The Gambling Commission has said that scantily dressed female croupiers are “unacceptable”.
Gambling Commission condemns outfits at trade show
Scantily clad women are “unacceptable” at a betting industry conference, Britain’s gambling regulator has said.
Sarah Harrison told the BBC that some women working at the ICE Totally Gaming event were wearing “little more than swimsuits”, while men wore smart suits.
The chief executive of the Gambling Commission said the body could boycott future ICE Total Gaming events.
But the event’s manager said the complaint was directed at a “very small” number of firms taking part.
Kate Chambers, managing director of ICE London, also said the show has been encouraging exhibitors to represent women more respectfully.
[…]
Earlier, Ms Harrison told BBC’s Radio 4’s Today programme of her dismay at seeing a gender disparity at the show, with some women on exhibition stalls doing promotional work in revealing clothing.
“The men were wearing smart suits and women were being asked to wear not much more than swimsuits. That’s totally unacceptable; it’s not reflective of the modern economy,” she said.
“This isn’t about political correctness. It’s about good regulation and good governance, because businesses that have a more diverse workforce are more likely to make better decisions. And that’s critical from a regulator’s point of view.”
“It’s about good regulation and good governance, because businesses that have a more diverse workforce are more likely to make better decisions” is one of the weirder non-sequiturs I have come across lately. It sounds like someone inputted a load of modern buzzwords into a 1980s Turing Test chatbot program. But that is a side issue.
What part of the legal remit of the Gambling Commission gives it authority to regulate the style of dress of people working in the gambling trade? It is meant to protect “vulnerable people”, that is, gambling addicts or people at risk of becoming gambling addicts. It also has a role in ensuring the law regarding gambling by minors is followed. Women employees who wear sexy dresses at a gambling trade show come into neither of these categories. How dare Sarah Harrison imply that they are either vulnerable or children. How dare she lay down the law on whether their dress is “acceptable” or “unacceptable” to her, when there is no law to lay down. She exceeds her authority.
Honestly, just kill them all. It’s time.
I think what we need is a Restoration.
We all know the scene – it is 1660, the Return of the King, the theatres open (this time with female actresses) the Maypoles go back up, Christmas is legal again (the Puritans had banned Christmas) and fashions became daring.
But behind all this was a legal move – rather than repealing individual regulations, the new government simply said that ALL the laws passed by the “Commonwealth” regime were void – that they had never been law. Which was true enough as the traditional idea of law was an effort to FIND law (the principle of justice in the circumstances of time and place). The idea of the Commonwealth that “the law” was a series of commands to control every aspect of life was alien to the Common Law.
If we, for example, declared that every regulation and agency (such as the “Gambling Commission”) created since 1869 was VOID – the problem would be sorted out. As for the Frankfurt School types of the Gambling Commission – they should be sent to North Korea, they would be much happier there.
Paul: Exactly so. I cannot believe what has happened to “England,” the country that more than any other bred us Yanks. We are not in good shape over here, but this that Natalie has posted is incredible. Didn’t somebody say something like “I weep for God and England”? –If not, somebody jolly well should have. On stilts!
In a complete, concise nutshell.
As I said over at David Thompson’s the other day, it’ll be skirts round piano legs next. Rather than a long-overdue exposé of the endemic sleaze and corruption in Hollywood, the Weinstein affair seems to have kicked the entire world into full-scale neo-Victorianism instead.
My Inner Devil’s Advocate pipes up here . . .
I join everyone here on this libertarian blog in condemning governmental regulation of things such as this that ought to be left to our own choices. Don’t like scantily-clad women? Don’t go where they are.
But . . .
I remember going to a car show with my ten-year-old daughter and my eleven-year-old niece and having to explain to them what bikinied beauties had to do with the machines that I wanted to see. It was uncomfortable. These women (barely – 18?) were doing jobs that I prayed and hoped my daughter and niece never had to become involved in.
So, while I’m not happy that government is once again going to tell us how to live and think, I’m not sad that the parading beauties seem to be dwindling. Our daughters are only cheapened by such culture.
In the end, feminism is a war on fun.
I wonder if the Gambling Commission will make up all those lost tips?
