Comments Elsewhere

Mandos: “within a paradigm of male supremacy, equality between the sexes is impossible…” Er, um, isn’t this immediately and redundantly tautological anyway? Supremacy obviously can’t mean equality.

I think the point is that people (mostly men) often try to assert that equality between men and women exists in this or that limited domain based on superficial resemblences, but that they are mistaken: under a society-wide system of male supremacy the superficial resemblences do not actually play the same role or get taken up in the same way for the men that they do for the women. It’s obvious that supremacy and equality can’t coexist at the same time and in the same respect, but it’s not always obvious that male supremacy in particular is pervasive and systemic. It’s true that it is, but many (especially men) ignore or deny it.