"Feminism" isn't a bad word, you know.

[Seshat]

But any university that practices affirmative action (which most North American campuses now do) will always hire the woman over the man.

Only in the cases where it's being done badly/wrong.

I'm all in favour of bringing about equality, but not special privileges and entitlements which a lot (but certainly not all) feminists/liberals seem to want.

Well, we feminists/liberals who have spoken up in this thread have repeatedly said that we don't know any feminists/liberals who want it.

Please, PLEASE: tell us HOW we're giving this impression? So we can somehow STOP!

The only people we've ever heard saying such things are people saying 'feminists want it' - not 'I'm a feminist and I want it'.

Frankly, I fail to see how being against this sort of thing equates to being against basic fairness in the eyes of some people.

And I - and others - in this thread have said that we're against it too. What makes you think we can answer you?

[Sylvia727]

For a high school term paper, I interviewed the director of admissions at a local university on the subject of affirmative action. He admitted- well, less admitted and more bragged- that the university held spots open for minorities. Say the university has 100 spots, and the 95 most qualified individuals happen to be white. 5 of them will be denied a place in the classroom based on their skin color. Also, in some states employment agencies will add points to an applicant's test scores based on race. Off the top of my head, an Asian-American gets 10 extra points, a Latino/Hispanic/Native gets 20, and a black gets 30 extra. So it does happen, even if it's not nearly as often as the strawman arguments would have us believe.

As a feminist, I can say that this sort of thing is against the very idea of feminism- that of equality. In fact, the term paper's thesis was that affirmative action and similiar policies do far more harm than good.