I'm not saying it's fair. I'm just saying they may have valid reasons for the policy of cracking down on sex workers and they don't need to have actually mistaken her for a sex worker per se to decide this policy applies to her.
Now replace the correlation with other undesirable traits, like being a thief and having a certain skin colour.
Do you still call that a 'blunt tool to crack down on issues that don't necessarily apply to each individual' or can we just call that racial discrimination and agree no such tools should be applied?
The idea it's okay for your daughter, wife, mother etc to be denied a seat, where you can sit alone, because she's a priori categorised as a sex worker merely because of gender, is pretty insane to me. Of course your personal relationship shouldn't matter, but maybe it hits home a little bit more like this.
The whole idea about discrimination is that people are judged not on the basis of their own behaviour, but the behaviour (or stereotypical views of such) of a group they (often involuntarily) belong to. And that's inherently unfair.
Instead we should always try to make a fair assessment of the individual. Of course we use mental shortcuts that can be discriminatory, but we always have to try and allow recourse. That's why a 60 year old tends not to be hired as a security guard, because they lack the fitness. That tends to be viewed as reasonable age discrimination, but only in the context of explaining the underlying assumption, that age determines fitness, and that this assumption is not challenged by the applicant. But if the 60 year old can demonstrate sufficient fitness and challenges the assumption, denying the job based on age is no longer lawful. In short, the assumption must be reasonable, must be made clear, and must not be challenged.
I can imagine the owner's worry, and that he profiled her based on mental shortcuts. But if she then demonstrates she is not a sex worker, denying her a seat anyway is silly. Let's not forget, she came there for years. If she came with colleagues, she'd leave with them. If she came alone, she'd leave alone. She never engaged anyone else. The first thing you'd do is have an honest conversation and see if your assumptions are even correct in the first place. In this case they went straight to applying a policy based on a wrongful assumption, and then denied any recourse or apologies once they were given ample indications to be incorrect in their assumptions.
In this case, the assumption was made, was somewhat unreasonable given her familiarity with the staff (knowing faces, names), was not made clear initially, and was not allowed to be challenged. That's sex discrimination, a case handled incorrectly and it's not ok.
It's a click bait title. She may not have been mistaken for a call girl. The anecdote is told to try to introduce opinions about how the death by a thousand cuts is a larger problem than actual sexual assault. The piece isn't that well written overall.
I realize and stated in my very first comment that it isn't fair. Assertions that I'm saying sexism is totes fine seem wildly out of line to my mind.
I'm not defending the owner's decision, but the problem with this is... other patrons might still consider her one, and they might think/tell friends "avoid that restaurant for your family dinner, escorts hang around there!". She's not just condemning the owner, but probably many in society who still have the same mental shortcut.
And as long as people in your thought experiment have zero consideration for me, I wonder, why should I be considered toward their bigotry? Because the conviction thay alone women must be escort is exactly that.
The example in former paragraph is quite relevant to me, because apparently stereotype people openly express here (sometimes as joke sometimes serioisly) is that women are often late. Come soon, understand that you are escort, come minute late you confirm stereotype.
So the sensible approach here is, to ban men from bars.
Doesn't sound so reasonable now, does it?
We both know, there would be outrage if men were so profiled (by restricting their rights wholesale). To ignore this part of the issue is disingenuous.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18946801
I also wasn't at any point suggesting it was okay. I posted several clarifications concerning that detail while new comments to the same effect continued to pour in, some of them snarky one liners.
I don't know what's going on here, but it's probably not what you and others are claiming is going on.
Remember women couldn't buy property back in the 1970's, for plausible reasons (most didn't have jobs so no cash flow). Its that fresh in some folks' minds.
Hypothetically and theoretically standing up for the author's right to sit at the bar and acting like my remarks on HN somehow undermine her rights while dozens of comments pile on to uncreatively beat a dead horse and say the same thing to me over and over and over is a great tactic for shutting women up on HN while pretending we are all doing the opposite.
Sexism, racism and other social ills tend to be kept alive by such events while the participants believe they are part of the solution, not part of the problem.
I'm not accusing anyone of conscious, intentional malice aforethought. I'm just trying to describe a common social phenomenon.
Have a great day.
/s
If you want to be rational about it, the information you need to make a decision is not limited to how many hookers sit alone at a bar, but also how many hookers there are in the general population. If that number is low, then you have no good reason to assume that a woman sitting alone at a bar is a hooker, and therefore no good reason to stop women from sitting alone at a bar.
That's Baye's rule, right? What's the probability that a woman is a hooker given that she's sitting alone at the bar? It's the probability that a woman will be sitting alone at a bar given that she's a hooker, weighted by the probability that any woman is a hooker, normalised by the probability any woman will sit alone at a bar.
Nerds should know those things, if nothing else, to avoid many awkward conversations: "Why do you want to know how much my spaghetti carbonara cost?".
I only noticed that it's odd and began paying attention to other women in eating establishments because I was getting weird reactions from people.
/Anecdata to feed your hypothetical algorithm
Perhaps they mostly just have more confidence in going out alone.
I didn't pay attention beyond that. It's not some formal study with records, etc.
I noticed this watching a lot of those hidden camera shows with dodgy repair men. They know they are indeed crooked but get all in your face "are you accusing me of being a liar? That's outrageous!".
Life is impossible.
I've already allowed as how it isn't fair. Is there some greater point here?
> I'm just saying they may have valid reasons for the policy
without any caveat about how this policy was applied only to women.
I don't know if it was your intent to come across that way or not, but that is how I read it.
The conclusion that she was actually mistaken for a call girl seems shaky.
I did give a proviso that I wasn't saying it was fair. So I don't know where you are getting this idea that I'm justifying sexism.
That she was "simply been caught by a policy designed to address the issue" is pretty clear. The issue is that this policy is discriminatory. And in a way that would fall foul of sex discrimination laws a whole lot of places.
> So I don't know where you are getting this idea that I'm justifying sexism.
You suggested they may have valid reasons for a discriminatory policy. To me that reads like a pretty clear cut justification. If you don't think that's a valid reason for discriminating after all, then my apologies.
Sex work happens to typically be done by women more than men. I've never been to a restaurant that didn't have a sign posted saying "We reserve the right to refuse service." Given that general policy, they may have been cutting her slack to let her eat there.
While homeless, I spent a lot of time in public spaces. Most of them have policies that pets are not allowed, but service animals are. Most homeless people with pets claimed they were service animals. Establishments were generally legally barred from asking for proof.
No policy is foolproof. There will always be exceptions to any rule and they routinely complain loudly about it, often while not having either sympathy for the very real problems involved nor a better solution.
That doesn't mean I'm justifying sexism.
I'm a writer. I was primarily critiquing the click bait title, insufficient evidence that they actually believed her to be a call girl and poor construction of the piece.
But I'll drop it. It's late. I'm tired. Whatever.
Sometimes, I prefave it to try to avoid that. Sometimes, I don't. This time, I didn't. (shrug)