[Reposted to fix comments, which weren't working originally.] Prof. Glenn Reynolds (InstaPundit) asked whether this would violate Massachusetts antidiscrimination law:
Harvard University has moved to make Muslim women more comfortable in the gym by instituting women-only access times six hours a week to accommodate religious customs that make it difficult for some students to work out in the presence of men.
Men have not been allowed to enter the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center during certain times since Jan. 28, after members of the Harvard Islamic Society and the Harvard Women's Center petitioned the university for a more comfortable environment for women....
Prof. John Banzhaf has put out a press release saying that it probably does:
... In 1998 a female weight lifter in Boston was awarded $5000 when she was denied admission to a male-only section of a gym which had a separate gym area for women. The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination made the ruling despite arguments that separate weight-lifting areas were necessary to prevent "sexual harassment," and a finding that it did in fact tend to reduce sexual harassment. [Hassan and DiCenso v. City of Boston, et al., 20 MDLR 83]
Just a year earlier Superior Court Judge Burnes ruled that a "women only" health club violates Massachusetts' public accommodation statute by refusing to admit men, and could not justify its policy on privacy grounds. [Foster v. Back Bay Spas, d/b/a/ Healthworks Fitness Center, Suffolk Superior Court No. 96-7060 (1997).]
Although the legislature responded by exempting some health clubs which are established solely for use by one gender, that exemption does not appear to apply here because the gym is used by both genders together during most times of the day, and because Harvard receives public funds. In the statutory words:
"however, that with regard to the prohibition on sex discrimination, this section shall not apply to a place of exercise for the exclusive use of persons of the same sex which is a bona fide fitness facility established for the sole purpose of promoting and maintaining physical and mental health through physical exercise and instruction, if such facility does not receive funds from a government source." [ALM GL ch. 272, § 92A] ...
A couple of quick thoughts:
I may be mistaken, but my sense is that the relevant statute wouldn't apply to Harvard if the exercise facilities are inded open only to Harvard students, faculty, staff, alumni, and some family members. The statute states that, "A place of public accommodation, resort or amusement within the meaning hereof shall be defined as and shall be deemed to include any place, whether licensed or unlicensed, which is open to and accepts or solicits the patronage of the general public" (emphasis added), and Harvard-only facilities aren't aimed at "the general public." Cf. Haskins v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 13 Mass.L.Rptr. 691, 2001 WL 1470314 (Mass. Super. 2001) ("Although Harvard accepts applications for admittance from the general public, it admits only a small fraction of applicants. The unsuccessful majority (like the rest of the public) is then excluded. Thus Harvard is not a place of public accommodation within the meaning of the statute.").
If there's some statutory text or caselaw I may have missed on this, please let me know.
UPDATE: Thanks to Wallace Forman for the pointer to what seem to be the eligibility criteria for Harvard recreational facilities; the original version was more tentative on the criteria, and also omitted the possibility that family members might qualify (a possibility that does not affect the analysis, I think).
Related Posts (on one page):
- More on Single-Sex Exercise:
- Single-Sex Exercise:
- Women-Only Exercise:
The first day of Freshman Orientation, a number of female students approached the Dean of Students demanding a time for the swim test where no males would be present. Many of them had religious reasons for their request -- their religions prohibited them from being seen by men while in bathing suits.
I saw no problem with it then and I see no problem with it now. We still have separate changing rooms and bathrooms for men and women. If somebody prefers not to be seen by a member of the opposite sex while in skimpy clothing, I see little reason -- at least from a public policy reason -- why they shouldn't be allowed to do so.
I guess I just don't get what the big deal is here. (OK, I'm not discussing the statute...)
I see this problem in much the same light as clubs supported by activity fees. You have a facility that is being paid for by all concerned parties yet group A (women) are afforded more time to use the facilities because they can also use the facilities at the same time as group B (men). Notwithstanding the desire of certain members of A to do so while no B is present.
If as I seem to recall schools must allow students to target their activity fee dollars I can only see this as being legitimate if men are given a discount rate or at least those women who wish to partake of the closed sessions are charged for that use.
Wendy Shalit, sister of Ruth Shalit, wrote a rather provocative essay for Commentary some years ago on the subject of co-ed bathrooms at Williams. Though she didn't state explicitly religious objections, can we rely on that as an authoritative statement of Jewish principles? I think not.
