Judges want female attorneys to stop dressing sexy
July 9, 2009 - When a female federal judge recently brought up the issue of needing a dress code in court, she was referring to an attorney who had shown up in sweat pants. But it didn't take long for her male counterparts to chime in with their take on the issue: female attorneys in 'skimpy clothes'.
Jυdgе Mіchаеl McCuskey complained about 'skirts so short that there's no way they can sit down and blouses so short there's no way the judges wouldn't look'. Another judge said he had asked female attorneys to dress more conservatively so he could pay attention to their arguments.
When even judges feel they have the right to blame a woman's clothes - and you can read into that her attractiveness in those clothes - for causing distraction or their own unwillingness to listen to her, what hope does any woman have when harrassed for the way she looks?
Are we really going back to the days of 'she was dressed like she was asking for it?', this time from the mouths of the very people who are supposed to protect us from that sort of thing?
Female attorneys need to take the moral high ground away from the male judges if they are going to come out ahead in this debate. The question, they should insist, is not "Do female attorneys dress too sexy?" but "Are male judges able to control their sexual urges in court?"
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