The quest for equality is perhaps the greatest example of the neurotic human chasm between what we claim to want and what we really want. It is like people who say they want to skydive, and they really believe it, but just until they take that first look out of the plane.

Sure, some people do it. But then again, how many people do you know that actually jump out of planes?

Even if we reduce it to the most practical and euphemistic of terms, very few people desire equality between the sexes. Indeed, very few people ever even consider what that would mean.

Do we want women subject to the draft and compulsory service in ground combat should a crisis emerge that requires such action? If your answer is no then you don’t want equality.

Women don’t even have to register for selective service. It is a boys only club and that is how most people want it.

Practical? Perhaps. Equal? Not on your life.

And we don’t see N.O.W. or other women’s organizations clamoring at the halls of power to include women in such mandatory hardship. It’s telltale signs like that which distinguish between the pursuit of equality and the pursuit of power. Which is where most people get confused.

That confusion is based on antiquated feminist mythology. We have a collective tendency to think that equality is only about access to wealth, independence and privilege. We think that parity is in the zeros on a paycheck or the letters behind a persons name.

That is only half of it. And it is, curiously, the only half we usually consider. That half-blind mentality has given us interesting concepts like “equal but special” and “feminism with chivalry.” They are the oxymoron’s of the new age, and though we rarely say them aloud, we practice them as a matter of routine.

And the end of the day it’s all nonsense. We (and I do mean women and men) don’t want women in the socialized role of protectors. When something goes bump in the night, how many women are going to say to their husbands “Stay here, honey, I’ll go check it out?” How man men would let them?

We don’t want women in the role of social provider, either. I read a recent survey where 44% of women reported that they would be offended if expected to pay their way on dates. A much greater percentage said they didn’t or wouldn’t do it, but close to half found the idea so objectionable that they would take offense to it.

Equality, when its meaning is not distorted, is a cruel master. And since we don’t care too much for harsh reality in todays world, we just play a game of make believe with the word. Women claim to embrace equality to pursue power, and men claim to embrace equality to pursue women. But neither really mean it.