You’re the one who said that women would be charged the same if their clothes were the same. I’m just telling you it’s not true. Don’t get your panties in a twist about. Oops… that wasn’t “dainty” was it?
Some people are doing something about it. Apparently, discriminatory sex-based pricing is illegal in California, DC and New York City, at least. Perhaps my first post was a little hasty. :o
All I can say is that the only dry-cleaning ‘discrimination’ I’ve noticed in my time has been on the order a pair of pants versus a wedding dress. In other words, no discrimination at all. And indeed, I’d venture to guess that most cases of women being charged more at the cleaners are simply a result of the fact that their clothes take more work to clean. But in cases like these, especially when women were automatically charged more before the cleaners even had a chance to examine the garments, are absolutely unconscionable and should be challenged.
Perhaps I should rethink discrimination in the realm of fashion, too. But I’ve seen the haircuts and clothes that many women get, and that has GOT to cost more.
It MAY be based on that, but it goes too far beyond it. (My own attitude is that, once you’ve eliminated the clearly offensive and rude, stop.)
A man lost his job for using the word “niggardly” (he later got it back, so that makes it okay :rolleyes:). An airline is sued for racism when a stewardess said “Eeny, meenie, miney, moe, get your stuff, it’s time to go”, even though she had NEVER heard the version that used the n-word.
From Joseph Starobin:
Sound familiar?
The two previous quotes are from American Communism in Crisis, 1943-1957, by Starobin, then-foreign editor of the American edition of the Daily Worker.
Even the great Dalton Trumbo got scorched in that witchhunt. He was severely criticized by his fellow Communists for, among other things, writing a description of a Negro boy as “polished and dressed in his very best” because that implied he was clean only on special occasions. See Red Star over Hollywood by Ronald Radosh.
My colleagues and I have been griping more and more lately about the lack of etiquette in some of our college classrooms. And no, it wasn’t “always” like this. I do not remember people being this obnoxious in the classes that I attended in the late 80s/early 90s. Then, we didn’t think it was okay to scarf down entire meals at our desks, socialize and giggle loudly with our pals when the professor was addressing the class or during an activity or exam, screw around with our phones and texts (nor did we have such things–there’s another issue), treat a subbing professor like crap because he/she is subbing, or get up and leave whenever we felt like it instead of asking to be excused or waiting to be dismissed.
Calling them on their behavior doesn’t even help. We didn’t sign up to teach the fourth grade, but that’s what we’ve got.
Disclaimer: it’s not going on in every single class, but when it does, it’s a real headache.
The only weapon we have left is dismissing them from two meetings and then reporting it as disruptive behavior. Again, I don’t recall ever seeing a classmate thrown out of the room for being disruptive when I was in college.
Hands up all those who think that the OP started this in MPSIMS because if it were in any more serious forum, where cites etc to actual studies would be expected, his OP would be ritually slaughtered?
[We need a hands up smilie]
I have never seen that happen in any of my classes. Maybe you just have jerks for students.
There actually ARE some (at least somewhat) objectively measurable changes in society that are somewhat related to the point Starving Artist is trying to make. I’m talking about the idea of social capital, as most prominently argued in Bowling Alone(cough)written by my uncle(cough).
But SA has a tendency to lump all sorts of things together and somehow blame them all on the liberals. While I think there’s a kernel of truth to some of the claims he makes, I’m not sure whether he sees that same kernel of truth at all, or whether he’s just a grouchy guy yammering about how things were different back in the day.
If you stop by the side of the road with a flat tire, is it more or less likely now than 20 or 40 or 60 years ago that someone will stop to help you? That’s at least potentially, if you correct for zillions of variables, a question with an objective answer (although not necessarily one whose objective answer is knowable). And it’s one that’s potentially interesting…
Basic womens dress shirts are darted in the front at the waist to accomodate their breasts so they are a bit more fitted to the body. These types of shirts are more difficult to press because you have to press 4 panels on the front and 1 on the back. Mens shirts are 2 front panels and 1 back. It is more labour intensive and costs more.
I’d say there’s a couple of problems with this. I’m all for increased politeness and consideration for other people. But you can’t force it. Trying to make anyone feel or do something specific is pretty much a guaranteed course to ensure they want to do it less, either out of annoyance, or purely to spite the demand.
You can certainly enforce outward examples of respect. But you can’t force actual respect. Someone saying “please” or “thank you” (or “regards”) can be as unpleasant as someone not doing so. And it still wouldn’t mean anything, other than politeness for the sake of politeness, which i’d consider a huge mistake to support.
The secret to garnering respect is to do things worthy of respect. It’s the only way it’ll really work, and it’s the only way any results won’t be shallow and fake. Certainly, it’s not fool-proof. But it’s the only thing that’ll really work.
Are you actually trying to float a guilt by association argument here?
Sitcoms no, poetry, yes:
Did ever I refuse to bear
The meanest part your lust could spare!
When your lewd Cunt came spewing home
Drenched with the seed of half the town.
My dram of sperm was supped up after
For the digestive surfeit water.
