Victim Blaming: It's OK to Fire an Employee for Being "Irresistibly Attractive"

This just in. We live in a world where women can be fired for being too sexy. Now I truly fear for the human race. The Iowa Supreme Court decided that it is OK for an employer to fire an employee for being "irresistibly attractive".  A dentist fired his assistant due to his wife's accusations that they were having an affair. He complained that her tight clothing was "too much of a distraction". Although Dr. James Knight admitted that Nelson was a great worker, he couldn't separate himself from his sexual urges.

According to the Daily News article, the state’s all-male Supreme Court ruled 7-0 Friday that an Iowa City dentist legally canned his female assistant because she was “irresistibly attractive” and a threat to his marriage.  The ruling came after Melissa Nelson, the assistant, sued Dr.  Knight, her employer of 10 years. Nelson claimed she was fired after Knight's wife grew jealous of their relationship. 

Knight's lawyer claimed that this ruling was a "home-run for family values". I wish to be enlightened on these "values" he speaks of. I've never heard of a set of values that requires a man to fire his employee because he cannot control his boners around her.

Knight told Nelson that she would know her outfits are too revealing by the bulge in his pants. He compared Nelson's "irregular sex life" to having a Lamborghini in the garage and never driving it". Talk about objectification of women. 

The dentist's actions imply that men cannot control their sexual urges, therefore it is up to the female to control them for him. This victim blaming is a symptom of a greater problem in our world. Women are held accountable for not only their sexual urges, but we are also responsible for those of men. There are men in the world who feel powerless against women they find "too attractive", thus they must find a way to regain what little control they lost.

Would Nelson have been fired if she were a man? She doesn't think so.  If men cannot control themselves around a woman, it is the woman's fault because she is either wearing too tight clothing, too much makeup or too much or too little of something that supposedly makes her "too attractive".

 Here is another instance of a female banker fired for being "too hot". Debrahlee Lorenzana was fired because her clothing, while not skimpy, revealed her attractive figure too much. Her male colleagues complained that her clothing was too tight, making it difficult for them to concentrate on their work.

Her bosses forbid her to wear turtle necks, pencil skirts, three-inch heels and fitted business suits. When Lorenzana claimed that her female colleagues' wore clothing more revealing than hers, her male bosses said that their bodies were not the same as Lorenzana's. Her body shape drew too much attention. Her case was dismissed because her employment agreement called for any disputes to be settled in private arbitration. 

So, I guess that means women who have exceptionally attractive figures should be more aware of it, and they should wear over-sized baggy clothes and tape down their breasts.

Speaking of taping down breasts, an employee at a  lingerie company was fired by her conservative Jewish employers for being "too hot".   Her employer suggested she tape her breasts down to make them look smaller. Her boss gave her an over-sized, garish bathrobe to wear over her clothes  when they didn't approve of her outfit.

I don't know for certain why these women were fired for being too attractive. The reasons don't add up. As far as I have researched, there have not been any men fired for being distractingly attractive in the workplace. Why the male or conservative religious majority feels the need to oppress female attractiveness is something I can only speculate. In the case of the banker, maybe her male employers felt helpless in the throws of their arousal, so they had to find a way to regain that power again. In this case, they regained that power by firing her.

I believe Knight's reasons for firing Nelson were similar. He felt powerless over himself and his love life, so he fired his attractive female coworker to regain what little control he had.

In the case of the lingerie employee, her employers were conservative religious Jews. The Jewish religion is run by a patriarchy. The patriarchy, like all men, feels powerless over women it has no power over. They felt powerless over their sexual urges. In order to regain control over those urges, they fired a female employee whose clothes were a little tight over her ample bosom.

For those of you men who claim that there is no sexual discrimination in the U.S. anymore, you are only fooling yourselves. They can tell themselves that there are laws that prevent this discrimination and that the courts will side with the women, but as we can see in these cases, that was not the case. Nelson's case in particular is an example of the old-fashioned white male patriarchy winning. Where were the laws for Nelson when she needed them most? Nelson was metaphorically raped by the white male court who justified her termination. Lorenzana's case is being worked on in private arbitration. Laura Odes' case has not yet been solved as far as I could find. Women should not be judged in the workplace for the size of their body parts or their attractiveness in general. These companies lost valuable employees because of the decisions they made.

Ignorance: The Fuel for Hate Crimes

Randolph Linn of Ohio set fire to a prayer room of a mosque on Sept. 30, after claiming to be "riled up" after watching Fox News. Linn pleaded guilty to the crime today and admitted consuming 45 beers in seven hours. In addition to his drunken state-of-mind and his Fox News brainwashing, Linn confessed that he does not know what Islam is really about. All he knows is that they do not believe in Jesus Christ as the savior. Therefore, he vandalized a mosque.

His religious motives stand out to me the most. Linn did not commit arsony because he drunk. He committed it because he was willfully ignorant. He fed his brain with the racist propaganda of right-wing media. We are not talking about a child who does not know any better. We are talking about a grown man who digests anything that makes sense to him rather than exploring new possibilities on his own. 

