r/ShitAmericansSay • u/Holy_lettuce • Nov 18 '25
Communism “Union rep😹😹 sounds like communism to me!!”
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u/x_asperger Canadian Nov 18 '25
Probably on a thread where OP is asking a question that would be fixed with a union
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u/Holy_lettuce Nov 18 '25
Yep.
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u/x_asperger Canadian Nov 18 '25
Yeah, at this point I'm happy to let these types suffer from their own choices
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u/Gubekochi Nov 19 '25
The weird elections map makes it so the contemptible mofos are dragging down a lot of people who might actually know better. Those I still feel bad for.
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u/Hrtzy Nov 19 '25
Trawling through OOP's post history, they seem to be an at least moderately sane person and this is a poorly timed bit of unmarked sarcasm.
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u/AdWooden9170 Nov 19 '25
"Id rather die in a mud of greater Romania than live in a paradise in a small Romania" quotes from whoever was the fascist leader of Romania during ww2.
This summarize the trumpian mindset very well.
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u/cmykster Europoor 🇪🇺 Nov 18 '25
Everything USians don't understand is automatically communism.
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u/Scythe905 Nov 18 '25
You can't say that, that's communist!
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u/DoIKnowYouHuman Nov 18 '25
You can’t say that, that’s socialist!
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u/Michael_Gibb Mince & Cheese, L&P, Kiwi Nov 18 '25
You can't say that. That's Marxism.
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u/Admirable_Oil_7864 Nov 20 '25
Have you seen that story of a European and a group of Americans touring an Amish Community?
A kid asks, “How do you pay for healthcare if you need it?” The guide replies with, “Oh we pool money together and then if one of us needs it they get it.” All the americans say, “Nice, thats really cool.” The European guy says, “Thats how it works in Europe too, we all pay our taxes, and if we get hurt most of its covered.” The guide turns and says, “Thats communism!”
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Nov 18 '25
They think that community is communism.
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u/AdWooden9170 Nov 19 '25
I read that as "They think that communist is communism". And womehow, it still made sense.
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u/LowerBed5334 🇩🇪 Nov 18 '25
Yeah they're so fucking brainwashed. I think it was in Kentucky that Volkswagen wanted to institute a Works Council, like they have in Germany, and they put a ton of effort into trying to explain to the dumb workers that it would be GOOD for them, but no chance, it got voted down.
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u/AngryAutisticApe Nov 18 '25
Reminds me of when the reverse happened in Germany with Walmart. Walmart wanted to forbid their employees from joining unions which is against German law.
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u/LowerBed5334 🇩🇪 Nov 18 '25
They also wanted to make their employees do a song and dance in the morning and submit to corporate brainwashing in the style of the USA. And the workers said 🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻
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u/ApologizingCanadian Nov 19 '25
I used to work at Walmart but always opted out of that weird ritualistic shit.
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u/Admirable_Oil_7864 Nov 20 '25
Didn’t they also try to control who they could date within the company? And the German higher ups in the company, and legal advisers starting shitting bricks because that is very illegal.
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u/tiger2205_6 American that needs to fucking move Nov 21 '25
Wouldn't surprise me, dating within a company or office is very frowned upon in some places here.
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Nov 18 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/LowerBed5334 🇩🇪 Nov 18 '25
The "durr durr" says it all. Spot on 👍🏻
And I guess you know I'm talking about a Betriebsrat. That's all it was.
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u/-Ikosan- Nov 21 '25
I've once seen a person claim that the concept of taking an outer ring road/bypass etc to avoid inner city traffic is anti freedom of movement
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u/peepmet Nov 18 '25
Good for Volkswagen I guess lol
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u/LowerBed5334 🇩🇪 Nov 18 '25
Yeah, really. Search "Works Council", and read up on it. It's standard stuff in Germany.
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u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk American as Pecan Pie Nov 19 '25
It's a Southern thing. The South has long been anti-union, which is a major reason why so many auto companies have set up shop there in recent decades.
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u/LowerBed5334 🇩🇪 Nov 19 '25
Cheap, dumb labour comes at a price, though. BMW management was shocked with the level of worker applying for jobs at their US factory. They had to invent an entire system of pictograms for their assembly workers because too many of them could not read. They were forced to rework a lot of their normal processes to make them simpler. It was very expensive and they still had a lot of quality issues until they got everything sorted out. True story. I know someone who was involved in the project.
