Sometimes goals appear to be fundamental issues, but often they are more symbolic than practical.
Consider the movement for equal rights and against sexual discrimination.
One goal of some of the proponents of the movement is the elimination
of sexist language.
In particular, the existence of gendered pronouns such as she
and her
are regarded as quaint antiquities that should be
eliminated from the English language, either by simply dropping them
or by replacing them and words like he
and him
with
new words that have no gender.
Whether achievable or not, this sounds like a reasonable goal.
A hundred years ago in China there was a similar women's movement to improve the language. But in this case it was the exact opposite, to create a new pronoun to apply to females since the language until that time had only a gender-neutral word.
This movement was so popular that a new word equivalent to the
English she
actually was created
and is now a common part of modern Chinese.
These two movements for women's rights had exact opposite goals, yet each group felt it worth fighting for. In at least one case, the achievement of victory must have been far more important than the goal itself.