Linn threatened the lives of innocent Muslim families based on the bias, radical right-wing propaganda fed to him on Fox News. I do not feel sorry for Linn, and I hope he gets the punishment he deserves for his willful ignorance. Michael Tobin, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice said that Linn used violence to respond to the Muslim terrorist attacks at the U.S. Embassies in the Middle East. According to Tobin, Linn believed the Muslims in the U.S. were getting a "free pass".

The people he threatened were not terrorists. They were innocent. Linn's target was no mere coincidence, as you will realize from his motives. His act represents ignorance and bigotry. I agree with the statement made by Steven M. Dettelbach, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio:

  Although this violence took place in one mosque in Toledo, as Americans we are all victims. The fire in this case wasn't just aimed at destroying a mosque. It was designed to deprive our community of one of our most cherished freedoms.

Linn's move was calculated to infringe on the religious freedom of U.S. citizens. Our country supposedly guarantees the right to practice whatever religion we wish, but hate crimes such as this may make citizens question how safe their freedoms are from people such as Linn. When Linn set fire to the mosque, he proved that he is no better than the terrorists who attacked the embassy. 

Linn was sentenced to 20 years in prison, so he is being appropriately punished. However, I feel that willful ignorance should be punished with something more. I guess his sentence will have to do. 

To tell or not to tell?

When embedded reporters in war zones are kidnapped, their employers try to persuade other news outlets not to print the kidnapping. In the case of Richard Engel's abduction, Gawker ran the story against the wishes of NBC. They believe that media attention may increase the risk of the kidnappers harming the reporter. How true is this? Is it ethical for news outlets to persuade others not to run the story?

Gawker writer John Cook received both negative and positive responses from journalists concerning the story. Gawker published the first set of responses in the first installment of their series about the kidnapping. Most of the critics lambasted Gawker's decision, bringing its journalistic integrity into question. Despite its lack of knowledge of Engel's exact circumstances, NBC requested that Gawker not publish the story. Cook responded:

Under those circumstances, no one at NBC made a case to me that reporting Engel's  situation might cause anything concrete to happen to him, because they didn't know anything about his current circumstances.

NBC could not make the case that reporting Engel's situation would cause any harm to him. How could they if they did not know his exact circumstances?  Given that the news had already been reported  internationally and domestically, Cook saw no reason not to report it. He states, "I didn't see a compelling reason to not do what Gawker normally tries to do, which is (among other things) publish true, newsworthy information. 

Fare enough. I'll give him that his journalistic integrity was in the right place. Cook did not allow NBC to strong arm  him into censoring information that they could not give a concrete reason not to censor.

 Not all feedback was negative. Gawker published one positive response to Cook's decision in "Fifteen Ways of Looking at the Media Blackout of Richard Engel's Abduction, Vol. II: Against".  

 I'm not sure what I would have done in that situation. Gawker's choice was ballsy and risky. Why was it risky?  Gawker *may* have put Engel's life at risk. We're not quite sure about that. NBC may have been blowing smoke up our asses. Second, Gawker risked its credibility with its more journalistically saavy readership. That was Gawker's call. Sometimes news outlets must make those risks to report worthy news.  I want to point out to my fellow journalism students that the situation Gawker faces is one that we may face in our careers as journalists. 

I agree with Gawker's decision to publish the story. They weren't the first the break the news here. A Turkish news outlet was one of the first to publish news of Engel's kidnapping. Also, a Chinese newswire Xinhua and Breitbart republished the story. 

Gawker's original posting of Engel's kidnapping can be found here.

War on Generosity

What happened to feeding students who can't afford a lunch at school? Dianne Brame, a lunch lady at Hudson Elementary School in St. Louis, did what anyone with a heart would do. She fed a student lunch when he was no longer enrolled in the school's free lunch program. 

 Brame dared to give him the "normal lunch". She took it upon herself to ensure he ate what the other kids ate rather than the "reduced lunch" for the students who cannot afford regular lunches. The reduced lunch included a meager cheese sandwich and milk carton. 

Brame feared that the student would be mocked by his peers if she gave him the reduced lunch. After all, economically disadvantaged students are usually ridiculed by their peers.

Chartwells repaid Brame's kindness by firing her. 

Let that sentence hang in the air for a moment. Dianne Brame was fired for feeding a hungry student. Chartwells viewed her actions as "stealing" because the food wasn't hers to give to the student. 

When has it ever made sense to punish someone for being generous?  Maybe it makes sense to greedy corporations such as Chartwells.  They fill their pockets while taking the food out of the stomachs of students. 

Chartwells rehired her because they learned of the reasons for Brame's actions. In reality, Chartwells rehired her due to negative attention from the media and public. 

 Why should students who cannot afford school lunches receive a lesser lunch from the school? The answer is that Chartwells won't have to spend that much money feeding students who cannot give that much money back. Therefore, let them eat a less filling meal which may be the only meal they get to eat all day.