Full gorged at another time
With a vast meal of nasty slime
Which your devouring Cunt had drawn
From Porters’ backs and Footmen’s brawn,
I was content to serve you up
My ballock-full for your grace-cup.
That’s merely a sample of the Earl of Rochester’s poetic subject matter and style, back in the good old days of 1670: click the on link for the full text of A Ramble In St James’s Park. Makes you yearn for the coy gentility of gangsta rap, it does.
I used to ask, but my professors said that they didn’t want to stop class to respond to each and every bathroom request as long as you were quiet about it. So your students may just be used to that attitude.
Ditto – every college class I had we never asked to be excused. (In fact, that was one of the most difficult things to get used to in college.) They mostly preferred not to have their lectures interrupted each time a student had to step out for a second.
keturah, none of my blouses are darted at the front. They have a different, looser construction since I am an older woman.
For years I wore my hair in a short and simple “bob.” I washed it myself before my hairdresser cut it. He did the same for my husband. My cut was $30. My husband’s was $18. Thanks but no thanks on those “no appointment needed cuts.”
You thought my examples weren’t good enough based only on what you had noticed yourself? Now you think we should take it to court because it is against the law to discriminate on the basis of sex. I remind you that the United States is a country that failed to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.
You a manchild by any chance?
I wasn’t referring to the bathroom trips. Sorry I didn’t clarify. I mean the shuffling and packing up and gabbing that starts because they feel like leaving before class business has actually been completed…and the walking out in droves because they have a sub instead of the regular professor.
I went to high school and college in the 70s. Many, many students pulled that crap. Well, not with the phones and texts, we didn’t HAVE them back then. But in college it was common and accepted for the students to smoke in class. In high school, it wasn’t accepted, but it did happen when we had a film. A lot of students ate in high school, though it was usually something small and quiet, and more students ate in college, with the full meals being consumed in the large lecture classes.
Some of them are, some of them aren’t. I see a lot of women’s dress shirts with no darts. I also see men’s uniform shirts that have three sewn creases down the back (think cops’ shirts). From what I’ve seen, a woman’s dress shirt is far more likely to have a dart going from the tip of the breast to the side seam, at about a 30 degree angle, than a dart at the waist, and I used to sell women’s clothing. More usually, though, there’s NO dart, because a dart will fit and flatter only a small percentage of the women who could otherwise wear that shirt. The dart will be too high on one woman, too low on another, and will be too flat or too deep on other women. Darts are most commonly found on custom made shirts, where they can be adjusted before cutting out the fabric. Once a dart is in a garment, it’s just about impossible to alter the dart.
I went to college twice - once in the mid-90s, and then again for the last 3 years. I can only speak for my own experience, but I don’t think college age kids have changed at all. Eating, talking, sleeping, etc., were all commonplace then and are now among a certain set of students, particularly freshmen. The thing is that as you get older you lose patience for these things and they become more noticeable and exasperating than they were when you were also young and perhaps less serious about your studies and more interested in the social aspects of college. I will admit that cell phones and laptops are a new element, but I don’t think the fundamentals have changed at all.
I’m reminded of the quote -
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Attributed to Socrates, 5th century BC
And besides, isn’t that also one of the complaints against so-called “PC-speak”?
Furthermore, apparently it’s narrowed down to the 1968 liberals 
But he’ll keep on insisting we don’t get his point and it’s our fault we don’t get it.
Hey, BTW very thought-provoking book by your uncle.
The loss of social capital indeed can be attributed also to a level of mobility and social “niche” compartmentalization since the 60s that’s vastly greater than it was for any earlier generation (and now even greater with the Internet = access to a world of info and people w/o leaving your room). A more solipsistic culture, which will look ruder to someone used to one more sociable, is enabled as much by material progress on transport and communications and work patterns, as it was by any political movement.
(e.g. I recognize that a lot of those people “rudely ignoring” me to yammer on their cellphone or attend to their Blackberry do so because their families and business and personal associates now EXPECT to be able to summon their attention 24/7 worldwide and to get an immediate response, because they can, and else there’ll be hell to pay.)
Strangely, if anything, my cousins and I were probably better behaved than our parents. (For example, there was the time my Aunt K, Aunt M.C. and Aunt M.C.'s boyfriend, my not-yet Uncle C., blew up a neighbor’s roadside paper deliverary box because she wouldn’t pay her deliverary bill. My father supplied the cigarette they used as a fuse, IIRC. That was back in the '70s) We never did anything like THAT.
I also find it amusing that he pics “1968” as THE year that divides America. You could pick many, many other more pivotal times, I think. 1941, 1945, the '20s, etc. There have been way, WAY too many changes in the 20th century that makes the hippie era look like a change of underwear. (If that makes sense)
I’d say the 20s were more of a change. I think a lot of historians would choose WWI (or the Great War ;)) as THE dividing line. Really, the 19th century mentality lasted up until 1914, or as a friend of mine put it, “WWI was a 19th century war, fought with 20th century technology.” Not just America changed – the entire WORLD did.