Should other groups, like people who curse, get special treatment, too?
A researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, recently argued that “kinky” should be a protected class of people.
Sam Hughes made the argument during an interview with City on a Phil Media. According to Hughes, “kinky” people deserve protection because they are often discriminated against in many of the same ways that people in the LGBT community are discriminated against. They therefore need the legal protection against employment or housing discrimination that comes with being a member of a protected class.
As evidence for his argument, Hughes referenced a study he had conducted on the subject, in which he had apparently found that kinky people were “terrified about losing their jobs over their boss finding out if they were kinky.”
“I want to be clear, if you show up to your job in a latex catsuit, you can be fired for that,” Hughes said. “Not because you’re kinky, but because it’s not the uniform of the job, because it’s disruptive, that sort of thing.”
“But your boss should not be able to go search online, find photos of you somewhere wearing a latex catsuit, and then fire you because they think you’re a pervert,” Hughes continued.
Sorry, but this is completely and totally ridiculous. What’s more, I think it’s actually a little offensive to compare the supposed adversity that someone who is kinky may have to face with the adversity that people do face in the LGBT community. If you’re gay, you have to worry that your normal, everyday public life choices might result in discrimination. For example, you might worry about someone judging you for bringing your same-sex spouse to a company Christmas party. Kinky people don’t have to face issues like that in their everyday lives, because there would never be a situation — at least in any reasonably normal job — where their sexual fetish would come to light in their work environment.
We have a lot of rights in this country, including the right to do anything sexually as long as it’s with other consenting adult(s). This, of course, includes kink. We also have the freedom to post about our lives on the Internet. Yes — if you want to post about your kinky sex life online, you’re totally free to do so. This doesn’t mean that people aren’t going to judge you for what you’re doing. Should you be fired over it? I personally don’t think so, because I personally couldn’t care less what anyone in the world does in his or her sex life. But that doesn’t mean that “kinky” should be a protected class. After all, there are a whole host of other things that you could post online that someone might choose to fire you over — such as tweeting things with offensive words in them. Are we going to make “people who curse” a protected class, too? And, as far as strange sexual preferences go, why is “kink” the only variation that would get to be a protected class? Hell, a boss could easily fire someone over a video of him or her having normal, non-kinky sex online, depending on what that person’s profession was. Why should “kink” get this kind of special treatment? The only reasonable answer is that it shouldn’t and that this is totally insane.
This story was previously covered in an article on Campus Reform.