Uh oh, we have another Patricia Arquette situation on our hands. This time it's Madonna, who compared gay rights to women's rights and arrived at the conclusion that the LGBT community has it better than women. In a recent interview with Out magazine, the singer opened up about the fight for feminism in comparison to some of the other fights for equality. "Gay rights are way more advanced than women's rights. People are a lot more open-minded to the gay community than they are to women, period," she told the magazine. She then went on to throw racial equality in there too.
It's moved along for the gay community, for the African-American community, but women are still just trading on their ass. To me, the last great frontier is women. Women are still the most marginalized group. They're still the group that people won't let change...You must fit into this box: You must behave this way, dress this way. You're still categorized—you're still either a virgin or a whore. If you're a certain age, you're not allowed to express your sexuality, be single, or date younger men.
And, while I agree with her views on women and how gender stereotyping really needs to change, I don't think there's anything to be gained by comparing equality movements. It's true that some people may be more open to the LGBT community, and some people are more inclusive of all races. But there's still a tremendous amount of work to be done on all those fronts.
It's an issue very similar to the one raised by Patricia Arquette backstage at the Oscars, which caused an understandable backlash. She basically said that the people fighting for all types of equality need to leave their fights and focus only on being pro-women. “It’s time for all the women in America, and all the men who love women, and all the gay people, and all the people of color that we’ve fought for, to fight for us now,” she said to the Academy press room, elaborating on her equal pay comments from her acceptance speech.
I understand where Madonna and Arquette are coming from, but I think their approach is wrong. To truly achieve equality, we need to approach it from all sides. We need equality for people of all races, sexual orientations, and gender. No one group has it better off than the other because all of them are still marginalized.
Until everyone can come together on all fronts and fight for equality across the board, we're never going to get anywhere. Comparing which equal rights movement has it better wastes valuable time that we could be spending championing for change on all fronts. That is what this country needs to finally be equal.
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