28/05/2008

In Praise of Discrimination on the Basis of Sex

Contains adult themes and language

It may give you a wrong impression about my leisure habits if I mention my local DVD rental yet again, but here goes anyway:

It is generally acknowledged that watching porn is a source of embarrassment for many men - it is not the kind of thing that's usually openly talked about. It's probably safe to say that it is generally less of an embarrassment admitting porn use to other men than to other women.

Yet the staff at my local DVD rental (which, like most, offers porn as well as "regular" films) is about 60% female. Based on my limited experiences with these businesses, this seems to be a typical number.

I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that many potential customers are dissuaded from renting Anal Asians 5 or Look Who's Fucking by the fact that they may have a female hand it over. I thus wonder why DVD rentals employ females at all.

Two counter-arguments:

1. Cutting the amount of possible employees in half would lead to the DVD rental having to pay employees more.

2. Porn consumers have a strong preference for dealing with pretty young women.

Both good arguments, but I don't think they offset the effects of embarrassment. I may be wrong, of course.

I don't advise you to open a DVD rental, which seems to be a shrinking business, but if you do, you might want to try hiring only men.

No comments: