Men's Rights Memes Episode 23: Affirmative Inaction

Hello and welcome to episode 23 of Men's Rights Memes, the show where I illuminate the trolls and general scumfucks that make up the Men's Rights Movement, and hopefully turn them to stone in the process. Without further ado, here is this episode's offending image.

Okay, I'm gonna level with you here. Affirmative action is a very difficult subject, especially when it comes to things like quotas. For a long time, I was vehemently against affirmative action. Then again, i was also an antifeminist right-wing asshole, so there you go.

Over time, I've listened to arguments from the other side, and done some actual research instead of just blindly swallowing the faulty rhetoric I'd been spoon-fed by family and culture. Sadly, there are still some people who have yet to do this, either by choice or because of ignorance. But I have seen the light, so I know that others can do so as well. I hope the following argument will help them do so.

One argument against affirmative action is that it is, in itself, a form of discrimination. Hell, the ideas inherent in affirmative action go by another name elsewhere: Positive Discrimination! Therefore, it must be bad, because discrimination is bad. People who make this argument often feel as though they've trapped people like me in the corner. We say that discrimination is bad, so it'd be a double standard for us to endorse things like quotas.

And, I suppose, they're technically correct. If a man and a woman apply to a STEM job with the same resume, the woman is more likely to get the job. But we have to consider that, for a very long time, the reverse was true. Men were favored for jobs in STEM and other fields, and in some cases, they still are. Thus, affirmative action for women and minorities does nothing more than level the playing field.

The counter to this is that it doesn't really matter who takes the job, because both the man and the woman have the same qualifications. People who make this argument claim to only give a shit about the quality of the work being done, rather than who does the work.

That's an admirable claim, really. But work does not exist in a vacuum. People do not exist in a vacuum. The bottom line is that there are certain groups of people who are oppressed in the world. Ignoring that fact, or choosing not to believe it, does not make it untrue. When you give people the opportunity to educate themselves, you allow them to exit the poverty they might have grown up in. But even then, you do not guarantee that they will get work in their chosen field. That's where Affirmative Action comes in. When you give, say, a woman the opportunity to be a scientist, you show other women, and even young girls, that it is possible to follow in her footsteps.

Affirmative Action is only about giving people something to look up to, about inspiring them to do their best. Frankly, I don't see how anyone can be against that.