I understand these arguments, both intellectually and historically; I simply don't find them convincing. The premise seems to be that those discriminated against by exclusionary categories of race, gender, or sexual preference should themselves discriminate and exclude on the basis of race, gender, or sexual preference. Calling discrimination compensatory doesn't make it less discriminatory.
It seems to me that real justice for, say, women poets would be achieved by an editor not discriminating on the basis of gender, taking the very best of what was submitted, and discovering that when this occurred, women were published at least as often as men. Parity achieved by practicing the mirror image of hateful policies is sort of a bogus parity.
RHE
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