The Beginning

I disagree. I believe discrimination is not a good thing, and it doesn't matter whether discrimination is because of dress, hairstyle, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation or whatever. Yes, it is easy to put on some flipflops, while someone can't change their skin color. But tell me; if someone *could* change their skin color at will (or their sex, or any of these things that are covered by anti-discrimination laws), would it be okay for a business owner to ask a black or hispanic man to 'change to white' when eating in his restaurant or shopping in his store? If not, why is footwear or other aspects of dress any different?

You can argue or address an issue without 'pissing and moaning'. Of course sometimes you'll piss someone off by only addressing an issue even if you do so in a calm tone of voice and with reasonable arguments. But on the whole, there is a whole range of possibilities between 'pissing and moaning' and complying with a store owner's request without comment.

Yes, people do stereotype. And while this *can* happen, I believe often it's exactly the other way around. If barefooters always comply immediately then people who ask them to wear shoes will be reinforced in their ideas that bare feet are wrong, and they'll be more likely to accost barefooters the next time around, and/or in other situations. See also http://www.xs4all.nl/~myranya/confrontation.html

 

That's a bit different. Discriminating over someone because of their race is completely different than refusing service to someone who doesn't follow a dress code. I think I mentioned before, if you go to a restaurant that requires a jacket and tie for men, and a dress for women, unless you're weird, or an idiot, you wouldn't go in to that establishment wearing jeans, shorts, t-shirt or anything of the sort, then bitching because you get turned away.

Really, it's the same thing with feet. I go into stores barefoot all the time, if anyone has a problem with it, I go to the car, and get my flip flops. Problem solved. Occasionally I might ask why they don't allow bare feet, and it's mostly because they are worried about safety issues. I then will tell them that they should post a sign on their doors that say no bare feet. If I go somewhere and there IS a sign that says No Bare Feet, or Shoes Required, then I comply.

I don't think in most cases it is discriminating at all. Most of these businesses don't know any better, and they are trying to "cover their own ass". It's really no big deal if you think about it.

What's not to respect these rules? If you have to spend 20-30 minutes shopping in flip flops instead of doing it barefoot, is it gonna kill any of us barefooters? I don't believe so.

 

Would it be different if race was a choice? Would a business then have a right to require a person to be of a certain race before they could come in and do business? If not then doing that would be no more proper than a business requiring someone to wear shoes in order to come in and do business.

Yes I would. I dont like a business to dictate what I wear in order to go in. I would never go into such a place and go barefoot anyways, but I would rather have the freedom to go in knowing im going to be treated like a fool rather than going in and having them dictate some stupid rule to me. The people there and my own common sense would keep me from going in to such a place barefoot without the need for some idiotic dress code.

That might solve the problem right there for the short term but in the long run it really doesnt solve anything because people will keep thinking they can manipulate you and make you do or wear whatever they want because whenever they do theyll know youll do it without question. That really doesnt solve anything.

They have nothing to worry about, thats a friviolous excuse. Theres no risk of you getting hurt, nobodys gonna sue them for hurting their foot in there because itd be their own damn fault for going barefoot in the first place and if the customer who got hurt tried to sue the establishment, theyd be laughed out of court. Those places need to let you worry about your OWN saftey and stop stressing over things that areint any of their concern.

If a business is going to have the need to have a shoe rule then they need to have enough decency to at least have a sign prior warning customers of this, otherwise they shouldnt have the rule. They shouldnt wait until the customer is inside and then embarass them about a rule that they knew nothing about because the business was too stupid to inform them about it in the first place. I really dont think such a rule or such signs are necessary anyways.

If they really bothered to actually look this stuff up then theyd realize they have nothing to worry about and wouldnt fuss about it anymore. They dont need to inconvience customers when theres nothing for the company to worry about. Nobodys gonna get hurt and if they do nobodys gonna sue them and even if they did the case would most likely get thrown out so overall theres no problem however you look at it.

Is it going to kill them to spend 20-30 minutes watching us go barefoot around their store if it means they get paid? I dont think so. If they want money theyll shut up and be happy we even bothered to come into their lousy store in the first place.

 

When I visit a restaurant, I wear whatever I wanted to wear. If that makes me weird, or an idiot, so be it. Btw, the really expensive restaurants don't have a dress code. The most expensive restaurant I've ever been in had most people wearing sweaters & regular slacks -it's the wanna-be places where you'll see all the suits. But I believe only the casino's have an actual dress code here anyways, and I don't gamble.
And really, why is it different? If you only allow people in because of differences that they are born with, what you're really doing is saying that there *is* something wrong with being different, only when 'they can't help it' we have to allow it.

Only if you own a car -if you don't, you have to carry footwear in your bag everywhere. I don't want to lug shoes around all day, every day. Also, as I've pointed out in other threads, handling dirty footwear actually increases the chances of getting dirt spread to places where I don't want it. Btw, do you always park nearby? What if you were parked all the way across town, and had been walking quite a distance?