And there was an issue at Yale a few years back when some observant Jewish students wanted to life off campus because they felt the residential colleges where the school expected them to live were not accommodative to their religious requirements in various ways, including such things as co-ed bathrooms.
When I learned to swim at the YMCA, as a child, in the 1960s, it was all-nude swimming. The men had the YMCA, and the women had the YWCA, and since the sexes were in different buildings nobody -- adult or child -- bothered with bathing suits.
In the 1970s the YMCA went co-ed. It tried to salvage nude swimming by having different hours for men and women to use the pool, but the women insisted this was discriminatory, even when the administration offered them more pool time than the guys. The women took the position that if there was a single minute when they couldn't use the pool it was discrimination. So despite the strong preference of most male members to keep nude swimming, it went the way of the passenger pigeon.
Having grown up without bathing suits, and finding them
disgusting and uncomfortable, today I pay a lot of money to belong to a private club that doesn't admit women and still has nude swimming. I understand that will keep me from ever having a job that requires Senate confirmation, but since I'm not likely in line for any such a job anyway, that's life.
There are broader points that could be made here about the unintended consequences of anti-discrimination laws (though I hasten to add that as a private organization the YMCA could probably exclude women if it wanted to), but I think the bottom line is this: There are times and places where segregation isn't all bad. If Muslim women are uncomfortable working out with men, or if not all men want to wear bathing suits in the pool, is it such a bad thing to accommodate them if you can do so while providing equal opportunities across the board? I know the legal answer to that; maybe as a matter of policy the matter needs to be revisited.
<i>Almost always</i>, women win the right to access private spaces set aside for men. Men rarely win such access. Why?
Because judges are lawyers, and lawyers are morons. The law is useless for resolving practical questions because judges are incapable of practical reason. They'll enforce "fairness" for everyone except men.
Screw the law, and those who "practice" it. If you have a penis it won't protect you anyway.
More to the point is everyone here having a polite conversation about something which has come about for more crass reasons:
Has Muslim money influenced the decision, or
has Muslim influence in the Administration, faculty or Student council affected the decision.
Maybe people are to scared to say no.
This really is the tip of the iceberg:
Some universities are installing footbaths so the faithfull can wash their feet (A university rep, also a Muslim, sees no problem with this).
In Australia, Muslims have just demanded the Universities change their class time to accomodate their prayer schedule. Some Universities have said no, but who knows what may happen in the future.
NI talked about nude swimming at the YMCA and YWCA. About a mile south of the QRAC the small pool in Adams House, which had been off-campus "Gold Coast" housing before the house system was instituted, was famously clothing-optional, and remained so after housing went co-ed in the mid-70s. It wasn't a big deal[*]. (The pool was quietly shut down and turned into a theatre in the mid-80s, putatively because it was leaky and too expensive to maintain, but apparently it had become the site of rowdy parties largely unrelated to swimming.)
[*]It's like the two men at the nudist colony who see a shapely woman walk by and one remarks "I wonder what she'd look like in a bikini" -- sometimes less is more. Co-ed housing, co-ed bathrooms, and co-ed pools don't automatically turn into orgies, especially when it's the same small group living together for years at a time. The fact that before randomization of housing Adams was the gay house (about half of the men were gay) may have contributed.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Never happen here.
But, just in case, maybe the chem labs should take another look at securing bulk acid supplies.
I am also troubled by the apparent inequitable treatment of men; women can go any time, but men can't go during women-only hours. While there is some historical precedent for the concept of "separate but equal" in educational facilities (heh), there must, at least, be equality.
So that strikes me as fair.
Joking aside, I can't fault the university for wanting to accomodate these women and their religious obligations. If this is wehre it ends, it's hard to see the objection. But if this is NOT where it ends, then university administrators are at some point going to be forced to decide the limits of the institution's flexibility.
The fact that the most traditionalist Mulsim women would be amonng the people least likely to attend Harvard (or perhaps any western university) could prevent this from becoming a crisis. But at the margins, I would think that every concession to traditional Islamic views of male-female separation would *increase* the number of Fundamentalist Mul;sim applicants.
Perhaps it's time for an Islamic version of Yeshiva U. It is hard for me to find any problem with Yeshiva's policies, (HUGE caveat) as I understand them: It makes a difference if a college is founded to serve a specific religious tradition. If I don't like extend of gender separation in the facilities, I can go to another school.
The rule is reasonable because Muslim women are special.
