Everything is a Gender Thing | Max Greenhalgh

Everything is a Gender Thing

by Max Greenhalgh

Gender and sexual equality are two of the most important and divisive issues in today’s society. However, as a bystander with no investment in the movements for equality, I often stand and wonder how any of the controversies brought up are about gender at all.

For example, the supposed pink tax scandal. Activists to this day still protest supposed differences between prices of male and female goods that are exactly the same, as the women’s products are, at first glance, unreasonably expensive. However, from all of the evidence I’ve seen, the issue doesn’t seem to be based on gender. Groundswell.org reported four major examples of the pink tax, and all four seem to have logical bases in consumerism. For example, the site reports the discrimination within the dry-cleaning industry, despite saying within their own information section that machines often cannot press women’s clothing due to the differences in the female frame, requiring manual pressing and a higher price as a result. Deodorants have been another item of controversy, as women often pay more for the same product, but with a different scent. However, whose choice is that? Women aren’t forced to buy the scented version of deodorant, but it smells better, so many choose to purchase it.

There are numerous other examples of the anti-pink tax movement’s fraudulent claims of sexism and misogyny, but I’m not here to debunk or ‘rek’ one side of the table. Many men’s rights activists claim that this is undeniably a gender issue, because the causation just must relate to the correlation of the data in this example. “You can’t be a guy and talk about needing help,” says CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) director Jane Powell. “This is why [suicide is] really a gender issue. There is no ducking this.” However, there seems to be plenty of ‘ducking this.’ Claiming that guys are completely incapable of seeking help for their problems and can never seem to get a handle on their emotions seems pretty misandristic for a charity that claims to be “Challenging a culture that prevents men seeking help when they need it” according to their website.

My point in all of this conjecture is that in today’s society, there seems to be an increasing sentiment of gender imbalance. However, unless real evidence is proposed for supposed components of modern gender imbalance, there will continue to be more and more sexism in the world as one gender’s image of the other is negatively impacted by all of these fringe movements that seem to defend their chosen side without evidence with ecclesiastical fervency. I think girls are pretty cool, and I promise, us guys have our positives, too. Let’s stop this separation of society based solely on gender before it is too late. Let’s go back to separating society’s haves and have nots in the way that is most effective – those who have money, and those who have not.

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