A woman seeing the "Men only" sign could also feel harm.
Slightly changing my earlier statements I suppose its reasonable to say she was harmed, but it might be argued she harmed herself. My contention is not that she has not felt harm but rather that the person putting up the sign has not done harm to her. But on further thought I might alter that as well, an argument could be made that the policy was rudely communicated and that by being rude he has done harm. However I would still maintain that he has not done someone else harm if their is no rudeness involved, and I don't think that all discrimination is inherently rude. Furthermore I think the harm done directly by the rude discriminator is just the harm of rudeness.
People can take anything as a slap in the face. I don't think that someone taking a policy or communication as a slap in the face is enough reason to say that the person who created the policy or communicated the idea did harm to the other person. Or if you want to define things so that the fact that someone takes offense at ideas, or words or policies means that the creator or speaker of those ideas or words or policies did harm, then by that definition I don't think doing harm would be assumed to be doing wrong, or more particularly that by that definition doing harm to someone who has done no harm to you or others would not always be wrong. I add that last phrase because I don't think that by either definition doing harm to say Osama bin Laden would necessarily be wrong. If I put a bullet between his eyes I think it would be indisputable that I have harmed him, but it would also probably be a good thing.
I suppose a sign could be put up with small (but not illegibly small) print saying "I will pick and choose my clients and this sign is not an implied promise that I will choose you", or something to that effect. It probably could be phrased better but since I'm not putting up any such sign I won't put the effort in to trying to phrase it perfectly.
BTW - At this point a large part of the disagreement is a semantic one over the meaning of "causing harm". Whether or not the masseur could be said to have caused harm by having a sign that said "straights only", I agree that it would be better to convey the policy in a more low key way that is less likely to result in anyone feeling offended, as long as that low key way doesn't amount to falsely communicating the idea that he will take all types of clients. Also I am in general against discrimination by race, religion, or sex without reasonable justification.
Tim |
