The struggle for female equality suffers from a fundamental problem: it quibbles over the appearance of a building that has a rotten foundation.

Many of the “core issues” in women’s rights today—at least in the west—are things like the number of women in science and technology fields, equal pay for equal work, and the fight against sexualization of young girls by the media.

These are important issues to be sure, but if one wants to truly address female equality we must look honestly at the more fundamental ways that women are treated differently from men.

I mean really look at them. With fresh eyes.

To take this journey with me you’ll have to think as an outsider—as someone from 10,000 years in the future, or as a visitor from another planet. Try to play along.

Ready?

Makeup and Clothing Differences

Women paint their faces every single day of their lives, and they do this because they and everyone around them believe their natural appearances are too unattractive to face the world. For a woman to not paint her face is a sign that she doesn’t want to participate in normal society. She should move to Oregon and start a co-op.

To make things much worse, the way women apply this paint to their faces is in order to make them look as close to ideal sexual fertility as possible. They maximize the size of their eyes, the whiteness of their skin, and the redness of their lips and cheeks. They are strongly encouraged, in other words, to make themselves more attractive to men, by the millions, every single day of their lives. And not doing so makes them an outcast in most circles.

Even more crazy, men have the same faces as women, but for them it’s the exact opposite. For a woman, not exaggerating their eyes and concealing flaws in their facial skin—at a minimum—is a sign that they lack self-worth. Might as well off yourself. If a man, however, were to tell a potential female mate, friends, family, or his co-workers, that he didn’t feel good about himself unless he had some eyeliner and lipstick on, he’d be divorced, fired, and ostracized—instantly.

Think about that. Imagine any woman you know being told by their husband that he wants to wear eyeliner so he can feel good about himself. That’s a divorce.

How peculiar is this? Men are told that their faces are natural and normal, and women are told they must look both sexually attractive and aroused, or GTFO.

It’s heroically ridiculous.

He’s a pro-tip: If you’re trying to attain equality and self-esteem for women, one of the best ways to start might be NOT painting your face to hide your actual appearance and appear sexually aroused.

Then there’s the clothes.

Men have an area of their body between their necks and their belly buttons. It’s called their chest. It’s where the ribcage is, which protects the heart, which pumps blood to keep them alive. And as it turns out, women have the exact same area.

But theirs are naughty. Yep. Can’t show 'em in public. Unless you’re a whore, of course.

The issue is that these parts, for female types, aid in the nursing of children. Small people. Little versions of ourselves. Mammals make milk to feed them. Female mammals, anyway. So that’s why you can’t show them. That’s why if you do show them in public you’re a whore.

I hope that’s clear.

Oh, back to clothes.

Turns out that the clothes that women like the most are the ones that make them look sexually attractive to men.

That’s it. That’s the entire game. Billions of dollars are spent on this. Millions of women spend hours per week shopping for clothes to cover their body in a way that makes them attractive in ways that men cannot be.

Sexually, in other words. Meaning different between boys and girls. Biologically, is what I’m saying.

So the clothes highlight the breasts, the butt, and the legs. And the hair I guess. Not sure about that part.

Go anywhere. Turn on any channel. Look at any magazine. Watch any movie. The women will have red lips and shirts that show off their breasts. And tight pants. Or short tube covers that show their legs.

And then with the shoes. They like shoes that make their feet look small and dainty, and that have really high heels on them that arch their backs and force their rears and mammal feeding breasts out.

…to be more attractive to men.

Now, maybe you’re thinking that I’m blaming women here. That I’m highlighting all this insanity and saying, “See? The women are doing it to themselves!”

If that’s what you think then you’re not paying attention. Try to keep up. This is happening. It’s a machine. It is reality. There are 1,000 causes and 1,000 effects that in turn become causes.

No, we won’t be assigning blame here. The goal of this exercise is visibility, awareness, and introspection. Stay with me.

We’re still on clothes.

Now here’s the really weird part: women wear mostly those same clothes to work. The shirts that highlight the breasts, and the tube thing that leaves the legs out, along with the very high shoes that force them to walk different than men and show the parts that men don’t have.

These are work clothes.

Oh, and they’re also wearing the face paint as well. The kind that makes them look aroused and young and in their sexual prime. And perfume. It’s like flowers, but sexy.

What do men wear to the office? Great question.

Think of a banker’s suit from the 1920’s. Or a train conductor’s uniform. The sexual face paint? No, not allowed, remember? Discouraged even. Their perfume? It just makes them smell clean, or dependable.

The shoes? Nothing there with the butt and breast lifting. They just keep the feet protected mostly.

So that’s the makeup and clothes bit. Highly curious.

Now let’s talk about names.