I have dealt with the Gambling Commission. It is very much like the FDA, in that its employees do not give a flying fuck about any eventual outcome, as long as forms are observed and useless bureaucrats are kept in employment.
Typically, I’d cap this off with a witticism, or a lame joke. But there’s nothing that’s remotely fucking funny here.
It is the new Victorianism. But instead of insisting that it is done to protect the vulnerable ladies, rather, it is done to improve the people (men) who like to look at scantily-clad women, because they are morally deficient in the ways that they think about women. The men need to be protected from their wicked thoughts.
I think a similar sort of logic is used to make women wear the burqa in some societies. In the sophisticated west, we insist that they wear business uniforms, instead. I wonder what will happen when the ayatolas (don’t know what the female form of this word is, if it exists) of feminism realize that some men are quite turned on by the sight of a woman in a “smart suit”.
rxc,
“Ayatolettah you so”?
Heh heh heh….
It’s perfectly understandable why she is against attractive, scantily-clad women……….here’s her photo.
http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/about/Corporate-governance-and-business-plan/Director-biographies.aspx
When have you ever known a regulatory authority not to exceed its remit?
Shush, you!
We need a revolution. Well we already have one, we just need one pointed in the opposite direction.
And as this is Ultra Vires, it NEEDS to be publicly repudiated. Defy the ruling and tell them to try and enforce it.
Natalie:
Oh Ye who believe, let me tell you this, but in fairness to the Commission, I think that they are expressing personal disdain rather than actually threatening action, the remit of the Gambling Commission is in the Gambling Act 2005, section 1:
OK, so they might argue that these women, being at the lower end of the socio-economic scale (ok, presumed to be working class) are being harmed or exploited by gambling, even if they are getting generous tips from punters.
If you say that is a stretch past breaking point, I would agree, but would an English Judge?
And if not, there is another route that they can use, the Equality Act 2010, which imposes a duty on the Gambling Commission as a public authority, go all the way down to Schedule 19, and F55 on the page, it is listed.
Now then, that duty, under Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, a public authority has a duty to:
I suppose that the outfit responsible for this dress code could always argue to the Commission that they are ‘fostering good relations’ between those who share the sex of women as a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not share it.
This ‘duty’ is a licence to the Left to sue, sue and sue again, and to the State to threaten, cajole, bully and persecute those whom it dislikes.
bobby b: In the UK, no one under 18 is allowed on premises where gambling is licensed, not even to change a baby’s nappy (diaper) in a toilet. So this sort of event would not have young children (or anyone under 18) anywhere near it.
It’s only demeaning if you assume the women have no power and no choice. For many being paid money to dress in beach wear is a good earning choice…. Is it the greatest role in society, no. If you assume those women are stupid and helpless, I can see the fear. I also understand explaining male lust to your grand daughters would be difficult… People earning money is always more dignified than being stuck in squalor. In this case human capital is looking enticing to men and presumably some women.
The simple answer is if you believe these young women are poor, downtrodden abused creatures you try putting the moves on one and see how that works out.
The claim that companies with more diverse workforces perform better is another bit of modern BS that is part of the official SJW jigsaw that’s currently being built.
But as Tim Newman said of this recently, all that’s been shown (even assuming the figures are right) is correction, not causation:
http://www.desertsun.co.uk/blog/?p=6499
I agree with Mr. Marks, let us have the Common Law back and then the Bill of Rights. That may bring back our Ancient Freedoms which were harshly fought for and have all but disappeared. I felt much more free during and just after the war than I do now. Every quango and “experts”, to say nothing of “celebs” all feel free to dominate every stage of my life, enough is enough, burn the lot.
Your daughters are not the target market, people like me are.
I don’t think men should be allowed to wear smart suits. It is a projection of power. They should appear in their underwear, preferably dirty. Oh, and on their knees.
Hey, I have one of those things too, so it’s more properly “people like us.” Whenever I’m asked, I vote in favor of it. Sex, I mean, not my . . . well . . . never mind.
This is cliche, but having kids frequently causes your thinking to change in some regards. You can remain very much in favor of elemental fun of all kinds but regret when public coarseness rules, maybe because sheltering your kids from that coarseness becomes important.
