xigoi

Equality

Who doesn't want equal rights? Gender equality, racial equality, you name it. However, there seems to be a general disagreement on what “equality” should look like. I'd like to present my viewpoint using the mathematical definition of an equivalence relation, which is basically a generalized idea of equality.

Equivalence relation

In mathematics, an equivalence relation is a binary relation that is reflexive, symmetric and transitive.
Wikipedia

Reflexivity

Reflexivity simply means that everything is equal to itself. This is not really relevant when discussing human rights, since the rights of a given group are equal to themselves by nature.

Symmetry

Symmetry says that if \(x = y\), then \(y = x\). In other words, two equal things are interchangeable. Now this gets more interesting. My interpretation is that if switching the roles of two people/groups wouldn't change their situation regarding what they can do, only then can we say that they have equal rights. Surprisingly, this already seems to be a very controversial opinion. I'll get to concrete examples later.

Transitivity

Transitivity says that if \(x = y\) and \(y = z\), then also \(x = z\). It's hard to imagine a scenario where this would come relevant in human rights. After all, it involves three variables, but discussions about human rights usually compare the rights of two groups. We'll see if this becomes useful later.

Women, Men, Axolotlgenders and the like

Probably the most talked-about kind of human equality is gender equality. The concept of non-binary genders is quite new, so most of the discussion is about differences of rights between women and men. Some examples include:

I could go on, but the point is apparent: both women and men are disadvantaged in some ways and often both sides get both a win and a loss from the same situation. This seems to be a more nuanced view than that of most people debating this topic.

A point I often see floating around goes like this: “Since most people who rule society, such as monarchs, presidents and the like, are men, this means that if men are discriminated against, it's their own fault.” This is wrong on multiple accounts: