Beginning with a quote from the post, Cees Van Barnevelt delves deeper into the issue. Her comment also reminded me of the Debrahlee Lorenzana affair, which I wrote about way back in 2010. [That’s Debrahlee above.] She was a Citibank employee fired because she was deemed to be dressing too “provocatively.” She sued and lost. The post discusses some ethics issues germane to Cees’ Comment of the Day on the post, “Stop Making Me Defend Shawn Gillis!”
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No, Gillis’s point, and he is accurate, is that many women at co-ed gyms dress to attract the male gaze while the official narrative is that they are just “expressing themselves.” “Observational humor” is supposed to reveal taboo truths.
Women at the gym may dress to attract the male gaze but not from every male. If the wrong man (unattractive to her) looks at her one second too long it may cause problems for him (complaints to gym management, public shaming).
Gym influencer Joey Swoll has many TikTok videos shaming women in tight clothes filming themselves, publishing the video at TikTok while shaming the men who walked into that video looking one second too long; these men might have looked wondering why somebody was filming at the gym!
At work you have a similar dynamic. Recently there was a TikTok generated trend of dressing up as an “Office Siren”, with women wearing clothes more suitable for a night club. This trend is getting people fired (e.g. dress code violations, risks for sexual harassment claims).
Shaming men for the “male gaze” and excusing women who dress inappropriately has undesirable social effects. Males are getting overly cautious around women, to protect themselves from creep shaming and claims of sexual harassment. At work this may mean that women have trouble receiving one-to-one mentoring from male colleagues who do not want to be alone with a women in one room. At the gym men do not volunteer to help a women who is stuck under gym equipment. A women gets a heart attack, and a man thinks twice about doing CPR or using an AED considering the potential for accusations. Men are getting afraid to ask a lady out in person, do to the potential for creep shaming and #MeToo accusations. You can lament about the dating crisis and the loneliness epidemic; shaming men for being and acting like males is one of the main causes.