In any event, it would never even occur to bureaucrats that this might be their business if I were king of the forest, but I’m an old fart who thinks we should try to be civilized and demure in public.
bobby b,
You can remain very much in favor of elemental fun of all kinds but regret when public coarseness rules, maybe because sheltering your kids from that coarseness becomes important.
Sure, been there, done that, worn the T-shirt. Still wearing it as a matter of fact: a lessening of public coarseness is one of the many social changes I am happy to advocate for. (However gambling establishments are specifically not public places.)
But the issue comes in when it stops being folk like you or I trying to persuade their fellow citizens to, for example, lighten up on the swearing when kids are about, and starts being folk like Sarah Harrison abusing her temporary authority as “gambling regulator” to enforce modest dress on these employees. That is a damn sight closer to forcing women to wear the hijab than I ever thought I would see in the UK.
I know you are aware of this distinction too. We probably agree 95% on the matter. But this crucial distinction between advocating for a social change and advocating for one’s desired social change to be enforced by law has been so disastrously blurred in our society that I feel I must shout about the difference every chance I get.
“Our daughters are only cheapened by such culture.”
Absurd nonsense. How are young ladies showing their excellent physical attributes for sexual display and money different from men doing the same? What do you think male athletes are doing, using their Einsteinian brains or largely showing their excellent physical attributes for sexual display and money?
What did you do when you were younger?
Do you wear intentionally unflattering clothing?
IIRC, the original of that was not strictly factual but a skit article by a British man who’d visited the US in Victorian times. The purpose was to criticise the excessive Victorian prudery he’d met there by humorous exaggeration.
This reminded me that, while I shared Natalie’s disdain, I am yet more focussed on retaining our free speech ability to mock it.
– Natalie is right that the letter of the law leaves the head of the Gambling Commission almost as naked as the Emperor was in his new clothes. (In view of Vinegar Joe’s information at February 8, 2018 at 4:20 am I shall avoid making that image too vivid in my mind.)
– However Mr Ed (February 8, 2018 at 9:15 am) also has a point: if the Commission’s head is gambling on getting a politically-correct-enough judge for any case that transpires, is she showing ignorance of her subject or does she have it from the horse’s mouth that the odds are not that bad?
Would such a politically-correct judge think it OK for people (people not like me) to be ‘offended’ by speech ‘hatefully’ pushing back on this?
– A society’s fashion tolerances evolve naturally, and usually include some in-public / extreme-case law. I sympathise with bobby b’s “regret” (at February 8, 2018 at 1:44 pm) “when public coarseness rules … because sheltering your kids from that coarseness becomes important”.
– The same people who will punish bobby b’s kids if they (wittingly or unwitting) cause their elementary school principle offence after he switches gender in the middle of the school year will be eager to punish us if we discourage them, or anyone, from taking offence at an, uh, “overly-gender-specific” costume. (I note the principle plans to let the children use either pronoun for now but the phrasing naturally reads to mean this liberty will end when the transiting is regarded as done.)
This is how an evolving taste is converted into a hypocritical tyranny.
Parkinson’s Law in action.
People will always seek out easy, undemanding work in order to avoid their main, difficult tasks.
SJW posturing about scantily clad women at an industry event is always going to be easier than doing anything to cure gambling addiction.
bobby b – I do not deny that the Puritans had an argument.
As they said in the time of Charles II – “see those men and women dying of pox” and “see that women can not walk the streets without risk of attack” with the claim that “this did not happen in our day”.
And there is truth in that – London was more orderly under Oliver Cromwell, there is no (honestly) denying that. But I am still sure which side I am on.
And these SJWs are no Oliver Cromwell – under their rule there would just be a horrible mess, leading to collapse.
1660 was a wonderful year – a massive roll back of statism (although, yes, freedom has its dark side – if people are free they are free to fail, to fall into vices that will DESTROY them).
However, I prefer 1700 – no censorship in 1700, and the taxes were just as low as in 1660 (well just about). Before the wars with France pushed the National Debt (and taxation) so high.
Sir John Holt as Chief Justice – that is the time for me.
As for the post industrial revolution period – I think 1869 is the most free year (in terms of taxes and so on), at least around here.
A few things about @bobby b’s comment (which I mostly agree with, since I am similarly situated having a young daughter.)