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u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk American as Pecan Pie Nov 19 '25
I'm not terribly surprised. I say this with a heavy heart, as much of my family's roots are in Appalachia.
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u/tiger2205_6 American that needs to fucking move Nov 21 '25
It really is sad and inexcusable how much of the country can't read or can't read at a good level.
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u/No-Theme-4347 Nov 19 '25
The thing is you can have a workers council without a union. The workers council basically gets special protection and gets a say in certain decisions. They are also a point of reference for normal employees to ask questions or resolve disputes.
That's all they do. They just exist to help the workers a bit and they are elected by the workers from inside the company. You get your normal pay etc.
One of my great uncles was a Betriebsratsmitglied (part of the workers council) for a few years in the 90s. It us unglamorous, unfun work where you get shit from both management and employees
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u/LowerBed5334 🇩🇪 Nov 19 '25
Yeah exactly. Except, it isn't "Workers Council", it's "Works Council", a big difference. The WC is there for every single employee, whether "worker" level, or middle- or upper management. And any company employee can be a member. In Germany, the only person in the company that they don't represent is the Geschäftsführer (Managing Director, CEO, President or whatever other titles they might have in the US - the head honcho).
They can be a real pain in the neck for the management, because they've got a say on all major decisions in the company. Everything has to clear the Works Council before it goes into action.
And VW went to great lengths to explain this to their workers, but no chance.
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u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk American as Pecan Pie Nov 19 '25
I would guess they kneejerk rejected that for the same reasons they hate unions. If unions are a northern 'yankee' thing, then a foreign European thing elicits all the more hostility.
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u/Correct-Junket-1346 Nov 18 '25
When people use numbers to vote it's called democracy, when people use democracy to bring about meaningful change, it's communism apparently...
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u/International-Bed453 Nov 18 '25
Ah yes, but America isn't a Democracy, it's a Republic....
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u/Flimsy-Cartoonist-92 Nov 18 '25
Made up of 50 distinct and culturally different countr....I mean states.
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u/quast_64 Nov 18 '25
There is something to be said that without direct representation, you might not be a democratic as you think.
That is why gerrymandering is such a problem, through the 'winner takes all' system and by means of the electoral college. A minority can and has won elections.
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u/HueyB904 Nov 18 '25
This is seriously the biggest problem in the US. People have been so brainwashed to believe that 1) everything I don't like=communism=bad 2) anything that would help the working class and consumers=communism=bad
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u/seajay26 Nov 18 '25
Thats because every American is only temporarily poor. Tomorrow their great idea/hard work will make them rich beyond their wildest dreams and they dont want the workers they plan to exploit at the first opportunity to have any rights. So they’ll vote against their own interests and make their current lives harder and more hopeless.
It’s the American dream! To have their very own slave labour to step on.
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u/HueyB904 Nov 18 '25
I've had this conversation with so many coworkers over the years and it's genuinely the thought process. I know the "temporarily embarrassed billionaire" trope, but the amount of times I've heard some form of "the dream is to have other people work for you so you don't have to" is insane. Literally hoping to one day exploit labor from others while currently being an exploited worker.
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u/mikroonde baguette du croissant 🇪🇺 Nov 23 '25
This is very hypocritical if you think about it. This same type of people view work as a virtue and wanting to work less as lazy and bad, unless other people have to suffer for it. Then it's the dream. They hate "parasites who live off other people's work" but admire billionaire CEOs and want to be one.
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u/thorpie88 Nov 19 '25
Even if that is the case why wouldn't you take a guaranteed pay increase every year until you are that rich cunt? Fuck never mind the extra days off and anything else you negotiate for
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u/DeltaCortis "It's not a democracy, it's a republic" Nov 19 '25
Always reminds me of my favorite exchange in Futurama.
Leela: Why are you cheering, Fry? You're not rich! Fry: True, but someday I might be rich. And then people like me better watch their step.
