According to the author, the reason that women still get special privileges is that _________________.
Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:
Titanic, the leviathan, the colossal ship met its end on that fateful day of April, 1912. Hundreds of passengers lost their lives, various men, women & children. There were around 701 – 713 survivors, most of them being women & children. This arises in front of us an important question – why were more women & children alive after the mishap? Would we call it sheer co–incidence or a foolish show of chivalry on the part of men of the twentieth century?
You're on the Titanic II. It has just hit an iceberg and is sinking. And, as last time, there are not enough lifeboats. The captain shouts, "Women and children first!" But this time, another voice is heard: "Why women?"
Why, indeed? Part of the charm of the cosmically successful movie Titanic is the period costume, period extravagance, period class prejudice. Oddly, however, of all the period mores in the film, the old maritime tradition of "women and children first" enjoys total acceptance by modern audiences.
But is not grouping women with children a raging anachronism? Should not any self–respecting modern person, let alone feminist, object to it as patronizing and demeaning to women?
Now, children are entitled to special consideration for two reasons: helplessness and innocence. They have not yet acquired either the faculty of reason or the wisdom of experience. Consequently, they are defenseless and blameless.
That is why we grant them special protection. In an emergency, it is our duty to save them first because they, helpless, have put their lives in our hands. And in wartime, they are supposed to enjoy special immunity because they, blameless, can have threatened or offended no one.
"Women and children" attributes to women the same pitiable dependence and moral simplicity we find in five–year–olds. Do the women agree to it? Such an attitude made sense perhaps in an era of male suffrage and "Help Wanted: Female" classifieds. Given the disabilities attached to womanhood in 1912, it was only fair and right that a new standard of gender equality not suddenly be proclaimed just as lifeboat seats were being handed out. That deference a somewhat more urgent variant of giving up your seat on the bus to a woman–complemented and perhaps compensated for the legal and social constraints placed on women at the time.
But in this day of the most extensive societal restructuring to grant women equality in education, in employment, in government, in athletics, in citizenship, what entitles women to the privileges–and reduces them to the status of children?
The evolutionary psychologists might say that ladies–to–the–lifeboats is an instinct that developed to perpetuate the species: women are indispensable child bearers. You can repopulate a village if the women survive and only a few of the men, but you cannot repopulate a village if the men survive and only a few of the women. Women being more precious, biologically speaking, than men, evolution has conditioned us to give them the kind of life–protecting deference we give to that other seed of the future, kids.
The problem with this kind of logic, however, is its depressing reductionism. It recapitulates in all seriousness the geneticist's old witticism that a chicken is just an egg's way of making another egg.
But humans are more than just egg layers. And chivalrous traditions are more than just disguised survival strategies. So why do we say "women and children"? Perhaps it's really "women for children". The most basic parental bond is maternal. Equal parenting is great-it has forced men to get off their duffs-but women, from breast to cradle to cuddle, can nurture in ways that men cannot. And thus, because we value children-who would deny them first crack at the lifeboats? Women should go second. The children need them.
But kiddie-centrism gets you only so far. What if there are no children on board? You are on the Titanic III, a singles cruise. No kids, no moms, no dads.
Here's my scenario. The men, out of sheer irrational gallantry, should let the women go first. And the women, out of sheer feminist self–respect, should refuse.
Result? Stalemate. How does this movie end? How should it end? Hurry, the ship's going down.