Is It Acceptable to Turn the Workplace Into a Nightclub?

From the Daily Mail:

Is cleavage a distraction at work? Four writers debate whether plunging necklines are ever acceptable in the office

Last week, a survey commissioned by Dragons’ Den entrepreneur Peter Jones claimed that women who display too much cleavage at work could end up sabotaging their careers.

The survey of 3,000 managers found that almost half of bosses had overlooked a woman for promotion if she had regularly worn low-cut tops to attract attention.

Sexist - or just common sense? Here, four writers argue whether it’s ever acceptable to parade plunging necklines in the office.

It's common sense. It's incredibly patronising that women think they can get by simply by showing some skin. The message it sends is: men, I think you are stupid, drooling, testosterone-driven animals, and baring my natural assets will make your brain go so haywire that you'll overlook my performance and promote me anyway.

The reason it's not sexist is because there's nothing to measure it against. If men walked around with their penises half-hanging out, and this earned them promotions, then yes, this could fairly be called sexist. But men do nothing of the sort, and women don't need to either.

What a surprise that men aren't taken in by women resorting to their 'feminine wiles.' Turns out men aren't stupid, drooling idiots who lose control at the sight of female flesh.

Only bimbos use their bodies to get ahead, says LIZ JONES

There was a time when I owed my ­career to my cleavage.

What an admission. Thankyou, Ms Jones. You said it, not me.

In the Eighties, I worked on a male-­dominated Sunday newspaper: me, my breasts and very little talent or experience.

I made terrible mistakes - and got away with them - because I had a giant cleavage.

More like, you got away with them because you were one of the few women working there, by your own admission. This was the Raving Feminist Eighties, when the ideas of political correctness in the workplace and quota systems and all that nonsense really took off. It was more likely the case that Ms Jones's employers could not afford to let women go.

Yet in truth, I hated the male attention and the favouritism. I started to walk around the ­newsroom with something clutched to my breasts to hide them: the Times World Atlas was a favourite.

Rather than, say, dressing more modestly? Ms Jones actually displayed her cleavage in order to get ahead, only to cover it up to avoid favouritism. This story is unravelling like a false rape accusation.

I despised the women around me who flaunted their breasts to get ahead.

Presumably because she saw it as her turf, and other women were a threat to her 'power' in this regard.

Another young trainee, fresh out of Oxbridge, used her breasts to get her straight to the top. She was given all the plum assignments and everyone hated her. I hated her most of all.

And so, aged 29, I took drastic action. I had my breasts cut off.

Jealousy, hatred, depression, self-mutilation; however did Liz Jones end up becoming a feminist?

I didn’t want to get ahead by plonking my breasts on to the editorial conference table. I had come of age believing that women should be treated equally, and as well as being given the same opportunities as men, this also meant not having an unfair advantage over them.

If men are no longer allowed to swear and throw their weight around, then women should be banned from acting coy, and blushing, and crying, and simpering . . . and wearing tight tops.

Actually, she's dead on here. I can't fault her on this.

And when I ultimately became a boss on a glossy magazine, I freely admit I discriminated against women who flaunted their cleavages. They were bound to disappear on maternity leave, and flirt with the inevitably male publishing directors and chairmen of the board.

I'm confused; is Liz Jones a feminist, or a misogynist? She sounds far less tolerant than the majority of MRAs.

Ultimately, a woman who puts it all on show is not only brassy, she is brainless. She usually has a face that is less than beautiful, but she always believes her breasts make up for this shortfall.

Ouch. The jealousy lingers on. Onto the next Opinionated Chick (TM), someone I've never heard of called Rachel Johnson.

I’ve certainly used it to get ahead at work - and I’d recommend any other ambitious woman to do the same.

And what ambition! As a famous celebrity once put it, "math is hard." God, I feel a bit like a feminist myself.

I’ve never minded men staring at them rather than my face. My feeling is, if you wear a low-cut top, you are asking for men’s gaze to lock on to your bust rather than listen to you warbling on about nonsense.

Quite, but it doesn't mean you get to sit on the board, darling.

Any woman knows that if you want to distract your audience from the possible vacuity of what you’re ­saying, allow them an unimpeded view of your cleavage.

I don't really know why I bother any more. Other people are apparently doing my job for me.

Perfect for parties, banned in the boardroom, says EVE POLLARD

This whole issue is dear to my heart because during my career in Fleet Street, I was often accused of deliberately wearing low-cut clothes to get ahead.

In fact, far from flaunting it, I invariably felt that showing my cleavage would backfire, so hand on heart, I never did.