1. I presume your comment about the scantily clad ladies is broader than the specifics — obviously at a gambling conference you wouldn’t have young children.
2. I have participated in a lot of these sorts of conferences. Booth babes are really just a point of attraction, like a juggler or some animatronic machine. Something to flag the attention and distinguish from the millions of other similar booths. The booth babes rarely do much in terms of the business. That is done by both men and women from the company, dressed in appropriate business attire. In fact the booth babes are usually hired from an outside company. Is that OK? It isn’t much different in my view from a broader cultural narative about women using their sexuality to their advantage.
How would I address this with my daughter? I don’t know exactly, but for sure, she and I will have a discussion about how she can use her sexuality in a world where that is valued, but do it in a way that is appropriate and doesn’t take away from the fact that she is a smart, capable person. How to do that, I have no idea…. but I’m working on it. In a sense it is a free super power that some women are granted, the ability to control with a look or flip of the hair. Nonetheless, like all super powers, “with great power comes great responsibility”, she, and all the shes, must be smart in how they use it.
3. Since both men and women attend these conferences I don’t entirely understand why the natural process has not been to degrade this type of thing, assuming women are offended by scantily clad women. But thinking about it, the truth is that booth babes are becoming less and less common, and it is probably not a coincidence that this change correlates with the increased role and numbers of women attending these shows. Which is to say bottom up organization apparently is quite effective at dealing with these things, and the angry top down approach, while effective at scoring political points, usually comes in demanding a fix long after self organization has mostly dealt with the problem.
4. By a really bizarre coincidence, my favorite TV show, Yes Minister, has an episode in which they talk about “Equal Opportunities” and how women are never given senior jobs in the Civil Service. Hacker decides to take this on by promoting one particularly capable woman. Her name? “Sarah Harrison.” Weird huh? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Opportunities_(Yes_Minister)
Once again, third-wave feminists punishing women for making choices unapproved by them. It takes a special kind of feminist to call for complete equality of opportunity and choice for women, then actively work to prevent some women from earning an honest living. Scum.
llater,
llamas
The chief executive of the Gambling Commission said the body could boycott future ICE Total Gaming events
… so, a commission with no remit to regulate that is having a huff and saying it won’t go to the events?
Good for them. Stay home.
They don’t appear to be threatening to use the power of the State here, at least.
Paul Marks (February 8, 2018 at 5:02 pm), I note that the often-entertaining Lucy Worsley – who is something of a feminist (as demonstrated by e.g. her absurd forcing of the evidence to make Catherine Howard into the pressured victim in the affair with Thomas Culpeper, and whose views on the intelligence of Anne of Cleves are also more in line with feminist thought than with some of the evidence), nevertheless regards the 1660s as a much better time for women than Cromwell’s commonwealth. That the puritans were even less popular with women than with men was remarked on at the time. Witness Charles II’s use of female agents from his escape to his restoration (and after). Witness the fact that feminist intellectuals like Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle and “anti-feminist” intellectuals such as Mary Evelyn both loathed the puritans. The duchess knew that the male-staffed puritan committees were sure to rule that her views and publications (e.g. involving herself in scientific philosophy, telling women they should not regard a husband as an essential goal but only if he thought of her fully as an equal, etc.) were immoral and to be banned. Mary regarded the duchess as mad, and the duke as mad for supporting her, and treated her own intellectual leanings as temptations, always to be held below the demands of home and family for a woman, but she was more than clever enough to realise that the puritans would not respect any such division – even before they demonstrated it in spades by banning Christmas, arresting her husband for nevertheless celebrating it, and forbidding her to decorate her own house on Christmas day.
I also note that anyone who has watched any of Lucy’s historical programmes will realise that she might react rather badly to anyone attempting to restrict what outfits she can wear. 🙂
Lucy Worsley does look cute in all those costumes she puts on. I watch her for that reason.
Suzannah Lipscomb trying on corsets was good too.
Women on the BBC (and other TV channels) are prettier than average.
This is entirely reasonable as why should we pay to watch plain girls when pretty ones are available who can do the job?
To be libertarian doesn’t necessarily mean being libertine.
(I have a rule against commenting drunk. I’m breaking it here. Go fish.)
