Comment by whoisjuan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by whoisjuan | Hacker News Reader

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But how can you objectively establish that somebody is unattractive? Assuming the world moves into this hypothetical society you're describing nobody wants to be part of that new protected class.

If you're by some semantic classified as unattractive, you will automatically feel segregated and marginalized. This is not like sexual orientation where non-heterosexual people actually have a desire to express their sexuality but this desire is repressed by a regressive, judgemental society. This is exactly why "Gay Pride" is a thing.

Compare that to being unattractive. Unattractive people, whatever that means, don't want to be part of that group. That's a pure factual reality of the human instinct. People want to feel attractive because they have a natural instinct to intermingle and reproduce.

But even if we opt to oversee this particular deficiency when attempting to justify an "unattractive" protected class, the problem is that "attractive" is extremely subjective and usually dictated by societal norms.

What's attractive today wasn't attractive 100 years ago. What's attractive in Africa is not what's attractive in North America. What's attractive for me (even in this dictated herd mentality) is not necessarily attractive to you. The only common factor that all these perspectives share is that nobody wants to be classified as unattractive.

People in this hypothetical protected class are placed there by others. They're already segregated and marginalized, and generally no one asks them if they want that.

We have an example of that right here from TikTok.

That's exactly my original argument.

"I determine you're ugly but you can still come into my nightclub" is not that much better than "I determine you're ugly and you can't come into my nightclub"

How about “I’m not allowed to use attractiveness to determine if you can come into my nightclub”

Because the above counter-argument is that you only belong to this class when people put you in it.

People aren't in or out of a protected class. Protections for race, sex, orientation, etc apply to everyone, even straight white men. Protections for religion even apply to atheists.

The laws prohibit certain behaviors, like excluding people from nightclubs on the basis of skin color. They could easily also prohibit excluding people from nightclubs on other appearance criteria.

Of course no one can control thoughts, and some people will still feel and think hateful things, but that's true for every protected class.

Good luck ever enforcing that.

Which is why rather than protected classes there must be protected characteristics.

>Unattractive people, whatever that means, don't want to be part of that group.

Neither do the elderly, the disabled, etc, but still they are legally protected from descrimination.

I guess I wasn't clear enough about that. Disabled people certainly don't want to be part of that classification but there's no subjectiveness when it comes to their disablement.

Unattractive people don't want to be part of that classification and their belonging to that class is 100% subjective in any direction. Even them leveraging their status to get some sort of benefit.

Also, where's the line? Does that mean that rhinoplasty should be covered by insurance under the same merits of sex reassignment surgery?

> Does that mean that rhinoplasty should be covered by insurance under the same merits of sex reassignment surgery?

If someone's nose is causing as much distress as gender dysphoria, why not?

Sex reassignment surgery isn't easy to get, and presumably coverage for "corrective" cosmetic surgery would also take some evidence. Patients couldn't just make an appointment on a whim.

> If someone's nose is causing as much distress as gender dysphoria, why not?

I definitely agree with you on this one.

But that's where I feel the line gets super blurry. This is not a white or black issue. Gender Dysphoria is an actual documented mental disorder.

Feeling ugly (or in the context of this debate, being classified as ugly), in general, it's not.

Why would it be called a mental disorder? If it's a disorder, it's a physical disorder, whose symptoms are the shitty behavior of other people that it "causes".

Or perhaps a mental disorder in those other people, but that's not likely.

I guess I'm thinking it more from the perspective of third parties like insurance. Gender reassignment is generally covered by health insurance and exclusions may be classified as unlawful sex discrimination.

On the other hand, your health insurance could easily create subjective definitions to deny coverage. Because unlike gender dysphoria, beauty is not binary.

With Gender Dysphoria there is only one direction when it comes to re-assignment options, and it is fully documented that this surgery is beneficial for the patient's mental health.

With beauty/ugliness, there are hundreds of possible permutations and no documented precedence to validate that this is a necessary surgery.

Body Dysmorphic Disorder is in the DSM 5.

Sure, the line is blurry. But so are so many other lines and we can't simply peer into one's mind and see things. Fatigue is a symptom of at least a few autoimmune disorders, but that line is definitely fuzzy and we can't really tell if someone is faking or not.

Body dysorphic disorder is a real thing (probably spelled incorrectly). There are people out there that feel like their limb isn't theirs - it is alien - and go to great lengths to stop it. Some folks spend lots of time and money hiding "flaws" (like their nose), even when they cannot really afford the costs every month, and avoid dating and going out because of these things. Just because it isn't a specific disorder doesn't mean the people are healthy.

And then there is another category altogether: Folks that have had accidents of different sorts. Sure, facial scars from burns or a disfigured nose might not actually cause a psychological disorder and it might not make things physically difficult, but damn it is hard to argue that fixing these things (when possible) wouldn't improve one's quality of life.

>Unattractive people don't want to be part of that classification and their belonging to that class is 100% subjective in any direction.

The way these laws work would not necessitate that. People who are old, disabled or queer are not required to carry a card or get a face tattoo. You are simply unable to descriminate on that variable, whatever the value is (old or young, able or unable, etc).

>Does that mean that rhinoplasty should be covered by insurance under the same merits of sex reassignment surgery?

Age is a protected class in Canada/Ontario but they don't cover blood boys for seniors under OHIP either (although I will strongly lobby for it in old age).

> Disabled people certainly don't want to be part of that classification but there's no subjectiveness when it comes to their disablement.

You'd be surprised. Being disabled is a spectrum just as being ugly is. It's not just perfectly healthy people vs people missing entire limbs. It's also the person with moderate chronic pain who can do anything they like but not everything they like.

And then there's the whole other subjectiveness that comes from bureaucrats having to classify people into discrete buckets based on how disabled they are. Sure you can't raise your arms above parallel, but does that qualify you for 4C coverage and not just 3D?

> But how can you objectively establish that somebody is unattractive?

It's difficult to prove individual cases of discrimination. Evidence can take the form of written commentary about a person's looks, or a documented policy about hiring practices. That is to say, you don't need to prove that somebody's unattractive; only that damage was done on the basis of that perception / judgement.

>But how can you objectively establish that somebody is unattractive?

Dating apps are a good data point to start with.

I can assure you that most gay people don't want to be gay either. There is nothing substantial that differentiates these attributes. It's just two features -- some have it, some don't and some have both. It is not "natural" for one of the features to be negative but not the other.

“ I can assure you that most gay people don't want to be gay either”

That sentence is super ambiguous.

Do you mean “Most gay people have a desire to be not gay.”

Or “Most gay people lack any desire with regard to there orientation.”

Reminds me of Doug Stanhopes brilliant bit about being ugly.

This one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgXwc-Gy19E

Yes!

Mainly his points: "There's no solidarity with the ugly" and "people would rather be called the worst racial slur for their race then be called ugly"

It's an opinion but if a table is ugly we can also say it right?

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