No, they aren't and if they want to be special, settling in a muslim country would be a better idea. The "privacy" argument is completely bogus, because no gender has a special right to seclusion from the other.
The only way in which "privacy" makes sense is by assuming that women are so emotionally vulnerable that the mere presence of men is an invasion of privacy. But the same argument could be extended to almost any context, where the only yardstick is women claiming feeling uncomfortable. And the situation is aggravated by the implicit threat of more trouble always lurking when muslim demands are rejected.
My problem is that the same Y is now encouraging people to wear bathing suits in the (single-sex) saunas out of courtesy to the sensibilities of others. I happen to think it is revolting to wear a bathing suit in the sauna, and my sensibility is offended whenever I see anyone do it. I certainly don't intend to do so myself. What about my preferences? Does this sort of thing only work in the direction of more clothing?
apparent? how about obvious?
fwiw, also, men can;t generally compete on women's sports teams, but men's sports teams generally let women compete (if they are good enough, which is rare).
this is based on the fact that women are inferior athletes, and thus it would be "unfair" for men to be able to compete against women in almost any sport. heck, marion jones - with or without AAS - wouldn't even qualify as an elite college sprinter, let alone olympics.
the point about catholics and modesty is spot on. they would be ridiculed, told to join the 20th century etc. by the same lefties who bend over backwards to support 'cultural diversity'.
The tremulous quavering any time someone proposes a trivial concession to Muslim mores tells us a great deal, but not about Muslims.
MPP - marginal propensity to pander.
this measurement tends to be higher when complainant is any of the above - female, a person of color, muslim.
occasionally, when the subject possesses different characteristics, male, white, christian, for example, MPP can actually be a negative number
Yes. So much for assimilation. At some point people will come to realize that Islam does not allow Muslims to assimilate into infidel cultures. It does permit minimal accommodation, but only until Muslims are able to exercise control; then the other culture will be forcibly assimilated. Meanwhile, creeping change is the preferred tactic. This is one example, and it will not stop.
Because, A.C., the nannies have taken over (or are trying to). It's for the same set of cultural reasons that we have regulations against so-called hate speech (or any speech that somebody somewhere might be offended by), asinine laws that people can't drink until they're 21 (does anyone seriously expect 20 year olds to not drink?), the war on drugs, the war on trans fats, five year old boys being suspended from kindergarten for saying things like "bang bang you're dead", etc., etc., etc.
Basically, anything that might possibly offend anyone anywhere, or anything that might harm anyone anywhere, or anything that somebody somewhere might be too stupid to not use properly, has to be banned because, well, protecting people's tender sensibilities and from their own stupidity is more important than allowing people to make choices for themselves.
Did the Catholic cuties get a major institution to make changes in order to accomodate them?
Besides, as others have said, there's always Curves.
I backroaded about two hundred miles once, didn't care for the expressway, and any town whose night scene was one step above the local softserve had a Curves. Might have been in an old shoe store, someplace.
The purpose of this exercise is not to make things more comfortable for Muslim women, but to make US society conform to Muslim demands. You ought to recall that Muslim societies are not known for being particularly concerned with women's welfare. That this is an exception might be possible, but it's not the way to bet.
A pre-op and outwardly male in appearance transexual, who identifies herself as a womyn, wants to access the gym during the womyn only hours, what do you do?
shoot the hostage?
well, it worked for keanu reeves.
People should be allowed to be people; IMHO when the government writes law to define human values, humans lose value
* I can prevent an Islamic woman from feeling uncomfortable while working out in a western gym.
* Prevent some poor sap from poisoning himself by ingesting illegal substances.
* Help people be healthier by limiting access to transfats, foi gras, and tobacco based products
google maps identifies the building in question as the "Malkin Athletic Center"; the workout room was visible from Winthrop St.
But the fact that Muslims ask--in many cases, demand--for so more concessions than than the alternative groups in question tells you a great deal about Islam.
And the further fact that the "tremulous quavering" tends to come after the concessions are made, when arguably they would not have been made for one of the alternative groups, continues to make a compelling point you seem determined to ignore.
I'm all for modesty and safe environments, but this is ridiculous. If you can't socialise with men, go to an all-women's school. (Methinks that might be too empowering for the traditional culture, however.)
news reports refer to the facility as the "Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center".
A harvard guide to athletic facilities mentions the "Radcliffe Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center" on Garden St., in a different location.
