Quote:
This is part of the answer, but it's incomplete. That's because in most jobs, being accepted in your role directly affects your ability to fulfill that role. Customers in a store expect a clerk to wear a uniform, and high-powered business execs expect the people they make deals with to wear suits. To dress otherwise lowers their opinion of the organization, and hurts business. That's all the ethical justification an employer needs to set a dress code.
And as for those customers/executives going around judging people by their clothes? Well of course it isn't "right." But neither is judging people by their face, their smell, the way they talk, or a hundred other things we instinctually do. Everyone should be scrambling over each other to dance with the ugly girl with the heart of gold, but they don't. There are some things about humanity and culture that you just have to accept.
And as for those customers/executives going around judging people by their clothes? Well of course it isn't "right." But neither is judging people by their face, their smell, the way they talk, or a hundred other things we instinctually do. Everyone should be scrambling over each other to dance with the ugly girl with the heart of gold, but they don't. There are some things about humanity and culture that you just have to accept.
That's really all I was getting at; that while it's acceptable for the employer to do so, they are merely catering to the customer, who is discriminating unethically, and I would also argue that sometimes it has nothing to do with customer/business image, but is simply a personal bias of the employer. I also don't consider the "ugly girl with the heart of gold" analogous, but that's because I don't think there's anything wrong with choosing mates based on physical attractiveness, because it's a crucial element to the sex drive, whereas a person's dress is not crucial to their ability to perform their job, necessarily.
As for just accepting it, it's not as if upon having this though I could no longer cope with day to day life. It's such a minor issue to me that it only serves as a means of entertaining discussion. That said, there are some things about humanity and culture that if we just accepted, we'd make no progress.
Thank you by the way for actually making a thoughtful post relevant to my question.
Quote:
So your reasoning relies on a slippery slope fallacy?
No, it would be a slippery slope if it were moving from a less extreme real life example to a more extreme example, but all of the examples are just ridiculous, not more or less extreme than the reality. They aren't in any way more or less wrong than current practices of discriminating on fashion, at least not based on this:
Quote:
Given that it's the norm, it would seem that it's your task to prove that it's unethical.
If they were the norm, you couldn't really prove that it were unethical, could you?
@Red: almost all of your examples and explanations were conditional on the employer having a specific need for a quality that was dependent on choice. Those are fine... to disagree with them would be like saying that it's sexist to deny a man a role on a douche commercial because the script is for a woman.
You did have a good point about it being representative about your decision-making abilities at least wherein first impressions are concerned, but I think that's still dependent on catering to discrimination in the first place. Actually, that's probably my own discriminatory tendencies talking. If someone shows up to an interview in a suit, and another shows up in a chicken outfit, the only thing I really know based on that is their understanding of social conventions, which could be crucial to their performing a job, but again, only based on the reality that my customers discriminate based on those things.
Quote:
I don't know how old you are, but you better get used to them...
I'll just say again, this conversation is not about me. It's purely for the sake of discussion. If anything you should think of me as the person in the employer role for the purposes of this discussion, because I'm the one more likely to "oppress" someone based on their dress.
Perhaps I should have made that more clear from the beginning, or perhaps some of you just shouldn't be so presumptuous :d I'm not looking for a defense for my dress habits (they're fine), I'm looking inwardly as to how I treat other people, and inviting others to do the same.
But I know, I'm dumb.
