Although I’ve often countered the saying that America is a free country by bringing up the fact that the typical American workplace is one of the least free places on the planet, it appears that the interests of certain groups – if sufficiently abnormal and bizarre – can trump even the capitalist mandate.
American Eagle Outfitters, which is one of those trendy brands that sell second-rate sweatshop apparel, had a policy in place that stated that employees had to wear “gender-appropriate clothing.” The rule probably applied mainly to the male employees, because women generally get a free pass to wear whatever they want, and also because cross-dressing men are not always as convincing as they think they are.
Evidently, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo got involved in the issue after Make the Road, a New York activist group, raised a fuss over the language. Cuomo strong-armed the company into dropping the rule against dressing in drag at work and forcing sensitivity training on non-trans employees, who will be instructed as to which pronouns to use when addressing gender-ambiguous co-workers.
The settlement is the first prompted by a new section of New York’s Human Rights Law that prohibits employers “from discriminating against applicants because of their gender identity.”
In the strange world of contemporary America, gender is now a “choice,” and making this choice a civil right that is granted more protection than speech and political views. In a way, it seems that prioritizing the absurd might be an effective way to trivialize the fundamental rights envisioned by America’s founding fathers.