I’ve stated repeatedly that I oppose governmental regulation in the areas being discussed here. It’s not government’s business. Anthony Comstock was the father of all such censors here in the US. Would that he would have died of the flu early in life.
I remember driving to Skokie, Illinois when I was a sophomore in college to protest in favor of the Nazis being allowed to demonstrate their unspeakable philosophy in that suburb that had the highest concentration of Jewish diaspora refugees from WW2 in all of the USA. The best defense against bad speech is sunlight and responding speech, was my thought. I still believe that.
My name is on several significant appellate opinions in the Minnesota courts upholding the rights of pornographers to sell their wares in Minnesota, to my everlasting pride from my early legal career. (Pride is all I got – pornographers always renege on their bills. Fuckers.)
After that phase, I spent significant time and energy protecting scum criminals from the power of the state as a crim lawyer.
At some point, you tire of protecting shit from power.
I will still contest the power of the state to tell me how I need to live and think. If the state tells me that women cannot dress scantily at auto shows, I will do my best to tell them to f off. After all, “the state” is nothing more than my neighbors getting together to tell me how I need to think, and frankly most of my neighbors are stupider than I.
But when I was advocating for the Nazis, I was advocating for scum. When I was advocating for pornographer Ferris Alexander in Minneapolis, I was advocating for scum. When I was advocating for thieves and rapists and murderers, I was advocating for scum. It was necessary work – the state isn’t god – but it wasn’t always as satisfying as other work could have been. I would have been a lot happier advocating for orphans and nuns and heroes.
Orphans and nuns and heroes generally lack the funds to pay legal bills, so they got little attention from me and my friends.
We as libertarians need to explicitly recognize that the freedom from state oppression to do some thing doesn’t translate into “that thing is good.”
rxc said it best above – “it is done to improve the people (men) who like to look at scantily-clad women, because they are morally deficient in the ways that they think about women.”
Just because the state seeks to ban something doesn’t mean that that something is bad, but at the same time it doesn’t mean that that thing is good. That I fought for the right of Nazis to speak doesn’t imbue the Nazi philosophy with any semblance of merit.
The state needs to keep its nose out of our sexual business. But, at the same time, if you’re looking at someone’s daughter as a set of tits and an ass that inflames your lust and nothing more, then you are diminished, in my mind at least.
No, I’m not Randy Tigue. But he’s my hero.
(Had to add that in case any minneapolis-centric people were reading.)
At least one of the grid girls is protesting on Twitter, and the comments there say it all.
Oy vey, that comment was meant for another thread – but OTOH it may be pertinent to this one as well. YMMV.
Paul Marks, have you become darkly enlightened? 😉
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment#Theory_of_revolution
Paging Shlomo Maistre…
Darts, Racing Cars, Casinos, just waiting until they turn their eyes on Comic Con, only then they’ll start to reap the whirlwind, the Keyboard Army will leave no casualties.
@bobby b
> But, at the same time, if you’re looking at someone’s daughter as a set of tits and an ass that inflames your lust and nothing more, then you are diminished
Although I agree with you broader point — just because something should be allowed doesn’t mean it should be approved of — I’m not sure I agree with the above.
Why? What if that someone’s daughter wants to be looked at as a set of tits and ass for some moment in her life? What if she is a sexual creature who wants to be desirable physically? What if she wants to make her living being looked at as a model or as an image that men enjoy seeing? What if she wants to exploit her attractiveness for profit? I see nothing wrong with that at all. And I don’t think that men (or for that matter women) who look and enjoy that are necessarily diminished, in some sense it is what they are programmed to do. Of course you are diminished as a person if you think of women as only a set of tits and ass ever. Then you lose out a lot.
I wonder if you would think that women are diminished if they go to some male review and watch some person’s son seeing him only as a set of broad shoulders, washboard abs and shaky sexy booty?
What is good for the goose is surely also good for the gander.
Fraser, I think that the key is in the ‘and nothing more’ bit. And it’s not that most men think this way of attractive women in general, but many (and not only men) do think this way of women who chose to use their physical attractiveness as their main quality, especially in fields that seemingly have nothing to do with human physique in general, and female in particular – such as gambling establishments and car shows (as opposed to fields such as the fashion industry). Not that there is anything wrong with it: after all, these women chose to do it, so they must accept that by doing so they are forgoing the display of their other, non-physical qualities, which may or may not be very significant; I just thought that the distinction was worth stressing.