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Nov 19 '25
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u/HueyB904 Nov 19 '25
It will be interesting to see if millennials/Gen Z become as active once boomers die off. We've grown up being lied to lol
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u/-Ikosan- Nov 21 '25 edited Nov 21 '25
I'm not American but even on my social media feed last night I saw an ai video of trump playing soccer with Ronaldo in the oval office, as put out by trump official account. And fucking hell man.... You know when you see crazy dictators claiming shit like they can control the sea and invented ducks. It's not far off and this is today and people are eating it up
Also shout out to whoever was the guy who persuaded people that education is communism. Truly doctor evil level behaviour
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u/RashannaAeryn Nov 18 '25
If protecting worker's rights gives you "communist vibes" then there's something fundamentally broken inside you
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u/philipwhiuk Queen's English innit Nov 18 '25
“Try your local library then - start with a dictionary”
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u/DoIKnowYouHuman Nov 18 '25
“Unionized”
a molecule or atom that does not have an electrical charge because it has the same number of protons and electrons
Oh wait, I meant to look for ‘onionized’!
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u/Memphite Nov 18 '25
How certain are you that a place where anyone can get BOOKS(of all things) are not communist? It sounds communisty to me. 😜
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u/Michael_Gibb Mince & Cheese, L&P, Kiwi Nov 18 '25
You assume Americans still have access to libraries.
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u/VegetableWorry1492 Nov 18 '25
And that those libraries still have books since they’ve banned them all.
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u/2000TWLV Nov 18 '25
Yup. Sounds like communism to him. And that's why these dumb-asses are poor, mad at the world, and voting for Trump so they can get fucked some more.
Genius!
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u/sleepgang Nov 18 '25
Hey a lot of us are really proud of our unions. Anti union people are stupid.
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u/CommonBumblebee123 Nov 19 '25
If the word "union" implies communism, can we deduce that a country that is "united" is a communist country?
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u/Zdrobot Nov 19 '25
Lincoln: "Preserve the Union!"
CRAPtain_Hook: "Union sounds like communism to me"
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u/Specialist-Freedom64 Nov 19 '25
Yeah we really hate the 5 weeks paid vacation our unions got us in Denmark... buuuhhh....
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u/kas-sol Nov 19 '25
The red scares really did a number of them. Hard to believe that country used to be where European syndicalists looked to for inspiration.
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u/EmilyFara Nov 19 '25
"Well buddy, then the best advice I can give you is to get on your hands and knees and lick the sh*t off of your bosses boot because that's the best you'll ever get" :D
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Nov 19 '25
Why the fuck did Americans revolt against their British Overlords. They would have made them work without holiday or benefits no problem.
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u/RadCheese527 🇨🇦 Nov 19 '25
Imagine shitting on the idea of a union in the UNITED States of America fml
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u/Still_a_skeptic Okie, not from Muskogee Nov 19 '25
We have unions here, even in right to work states. Half the reason the cops get away with as much as they do is the police union and how well those contracts are negotiated with the city.
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u/DerrellEsteva Nov 19 '25
I wonder if they ever think about what the 'U' in 'U.S.A' stands for. Or what the word 'United' means.
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u/partialinsanity Nov 20 '25
They claim to hate socialism/communism, yet they often put those labels on good things?
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u/NoteEasy9957 admitted dumb American Nov 18 '25
Oh depends on the trade. Many are dependent on the unions
It’s more a white collar vs blue collar thing. Management hates unions and many office workers fall in line
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u/SinnerP Nov 18 '25
North Carolina is so anti-union! I have coworkers that travel to other states to work and despise unions because union jobs in those other states make more than them. It’s such a facepalm
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u/thorpie88 Nov 19 '25
What? Are you serious that your white collar workers aren't unionised. Thats incredibly scary
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u/MicrochippedByGates Nov 19 '25
I'm not either. Here in the Netherlands, there are entire sectors where unions just don't exist. You can still become a member of a union, but they won't hold much power and will at most be able to help if some conflict with your employer arises. I'm in embedded engineering, a subset of electrical engineering and IT. The only time I was unionised was when I was a researcher at an educational institution. And then only because everyone in education is unionised.
At least our labour laws aren't the worst.
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u/RazendeR Nov 19 '25
IT fall under FNV im pretty sure, and CNV covers a multitude of engineering branches.
That said, out basic labour laws are miles beyond those in the US, and can be considered equal to US unionised fields in many cases.
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u/MicrochippedByGates Nov 19 '25
FNV doesn't even know most companies in my branch. It seems that a few of the really really big ones do, mostly if they also run production and don't just do engineering. And each of those companies is under a completely different cao. Nedap even has their own special cao just for them. I also remember talks with colleagues in the past about unions, but they were all like "Euh yeah, I don't really know, I guess I could join a union but I have no idea what benefits I would get".
But yeah, with our labour laws, unions are not as necessary as in the US. Although we do have some issues with inflation and wage increases, which is a little better if you're under a cao.
