Quote:
Originally Posted by Simplicity
None of this has changed. If anything, things have gotten worse if the barometer is some evident and newly-found respect for women. Every Earls, Boa, Moxie's, Greenroom, Opera - you name it - is designed solely to accommodate the same acceptable level of sexism that's always existed. Just because the internet has allowed for nearly everybody who's easily offended to have an outlet doesn't mean that anything has changed. Nobody needs MTV anymore. All you have to do is go to your local suburban dining establishment where the servers are all dressed in tiny black shirts with their tits pushed up where rubbing them up against the back of some 50 year old drunk in exchange for tips is encouraged.
These bars people think are replacing the old suburban bar are not less hostile environments because they're downtown. They just happen to be the cool clubs at the moment. The same things that have been happening at clubs for 50 years are still happening. The enlightenment has not yet occurred....
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Ah, Simplicity. Always the optimist.
I'm not arguing that we're all suddenly enlightened--that's patently untrue. But people are taking this stuff more and more seriously, and after the (totally unsurprising) Jian Ghomeshi revelations I feel as though we've reached a tipping point where the kind of awareness that will eventually lead to enlightenment is eminent, if not mainstream.
I'm not even trying to argue that a culture shift is entirely the reason for the decline of clubbing--the fact that there's effectively no such thing as pop music any more is probably as much or more to blame--but to the points you make, we're talking about what 18-20 year olds do here. That most 50 year old men are still sexist pigs isn't reflective of what younger people are like. And while I want to be clear that the scenario in many restaurants is anything but empowering to women, at least the women are doing that to make a buck, not just having immature hardons thrust towards them. There is a difference there, even if it's a hollow one and anything but a triumph for feminism.
This is where Riverman can chime in that these restaurants exist because the market dictates it and that's all there is or ever will be to say on the subject.
Anyway, this is a good talk and a nice diversion from what we usually all argue about. And I like the irony of a conversation about sexism breaking out on male dominated board dedicated to discussing phallic objects.