If you were asked to change their hairstyle, would you do so? And you didn't answer my question about the black or hispanic guy... I know it's a hypothetical question, since we can not really change our skin color at will, but just for the sake of argument let's imagine that it would be possible... would it be okay to ask someone to change their skin color, ethically speaking? If not, why is it okay to ask someone to change any other aspect of their appearance?

Ignorance is no excuse. Fifty years ago, many people genuinly believed black people were dirty and smelled bad, and they did only right to protect their business and their other customers by keeping them out. What if people then had said 'but they don't know better'?

I'm not against all rules. I follow traffic rules all the time; I'm one of those strange people who'll wait for a red light in the middle of the night when there's no other living person within a mile, who'll wait for red lights when walking (which is rare here in the city; people have literally bumped into me because they didn't expect me to actually *stop* and wait for the red light). I'm not a rebel who objects to rules in general. But when rules are arbitrary and senseless, I think it's a good thing to oppose them and try to get them changed. The anti-barefoot signs fall into this category because they're discriminatory, because the fear of bare feet is pure prejudice and not based on facts -at least not in general. I don't object to no-bare-feet rules in construction zones where boots or closed shoes are required, I also agreed to carry something to clean my feet at the door in a gym where everyone was asked to take off their shoes to keep street dirt out -in those cases the rules made sense. But I will not be one of the sheeple who mindlessly follows arbitrary rules without comment.

 

Business owners don't say "You must wear shoes inside" because they care/don't care about your lifestyle...they have such rules due to the fact that you're a whole lot more likely to step on a piece of glass/syringe/shard of metal/nail/etc without shoes...and if you do it in their place of business, they can end up legally to blame and have to pay through the nose. It is possible, and if the business does not have a sign up saying you need to have shoes, they -can- be held responsible if you get hurt while there. It's happened to two establishments I've worked for.

The same goes for no-barefoot laws in other public places. It's not discrimination, it's preventing whomever owns the land/business from potential legal issues. Sure most people would just say "Ouch, damn...oh well, my fault" and not make a stink...but it only takes one bad apple to bankrupt a business because he got tetanus from a rusty nail.
In other places it is common sense - construction, a gym, etc. These are places where you're pretty much guaranteed to get part or all of your foot smashed/stabbed/crushed/etc by a random object or other person.

For most of my life I pretty much never went barefoot...over the last few months that's changed, and now I go bare whenever I'm at home, in the yard, at a friends' house, etc....



A lot of people who go barefoot really have a persecution complex...and seem to honestly believe everyone who doesn't go bare is somehow "anti-barefooter" and every business/whatever that requires shoes is discriminating.
It's NOT discrimination people...
what if -MY- chosen lifestyle was to walk in the nude, smeared with cow feces?
Yeah, it's gross to you...but I and my fellow nudecowfecers are simply being ourselves and living our lifestyle! I can go into any store a NON-nudecowfecer goes to in my full regalia, because if you don't let me in it's discrimination!
See where I'm going here? It's a slippery slope sort of deal. Discrimination based on things that CANNOT be changed is wrong - age, race, gender, and so on. Hell, discrimination on things that can't be easily changed is wrong - bias against people with piercings, tattoos, etc.
But if a place requires you to wear shoes...Just pull on some sandals...3 seconds later, the problem is solved.

There are MUCH BIGGER problems in the world, people.

 

Sorry guys, but I completely agree with Myranya on this one...there ARE bigger issues in the world which is why others (not us) should not be making sucj a big deal of it.

 

Other kinds of footwear can cause injuries; high heels, platform shoes, loose shoe strings... Even the lawsuit angle isn't as bad; an SBL member did quite a bit of research and found very, very few barefoot lawsuits and even less that won. On the other hand, there are loads of lawsuits from slip and falls from people wearing heels & slick dress shoes. Yet a place that doesn't allow me in barefoot would allow me to slip on a pair of 3-inch heels and allow me to walk in. Where's the sense in that? And last of all, a twisted ankle is likely to be more disabling than a small splinter -with an ankle you can be laid up for quite a while, but most stuff you step in is solved with a band-aid.

These places allow only sensible footwear; they don't single out bare feet while allowing someone else to teeter around the construction site on platforms. I don't know whether you're addressing me specifically or everyone in this thread, but I seem to remember I already said I don't object to those rules.

Smeared with cow feces, you would spread actual germs around. Not comparable with bare feet, which may carry germs but no more than shoe soles, as long as they stay on the floor just like shoe soles would.

