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.