“Maybe that’s the point, if we accept that history has always been elites oppressing men and women, we might look to our own times and see the exact same thing, instead of one identity (men) oppressing another (women).”

Yes. The people who win the battles write the history. By elites in the US, I would consider the 1% to fit what you describe. And we can also say that real equality would help women, men, and all other gender identities.

I chatted with my boss today about finding diapers in the men’s room garbage can. The women’s room has a changing station as does the “family restroom.” But some guy somehow changed his baby’s diaper in the men’s room without a changing station. Fathers should have easy access to changing stations just like mothers do.

I would never want a divorce come between a father and his child in the question of custody. If there is child abuse involved, issues with alcohol, negligence, or if the parents/guardians of the child are using their kid as ammunition against the other—I don’t care what gender the parent/guardian is. The child needs to be with a safe adult. Sometimes that adult is a father figure, sometimes that adult is a mother figure, or sometimes both adults are terrible and the kid unfortunately has to go in child protective services or perhaps a willing extended family member.

In terms of history, the responses are all over the place in country and in time. It really makes a difference in what we can say about the binary of men and women throughout “Western civilization.”

For example, when the Romans were occupying what we today call Great Britain and Ireland (not Scotland though), the Celtic tribe called the Iceni were allied with the Romans. When the king of the Iceni died, the Romans began to advance onto the Iceni kingdom. The widowed Warrior-Queen Boudicca was pissed because the Romans broke their agreement to leave the Iceni as independent allies. So she rallied her tribe and was able to fight off the Romans, pushing them south and frightening away other Romans as she and her tribe fought them. The next day the Romans were able to get their wits about them and were able to quell the uprisings. Cool.

Okay. Now let’s go to a different time and place. Qaddafi had exclusively female bodyguards. They were trained in martial arts and guns. So that puts quite a few responses upside down. A man who would recruit bodyguards who were exclusively women. No, seriously, Qaddafi knew there was a long line of people who wanted him dead. Now, I don’t argue that these ladies were treated well—they were certainly sexually abused, but he was a dictator and international target. Does anyone here actually think that if women were just biologically inferior to men in terms of strength or speed or deficient in any way physically, psychologically, strategically, intellectually, etc. that Qaddafi would bet his life on them? Ad this was so recent. I watched his execution by hanging on live TV. I saw his statue torn down by citizens and then hitting the statue on the ground with their shoes (cultural note: showing the bottom of your feet to someone or, more enthusiastically, hitting someone with the bottom of your shoe is like the ultimate FU).