Besides, many of the steps I took up the executive ladder came with the help of some amazing women. I don’t think putting my bust on display at interviews would have impressed them very much.

But I do know plenty of members of the sisterhood who thought nothing of unfastening a couple of ­buttons as they were being summoned into the lair of the big, male boss.

... Using your talent, your personality and your experience to get ahead is very shrewd; using your body is just dumb.

etc.

Next up is Lucy Cavendish, who has a face that could cut glass and whose general demeanour suggests that she is not just a career woman, but a fucking career woman.

Above: a fucking career woman.

A woman's brain should be the only asset she needs, says LUCY CAVENDISH

When I was an editor of a magazine, I would NEVER have employed a woman who’d come for an interview showing off her cleavage, any more than I would have hired a man wearing tight shorts with his lunchbox on prominent display.

So why do women insist on ‘putting it all on show’? The answer, regrettably, is because whatever Peter Jones and his survey says, male colleagues do turn in to brain-dead morons at the sight of an impressive cleavage.

Yawn. Feminist who nevertheless won't help a sista out. Hates men, hates women too, blah blah blah.

And far from taking a negative view, in their breast-obsessed ­stupor men are not only more likely to hire you, but to forgive any shortfalls.

I know this, because I’ve been on the receiving end of it - and felt ­horribly demeaned in the process.

Aww, poor Princess is upset about her privileges. You know what you could do about it, Ms. Cavendish? Stop bashing men, for a start, because that's nothing more than the exercise of that very same privilege you're so upset about.

Bashing the opposite sex is a shortfall which is forgiven only because you're a woman - any man can attest to what happens when he talks about women in this way.

I recently wore a new dress to a friend’s Christmas party that was reasonably low cut. I thought it wouldn’t matter. Why would a flash of cleavage make any difference to anything?

I couldn’t have been more wrong. One really old friend, a bit worse for wear, spent most of the night looking down my top, his tongue hanging out.

Another came up and said: ‘God, if my wife wasn’t here, I’d take you to bed.’ On and on it went.

It was bizarre. Usually, I would have expected to stand and talk to these people. We would have discussed the student riots, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. But my cleavage had turned me in to someone who suddenly had no brain, no opinions, but was ­centre of attention. I was horrified.

So horrified, indeed, that she even had to air the experience to the whole world in print.

The section above is nothing more than boasting about the attention she received. Take that, my poorly-endowed peers! I'm Queen Bitch of the Boob Wars.

Finally, we come to the only male opinion in this clusterfuck of an article. Surprise, surprise; like a person who has had to get by on his own merits and not by flaunting parts of his body, James Delingpole pens the only reasonable assessment.

There's one correction I would make, and that would be to substitute 'efficient' for 'simple.'

...and the male view, from JAMES DELINGPOLE

I’m no prude. Au contraire. Like most men, I like well-defined cleavages very much indeed. But that’s precisely the problem.

Men are simple creatures, they want to get the job done as well as possible in as pleasant an ­environment with no ­distraction.

And a prominent cleavage is a distraction with a capital D - and not just to men either.

Among the other women in the office, it inspires vicious, claws-out jealousy and hatred; and in the men, it acts simultaneously as either an ­outrageous come-on or an ever-present source of embarrassment.

You don’t know where to look. One part of your brain is urging you to linger appreciatively on the fleshy delights laid out so blatantly for your delectation; the other part is saying: ‘No! Don’t you know how easy it is to get done for harassment these days.’

Modern equality laws are bent outrageously in favour of protecting ­women’s ‘privacy’.

The very least women owe us in return is to turn up to the office looking like they’re dressed for business - not the bedroom.

White? More Like Racist

Half Sigma posted the following back in May 2006, although it has only just come to my attention. It was taken from a Seattle Public Schools website, although the link is now defunct.

Cultural Racism:
Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers.

Half Sigma makes a big fuss over the 'future time orientation' part, and rightly so, but there's an awful lot more here that I find worrying.

Believe in individualism? You're racist.

Making plans for your future? You disgust me, you piece of shit racist.

Use standard English? RACIST.

Can only think of white composers? FILTHY FUCKING RACIST NAZI.

It's pretty clear where this is headed. I guess all those black conservatives I've met throughout my life are just race traitors, because as we all know, black has the same meaning as 'collectivist.'

Wait, who's patronising and stereotyping now?

Take out the 'cultural' part and we get the following:

So you're white? RACIST.

Even Greater Leniency for Female Criminals in the UK

A leaked five page document detailing new prison guidelines includes the following:

a ban on naked searches for all women inmates.

But not on men, I see.

Indeed, even transsexuals are exempt; as usual, when the question is of something unpleasant, only men are not exempt.

