LGBTQ Moving Up, Women Still Second Class

More and more, gay marriage is being seen as perfectly acceptable, and it is legal in more and more places.  That's great, and about time (things are actually moving faster than attitudes toward interracial marriage which didn't gain majority approval until the mid 90's). Yet it's still ok to treat women as second class in far too many ways and places.

Articles like the wank-tacular Dylan Byers piece effectively shortened at Lawers Guns and Money are still being published, and reading the comments (actual piece and a few other sties that commented on it) it is clear that many people think the treatment is exactly the same as men get because, I presume, they had a boss sometime that was a man that they said mean things about.

You see similar things with respect to equal pay.  Equal pay day was a couple weeks back.  Go to any (popular) blog or news site that has an article talking about gender equity largely on the basis of the pay gap, and read the comments.  It so frequently turns into a discussion about whether the pay gap is "really" that big, and what other things are going on, and "women are really advantaged because...[preferential hiring or something]", and "men are the only ones you can reject/fire/not promote without consequences", and lots of other, often spite filled commentary.

I myself complain just about every time the pay gap is released/pointed to.  I do this because 1. I find the statistics problematic and 2. use of it tends to shut down or sidetrack conversation. Really, though, I probably shouldn't harp on people who get into this, not the least because I actually am aware that a serious problem exists and I understand why the pay gap number is useful in many/most cases.

For all the complaining that [right-wing] white men do about how they are the only people that are discriminated against anymore, in the real world about the only -ism that you can use in public without being shunned/shamed is sexism.  It happens in newspapers, on tv, in workplaces, in academic environments...everywhere.