Btw, interesting how the Guardian headline quotes her father defending her legitimacy with the phrase, “She’s my little girl.”

“Wow. A new low for Manpower and global corporate forces.”

Well no, I don’t think it’s a new low. Sounds like the same old low, really, just with a spin depending on which minority they’re shitting on. It’s just that this one got in the news, and I hope Manpower dies a horrible, horrible death in court. About fucking time, really. I know that when I went to fill out the paperwork there, the guy told me, quite bluntly with a witness in the room, that he wouldn’t use my application, that I’d be a ‘liability’. To be clear, I’ve low vision, but I’m also a trained diesel mechanic. Manpower sucks. So does Sapa, which I hadn’t heard of before. I don’t believe being trans is a disability, however, and the problems would’ve been much better situated under sexual harassment.

I agree w/Sailorman, Thomas and DaisyDeadhead. This has to be seen in the context of gender/sexuality functioning within the context (rules/priorities) of property/capital.

I hope they find she was wrongfully terminated.

Even if people were willing to do that, I don’t think harassing office assistants, secretaries, and/or mailroom clerks with amateur photographs of strangers’ genitalia would really help anything.

Alara Rogers says:
August 18th, 2009 at 12:10 pm – Edit

The only possible excuse for demanding to see her genitals — and it’s a bad excuse, for reasons I’m about to rant about — is that they believe the bullshit argument that men commit rape because men have penises, and if they didn’t have penises they wouldn’t rape, so letting a person with a penis into a women’s room is letting in a potential rapist.

Well, in theory one’s genitals could be an issue, if members of a certain sex did not want to be in a changing room with members whose openly-displayed genitals indicated they were of opposite sex. I think that’s actually fairly common for a variety of reasons which include but are no means limited to the rape issue.

But I assume that didn’t actually happen: if it DID, they would already know, and wouldn’t need to see her genitals. So if she’s already been working there and it hasn’t been an issue, why is it becoming an issue now?

(Actually, that last part is what makes me the most curious. What caused the change? Did they just find out? Did something happen between the employee and a supervisor, or with another employee? Why break an apparently-good status quo?)