Solving Gender Inequality Two People at a Time

After hearing assorted tales (mostly via Fark, so YMMV) of how repressive some middle-eastern countries are towards women (well, everyone really, but especially women), I thought of a plan for fixing this in a small way:

Offer a certain number of student visas to these countries. Make them a 50/50 gender split - if you (you being, for example, Dubai or Saudi Arabia) want 10000 men to attend a Canadian university, you have to also send 10000 women. Everyone needs to qualify for a Canadian university, and they must all attend classes, or otherwise do whatever it is we do to guarantee that student visas are being used by actual students.

You don't have enough women who qualify? That's too bad, I guess we're only issuing 34 visas to your country - 17 for the 10000 men and 17 for 17 women.

There would be attempts to game the system and that's OK, at least some Western egalitarian thinking would still sink in, even if it's not 100 percent. A bigger problem would be a simple boycott of the country. So be it - we either believe in gender equality enough to risk backlash or we don't. Maybe the other western democracies will join in.

I'm a firm believer that most of the world's problems will go away once we give a proper education to every child, regardless of their gender (or background or religion or class).

Chickenshit Capital of the United States

Remember Constance McMillen, the lesbian senior who wanted to take her girlfriend to the prom and ended up showing the world what a bunch of backwards hillbillies the Itawamba County School Board is?

Turns out the prom was a few days ago and seven kids showed up, plus Ms. McMillen and her date. The rest of the kids were at the double-secret-no-homos-allowed prom put on by the ever-tolerant parents of Fulton Mississippi.

You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.

Anyway, the Itawamba County School District has won and excluded Ms. McMillen. They get to continue to be an insular little backwater and no one's going to make them abide by new fangled ideas like equal rights, common decency or just not being an asshat.

Ms. McMillen will just have to accept that she's lost and will have to leave town to spend her 30k scholarship to a post-secondary institute in a more enlightened area. She'll have to suffer with the knowledge that she stood up against bigotry, fought the good fight and has the opportunity for a fulfilling life in the greater world outside hickville. What a nightmare.

Oh wait, it sounds like the Itawamba County School District actually only won the battle but Ms. McMillen won the war.

Anyway, looks like Fulton is going to go down as Chickenshit Capital of the United States. Plus the ACLU will be giving them a well-deserved public spanking.