More on Discrimination in the UK

According to the Telegraph, the 'positive discrimination' I discussed previously is being sold as 'positive action' - the difference being not entirely clear.

Britain embraces 'positive action' to abolish workplace discrimination

Calling it 'action' is most likely a move to avoid all those nasty connotations which unfortunately attach themselves to the word 'discrimination' - connotations which remain even when you deem it 'positive'.

Perhaps when men are beaten in the street, it is 'positive violence'?

When men are killed, is it 'positive homicide'?

I am sure that feminists think so; after all, it is precisely the same logic behind calling discrimination 'positive' when it targets men.

Miss Featherstone said recruitment and promotion decisions, especially in big firms, were still made on a "nudge-nudge, wink-wink basis", before women had the chance to apply.

If these decisions really were made in such a clandestine matter, how exactly would Miss Featherstone - barred entry to the old boys' club because she is a victimised woman - know this to be the case?

I highly doubt it's the case at all - most companies are falling all over themselves to prove that they genuflect at the church of Equality. But, to turn profits, they also need to hire the best candidates.

Who are, for our cultural guardians, all too often male.

Ministers said that in practice this would mean that a primary school with no male teachers could hire a man of equal merit to a woman.

It will also mean that a manager will be able to hire a black man over a white man, a woman over a man, or a homosexual man over a heterosexual man, if they have the same skills and qualifications.

This is an attempt to play down the ramifications of the Equality Act. All those things listed above can and do already happen - when two equal candidates have applied, the employer has to choose between them. If this was all the Act implied, there would be no need for it; it would be completely superfluous.

Miss Featherstone said the reforms were “absolutely not about political correctness” but aimed to give employers “the choice to make their workforce more diverse”.

Again - employers already exercise full choice over who they hire. If they want to create a more diverse workforce, they are currently free to do so without requiring the help of government.

So, what's really going on?

Companies with more than 150 staff will be encouraged voluntarily to disclose whether they pay women as much as men.

Miss Featherstone told business leaders in London’s Docklands that she hoped the voluntary approach would work. However, if too few companies signed up, ministers would consider whether tougher action “including a mandatory approach” was needed.

So disclosures will be voluntary - unless nobody volunteers, then they will be mandatory.

So essentially, disclosures will be mandatory.

business leaders said the new rules would lead to a rise in the number of companies being sued by potential employees.

This is undoubtedly one of the primary reasons for the new legislation - the terms of the Act are so broad that anybody can sue for virtually any reason, so long as they belong to a 'protected category' of person.

The effects will be for disgruntled or bored women to cripple businesses, in order to fund their own lavish spending habits and luxurious cruise trips.

David Green, a director of the think-tank Civitas, said the new law imposed “illiberal requirements on employers”. He said: “The Government is now to require employers to discriminate on grounds of 'group identity’ not personal qualities.”

Spot on. I would add that ideologies such as feminism explicitly aim to divide people by putting them into little 'group identity' boxes then treating them differently.

Legal Discrimination Against Men in the UK

'Positive' discrimination against men is now legal in the United Kingdom.

As reported by the Daily Mail:

Employers given right to hire women rather than men in 'positive discrimination' laws

Businesses will be permitted to hire women over equally qualified men under new 'positive action' legislation unveiled today.

How successful the feminists have been in demonising men - we have reached a point where explicitly sexist action against men is deemed 'positive'.

Personally, I do not believe that discrimination can ever be 'positive'. Though I suppose it depends on your point of view as to whether or not it is 'positive' - i.e., who is being discriminated against. If it's not you, and if you stand to gain from the discrimination, then you might well think that it is a 'positive' thing.

This new legislation, if you are a man, could certainly be called 'negative', because you could be rejected for a job for no other reason that you are male - a fact of your birth that has nothing to do with your experience, merits, references, or what you could bring to the role.

So, I have a hard time swallowing that this is 'positive' discrimination - it's just plain discrimination.

For years, we have heard that treating women in precisely this way is just plain discrimination, and that we should never judge women on the basis of their sex but on the basis of their merits.

Who could have foreseen that the very same feminists who imposed law after law, ensuring that this would be the case, would then deem it acceptable and fair for men to be discriminated against in this way?

"These plans are absolutely not about political correctness, or red tape, or quotas," says Lynne Featherstone, who is apparently the Equalities Minister.

That's nonsense.

Of course these plans are about all these things - if not for certain politicians' chauvinistic devotion to political correctness and quotas, the plans would not exist.

Specifically, they would not have been dreamed up by the notorious feminist Harriet Harman, who held Ms. Featherstone's role in the previous administration.