All of which, I guess, addresses the point about ‘someone’s daughter’: it depends in which of these two distinct situations she finds or puts herself.
@Alisa
All of which, I guess, addresses the point about ‘someone’s daughter’: it depends in which of these two distinct situations she finds or puts herself.
Thanks for the distinction. Perhaps I can also offer this — these women scantily clad to bring your attention to the latest BMW or newest slot machine? Their job as a model isn’t the whole of them. It is what the choose to do at one time, and at other times, probably dressed in a different manner, they can function as a different type of person where the focus is on their other skills or attributes.
And to me I have a fear of infantalizing women and desexualizing women in my mind and thinking. I think these are extremely common things, and done with this kind or arrogant “I’m doing it for your benefit” type of view. I am a HUGE fan of bobby b on here, but, to me, the “not my daughter” thing absolutely echos those very ideas. I am a father too, and it is very easy to want to protect your kids from bad decisions they might make, but when they are adults they can make their own decisions, even about their sexuality.
My experience is that many women feel empowered by their bodies making them desirable and the concomitant benefits it brings. And that in itself sounds so commercial. Many women enjoy their bodies because it just plain old makes them feel sexy, and allows a form of sexual expression that is built into their DNA. Put on a bikini and strut around and have all these rich powerful men drooling over you? That must be an amazingly self affirming, empowering feeling, and perhaps a massive turn on.
If #metoo is to mean anything surely it is that women are adults, they are sexual creatures and they are in control of both their adult decisions and their sexuality.
Of course not, just as a person’s job as a doctor or an accountant isn’t the whole of him or her. My point though was that a woman who chose a job with her Tits&Ass being the center of that job is obviously not expecting the customers to give any thought to other aspects of her – just as a doctor does not expect his or her patients to give any thought to his or hers T&S, or any other aspects of him or her (or if they do, to at least keep it to themselves).
As to people’s concerns about their children, they tend to be a bit more complex than you have presented them here. I would certainly respect my daughter’s wish to work as a scantily dressed croupier at a casino or a model at a car show, but I would be lying if I said that I wouldn’t be concerned if she chose it as a career, rather than a temporary job while she might study and train for a more challenging and rewarding profession for her more distant future.
Funny, I had that same thought shortly after posting my diatribe. If one of my sons told me he’d been hired as a Chippendale dancer for a bit, I’d probably clap him on the back and congratulate him.
Thing is (and maybe this points to my own root sexism) I think girls – women – operate under some burdens in our society that guys don’t worry about. I think men have options open to them that women also have to begin with, but the women’s options can get foreclosed quicker than the men’s options. If that makes any sense.
So I end up more protective of my daughter than I do of my sons, even though she already outstrips her older brothers in social status, income, and life satisfaction. It’s partly my own sexism, and partly that I see her making her way in a society that remains quite sexist in many ways (and probably getting worse with the new feminism influence.)
(I should also add – I broke a few ribs a bit ago, and yesterday I ended up ignoring the advice on the hydrocodone bottle that says “do not drink Carlsberg Elephant Beer and Glenfiddich scotch with these pills.” Wheee! So, I apologize for the tone of my diatribe. 😳 )
A. “Women need to be empowered” by the actions and opinions (i.e. by permission) of other people, and B. “women are being exploited in the work place” both imply the same thing, that women are weak and pathetic.
I happen to know that women, generally speaking, are neither weak nor pathetic. They don’t need external validation (though they may enjoy it), nor do they need other people (including women) to fight their battles for them.
Obviously Ms. Harrison doesn’t understand what the word economy means.
“But the event’s manager said the complaint was directed at a “very small” number of firms taking part.
Kate Chambers, managing director of ICE London, also said the show has been encouraging exhibitors to represent women more respectfully.”
No. No no no no no no no.
The answer you give is as follows: “The gambling regulator has a remit from parliament. This is outside of their remit. The public should ask why they are wasting their taxes on such matters rather than the ones that they are expected to deal with”.