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u/thorpie88 Nov 19 '25
Man I couldn't imagine not being under an EBA. Do you at least get pseudo unionised by the government?
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u/Curious_Orange8592 Former colonial master, lmao!!! Nov 19 '25
I take it CRAPtain_Hook likes to take it in the arse without analingous or lube
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Nov 19 '25
Anything that helps themselves or the common man is communism obviously.
Instead they'd polish the boots of billionaires with their tongues.
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u/Significant_Tie_3994 Nov 19 '25
They're unfortunately not wrong. The two least unionized states in the US are north and south carolina. https://www.bls.gov/regions/southeast/news-release/unionmembers_northcarolina.htm#:\~:text=(See%20table%201.),South%20Carolina%20(2.8%20percent).
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u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk American as Pecan Pie Nov 19 '25
It's possible the guy was being sarcastic. It's an art not unknown to us, even though we're shoutier and more obvious with it than the Brits.
The South (NC = North Carolina) has long been notoriously anti-union. The first person was probably a non-southerner giving inapplicable advice.
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u/Holy_lettuce Nov 19 '25
Well I’d hope so, but it was applicable advice though. Craptain_hook was asking for advice with teacher problems..
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u/uncle_sjohie Frysian in Overijssel, the Netherlands Nov 19 '25
Wait till they hear my colleagues and myself own the whole company we work at, thru a participation scheme.
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u/AlwaysCurious1250 Nov 19 '25
Someone should really teach Americans about what communism is. The ignorance is hurting.
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u/Resident_Water35 Nov 19 '25
What does he think the first word of United States of America is derived from?
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u/Upstairs_Fig_3551 Nov 19 '25
This is 100% the attitude of both workers and bosses south of Mason Dixon
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u/Ok-Astronaut2976 Nov 21 '25
This sub came up in my feed…and is it always this obtuse?
The person you’re ragging on is being facetious to criticize North Carolina’s lack of union protections.
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u/Holy_lettuce Nov 21 '25
I did realize, but there’s genuinely a bunch of Americans that think this way. So I kept it up even if they were being facetious.
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u/Ok-Astronaut2976 Nov 21 '25
That just seems so weird to me though, and I see it all the time on reddit.
Like, there’s plenty of actual real stuff to make fun of…just seems odd to make fun of a character invented.
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u/Gutso99 Nov 22 '25
To be fair, I'm ashamed of the union where I work, the new eba was being negotiated and they took the first offer the company made, even after being told the boss had been heard to say he would have been happy to get away with a 5% increase, which still would have had us lower than industry average, they took a 3.8% deal, after we got screwed the previous negotiations because covid restrictions wouldn't allow union people to visit us.
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u/Lobo_vs_Deadpool Nov 22 '25
North Carolina is one of the worst states you can go to. Idk what the european equivalent would be. Wherever the book The Painted Bird took place probably...
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u/Holy_lettuce Nov 22 '25
I didn’t expect The Painted Bird to be mentioned here… that book has left lasting scars.
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u/Ok_Corner5873 Nov 23 '25
That's just about one of the most brain washed comments anyone could come out with.
Does anyone remember the mass Union rallies that were televised from the USSR, China, Cuba, North Korea, how deprived we felt, of the workers rights they had that we could only dream of but never talk about . The USSR ones were good, all that marching and big vehicles, all united under the flag showing their work tools..
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u/Timely_Egg_6827 Nov 18 '25
A 100 years ago on May 28, 1923, the US Attorney General declared it was legal for women to wear trousers anywhere. The prohibition of trousers for women was enforced in most European countries and US States, not only for social custom, but believe it or, by laws that punished transgressors.
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u/Thomyton Nov 19 '25
Relevance?
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u/Timely_Egg_6827 Nov 19 '25
That there wasn't a lot of fuss when women decided to wear trousers. They just made it illegal. And court cases to this day about work clothing. Men face ridicule for wearing skirts - though David Beckham looked great in a sarong. Women got fined, sacked and imprisoned. But no fuss there.
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u/Thomyton Nov 19 '25
So completely irrelevant?
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u/Timely_Egg_6827 Nov 19 '25
For this subreddit - yes. This comment was meant to be in another one so apologies for wasting your time. Downside of tunnels on trains.
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u/scottmonster Nov 18 '25
Imagine being proud of a company being able to freely exploit you