Notes from the Human Kite

Human Kite
Winds here are so strong here in the country that the notion of a human kite is as far as you can spread your arms out in the wind. One can actually suffocate from winds walking to lecture. Imagine. Dying on your way to a morning lecture. Double shit. But I didn't and live to do more work piling.

Women...coming right up!
Just an observation from reading the news in the past couple of weeks: a recent number of women breaking the glass ceiling and assuming prominent leadership positions on the international scene.

Democrats have taken the majority in the House of Representatives in the US, they have a woman boss. WHO chief, Deputy Secretary-General of the UN, potential candidate for French top political office, my missus...

I'm glad to see that women rights' activitists are not seeing their good work going to waste in levelling the playing field in a generally patriarcal era we currently live in (and have been for far too long). Equal society, equal opportunities is good, isn't it? Discrimination is bad in general, no? But what troubles me is the notion of "positive discrimination". It is essentially a discriminatory process, with which as advocates of a free and equal society should principally disagree with, but yet it is this process that is touted one of the better means to achieve equality in an already unequal world.

The new UN chief said that he would appoint a woman deputy, and he did. So in this case, is the Tanzanian lady who is now his deputy there because of her merits, or because she is woman? It is fair enough to say she's the woman with the most merits relevant for the position, but essentially she is chosen because she is an Eve-descendant, hence discrimination.

No, don't get me wrong in thinking I'm not supportive of having an African woman as the number two in the UN, but I'm just puzzled by the proposing arguments and opposing ones for "positive discrimination". Possibly there are other substansive means to level the playing field other than appealing to the very principle that made the playing field uneven in the first place.


Uncle T