If tipping stopped, waiting staff wages would increase and so would food prices (to pay for the wage increases).

"Arguing against "Women suffer more unfairness""

Nobody has yet provided arguments that women suffer more in e.g. USA. I'd say my points are true to some degree in USA, except for military service and perhaps domestic violence. I've talked with a researcher of income equality, and atleast he said that wages are pretty much equal for male and females in the USA. Income is not. In Finland for example, males have 20% higher income, but they do 20% more work hours yearly.

"Or do you deny the existence of international organizations working for equality, and that individuals have some (limited) ability to choose for which cause in which country they fight?"

No, but each country has a local equity resource budget. A global one does not exist, but can be "conjured" up in your mind.

I made a list of problems in a comment on a website. That's not a good way to make politicial decisions. We need a proper study of the question. I think a priori the 50/50 split between genders is a good balance. You can call that a political compromise, I call it "don't make quick decisions without proper scientific research".

My data justifies slightly more resources for men, but until we have proper scientific research on the question, I'm okay with a 50/50 split. The split is currently about 97/3 in favor of women, so going to 50/50 would help significantly.

I didn't claim you were talking about Finland. However, many of those issues are true in most Western nations. It's just that I'm not an expert in any other country.

"a global equality resource budget"

This doesn't even exist..

"For example, by "evenly" do you mean 50/50 between these two causes?"

Yes.

More information here: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/4vj/a_rationalists_account_of_objectification/3r3j

"Women suffer more unfairness so presumably most resources would be directed towards them anyway, but there could easily be a number of low hanging fruit on the male side."

This claim is often made, but I haven't seen any calculations to back it up. I'm active in the gender equality debate in Finland, so I can only talk about Finnish statistics:

• Men are forced to serve on average 8,5 months in "slave work". No modern work regulations apply. I personally witnessed many broken bones and other health problems which happened to my friends during my service. Work was often 24/7 for weeks. Psychological stress is commonplace.
• Men make 80 % of suicides, and 80 % of the homeless are men.
• Women have higher wages by 2 percent.
• Men have less success in studying
• Men don't have sexual power
• Men face the majority of violence (and men face as much domestic violence as women)
• Mutilation of boys for religious reasons is legal, but mutilation of girls is illegal.
• Men die seven years earlier
• 60% of unemployed people seeking work are men

(I can provide sources for these, but they would be in Finnish, so I don't think most people are that interested, check http://mies.asia for more information though)

Obviously, women also face problems like rape and lack of leadership positions in corporations. On the political front, we have a female president and a female prime minister.

I'm not claiming definately that men suffer more, but this non-technical examination seems to imply it. At least it has not been proven that women suffer more nowadays.

Until such calculation has been made, I think it should be reasonable to direct 50% of equality resources for feminism, and 50% for masculism.

EDIT: There have been a downvote, but I don't really understand why. Of course, Finland is only one nation, but similar lists have been made in USA for example. If this site assumes that we should only talk about USA, I think that's unfair, since there's a significant Finnish representation. I'm clearly talking about the situation in Finland, and the situation differs from country to country.

There are of course some countries, where women have less freedom than men etc. I don't think it makes sense to talk about a global average here, since equity politics are not a global, but local question.

"I'm a tall white American male, so sometimes it takes a bit of work for me to understand what it's like to be a member of a suppressed group."

Females are suppressed, and so are males. Gender roles suppress both genders. They also offer advantages to both genders.

List of male privileges: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/

List of female privileges: http://masculistadvice.blogspot.com/2008/06/female-privilege-list.html

It is true that popular discourse paints females as the suppressed group and males as the non-suppressed group.

"So I've always thought of myself as a feminist."

Feminism goes beyond technical gender equality of having the same rights and privileges. I'm a feminist too, because I think politics should solve problems facing women. And I'm also a masculist (or a men's rights activist), since men's problems should be solved too.

"Of course, some activists (the word has positive connotations to me, BTW) pushed too far, as is the case in all large movements."

The main problem with feminism today is that all the political gender equality resources are directed to feminism. It should be evenly distributed between masculism and feminism.

I stutter, and I've done it for as long as I can remember. Anyone know how to beat it? I feel this has pretty significant (negative) effects on my life, because I'm often afraid of speaking up in a group, as stuttering is extremely embarrassing.

And that's why we need an article somewhere which would define some common terms, so you don't have to define them all over again in every article about consciousness.