Sorry, women can't be Santa
How a Louisville discrimination case belies a disturbing trend:
gender overequality
By Andrew Bissell-
Arrow Staff
No,
I don't mean that women should be prohibited from dressing up as Santa
for their own children or relatives or for charity drives. I do mean,
however, that if a business refuses to hire a woman as their full-time
ceremonial St. Nick, she has no right to bring sexual discrimination charges
against them. Marta Brown of Louisville, Kentucky would disagree. She
has filed sexual discrimination charges against Wal-Mart for deciding
not to hire her for a full-time job as the proverbial Man … ahem
… Person in Red. Wal-Mart opted to use a male Santa instead when,
during Brown's audition for the part, a child reportedly asked her mother
about certain anatomical features Santa possessed that were unique to
the female gender.
At first, this may seem like an insignificant event,
something that makes for nothing more than interesting and comical news.
The Kentucky Human Rights Commission did ultimately reject Brown's claim.
The fact, though, that a woman can now sue a business because she believes
they should be forced to hire her for a position that, by all objective
judgments should filled by a man, is indicative of how America has gone
too far in giving women greater legal powers.
From a very young age, males in America are taught to
fear the legal advantage that the opposite sex wields over us. In health
classes as early as grade five, we are warned about what we can and cannot
say to a girl. Say anything that she finds even remotely offensive, we
are told, and she'll have every right to get you suspended, expelled,
or sued for your every last penny.
There is nothing wrong with sexual harassment laws per
se; there are, however, serious defects with the principle upon which
they are based and the extent to which they are applied. There should,
of course, be laws in place to prevent men and women from using their
positions of power to exert undue influence on members of the opposite
sex. Unfortunately, our laws go much further than that, giving any person
who feels they have been offended in a sexual manner the right to sue
for damages. These statutes overstep the boundaries of reasonable law
because they allow the victim to decide whether or not the aggressor violated
the law according the victim's own sensibilities. Under this doctrine,
do I have the right to sue Rosie O'Donnell because I find her TV show
offensive?
Sexual discrimination laws are the principle method
by which women have been granted legal advantages. These laws are usually
used to remedy true cases of discrimination. There are, however, certain
jobs to which sexual discrimination laws should not apply because they
can only be filled by men. The job of Wal-Mart Santa is one example. Women
may also be denied male roles in plays or positions as Catholic priests
and not have a right to sue for discrimination.
Flathead High School itself has jumped on the gender
overequality bandwagon. According to the 2000-2001 Flathead High School
Student and Parent Handbook, one of the many behaviors that qualifies
as sexual harassment is "verbal or physical conduct of a sexual or
sex-based nature, imposed on the basis of sex, that … has the purpose
or effect of creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive education
environment." Under this rule, a flippant remark made near someone
easily offended by sexist comments could land you in a legal battle with
your dignity and reputation at stake.
There are many other means by which the fairer sex gets
more than fair treatment. For instance, simplistic and faulty statistics
are bantered about which erroneously portray a world of gross wage discrimination,
where women, on average, are paid a measly 79 cents for every dollar a
man makes performing equivalent work. The problem with such computations
is that they fail to take into account the fact that women often accept
jobs with lower wages but greater time flexibility, so that they can care
for their children. Issues such as abortion and public funding of day-care
facilities are discussed in demagogic, men-vs.-women terms. One very common
and liberally applied retort to the arguments of a male pro-lifer is,
"Well, it's easy for you to argue against abortion, you could never
become pregnant."
It's time for an end to this ridiculous notion that
women need to be given a vast array of legal, political, and economic
advantages in order to achieve equality with men. The idea is predicated
on the old-fashioned idea that women truly are inferior to men and require
special treatment, an idea the feminist supporters of such preferences
purport to despise. Women now outnumber men in colleges and universities,
evidence enough of the fact that they are talented enough to overtake
men in terms of economic success.
At the same time, women need to acknowledge that there
are certain positions, mostly undesirable ones, for which they most likely
will never be suited. Coming to grips with this fact, rather than trying
to nullify it through litigation campaigns, would allow women as a gender
and society as a whole to avoid a lot of frivolous and unnecessary legal
battles.
What does this mean for aspiring female Santa Clauses
like Marta Brown? Well, if you want to dress up in red suits, glue beards
to your faces, and cry "Ho! Ho! Ho!" for hours on end, that
is entirely your own prerogative. But if Wal-Mart refuses to pay you $7.00
per hour to do that, please, keep the lawsuits to yourselves.
