Interested in Sartorial Elegance

I got into a spat just lately over at Tim’s place. I don’t comment much there because, while Tim is the real deal when it comes to liberalism, many of his regular commenters are knee-jerk, reactionary social conservatives and they are as much the enemy of liberty as the left. So, while I am in absolute agreement with Tim on the piece in question, the spat was in response to the first comment:

I don’t like dreadlocks and would be quite happy to cut around the place freelance shearing every fucker I see with them. Ditto mullets, male pony tails, and frankly male shoulder length hair like your own. No2s all round.

My reaction to this was precisely the same as Tim’s was to the SJW’s and their cultural appropriation bullshit and for the same reason, no one gets to tell others how to dress, wear their hair or anything, frankly. Okay, I’ll  come to the exception in a minute…

Interested’s response to this was that he was joking (along with the usual ad-hom I’ve come to expect from these twats when challenged). Oh, yes? Really? The problem with this kind of “joke” is that it isn’t. Many a true word spoken in jest and all that. You have to have had the thought to voice it – and in voicing it, you betray what is going through what passes for your mind.

I don’t much like that style where men grow their hair long on top, shave the sides and then have a small pony-tail above it. I saw two of them the other day at Temple Meads station. My reaction was one of  “hmm, no, not really…” and that was it. At no time did it enter my head that they should do anything about it, let alone be forced to – even in jest. And that is the point here. You have to be thinking it to say it.

It was suggested later on that I was over reacting. Well, if I am, so is Tim in his original piece.

You might want to calm down mate. Just as you have the right to dress as you wish, he has the right to judge your choices publicly. And so do these other idiots ‘fighting’ against ‘cultural appropriation’.

And *he’s* not saying that it would be appropriate to use force against you to make you conform to his wishes, unlike some of the people on the other side.

Anyone who judges others on something as facile as the length of their hair is a drooling idiot. However, that aside, making me conform is precisely what he was doing – read it again, it was perfectly clear, go on, read it slowly if necessary. He didn’t say “I don’t like long hair on men” which would have been fine, he actually stated that we should be subject to forcible hair-cutting. That is assault. Yeah, sure, it may sound trite and it’s usually passed off as a “joke” that I’ve heard numerous times over the years, but holding someone down and cutting their hair against their will is still assault. It isn’t a joke, it isn’t funny and the arseholes who think it is, are telling us much about their prejudices.

Social conservatives, unlike their SJW travelling companions in authoritarianism, tend to get themselves into positions where they can tell others what to do. They are the ones in organisations that come up with absurd dress codes. The last time I encountered one, it was a woman who thought that long hair on a man was unprofessional and tried to impose a unilateral dress code. Had she applied employment law, she might have stood a fighting chance, for the law does, still, allow such sexism to be imposed in dress codes. Although public opinion will eventually cause a change in that precedent and not before time.

As it was, I told her rather more politely than I recently told Interested,  precisely where she could stick her professionalism bullshit. My body, my rules. I sell my time and expertise, not my body. If you want to impose a sexist dress code, do it up front so that I can avoid working for you.

I’ve tried short hair. I was a Naval Reservist for a few years  back in the eighties. I tried cutting it again briefly in the nineties. It doesn’t suit me, so I grow it out. Indeed, next week, I am having my annual haircut as I need to tie it back when wearing a helmet. Ah, well…

But tell me how I should wear it and you cross a line. Threaten to forcibly cut it – even in jest – then I will point out that there is a perfectly acceptable orifice where your shears may be sheathed. Either way, I can write you off as someone whose opinion isn’t worthy of further consideration.