Because what you’ve done there, lady, is accepted their basic premise that this is a problem. You’ve rolled out a red carpet for “even the organisers acknowledge this problem, yet seem to do nothing about it” next time. You’ve appeased them, and they’ll be back for more.
Fraser Orr,
“My experience is that many women feel empowered by their bodies making them desirable and the concomitant benefits it brings. And that in itself sounds so commercial. ”
Sex (whether we’re talking whoring or marriage) *is* commercial. Many of our problems debating this issue is the denial that this is a large factor, or in the case of feminists, wanting it changing (despite it being largely a result of biology). Ugly footballers don’t get model girlfriends because their girls are fans of the sport.
@Alisa
> but I would be lying if I said that I wouldn’t be concerned if she chose it as a career, rather than a temporary job
Well so would I, but probably not so much because of the manner of dress as the fact that it was not a job with either significant prospects or one that was likely enjoyable and challenging. I’d also be OK with her working at McDonalds for a couple of years, but would be equally concerned if she wanted to make a career of it.
Anon
Sex (whether we’re talking whoring or marriage) *is* commercial.
Sorry, your views are 200 years out of date. Obviously some sex, and some marriage is commercial, but certainly not all, whether it is that girl you met at the bar and took home for the night, or the woman you married who put you through med school, a lot of sex is about physical enjoyment, love and establishing a family.
Of course if you want to make some degenerate point that everything in the world is commercial then broaden the definition of “commercial” so wide that it doesn’t mean anything, then you can support your case. But the plain fact is that marriage used to be MUCH more commercial than it is today. In fact it used to be that there was an actual exchange of dowry money during the nuptials.
Frankly, on the contrary, I think it is you who misunderstands how much women like sex for its own sake irrespective of what peripheral benefits they might get from it.
bobby b
(I should also add – I broke a few ribs a bit ago, and yesterday I ended up ignoring the advice on the hydrocodone bottle that says “do not drink Carlsberg Elephant Beer and Glenfiddich scotch with these pills.” Wheee!
Party at Bobby’s house!!!
Exactly, and that is the reason why some people view these women as mere T&S: not because the way they are dressed, but because they think that they are doing this job because they are incapable of anything more challenging, complex, rewarding etc. They are of course wrong in at least some of the cases, but consider the doctor or accountant example for the reverse possibility.
The gambling commission seem to be run by fat unattractive creatures claiming to bewomen and insipid looking male weaklings. True diversity would require at least one attractive or intelligent director. Diversity of opinion is obviously far too much to dream of for any English institution.
Have I become “darkly enlightened” – errr no.
A libertarian and a libertine are very different things – yes I agree Bobby B.
Fraser Orr,
I’m not denying that women like sex. It’s about which men they have sex with. Part of that is physical attraction. But most women don’t fuck on the first date which tells us that physical attraction isn’t the whole story. And we know that good looking footballers get to bang a lot more models than good looking plumbers do.
Do we really? How much press coverage do good-looking plumbers’ sex lives tend to get? 😛
@Alisa
Do we really? How much press coverage do good-looking plumbers’ sex lives tend to get? 😛
I did some quick internet research on this, using a site called PornHub. According to that site women are always dropping their knickers whenever the plumber comes over to fix the shower. Apparently faucets are the ultimate aphrodisiac. 😆
@Anon
But most women don’t fuck on the first date which tells us that physical attraction isn’t the whole story.
Of course it isn’t the whole story. It isn’t the whole story for men either. But to say that women consider things beside simple physical pleasure before engaging in a sexual relationship isn’t to admit that these considerations are commercial as you claimed. The word “commercial” here seems to be a deliberate signal that you agree with that ugly, sophomoric idea that all women are hookers, just that the form of payment varies. But that premise is just nonsense. People are way more complicated that simple epithets would have us believe.
Fraser: 😀
EdMJ,
I suspect that Paul Marks and I mean rather different things by the term restoration.
In any case, though, Paul said “I think what we need is a restoration” but we do not get the government we need; we get the government we deserve. There’s a reason the Western world is for the most part not really free anymore; that reason is that we do not deserve freedom anymore. $20 trillion in debt will be liquidated – by hyper-inflation inducing payment or by blood.
Are these not mutually compatible ideas? I believe both may be true.