Now Just What the Hell?

Hat tip Digsauce at Don't Get Stuck on Stupid, via Basil. The 9th Circuit (yippee!) just held that "Screaming and yelling by men at work may now be sex-based discrimination if women at work find the behavior more intimidating than men do."

Let's see if we can work through this.

Feminist Equal Protection theory operates on the principle that women are precisely equal to men, except for deep-seat cultural disadvantages which are psychological rather than real. Therefore, laws are improper if they merely recognize the status quo; they must affirmatively work to break down the cultural disadvantages imposed by patriarchal culture. Therefore, at the end of the Feminist rainbow is a world where women and men are perfectly equal in all ways.

How does the 9th Circuit ruling fit into this scheme? It presupposes that a) harsh language is more likely to negatively affect whiny sissies, b) women are whiny sissies compared to men, c) the law should recognize this distinction, and therefore d) the Ninth Circuit will punish men who treat women differently than men, by using harsh language.

So you would assume feminists would hate the ruling, because it's based on a stereotype of women as whiny sissies, and you would assume conservatives would hate it because -- well, because it's the most dismally ridiculous thing I've read in the past ten minutes or so. Who benefits from this ruling? Women who want to use frail egos to make a lot of money from a legal system out-of-whack, that's who.

Digsauce's comment sums things up well: "Apparently, then, instead of treating women equally, I’m supposed to give special consideration to their gentler nature and weaker emotional disposition. Sounds rather noble and 50’s-ish, eh? So the old 'Anything boys can do, I can do better' needs to be amended with 'as long as you don’t yell at me?'"

Yeah, pretty much.