And of course, we have to draw the line somewhere. But that goes for anything. We always have to draw lines; why can someone legally drink at 21 and not at 20-and-11-months? That one month isn't going to make a world of difference in their maturity, and nothing magically happens at midnight on their birthday that makes them all of a sudden much more likely to make correct choices concerning drink (or voting, or driving, or marriage, or whatever). Currently the line for dress codes isn't drawn in a sensible place. Bare feet are often banned in the US; it's not based on true safety (see my first point -other far more unsafe footwear is allowed in most places), it's not based on whether people dislike the sight of a foot (flipflops with just a tiny strap are fine in most places), it's not based on keeping dirt and germs out (in a small town where I worked with horses everyone walked into the store in their work boots without comment). It's just arbitrary to ban bare feet and allow all kinds of unsafe, open-toed, dirty footwear as long as it's *something* on the foot. The line should be drawn where *real* safety and health issues are at stake, not just perceived ones. Note that the state health departments in the US don't have anti-barefoot rules; they base their laws and regulations on actual facts rather than myths or personal preference. Sexual organs are a tough one for me; I'd like to say you'd be welcome naked (minus the cow feces) but I'm afraid in today's society you'd create an uproar far bigger than bare feet, or tatoo's, or piercings ever could. So I'd probably support the line drawn at exposing sexual organs for now, but I hope society will become more liberal and there will be a time in the future when you can indeed go out naked if you so desire.

Let me point out for the second time that I don't own a car and would have to carry them around in my bag all the time, and also that by handling footwear I'd be *more* likely to get dirt and germs in places where they aren't wanted (on my hands, and then on the groceries, etc)...

First of all, does the fact that there are bigger problems in the world mean we can't talk about smaller problems? Do you not complain when someone steals $10 because just last week there was a bank robbery in the next town where they took off with $100,000? Just because people are dying from deadly diseases like cancer and AIDS, does that mean it's not annoying when you got the flue?

Second, this happens to be the 'bare it' forum, and thus we talk about being able to go barefoot in places. That doesn't mean we're not involved in anything else like hunger, pollution, poverty or whatever. But we don't write about that here because well, this isn't the anti-hunger, environmental or anti-poverty forum. Reading the posts here may give the impression I spend all my time and energy on this one small issue, but I just try to stay generally on topic and thus it's the only thing I talk about in this place. Just in case anyone cares, I've also been involved in funding for medical research, pro-choice rallies, lots of other stuff.

Third, is it so unimportant? I believe that protesting against arbitrary rules is quite important in life (and here I do get a little off-topic sometimes, in opposing dress codes in general -my personal preference is bare feet but I would interrupt my own, barefoot, meal if I saw someone else be refused access for a different reason, even something I would never want to wear or do myself). A lot of bullying is based on people making up senseless & arbitrary rules and making others follow them. From small-time bullies at school or work, all the way up to dictatorships. Freedom is built on people who think for themselves and don't mindlessly 'follow the leader'. Consider it as important or petty as you like, but I believe it's more important than it may seem at first glance.

 

i wish i could blackmail $100 000 000 money from somewhere as im barefoot as well
lol anyway i started to be barefoot, as i was child, done it since i started to walk around on my own. My granny always said it is healthy to be barefoot.. so i guess she was write.. i still love it, tho in the city its not the best thingy to do, tho i love it.. and i mean in the summer i wear sandals, couse to protect my toes a bit (i took of 2 pieces glass from my sandals tho - i guess im happy i did wear them)..
being barefoot in the winter is not possible, well of course it is possible, but i dont wanna play with my life like this, and helly freezing is not my thingy honestly..
Tho as yer taking hot sauna, and yer gonna roll in the snow, all nekkid.. aww this is something that KICKS ASS!!!
ok being barefoot at home - of course from time to time i wear socks or am barefoot, i never wear shoes at home.. and it is not common in here as well, as yer going to meet someone and yer wearing shoes in their home, you insult them like hell.. gotta be barefoot man!
aww.. im waiting for summer so much, uhh wanna be barefoot in the grass right now, would be awesome o boy!!!

 

During the summer I'm always barefoot, except when going to public places (and when at work). Just recently I've started venturing into stores barefoot... and I was surprised that I didn't hear anything about it. I like the way going barefoot feels, but I'm too concsious of how other people may feel about it (being out in public places barefoot). A shout out to all of you who just get out there and do it - I really respect you!

 

I dont think you have anything to worry about with other people. 95% of the people youll encounter are so preoccupied with getting where theyre going and doing what theyre doing that they are stuck in their own little fantasy world and wont even bat an eye at you because they dont consciously give it a seconds thought and the other 5% are the type who make it their mission to gripe about things and beleive me putting on shoes will not stop that because if they cant gripe about you being barefoot, they'll find something else to gripe about otherwise they would die from sheer boredom. So I think you should just go barefoot and go where you please and not fret about it.

 

"So I think you should just go barefoot and go where you please and not fret about it."

Yeah, you are right! I have been getting a little more daring... or should I say - I've been less occupied with what other people are thinking. Just this past summer I started going out, locally, barefoot (to the store, just driving to drop off a video and what not). Thanks, Mike!!!

 

Youre welcome, always like to help people out