6 ms·
unattractive people are not a protected class
by finnh 7y ago
unattractive people are not a protected class
- leereeves 7y agoAnd 100 years ago race, sex, and sexual orientation weren't protected classes. Society makes progress, slowly.
- toxik 7y agoYes, let’s mix all the colors until we all turn out culturally brown. Sounds super exciting.
- whoisjuan 7y agoBut how can you objectively establish that somebody is unattractive? Assuming the world moves into this hypothetical society you're describing nobody wants to be part of that new protected class. If you're by some semantic classified as unattractive, you will automatically feel segregated and marginalized. This is not like sexual orientation where non-heterosexual people actually have a desire to express their sexuality but this desire is repressed by a regressive, judgemental society. This is exactly why "Gay Pride" is a thing. Compare that to being unattractive. Unattractive people, whatever that means, don't want to be part of that group. That's a pure factual reality of the human instinct. People want to feel attractive because they have a natural instinct to intermingle and reproduce. But even if we opt to oversee this particular deficiency when attempting to justify an "unattractive" protected class, the problem is that "attractive" is extremely subjective and usually dictated by societal norms. What's attractive today wasn't attractive 100 years ago. What's attractive in Africa is not what's attractive in North America. What's attractive for me (even in this dictated herd mentality) is not necessarily attractive to you. The only common factor that all these perspectives share is that nobody wants to be classified as unattractive.
- leereeves 7y agoPeople in this hypothetical protected class are placed there by others. They're already segregated and marginalized, and generally no one asks them if they want that. We have an example of that right here from TikTok.
- whoisjuan 7y agoThat's exactly my original argument. "I determine you're ugly but you can still come into my nightclub" is not that much better than "I determine you're ugly and you can't come into my nightclub"
- gbear605 7y agoHow about “I’m not allowed to use attractiveness to determine if you can come into my nightclub”
- whoisjuan 7y agoBecause the above counter-argument is that you only belong to this class when people put you in it.
- leereeves 7y agoPeople aren't in or out of a protected class. Protections for race, sex, orientation, etc apply to everyone, even straight white men. Protections for religion even apply to atheists. The laws prohibit certain behaviors, like excluding people from nightclubs on the basis of skin color. They could easily also prohibit excluding people from nightclubs on other appearance criteria. Of course no one can control thoughts, and some people will still feel and think hateful things, but that's true for every protected class.
- yakshaving_jgt 7y agoGood luck ever enforcing that.
- dependenttypes 7y agoWhich is why rather than protected classes there must be protected characteristics.
- def8cefe 7y ago>Unattractive people, whatever that means, don't want to be part of that group. Neither do the elderly, the disabled, etc, but still they are legally protected from descrimination.
- whoisjuan 7y agoI guess I wasn't clear enough about that. Disabled people certainly don't want to be part of that classification but there's no subjectiveness when it comes to their disablement. Unattractive people don't want to be part of that classification and their belonging to that class is 100% subjective in any direction. Even them leveraging their status to get some sort of benefit. Also, where's the line? Does that mean that rhinoplasty should be covered by insurance under the same merits of sex reassignment surgery?
- leereeves 7y ago> Does that mean that rhinoplasty should be covered by insurance under the same merits of sex reassignment surgery? If someone's nose is causing as much distress as gender dysphoria, why not? Sex reassignment surgery isn't easy to get, and presumably coverage for "corrective" cosmetic surgery would also take some evidence. Patients couldn't just make an appointment on a whim.
- whoisjuan 7y ago> If someone's nose is causing as much distress as gender dysphoria, why not? I definitely agree with you on this one. But that's where I feel the line gets super blurry. This is not a white or black issue. Gender Dysphoria is an actual documented mental disorder. Feeling ugly (or in the context of this debate, being classified as ugly), in general, it's not.
- leereeves 7y agoWhy would it be called a mental disorder? If it's a disorder, it's a physical disorder, whose symptoms are the shitty behavior of other people that it "causes". Or perhaps a mental disorder in those other people, but that's not likely.
- lowdose 7y agoIt's an opinion but if a table is ugly we can also say it right?
- LandR 7y agoReminds me of Doug Stanhopes brilliant bit about being ugly.
- magicalhippo 7y agoThis one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgXwc-Gy19E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgXwc-Gy19E
- LandR 7y agoYes! Mainly his points: "There's no solidarity with the ugly" and "people would rather be called the worst racial slur for their race then be called ugly"
- bjourne 7y agoI can assure you that most gay people don't want to be gay either. There is nothing substantial that differentiates these attributes. It's just two features -- some have it, some don't and some have both. It is not "natural" for one of the features to be negative but not the other.
- qtplatypus 7y ago“ I can assure you that most gay people don't want to be gay either” That sentence is super ambiguous. Do you mean “Most gay people have a desire to be not gay.” Or “Most gay people lack any desire with regard to there orientation.”
- klyrs 7y ago> But how can you objectively establish that somebody is unattractive? It's difficult to prove individual cases of discrimination. Evidence can take the form of written commentary about a person's looks, or a documented policy about hiring practices. That is to say, you don't need to prove that somebody's unattractive; only that damage was done on the basis of that perception / judgement.
- uwuhn 7y ago>But how can you objectively establish that somebody is unattractive? Dating apps are a good data point to start with.
- rtkwe 7y agoDoesn't mean it's not a shitty thing to do.
- dependenttypes 7y agoI am unsure how this is relevant. "protected class" is a legal term, it has nothing to do with morality. In addition to that I doubt that refusing to sell a cake to someone because they are ugly would be considered an acceptable thing in a court of law.
- cma 7y agoIt is allowed for by courts for hiring decisions when hiring sales people. And things like commission based pay means it happens even if not explicit. Aside from beauty, if you do things to signal you are poor as a luxury sales person, I’m not sure the company is required to keep you on, right or wrong.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> "protected class" is a legal term, it has nothing to do with morality. This is not a distinction that most people have the mental capacity to make. Whatever the law is, that's obviously what it should be.
- braythwayt 7y agoYou’re saying, in effect, that it is not illegal. Which is not a statement of whether it is moral, or a social benefit. Discrimination against an “unprotected class” can still be worthy of criticism. For a very long time in Ontario, homosexuals were not protected from discrimination by law. The laws protecting them came about because people would not settle for, “if it’s legal, it must be above reproach.”
- simplify 7y agoThey are the most highly discriminated against, though.
- qtplatypus 7y agoIt depends why they are unattractive. If it is due to a birth defect, dwarfism or some other condition that is also a disability then it is a protected class.