is unable to meet him until later. As they talk in the living room, an exhausted Ema becomes dizzy from a fever and goes to her room to rest. Louis, the eighth son, arrives home from work and go to say hello to her before joining the other brothers in preparing for dinner. Later in the evening, Ema runs into Kaname as he passes by her room. He kisses her on the cheek, to which she responds by asking him to stop teasing her, because she "knows" that he is a kind person. After Kaname leaves, Ema decides to go take a shower and accidentally bumps into Subaru, who only has a towel around his waist. Embarrassed, she runs into the living room where the twins, Tsubaki and Azusu, are apparently confessing their love to each other. Ema runs away when Azusa tells her that he did indeed confess to Tsubaki, only to laugh at her, explaining that the two of them are voice actors and that they are only rehearsing from a script. Ema eventually arrives back in her room and lays in her bed, wondering what new adventure she had just gotten herself into. After the ending song, Yusuke is seen lying in his bed, asking himself, "Ah, why? Why does she need to be the one that is my sibling?"It's a new day for Ema, and she helps Ukyo make breakfast for the brothers. She later on heads for school with Yusuke. In class, Yusuke–– who has apparently been crushing on his new step-sister long before she became his sibling–– is seen staring at Ema. Back home, Ema meets Futo, who calls her his "stupid, beautiful sister." She also greets Ukyo, who then asks her to make a birthday cake for Subaru. She comes back from the market to find Louis, who had fallen asleep across a couch on the landing above their living room. He wakes and then almost immediately insists for her to let him do her hair. While Louis is styling her hair, he finds that the curling iron is broken and rushes off to find a new one. Futo walks in, demanding to know where Louis is, and, finding he isn't at the house, storms out of the house. Once Louis is finished with Ema's hair, she bakes and decorate's Subaru's birthday cake. The brothers, including a blushing Subaru, are presented the beautiful, fruit encrusted confection. Later on, Ema decides to go to the living room, where Tsubaki is teasing Subaru about liking Ema in a non-sibling way. Embarrassed and (quite) drunk, Subaru says mean things and later realizes that Ema had heard all of it. He goes to apologize, but ends up kissing Ema, then passing out on top of her. The "valiant" twins arrive on the scene and haul Subaru off of Ema. When they question her about what had happened, she protects Subaru by insisting that it was a complete accident. The following day, Ema visits a media store and sees Futo. She loudly calls out his name, which promptly blows his "cover." He shoves his CD's into her hands and commands Ema to rent them for him before rushing off. At home, she gives the CD's to Futo and he whispers suggestively that he will give her a "punishment" in her room. After the ending song, the twins receive a message from one of the (as of yet) unmet brothers, saying that he will be coming back home.