This protection of sensibilities is never symmetrical, is it? My sensitivities call for less clothing in the sauna on account of hygiene. (Loose towels are fine, just not tight nylon things.) We've already done the one on bare arms in the operating room, which is also an argument for less clothing in the interest of hygiene.
How about other issues? What about those who are offended by illegal immigration because it undermines labor protections we spent a century putting in place? Or who are horrified by the veil in general, which I think is a much larger group than will admit to it publicly? (I've even heard Muslims take shots at it, although only Turks and never Arabs.) There's no serious consideration of such sensibilities, which there would be if the nannies were equally concerned about everybody's psychological welfare.
I'm not sure what I think of Harvard's decision (I can see both sides) but you people need to develop a sense of perspective.
You will never find enough money to beat muslim's money. They have Oil we have nothing only debts and fiat dollar.
the issue is that it's one data point in a sea of pandering.
Indeed.
Anytime the word "Muslim" or "Islam" is mentioned, I run a personal pool to see how quickly "dhimmi" props up.
This was a request to the university administration. How they dealt with it says NOTHING - yep, jack squat - about Islam, immigration etc.
A few years ago, I recall a Catholic officer got into trouble with the military because he did not want to get into a missile silo for prolonged periods accompaneid solely with a female colleague. He had religious concerns.
It was handled adminstratively, and that was the end of the matter. Had "Muslim" been involved, the right-wing-blogosphere would still have been frothing at the mouth about it.
As a Muslim I do wish the small minority of Muslims such as the folks indicated here would ease up. But I have no doubt that for the Islamaphobes, *any* consideration - a cheeseburger without bacon for instance - is the Fall of Rome all over again.
QRAC is a newwer facility, up by the "Radcliffe" Quad, next to the Observatory. (FWIW, at one time residents of Quad houses had some preference to use QRAC -- it was considered better than what's now known as Malkin, and the Quad was generally more poorly served, facilities-wise, than the River.)
The serious athletic facilities are in Allston, across from the Business School.
If you were being honest about this, you wouldn't have chosen a false analogy as if it had any relationship to the truth.
The key here is the perceived increasing number of accomodations to Islam which are not mirrored by accomadations by Muslims in this country to the rest of us.
These accomodations, it should be said, restrict the freedom of non-Muslims, which is, it would seem, the point.
The health clubs that did violate the statute were only open to those with memberships. You get a membership first then you get to enter. You get into Harvard first, then you get to enter. Same thing.
An instutiton's level of left-wing derrangement can be measured by how quickly they pander to Muslims while at the same time insulting/dismissing/actively suppressing Christians.
Your comment is not the first one to remind me of Forster's "The Machine Stops" in which, as the machine which supports all life goes incrementally downhill, a famous writer explains brightly why it's all good. Nothing to worry about. Not at all.
Are you a famous writer?
that's pretty typical. actually he did the classic twofer. false analogy, and the "phobia" card. criticize in any way and you are "phobic".
So Haravard tries to offer an accommodation to students' religious beliefs, and gets labeled an "insan[e]" instance of "pander[ing]" that amounts to "kowtow[ing]"
to "demands" backed by "implicit threats". These six hours a week apparently turn Harvard into "Dhimmi-land".
Could you explain why such an accommodation makes sense from an assymmetrical perspective? And if gender segregation why not race or religion? While gender might not be equivalent with race for all purposes, there must still be a sound and provable reason for treating the exes differently.
What is this accommodation other than pandering to bigotry? If the situation was the other way, and men demanded seclusion from women, I am sure you would object.
if you were being honest, you would not stretch the cheeseburger analogy to portray it as something it clearly wasnt. I said that ANY concession to Muslims would be viewed by some (yourself included, apparently) as The Fall of Rome.
I'm not even taking any particular position on the wisdom of this Harvard policy.* College adminstrators - a breed that I've never been particularly fond of - have to make choices. Some invariably are unpopular. Getting rid of nude swimming was apparently unpopular. At my undergrad alma mater, the decision to go co-ed was ferociously unpopular. I'm pointing out that just because something involves Muslims does not necessarily mean there's a nefarious conspiracy afoot.
The line has been at "separate bathroom and locker facilities, everything else mixed" for a while -- this is certainly a move in the opposite direction from the trend. As pthers have said, in and of itself this is not an unreasonable move, one facility three mornings per week, but the inflection point is worth noting, and so is the weakening of the underlying principle.