Women change their names

If you’ve ever read any history, or fiction, or fiction about history, you know that names matter a lot. Your given name, your family name. They all define you.

They’re how you describe yourself to others. They identify you in groups. People are their names.

But not women.

Women have to get married (unless they’re failures), and when they do they have to change their last name to that of the man they’re marrying.

They…change…their…names.

Like the guy wearing eyeliner for self-esteem, I want you to imagine a man who volunteers to take his wife’s name instead. What’s divorce called when it happens before marriage? Whatever that’s called, that’s what happens to him.

It’s fine for a man to need help once in a while, but Jesus—don’t behave like a woman. That’s the easiest way to lose her respect.

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(thoughtful pause)

Still with me?

I was in the passport office yesterday and everyone was being asked if the name they put down was their only name. All the men were like,

Are you f**king kidding me? This is my NAME man!

And all the women were like:

Yeah, I’ve actually been multiple people, you know, based on who I was with at the time.

It was heartbreaking.

Forget all that. Equal people don’t change their goddamn names. Your name is your soul. Your name is your identity. Slaves and dogs have their names changed for them, not humans. Not unless they have a collective spell of stupidity cast upon them.

Which we clearly do.

Ok, let’s lighten things up and talk about the draft.

Equal people go to war

Men get called to go to war. Women don’t.

Sounds cool, right? Like a good deal for women? It’s not.

Why? Because in exchange they have to wear sex face paint and change their names, and stop talking in meetings when a boy wants to say something.

That’s the tradeoff, and it’s not worth it.

Here’s the way the draft should work: everyone gets called. If you’re 130 pounds and five foot tall, then maybe you shouldn’t be an M60 gunner. But it shouldn’t matter what gender you are.

The military has this test called the ASVAB that figures out how smart you are, and puts you where you can help the most. It can do the same for women. Make them engineers or accountants or firefighters or pilots or tank gunners—whatever they can do. And if a man can’t do a job because he’s too short, or light, or weak, then he should get a different job as well.

Many women are weaker than men. So what? Don’t hide that. Don’t pretend it’s not true. That’s dumb. Hardly any men I know can make humans in their stomach. And women seem to be pretty rad at way more things then we thought just a decade ago. Make the standard. See who reaches it. End of story.

The key thing is not to treat women as a separate class of human.

Summary

Ok, we’ve returned from our external analysis of things. What can we take away from the journey?

1. It’s fundamentally unequal to require that women paint themselves before they can face the world, especially when men would be considered the epitome of weakness and failure if they wanted to do the same.
2. This is a good benchmark for evaluating the level of insanity for a way women are treated. There are commercials all day long about cleaning products, for example. Laundry soap, mop products, etc. Imagine that it’s a man in the commercial doing the cleaning, and ask yourself if any woman would buy that product (or date that man), and you start to see the problem.
3. We consider the female body as something to be simultaneously ashamed of and sexually emphasized. Aren’t both of those bad? What if it were just a body?
4. Names are a matter of identity, and the worst thing you can do to a human is mess with its identity. It’s actually a type of torture. But we, as a matter of course, tell women to dissolve themselves into the greater liquid of a man. Sickening, really.
5. Then we treat women like children by exempting them from the draft.

All of these things are fundamental attacks against female equality. They undermine womens’ rights far more than any of the issues talked about today because they are the reason for those symptoms.

Maybe fewer women want to go into STEM fields because their mothers are teaching them how to attract men by painting their faces to look aroused, in the hope of discarding their given names for a future man, who may have to gallantly fight wars on her behalf.

Maybe that’s what we should be talking about.

What have we learned today?

What I’ve learned is that I have no idea what to think about these issues. I’m as confused as anyone.

One side of me is a pure liberal, humanist, free-will skeptic. That side says we should go hardcore on the pure equality front. Same same, 50/50 down the line. Get rid of the Barbies and the pink. Unisex clothes. Etc. Not as a requirement, but as an ideal that we start working towards immediately.

But the other side of me likes what this media produces. He likes a feminine woman. He likes chivalry. He likes romance. He likes a woman taking his name. He likes lifting her over puddles and protecting her from danger.

My progressive humanist side hates that guy. He thinks he’s a caveman asshole who belongs in a history book to be studied by smart people who know better.

And a third part of me worries that it’s a losing battle. Turn on Univision one day and you’ll see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

The one thing I can say for sure is that if we want to make real progress, we’ll have to start by being honest with ourselves and addressing problems rather than symptoms.

Based on the three topics I raised here we have much ground to cover. It’s time to woman up.

Notes

1. I am aware of the fact that women were covered in the past because society worried that they were too alluring for men to avoid assaulting. We also used to think sickness was caused by evil spirits.