Letters to the Editor
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Yes, I was being silly, but to make a point.
We don't need to see equal as the same, although men may choose to take the same time at home after the birth of their child that women do. The law says so. This may make lots of sense where the woman is the primary breadwinner and the man has more time and patience for babies. Also, the guy just might want to bond with his child.
We are in new territory and many people will be uncomfortable with the changes. If our goal is to make all observers comfortable, we will end up bogged down in minutia. To me the Kitty issue is minutia. You simply don't want to see it that way, despite letter after letter saying many people see the Kitty tee as innocent and even posting photos of the Kitty tee that looked quite innocuous. You want to see the Kitty shirt in the context of things the LW posted that others find dubious. This is certainly your right.
If I concede that you or any man must never be made uncomfortable by what they see as sexual in a woman's apparel, then I must also concede that if a fundamentalist Muslim comes to work at your office "Kitty" should not only give up her t-shirt, she should be wearing a burka. I won't agree to such nonsense.
My point is not that offices should not make reasonable rules about clothing. My point is that those rules should take in the "reasonable" point of view of workers who must do their jobs. Clothing should be job appropriate. Naturally, clients should be considered.
The problem the LW had with the response here is several-fold:
1. He led off with that good-family-choir-singing stuff.
2. He didn't really know what Kitty means in the culture at large -- its variability.
3. He was paying attention to her breasts rather than to the tee itself. Nothing in the description of the tee revealed that the garment itself was revealing.
4. He confronted the co-worker himself. Even if he is the boss, this is a bad move. This is what HR is for. This is what letters are for. No boss in our litigious culture should risk talking about double-ententes with employees of the opposite sex. A note would have been sufficient. "To the staff: Management has decided that no t-shirts with writing or pictures on them will be allowed."
Men simply need to get used to women in the workplace and accept that fashions change. I admit that when I taught one semester after being out of the academy for a bit, I was shocked at the low cut (tops and jeans both) outfits my women students were wearing. (Some of my males students wore pretty revealing clothing as well since this was in the Southwest and summer is very hot in mid-August.) Then I started taking a closer look at what the stores were selling and what the magazines were featuring. When I went searching for a pair of jeans that were not lowrise, my shock turned to despair. I searched for hours and finally ended up buying a pair that were lower rise than I would have preferred. Even many women's trousers were low rise. Sometimes women are willing victims of fashion trends and sometimes they are just victims.
Now about that dog: People who are blind are by law allowed to bring their guide dogs to work. Ditto for people with other impairments that require service animals.
Does that mean everyone should get to bring their dogs. No.
Common sense must prevail. Men don't get to call all the shots just because they might get turned on by what a woman might wear. People of my generation should not get to tyrannize over young people whose tastes we might not approve of. People who don't want to nurse or are not able to nurse their children should not get to make policy for working, nursing mothers. People who don't like dogs don't get to decide that workers who require service animal assistance cannot bring their dogs to work.
We are not all the same. Fairness is not decided by stringent sameness. Fairness is not decided only by the observers/co-workers. Workers have rights to make some decisions about their clothing. They are the ones who have to iron it, dry clean it, sweat in it, feel burdened and constrained by it, lift, bend, and sit in it.
In 2004, there was a woman in the South who had a Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker on her car. It was her only vehicle which she drove to work. She was told to remove it. She declined and was fired. This was wrong. I am of the point of view that people have a right to reasonable freedom of expression about matters that are their business. As far as I am concerned, Cary said it all pretty well in the first place. I have come full circle and with renewed admiration for Cary's answer, I arrive at the conclusion that we should err on the side of the workers rather than the bosses. I guess that makes me a progressive.
Goodbye for now. I am going to go listen the Pink Floyd's "The Wall."
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Vibes
The fact is that in professional situation these days, men are asked to put up with whatever sexual vibe a woman wants to present, aggressive or absent, playful or serious, and accomodate themselves to it, while women are not asked to, and will not for one moment be made to, put up with a sexual vibe a man choses to present.
Well, here again, we're back to the issue of same vs. equal. Sex doesn't mean the same thing to women that it does to men. Few men see a sexual proposition from a woman as a threat to his physical safety, and they don't tend to stay scared of her afterward. Women do react with way, though, and in my experience, men rarely understand why. They think women should be the same sexually as men. We're not though, so equal treatment won't be same treatment here.
It's as crazy as demanding that men wear pantyhose and skirts because it's required of women.
There's also the fact that women don't put off nearly as many sexual vibes as men seem to think. Women aren't blowing hot, cold and playful at you. For the most part, they're not blowing at you at all. They're just going about their daily lives, which happen to intersect with yours.
I wonder how much of the anger directed at the office siren has to do with the perception that she is incurring advantages with her behavior? Because she's not. It will actually hurt her in the long run. There isn't anything to be jealous of here. She's acting like an idiot, and it will catch up with her.