I haven't heard Harvard's explanation -- is this being justified on gender grounds, or religious/cultural grounds?
Maybe this incident is part of that conspiracy, and maybe it's just a couple of young women who don't want to get their head scarves caught in the weight machines. But belief in the conspiracy itself isn't a product of any particular phobia. Maybe if everyone admits that, we can start an honest conversation on which things are part of the conspiracy and which things aren't.
um...
while i totally disagree with harvard's pandering to muslims here, your post is pretty nonsensical.
gender differences are MUCH more robust than sex.
we segregate bathrooms, sports teams, the military, strip searches, public showers, etc. by gender.
we publically fund teams that discriminate on account of gender (as a male, try getting on a woman's sports team and see how far that gets )
we do not do so by race. there is simply no equivalent.
the sexes have very profound biological differences.
this the same type of argument that i also think does disservice to the gay marriage movement (note: i am not against gay marriage).
racial differences are not comparable to gender differences.
Does anyone deny that people of just about every leaning "pour money into" or seek to influence, institutions around the world? And if the objective of the Muslim conspiracy is to capture the world, its doing an incredibly lousy job. My understanding is that the GDP of the entire Islamic world is still less than that of Spain. The R&D budget of the OIC membership is less than that of Belguim.
Pitted against those stark facts, exactly how the scheduling policies of a particular gym further this supposed conspiracy is mystifying.
I recently attended a wedding in a part of the country where a pig roast is traditional at part of the rehearsal dinner. At my request, my hosts were kind enough to substitute a deer instead so I could eat it as well. Though I supposed some VC readers would see that as an abridgement of my hosts' freedom to eat roast pork, and hence part of said conspiracy, I saw it as gracious accomodation. I dont see how what Harvard did was any different.
The underlying theme here is that lots of folks were demanding accomodations from Harvard, which spitefully turned all of them down. Then here come some grubby smelly funny smelling Moslems, and Harvard granted their reque... er, "caved" in immediately.
But the only evidence that I've seen to support that is a visceral dislike of "liberal" academia and antipathy towards Muslims.
so suggesting the presence of a jewish conspiracy will get you ridiculed on this site, but the presence of a muslim conspiracy is accepted as fact? if one is so hard to believe that it is dismissed out of hand, what makes the other one so easy to believe that it is accepted without any proof at all?
(for the record, i don't think there is a muslim, jewish, christian, 9/11, alien/roswell, or any other conspiracy)
College football games are traditionally on Saturday afternoons. Last fall Harvard held its first-ever night game, by moving (after the schedules were published in mid-summer) the scheduled Saturday afternoon game to the prior Friday night, which was Kol Nidre (the start of Yom Kippur.) Lots of moderately observant Jews, who would attend a Saturday afternoon game, wouldn't have gone on Kol Nidre, so after grumbling from the Harvard and Brown sides the game was re-rescheduled for that Saturday night. Kickoff was a little before the end of Yom Kippur (no tail-gating for 3-day-a-year Jews.)
Harvard Commencement is the first Thursday in June. Every so often that day is Shavuouth. Jews grumble, last time (or maybe the time before last) Harvard said "There are probably 2 or 3 families who wouldn't attend because of Shavuoth, we're already scheduled this, too bad."
we segregate ... strip searches
Call me a homophobe, but if I have to be patted down, I prefer being patted down by women. Last place where I had to be patted down, they split it by gender. [If I'd known I was going to be patted down I wouldn't have gone, but I was already there, and I wasn't carrying anything they were looking for.] I figure a pat-down either is or is not sexual. If it is not sexual, why did I have to wait on the longer line? If it is sexual, my preference is reasonable. (Most of my doctors are women -- if I could show them something they haven't seen hundreds of times before, they'd probably remove it and send it to pathology.)
Did you insist that nobody eat treif/non-halal food? Did your hosts have a stated policy that (stretching the analogy, but Title IX and various non-discrimination rules don't apply to private weddings) people may eat what they want where they want?
The issue isn't that women are working out without men; it's that men are being excluded.
Well then HELL! They shoouldn't be allowed in the pool AT ALL! THAT'S unsanitary.
Ping Pong: A "visceral dislike" of "liberal" academia? Give me a break. I've been in academia my entire career, and thus my entire aldult life. There are rather good, *reasoned* criticisms of academia as-is. Including academia's lack of pluralism.
