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Originally Posted by Urban Hatemonger
Actually in my last job I was sent home and told to have a shave for having less that a days growth on my face on a couple of occasions.
You don't think that being sent home in front of your work colleagues is public humiliation too?
and they were forever on at me to get haircuts the minute the back of my hair went below my collar.
I don't recall any women getting sent home to shave or told to have haircuts.
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Here, Urban - I'm putting my comments to you first so that in case you're skim-reading this post, you won't have to skim far!
Yes, being told to go home to shave your face IS public humiliation. I was wrong, then, that men aren't humiliated for having facial hair, and you are right. If I saw someone being treated at my office like you were, oooooo, believe me, Urban, I'd be sticking up for that person immediately.
Grrrr. It makes me upset just thinking of someone telling you that.
Have you actually seen women coworkers who didn't shave legs and underarms and revealed this in public? In the last ten years or so I have never seen any woman at all at my university who doesn't shave.
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Originally Posted by TheBig3KilledMyRainDog
The job thing was a little understandable I suppose since I was front-line in Customer Service then, so they were looking for someone who gave the image of top-of-the-line, Hilton-level professionalism.
You can wear your hair a lot longer than the Military cut and be accepted into high society, but the stigma that you're supposed to be the support system for the family, you're supposed to be independent, you're supposed to be a rock.
The social limitations are perpetuated by men. I think the "provider" element is still perpetuated by women.
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Your workplace's desire to have you smooth-shaven reminds me of a news report about an obese nurse who was fired from her job because she didn't fit the "healthful" mold they want nurses to fit in.
Yes, I agree the pressure on men to be a strong provider is greater than on women. I often think men actually seem more scared and timid than women in social situations...more afraid to rock the boat, more likely to follow social rules. They seem to hold it in more, keep a stiff upper lip more, etc.
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Originally Posted by Tea Supremacist
Off the hair debate for a moment... Vegan, what are the attitudes to breastfeeding in public where you are? Over here (or perhaps just the area I'm in?) the attitude is quite conservative, which is a shame. In some places, what is a natural activity can be viewed as fairly offensive. ... the woman on the table next to us was breastfeeding her baby. The Manager came straight over and asked if she could go somewhere else and do it as it was 'putting off the other customers'. She was reduced to having to go to the bathroom and sit on the toilet to breastfeed her child
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Tea Supremacist, women's breastfeeding rights is a topic I like even more than shaving issues!
Unfortunately, the views toward breastfeeding in Iowa sound similarly conservative, although I never received any negative comments in public. However, in Des Moines several years ago a restaurant owner asked a woman to breastfeed her child in the bathroom, just like you describe. People then had a "breastfeeding sit-in" at a restaurant across the street to protest this woman's treatment. Such "nurse-in" protests around the U.S. this year show that discrimination against breastfeeding moms is still a problem activists are trying to solve.
Here in Iowa women have the LEGAL right to breastfeed a child anywhere the women themselves may legally be in public. However, women socially are still pressured to hide their breastfeeding. I see a lot of women covering their whole baby with a blanket when they breastfeed, trying to "be discreet." Heh heh...as you can imagine, I did *not* half-smother my child, as if his breastfeeding were a thing to be ashamed of.
I joined Le Leche League to get support...a great group I recommend highly! This was especially helpful for me because I chose to do child-led weaning, which means your child probably loses the urge to breastfeed when s/he is 5 years old. So people's negative feelings about that was another issue I had to face, because in most Western cultures people start to think of breastfeeding as REALLY lewd once the baby is no longer a baby!
You mentioned the important issue of women and careers in an earlier post: I definitely feel workplaces need to support breastfeeding mothers. Iowa is doing this...breaking news...by requiring workplaces to have a special private place, not a toilet, for women to pump milk (for their child's first 2 years):
Iowa proposal for breastfeeding moms is stronger than federal one | Des Moines Register Staff Blogs
However, I also feel it is important for workplaces
and commercial establishments to support women breastfeeding their children
in public.
I loved breastfeeding my child, Tea. It was a wonderful experience...so close and sweet. I'd like every mom to feel free to give her child the best nourishment for young ones whenever the child is hungry or just wants the comfort. A big part of breastfeeding is the emotional security it gives the child, and a lot of people want to deny that, I've found, as if it were trivial.
Eating lunch at a castle! You lucky duck!
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Originally Posted by boo boo
I share your desire for men and women to have as much equal rights as possible, so people can just be comfortable with who they are instead of wishing they were something they are not. I think women have a lot of great things about them so it always saddens me that they still feel inferior because men have certain privilages....
Do you not read me ever? I DON'T think women should be denied the rights to show their hairy legs, I'm just defending people's rights to their asthetic preferences. Women have them too and don't tell me that men don't have to worry about living up to them.
My issue with you has always been the way you treat women who choose to shave their legs. And why is that so hard to grasp? I believe in equal rights, and part of that means accepting the decisions other people make as well as their opinions and that's the part you don't seem to understand.
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Boo boo...sometimes I feel like you don't read ME!!! I don't expect people to all like hair on other people's bodies--they can't just change their feelings overnight--but I DO mind when they ACT on their feelings by putting people down or discriminating against them at their jobs.
I am not denying the right of people to SHAVE...I am trying to support the right of people NOT to shave. (Or to shave their heads.
) However, I know that any time people give in to some social norm, they are perpetuating that norm and all the negative views of the human body that underlie those norms, whether they want to be doing this or not. I want people to question what they are doing and not just follow norms out of fear.
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...I'm a champion of diversity and a big reason I can be a harsh critic of certain kinds feminism is because I feel they shun the distinctions and privilages that come with being female instead of embracing them. My definition of feminism is wanting equal rights for men and women but at the same time embracing the fact that you ARE female and the fact that I AM male, and there's nothing wrong with either.
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I completely agree with you that there is nothing wrong with women and men having distinctions. That's why I support women breastfeeding their kids, being able to reveal their breasts, being able to embrace emotional/physical changes their bodies go through, being able to have non-medicalized births, and being able to have their birthday suits grow into their older-people-suits, embracing their bodies as they are without feeling ashamed of them.
What gave you the idea that I
want men and women to be identical?
What I want is for people to not be pressured or forced into gender roles like straight-jackets. If a woman wants to do whatever some culture thinks of as "manly," that is completely fine with me. If a woman wants to wear dresses, that's fine, too. Even *I* actually own some dresses. Really. I think they are pretty.
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Now this is reaching a new level of absurdity. Having aesthetic preferences and standards and treating and selling women like cattle is not the same f*cking thing. Yes we have aesthetic standards that only apply to women, we have aesthetic standards that only apply to men as well.
Women no longer being treated like private property and being taught not to be ashamed of their sexuality was a great moment in feminist history, which modern radical feminists have completely twisted around to support their own backwards cause.
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I was not saying that shaving legs is equivalent in severity to parents in India selling child-brides to men, or women killing their baby daughters because of the pressure to have sons in China. I was saying they are RELATED in that these practices all involve looking down on women and not fully valuing them as human beings. The fact that men are also critiqued and criticized based on appearance does not mean we should ACCEPT when this is done to women. I feel we should oppose the objectification of both women AND men.
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And there's people with fetishes for furry animal suits and IMO those people with furry animal suits have just as many rights as everyone else as any individual with their own idea of beauty.
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I didn't know there were fetishes for furry animal suits! I might need to find one of these people, since I wouldn't need the suit! ;-)