Human Rights

As I walked around town today, I couldn’t help but notice the silhouettes of women attached to many doors. I stopped and read of few of the tags attached to each that informed passersby of the issue of abused women. Let me state simply that I think women’s rights is a very important movement, but I think we need to move passed that.

We ought to be thinking in terms of human rights. In any given situation where one human being usurps the rights of another, a crime has been committed. That’s a simple fact. We live in a world where a crime is more severe depending on the person committing it. For example, if a woman were to hit a man with a baseball bat, the general question would be, what did he do to deserve that? It may be what you’re thinking right now. If a man were to hit a woman with a baseball bat, the perception of the crime is astronomically worse.

I propose that we have one set of rights. We already have a title...human rights. Every situation should be able to fall into those rights. They should include every visible or invisible minority. They should include all men and women and all gays or lesbians. If a crime is committed, it should be a crime committed by anyone. Reverse racism should be just as bad as racism.

On the playground at school people aren’t supposed to play favourites. If Sally comes in complaining that Johnny called her a name. And Johnny’s complaint is that Sally hit him. The solution is not to figure out who did what first. The solutions are that Sally is reprimanded for hitting and Johnny is reprimanded for name calling. We often feel justified in retaliation, but if we bought into the idea that every action deserves a reaction, then road rage would be a justifiable solution to being cut off by a bad driver. If the roles were reversed, the consequences should be equal as well. It is the same bad to hit someone or call someone a name no matter who that someone is. We don’t need labels. We just need one set of rights that applies to everyone. We are all equal and we need to be treating each other as such.