I suspose my "visceral" dislike is directed more at those who put scare-quotes around "liberal" when talking about academia. Unless one also refers to, say, 'the force of "gravity" on our campuses.'
"In the 1970s the YMCA went co-ed. It tried to salvage nude swimming by having different hours for men and women to use the pool, but the women insisted this was discriminatory, even when the administration offered them more pool time than the guys. The women took the position that if there was a single minute when they couldn't use the pool it was discrimination. So despite the strong preference of most male members to keep nude swimming, it went the way of the passenger pigeon. "
So it did. In this example, there was, on the one hand, a claim of gender discrimination; on the other hand, there was merely the desire of YMCA men not to have women in their pool. It's not a fair analogy to the Muslim womens' request, since the gender discrimination claim is opposed by a request for religious accomodation, which is generally privileged (ie, Native American churches can use peyote and other psychedelic drugs in their religious rituals which are illegal for ordinary citizens to possess). The Muslim requests tend to make media splashes, trigger rants about 'pandering', and so on, mainly because of the "OMG ITS A MUSLIM GET IN THE CAR" factor, not because they're asking for 'special treatment' that Christians, say, or Jews would be denied. (True, mainstream Christianity isn't going to win a demand for single-sex exercise rooms, but that's because mainstream Christianity doesn't limit mixed-gender exercise or require bulky, awkward clothing for women in mixed-gender groups; I imagine Orthodox Jewish women, say, or Amish women, were there a large population of the above in the area, could ask for the same 'special' treatment, and probably get it).
"No, they aren't and if they want to be special, settling in a muslim country would be a better idea. The "privacy" argument is completely bogus, because no gender has a special right to seclusion from the other. "
I assume you'll be leading the fight against single-sex bathrooms, then. (Also, I appreciate the 'Muslims aren't *real* Americans' implication. Subtle, yet revealing.)
"An instutiton's level of left-wing derrangement can be measured by how quickly they pander to Muslims while at the same time insulting/dismissing/actively suppressing Christians."
When Muslim groups start demanding that public colleges become explicitly Islamic, put the star and crescent on their insignia, permit them to harass gay and lesbian students, accept Muslim creationist biology courses as credit towards a degree, etc., I imagine the Muslims will get shot down just as fast as the Christians do. Desiring to be part of a campus community while still following the decrees of their faith? That's not a problem for Christians, and it shouldn't be a problem for Muslims.
"Or who are horrified by the veil in general, which I think is a much larger group than will admit to it publicly?"
You get exactly as much concern (in the United States) as Muslim men who are horrified by Western women *not* wearing the veil, that is, zero.
gender differences are MUCH more robust than sex.
we segregate bathrooms, sports teams, the military, strip searches, public showers, etc. by gender.
we publically fund teams that discriminate on account of gender (as a male, try getting on a woman's sports team and see how far that gets )
we do not do so by race. there is simply no equivalent.
The last sentence might be agreeable if the reasons for gender and racial segregation had all to be3 based on rational justifications. But once you accept that religious norms, which have no rational pedigree, should be allowed to override nondiscrimination, there is no intellectual consistent reason for denying race based religious accommodation claims. After all, if God tells me that mixing with the other gender is sinful, why should my brother belonging to a different religion whos tenets objects to mixing with other races not have an equally strong claim to accommodation?
The fact that we accept more gender segregation for reasons of biological inequality does not defeat the race analogy in all contexts. I am sure that we would see the equivalent if a city decided to segregate public transportation by gender, precisely because gender segregation should only account for actual biological difference and not mere prejudice.
And regarding strip searches, if no officer of the same gender is available, the person to be searched would have no right to object to being searched by one of the opposite gender.
In this case, the men were willing to accommodate the women by giving each sex pool time. The women, on the other hand, demanded the men capitulate completely.
