The problem with this stuff is that it is so nuanced. Imagine a gym owner noting that he wasn't getting enough black customers, so he offered them a discount? What's wrong with that? Universities in effect do it all the time, to a great deal of approval.

Women pay more for haircuts and drycleaning, sure, but check out the price differential on men's and women's decent quality business suits (at that price damn right I expect the alterations thrown in for free) for example, or stereotypical male food vs female food on a restaurant menu. At the rec centre my family goes to, the women's room has changing & shower cubicles with doors. The men's is standard stand around naked in a crowd kind of thing. Discrimination?

Then there is agism. The definition of "youth" in most movie theatres is pretty damn young, most teenagers getting stuck with the full cost, because they'll come anyway. Grampa? Drop the price. Grampa also gets a better deal on car insurance, but not life insurance. Hmm. Discrimination I tell you.

There's geography too. A while back when the exchange rate wasn't so good, I've US business take Canadian dollars at par, which isn't fair to their US customers. And American tourists here get their sales tax refunded when they go home, and I don't.

The thing here isn't about the discrimination, it is the stupidly litigious culture in the US, and a lawyer who sounds like a real asshole (he sure looks like it in the picture, smirking into the camera). How big is the price differential? How much money is he actually going make, after making everyone miserable? (I know, I know, he'll class-action it and all the men will get a coupon but he'll rake in a bunch of fees. Lovely.) And you can bet that the men's fees won't go down in the end, no indeedy, the women's will go up of course. Great outcome.

Incidentally, the spousal unit goes to a female only gym, and from what I have seen of it it looks pretty good quality. But the main reason for the gender wall is mostly women with body issues, not fear of getting hit on.

LeftyC, I think in a general sense you are right, but are taking it a bit far. I have maybe been around here a bit longer than you, but before female teachers seducing their students became such a common media meme, Broadsheet did in fact cover it.

The "outrage porn" as you call certainly is there-- and usually about barbaric Saudis or Brazilians or Kurds or Pakistanis, brown people anyway, and it bothers me a little.

And yes, Lynn, really, quite often not enough context is given-- in this particular story, the "facts" are not all that concrete, with competing versions of events-- that particular region of Brazil is pretty much a mess no matter how you look at it. The child in question seems to have been something of street urchin, with a "loving" family possibly around her only now that they smell money. The reporter in question is reporting on the story from Brasilia, which is kind of like reporting on events in St. Louis slums from Boston, except more so. So I'm saying none of this is true, but I bet there is a lot more to it.

Anyway, all too often BroadSheet uncritically report statements by people with a very definite axe to grind, without saying so. cf http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/12/10/basra/index.html

(Not that I'm that saying that story was wrong, for all I know it's gospel truth, but Basra is a big place, with different environments in different parts of it, and the police chief is pretty far from a neutral party with no agenda. And the body count seems a bit high, in a clan-based culture that practises feuding, rather than report a crime like this to the police, they'd be pulling out their guns, just saying.)

But LeftyC, we seem to get two or three ourage cases a week (this week has been heavier than usual), and lots of stories about bras and presidential candidates' marriages and brave lawyers standing up for equal rights for men (sorry) and tacky Walmart underwear. So you are over-stating the case a little bit perhaps.