All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others

For those of you who thought there was something wrong with feminism, it turns out you were right. In the process of making women as a group more equal to men as a group, the feminist movement has added to the growing trend of inequality between social groups. According to the New York Times Magazine article, this is because marriages accross income groups are less common and within highly educated couples, women are increasingly likely to max out their potential education and earnings. What's more, it turns out that marrying up used to be one of the primary means of social advancement. This can be seen in the fact that the increased inequities between socioeconomic groups is mirrored by a decreased rate of social mobility. Hrm. A seemingly correlated trend is that interracial marriage has been on the rise largely because it is no longer as likely to imply interclass marriage. Double hrm.

Now before anyone accuses me of being a masogynist oppressor, let me explain myself. The feminist movement was largely in response to the division of labor which typically placed men in the factory or the office and women in the home. This is clearly an unequal type of situation. The man, through his labor, generated liquid assets (read: cash money) while the woman generated nontransferable goods and services (a clean house, dinner, children). This gave the man much more freedom to spend the returns on his labor while leaving the woman dependant on him. The thing is, this was not the situation from time immemorial. In fact, this division of labor was largely the product of the industrial revolution; as you go back in time, women get more equal to men, not less. Prior to Adam Smith and the division of labor, pretty much everyone (minus a few kings and such) was on pretty much equal footing, the problem was that they were all equally poor. Division of labor created wealth, but it also created more divisions of wealth. Without the industrial revolution and the agricultural revolution, there would not have been such a need for the sexual revolution. Discuss in groups: why do we call it the Enlightenment when it created inequality?

So all the progress of the women's movement, the civil rights movement and so on? Well, they have created equal (or nearly equal) standing under the law. This has allowed some women and minorities to enter the upper classes. Once they are there, they keep their wealth in the family by ensuring that their children get educated and marry well. They probably don't care if their daughter marries a black man, so long as he's a doctor (or for that matter, if their son marries a Puoto Rican, so long as she's an executive). "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife," wrote Jane Austen 200 years ago. Today she would probably write "...in want of a rich wife."

So what has happened to all the unpaid labor that women used to perform. Well, most of it is paid labor now, and gets outsourced. All the housekeeping, laundry and childcare is done primarily by the working poor, mostly, it should be pointed out, by women. The triumph of feminism is to find other women to oppress, and to do it under the justifying auspices of the market.