Equality: A realistic goal ?
In the last few years there have been many large protests occurring around the nation; the Dreamer protests, Black Lives Matter protests and the Women’s March are just a few of them. The Dreamers are a group of undocumented youth who advocate for immigration rights, they got their name from the nickname instigated by the DACA policy which protects them from deportation and offers the eligibility to get a work permit. The Black Lives Matter movement is a group of activists fighting against police brutality and racial discrimination against African Americans. The Women’s March was a protest held worldwide in support of not just women’s rights but human rights over all. What do all these movements have in common? They are fighting for the same thing, equality. Specifically, legal equality. They want laws and policies to be created to protect their rights; they want to be legally equal to those who are oppressing and denying them these laws. According to Luisa Muraro, the fight for equality is never ending. Instead, she introduces alternative ideas.
Is equality possible? If it is, is that the final goal? In her essay, “ The Passion of Feminine Difference beyond Equality”, Luisa Muraro asks and attempts to answer these questions using Italian feminism. Muraro begins her paper by stating that equality should not be the final goal of feminists, instead they need to reach for something beyond equality. Equality, she claims, is given to the oppressed by the oppressors. In the case of the groups mentioned above, it is the politicians, mostly male and White, providing disadvantaged groups equality in the form of laws and policies. There have been many laws and Supreme Court cases that attempt to make all equal by law. The Brown v. Board of Education case attempted to end racial segregation in schools. Realistically, schools continue to be segregated; schools located in places with high levels of poverty consist of mostly Latino or African American children. These schools, which are poorly funded offer fewer classes to assist students in the pursuit of higher education. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 made it illegal to pay a woman less than a man for “equal work” . As most are aware though, a wage gap still exists between not just women and men, but also between White people and racial minorities. These are just a few examples of equality being written into our laws but failing to do their job. When you look at our reality, it is painfully obvious we are still not equal, regardless of how many laws are written. Luisa Muraro’s work offers an explanation on why the fight for equality is not working.
Muraro thinks the end goal should go beyond equality. People should aim higher than to be at the same level as their oppressors. Otherwise, the struggle to be on the same level of the oppressor will persist, meanwhile the oppressor will only continue to raise the bar. She also questions if equality is even possible in practice. We are born into asymmetrical relationships, she says, our first relationship is with our parents who we are completely dependent on. We are always dependent on others and are not truly in equal standing with everyone. Muraro does not think this is a bad thing however. It becomes complicated only because our society feeds us the myth of independence and individualism. We are told the independence should be everyone’s goal. We idealize the myth of the self sufficient farm from our nation’s early days. Dependency is such a stigmatized concept even though everyone is dependent at some point in their lives. We shame struggling women who are dependent on welfare, meanwhile we rely on our family and friends for mundane everyday things. Muraro, therefore, argues that we are always dependent.
Muraro thinks we shouldn’t be shooting for equality; in theory it sounds great but is almost impossible in practice. The discourse around equality is complex. There are many issues, as well as, different people trying to get their voices heard. It becomes a competition on how is more oppressed at times. This makes equality even harder to obtain. Instead she believes we should embrace our existing relationships. We should destigmatize the concept of dependency and accept our differences. True equality will be impossible; there will always be people who are disadvantaged as long as there are people who are advantaged. The goal is to not exploit those people, according to Muraro, trying to put everyone on the same level is unrealistic. The idea is to accept our asymmetrical relationships without domination and antagonism. Mauro emphasizes this is possible by reintroducing emotions into our politics; making our everyday relationships political. Much like the protesters initially stated, we should aim to be heard and seen . Let our existence be known. Let empathy reach, where laws and equality have failed to reach.