Put another way, it is one thing for women (or minorities) to say, "We want to play baseball on a level playing field." It is another thing entirely to say, "Now that we're here, we demand that you stop playing baseball and play croquet instead." And to the extent there is an anti-feminist (and anti-minority) backlash in some quarters, that's largely the reason: We don't mind if you want to play baseball with us; we do mind when you completely try to change the game.
me 2. but if sport wood while i am being patted down will the female cop sue me for sexual harassment :)
" Last place where I had to be patted down, they split it by gender. [If I'd known I was going to be patted down I wouldn't have gone, but I was already there, and I wasn't carrying anything they were looking for.] I figure a pat-down either is or is not sexual. If it is not sexual, why did I have to wait on the longer line?"
the reason (ostensibly) they segregate patdowns is that it minimizes the risk of (often false) complaints
we are, for instance, allowed to pat down women in the field,but if there is a femaleofficer PRESENT we are supposed to have her do it. and as for strip searches, those HAVE to be same gender.
i guess there is a heteronormative bias in these assumptions...
but, and i think this is valid, male cops are more likely to get a complaint about the nature of their search when they pat a female and female cops, vice versa. so, we PREFER opposite sex patdowns for that reason.
it's not that they ARE sexual, its that the person being searched can construe it that way, and it just is a CYA thang.
we are also told, believe it, to say "spread your feet" when positioning somebody for searching/patting and not "spread your legs" because the latter has sexual connotations. i kid you not
we are also not supposed to use the term "white out" because it is racially insensitive. it's "correction fluid".
i know of some org's (not police though) that discourage the use of the term "bullet points" for powerpoint presentations because bullets are like, bad and stuff
(rolls eyes)
The wild card is Saudi oil money, and the goal seems to be as much to get Muslims to turn more extreme as to influence the west. This influence strikes me as extremely undesirable, and I am sure there are many Muslims who think the same. So in a way, I do discriminate against the particular strand of Islam that the Saudis fund. I find the content objectionable, and so I oppose any effort to propagate it.
If the most religiously and culturally extreme Jews in Israel had oil money, I'd worry about them too. Ditto polygamous Mormon offshoots and so on. But in most religions, the nutters are the poor people. In Islam, the location and concentration of oil reserves has made a difference.
but in order to "level the playing field" we allow gender discrimination
are we going to this for race?
last i checked, not a single male who is not of west african descent has broken 10 seconds in the 100meter sprint
it has been done DOZENS of times, but only by blacks of west african origin.
asian and white sprinters ? nope (not last i checked)
also, the most recent stat i had showed 484 / 500 top 100m times were west african origin males despite the fact they make up a relatively small %age of the worldwide population.
do we thus "level the playing field" by segregating by ethnicity or giving whites and asians a headstart?
im being somehwat facetious here, but my point is that we DO discriminate on account of gender to level the playing field because we DO recognize that they are inferior athletes.
but it's still blatant discrimination.
Indeed, I don’t see much of a problem with it so long as Harvard isn’t charging men the same it charges women for using the facility while giving them less than equal access.
The unanimity of what's a fundamental belief of Islam resembles a Presidential election margin and leaves us with the same sense of unease.
If a fundamental belief of Islam denied women education or deemed girls marriagable at 9 would we accommodate that too?
Personally, I look forward to Islam being reformed through the power of our very real melting pot society. Jewish society has gone through this and the Amish were not immune either.
Suppose straight men complain they are made uncomfortable being checked out by gay men. Can they get some straights-only time blocked out?
If not, why not?
Your sarcasm is mis-placed. Yes, when an observant Muslim woman readily engages in behavior contrary to an alleged religious law, it is evidence that there is no such law. This is what is known as a counterexample. There are some clear and universal rules in Islam, such as the ban on eating pork, but many other requirements are mere customs or interpretations of vague statements. Requirements concerning segregation of the sexes and dress fall into this category.
So while it is certainly the case that some Muslims object to men and women exercising together, or to women appearing in public with any part of their body visible, these beliefs are not fundamental principles of Islam, which is why we see such huge variation in behavior.
By the way, the woman in question was under no obligation to use a co-ed bathroom. The option of living in an all-female area was available, as was the option of living in a co-ed dorm with segregated bathrooms.
Even Socrates, the original advocate (unless we count Spartan inspiration) of co-ed exercise, would be horrified at this blatant sexism. How does biological difference impact the ability to exercise together? What is it about non-sexual movement of the body that must be hidden away and segregated by sex? Perhaps Harvard should create women-only and men-only zones and times for energetically walking the campus pathways, or playing frisbee outdoors.
when I was in college I lived in two different dorms. One had been built recently and had co-ed bathrooms. The other was much older and had sex-segregated bathrooms. The co-ed bathrooms in the new dorm were built to be coed (not merely relabelled) and as a result generally provided much better privacy - each toilet or shower was in a separate room with a locking door.