No smoke without flamewar

[j4]

You may recall a bit of a debate recently about whether Christians should be forced to let gay people stay in their bed-and-breakfasts, in which people invented various analogous situations (as people are wont to do) as aids to debate. Here's one we didn't need to invent, from The Times' News in Brief on Monday:

Smoker put out

A smoker was denied cigarettes at a store because the assistant, a Muslim, said it was against her religion to sell tobacco. The woman smoker, 31, had tried to buy cigarettes at W. H. Smith in Cambridge. The company said that the customer should have realised the assistant was Muslim and would not sell tobacco.

How did the Times know that the woman was a smoker? She might have just been buying cigarettes for a friend. ... No, wait. Should smokers be allowed to refuse to be served by a Muslim? ... No, that's not it either. Hang on, I've got it: How can you tell if the checkout assistant is a Muslim? There isn't a punchline, but there probably would be if you started making assumptions like that based on, ooh, I don't know, the c*l**r of someone's sk*n, or their h**dg**r.

I would say "it's not just me, is it?" but a friend recently said (in an entirely other context) "I too spend a lot of time in culture shock at what's supposed to be my own culture." I think that sums it up, really.

Comments

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

There's a related, more serious, issue in the Southern US of 'Christian' pharmacy staff refusing to sell the morning-after pill (and in some cases other sorts of contraception).

In both cases the issue is whether the store owner can sack the uncooperative staff.

And surely the culture shock issue arises because it's not just your own culture involved?

[j4.livejournal.com]

'Christian' pharmacy staff refusing to sell the morning-after pill

Indeed. I am, honestly, thankful that at least over here they don't refuse, they just refuse to sell it without asking you a series of patronising and intrusive questions first.

surely the culture shock issue arises because it's not just your own culture involved?

Well, I thought we'd 'ad them funny forrin folk over here for a long time, not to mention being able to sustain the co-existence of cultural differences between 'natives' (if you believe in such a thing); but Things Seem To Be Going Weird generally, across the board, when any differences of culture/lifestyle/opinion clash. I think the common thread in a lot of the things which bother me is the general confusion over who "should" take responsibility for what. The lines we draw between one person's freedom-to and another person's freedom-not-to. That sort of culture, not do-you-eat-meat sort of culture.

*waves hands* Oh, ignore me. I'd probably better delete the post since I'm obviously only making sense in my own head. :-(

[lnr]

Um, this case:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/x-ray/allarticles/stories/5p07_emergencycontraception.shtml

was in Cardiff. Which admittedly is nearly as weird as the southern US but not quite as far from home.

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say, but don't delete the post, it's interesting if nothing else. Very odd.

I do know what you mean about it being odd that co-existing seems to have got different lately. I suspect the while Terror thing is somewhat involved, but don't really know what on earth one's supposed to do about it.

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

I think it's more the tension between:

- People who are A want to be treated in way X
- People who are B want to be treated in way not-X
- "You should not discriminate" between A and B.

I don't have a problem with people being British and Muslim, but I'm starting to get concerned about the "Muslim community" self-discriminating. It's really not that different from the 300+ year old Catholic-Protestant distinction which is still very much an issue in some parts of the UK.

[j4.livejournal.com]

"You should not discriminate" between A and B.

Ah! Ha! This is the point. It should be okay to discriminate between A and B without discriminating against A or B. It's okay -- at least, it bloody well should be in any sane society -- to say "X is not Y" without implying or being supposed to be implying that X is better/worse than Y. That's not to say that all discrimination-between is value-free, but it can be, and I think that's being lost sight of. Of which. Yes.

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

I think that's extremely hard; once there exist two or more categories A or B, it is possible (and quite likely) that some people will prefer B to A and some people will prefer A to B. If you are B when most people prefer A, you're likely to feel discriminated against.

Describing someone as "discriminating" used to be a complement in the last century.

On self-discrimination, http://randomreality.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/11/24/2522258.html

[j4.livejournal.com]

Describing someone as "discriminating" used to be a complement in the last century.

I'd still regard it as a compliment. I wonder if a new word will come into use for being (intransitively) discriminating? For being able to choose sensibly between options, for being able to assess whether one thing is better (for purpose) than another, for having taken the time to form an opinion on things which affect you? Or have we just lost the entire concept, the sense that it might be a good idea to know a hawk from a handsaw?

Also, "feeling discriminated against" isn't the same as being discriminated against. I'm not convinced that it's possible to legislate effectively against the possibility that someone will feel that they are being discriminated against.

extremely hard

Difficult, or ruthless?

I'm not saying that the distinction between "discriminating between" and "discriminating against" makes it easy to draw the lines between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in every case. But I do think it's useful to remember that observing differences need not be a quality judgement.

I believe that some things are better for given purposes than others, that some things are morally better than others, that some people are better at certain things than others, and that it is sometimes possible to make not-entirely-useless predictions about how people will look/think/behave based on their demographic. It's very hard to express specifics along those lines without being seen to be "discriminating against" something.

[(Anonymous)]

Alan Coren is thinking along the same lines in today's Times, I think.

[cosmolinguist]

at least over here they don't refuse, they just refuse to sell it without asking you a series of patronising and intrusive questions first.

Really? That wasn't how it went for me: the pharmacist explained how it worked and asked me only a couple of things that I didn't find discomfiting. (Excellently, the pharmacy also gave it to me free of charge, which I'm sure will never happen in the US.)

[j4.livejournal.com]

Free of charge??

I had to pay 20 quid for it, and got questions about exactly how/when the condom had broken, and patronising explanations of How A Baby Can Get Made When A Slapper And A Bloke Have A Special Cuddle. :-/

[cosmolinguist]

Gah, how awful! Mine was nothing like that; I only mentioned a condom breaking when it wasn't even the answer she wanted to the question that was asked (it was "why are you here?" or something and the answer she was looking for ended up being "the people at the sexual-health clinic told me I could go there*." Like I said she explained how it worked and asked if I'd had it in the last month, when my last period had been, and I think that was it.

And it's not usually free from pharmacies, I know, but it was at that one. Perhaps because it's in an area with lots of students and other not-well-off people?

*If it sounds odd that such a place would be referring me elsewhere, I should say that it was only because they were busy and I'd have to wait a long time for something simple, rather than because they didn't do that sort of thing themselves.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Sounds familiar. My favourite question (asked at the Oxford family planning clinic) was "have you put yourself at risk before?" The temptation to answer "well, I almost walked in front of a bus while a bit preoccupied recently" or similar was very strong.

They asked questions about my relationship and how stable it was, too.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I like your answer. :-) I'm not even sure I know what they really meant, though... is having sex putting yourself at risk? Or just using a condom which isn't made of unbreakable stuff? (Titanium condoms! ... No.)

I didn't go to the Family Planning Clinic because I was sure they would ask me all the "Did you know you can get pregnant and get diseases from Doing It with a man" questions, whereas I thought Boots would just sell me stuff (after asking the usual "Have you taken this before?" questions) because they were more about making money than making people feel stupid. HOW WRONG.