Many years ago, I struggled with foot pain.  I had repeated bouts of plantar fasciitis and occasionally instances of gout.  Many have described me as having a high threshold of pain, but for this, I suffered.  The best way that I may describe the degree of pain:  if you’re sitting down, but need to pee, you contemplate how long you can wait until you need to stand up and walk to the bathroom.  It is that painful.  I got custom (molded from my feet) insoles for my shoes.  Every time I changed shoes, I’d meticulously take them out of one pair and put them in the other.  Additionally, they didn’t work reliably enough; those insoles may have halved the number of occurrences.

I decided to try something completely different; I got a pair of Vibram Five Fingers.  I took the plunge and started the minimalist shoes trend.  They have incredibly thin soles, like 3mm thin.  They force you to land on the balls of your feet.  Though one feature that made them even more distinctive.  As the name suggests, each shoe individually wraps each toe.

Moving to these shoes presented its own set of challenges.  Walking on the balls of your feet required considerably stronger calves; I suffered calf pain for days.  Furthermore, these shoes did not shelter you from the elements; step on one puddle and you’ll have damp feet for hours.  Seattle has many puddles.  However, even with all those idiosyncrasies, my bouts of plantar fasciitis decreased dramatically to once every few years.

Aversion to my Five Fingers

As I discovered that my foot pain was mostly gone, I acquired more and different pairs of these shoes.  On a typical week, I’d wear three to five different pairs to work.  Naturally, many people asked questions from sheer curiosity, so I happily answered them.  Some joked that I got a kickback or perhaps that I had stock in the company.  Neither was true.  Friends even joked that upon wearing my black pair, my feet looked like a gorilla’s.

One especially loud and vocal Swedish teammate, complained about them incessantly.  Merely seeing my feet in those shoes induced great distress.  He continued to call them “foot gloves” and spoke a little too loudly of getting them banned from the workplace.  Some other teammates who also wore them, would occasionally “low five” me (tapped the soles of our feet together) simply to get his goat.

Did he really try to get them banned from the office?  No, he merely joked about it.  However, inexplicably my shoes did genuinely give him the “Heebie-Jeebies”.

I continued to wear them almost exclusively, year-around, only recently have I dialed it back a bit on cold and wet weather.

What about that ‘ban’ thing again?

Did I gloss over that?  Shame on me.  Yes, he legitimately barked that at me many times, and loudly enough for everyone around to hear.  Did I take him seriously?  Of course not.  Did my wearing these shoes legitimately make him uncomfortable?  Sure, probably a little.  However, I wore those unconventional toed shoes on my feet, not his.  My shoes didn’t impede his ability to work, nor did he have a legitimate reason to object to them.  He simply didn’t like them.  It’s almost not worth mentioning.  Almost.

I understand that my shoes were never legitimately at risk of exclusion from the workplace.  However, on a basic level, the mere idea that he should (or even could) disallow me a basic freedom (which shoes to wear) because it offends his sensibilities is profoundly dangerous.  Yes, I understand that he spoke in jest; he didn’t mean it.  I never took it seriously.

Let me frame it differently, let’s say that you say something strictly in jest, something like, “They promoted Susan because she’s attractive”.  Let’s also suppose that everyone who heard you say it, understands that you said it in jest.  The actual spoken words (and what they implied) bore no immediate consequences; no one doubted that Susan earned her promotion.  However, merely hearing that comment invites others to call into question a woman’s competency and tie rewards to her appearance.

That’s not okay.

“We don’t ban people from doing anything”

First, we do ban people from doing things, but we call those laws.  Specifically, we established laws that allow us to coexist and minimize the harm we do to each other.  We can’t drink and drive.  We can’t openly fondle people we find attractive without their consent.  Even rules with which we may disagree, such as vaccine mandates, are generally established to protect us from each other.  I’m not talking about these types of bans.

Second, we do ban people from doing things, even when it doesn’t directly impact our lives.  Furthermore, we do it simply because it fractures our sensibilities.  Explain to me why:

• The two women who live next door should be disallowed from marrying.
• Your neighbor’s transgender child should be denied gender affirming care.
• Every child in the county should be denied access to library books from LGBTQ+ authors.
• A white man and black woman may not legally married.

We initially disallowed all of the above.  We, in different states, still hotly debate and contest some of the above.  Explain to me how your two female neighbors getting married impinges upon your rights.  Explain it to me like I’m five.

“We do it to protect people”

Bullshit.  Stop rationalizing.  You protect nothing but your fragile ego and misguided sense of order.  Those who’d seek to ban any of the above argued that it’s a necessary measure to protect someone or something.  In 1967, the Supreme Court decision of Lovings v. Virginia ruled that Virginia may no longer criminalize miscegenation (marriage between people of different races); it is the oldest of the above topics.  In fact, the State of Virginia argued before the Supreme Court that:

The prohibition against interracial marriage was a valid exercise of state power to protect children from damage that would result from intermarriage between blacks and whites.

Don’t believe me, read it yourself.  Assuming that Virginia argued in earnest that they aimed to ‘protect children from damage’, and the Supreme Court prevented them for doing so.  Therefore, it stands to reason that a collection of damaged children from all those interracial marriages for fifty-seven years exist somewhere…  Okay, so where are these broken children?  Is it plausible that they were mistaken about the extent of the damage inflicted of upon such children?  Any damage at all?

And if so, can you entertain that it is similarly plausible that you may be wrong about:  gay marriage, gender affirming care for children, and access to LGBTQ+ authors for children?

The next time you hear someone suggest that we should ban something from everyone simply because it offends their sensibilities (even if it happens to be toed shoes in the workplace and even in jest), understand that they’re weaponizing their bigotry.  Look them straight in the eye and tell them, “You’re an asshole.  Shut the fuck up!”