new thread
For those of you with concerns over keeping your hair and getting work, you could consider becoming a member of a religion which does not allow cutting of hair.
I'm not suggesting that anybody should join a religion without any serious intent to encompass all that involves, but it might be that you would find that the belilefs involved were right for you.
As an example, if you go to
http://www.sikhs.org
you will find a number of rules, including
(i) A Sikh should, in no way, harbour any antipathy to the hair of the head with which his child is born. He should not temper with the hair with which the child is born. He should add the suffix “Singh” to the name of his son. A Sikh should keep the hair of his sons and daughters intact.
But you would also have to take on board (amongst may other things)
(j) A Sikh must not take hemp (cannabis), opium, liquor, tobacco, in short any intoxicant. His only routine intake should be food.
Again, I would emphasise that I am not trying to trivialise any religion, merely to point out that being a member of an established religion does give a person certain human rights against discrimination.
Protection from religious discrimination is only applicable for sincerely held religious beliefs. If someone can demonstrate that you are not living and practicing a Sikh life, and that you are only claiming Sikhism to justify the length of your hair, you will lose.
Beyond that, there's the matter of trying to bastardize a religious faith that is held sacred by millions of people around the world for the selfish and self-serving goal of maintaining a hair length. There are few ways to profrain a religion worse than something that shallow.
The purpose of religion is not to find a path that will give you an excuse for doing something you want to do that may otherwise be considered unacceptable. The purpose of religion is to help you define your life and make it a life worth living. To try and claim to be a practitioner of Sikhism just to justify wearing long hair, and to try and take advantage of protections that would not otherwise be granted to you, is no better than people who claim to be Christian and use it as a way to excuse their own hatred of homosexuals and minorities. It is little better than those who will claim to follow Islam as an excuse to behave in a violent manner. While the severity of the behavior being justified may vary (i.e. terrorism vs. long hair), the principle is the same, and in all cases, should be condemned.
Attempting to abuse the constitutional protection of religious practice by claiming to follow a religion you do not sincerely believe in, so that you can have an excuse to keep your hair long, and not have to follow an employer's rules, serves only to cast doubt upon those who legitimately follow Sikhism - or any other religion for that matter - and who legitimately are entitled to the benefits and protections thereof.
Frankly, I'm appalled that someone would suggest doing such a thing, and I sincerely hope that none of you will try to take this suggestion seriously. Not only do you weaken the protections that exist for legitimate follows of the religion, but to try and put into practice this ill-advised suggestion would also serve to make the long-haired men's community in general look shallow and foolish, and I think that, if we're going to claim that we are mature enough to make our own decisions about our own appearance, then we need to be mature enough to accept the consequences of those choices, and not try to find a convenient ball to dodge behind.
Nyghtfall gave you the long reason to not become a Sikh just because they have long hair. Here is the short reason: They keep their hair underneath turbans all the time, so no one will ever see your hair.
Moral to the story: When you take on a religion, you often get more than you bargained for....
For those of you who read carefully what I originally said, I do not consider it right to pretend to follow a religion in order to take advantage of one aspect of its teachings.
But if one particular thing is very important to you, then you might find an appropriate religion something you could follow wholeheartedly, taking on all that is implies (again as I indicated in my original post), then it may be for some a choice worth considering.
For the record, I did read your post, carefully. I understand you weren't trying to make light of religious discrimination, but that's exactly what you were doing. Even if you don't personally advocate adopting a religious belief to avoid the consequences of having long hair at a business that prohibits long hair on men, the very act of suggesting that others might consider doing so is completely wrong.
You may as well have said, "I don't recommend doing this, but it's an idea". My point is that it's not an idea because the idea itself is wrong. It's the principle of the issue that matters, not whether or not you advocate doing it.
OK, I understand your point. I like exploring ideas, but I accept that this probably wasn't the best way of doing so. I did try to emphasise that one should only become part of a particular religion if prepared to sign up to it wholeheartedly and completely.
I've re-read and have been analyzing what it was you were trying to suggest, and I feel I mis-interpretted what you were attempting to suggest.
I'd like to apologize for having replied so hastily. Religion tends to be a sensitive topic for me, and my response to you was written in the heat of the moment without any rational thought behind how I should respond.
No apology necessary. As you say, it's a sensitive subject!
what you (nyghtfall) said and...
by hiding behind a religion for such a shallow purpose, not only does one cheapen the faith and those who are sincere about it but also the 'cause' of longhair discrimination. if you must resort to religious conversion to keep your hair you circumvent the issue of discrimination and abandon honest longhairs. by using any religion as hair protection you are in effect saying that it's all right to discriminate otherwise because the issue of personal appearance is fair game to be regulated- you've simply 'opted' to allow the church to regulate yours... giving implicit ok for the work force to enforce it's arbitrary grooming & forcing it's employees to wear a uniform that can't be completely removed outside of work. i refuse to be forced into exemplifying someone else's standards of 'good male grooming' in the privacy of my own home. i don't know about anyone else but my work is not going to define my identity.
I agree with you, and I too don't need a reason to be myself, it's a justification in itself.
But some people find not conforming is a problem, and more as an intellectual exercise than anything else, I wondered how that might work out for a perhaps less self-confident longhair, comlpete with all the consequences.
a less confident person is going to have problems wearing long hair whatever the avenue used to justify not cutting. adopting a disingenuous set of beliefs is not going to make me more confident if i'm worried about what people think or about dress codes. it WILL add a layer of doubt and unease- along with the worry of whether i'm going to have to cut goes the fear of being exposed for my fraudulent beliefs. my long hair would not be a symbol of who i am, but would represent a lie i am living.
As I view this whole discussion, the heart of the matter for all of us get's exposed: we live in a culture, a multi-layered culture, and we are surrounded by religions with their multiple layers all of which attempt to keep the essence of who we are as human beings under control--repressed--covered up.
Cutting a man's hair is one of the ways culture and religion do it. Demanding multiple kinds of conformities is another way. As long as we dress ourselves for the approval of another, these controls are at work.
The discomfort that I have felt and others here feel when they begin to grow long hair and then wear our long hair out in the public eye, and in family's eye, for me has been the vehicle for looking deeply at how all this works. It can be very enlightening, perhaps after being very frightening, angering and frustrating.
Nevertheless--want to see what runs us? Grow your hair long, oh man.
Robert
It's ALL of THAT...& isn't it a damned shame too!
...but respectfully disagree with the approach. The answer, I believe, is in the law...specifically the 14th Constitutional Amendment under the Equal Protection Clause and also under Civil Rights Legislation. No matter what religion one adopts, it's funamentally wrong to discriminate against a man for his long hair. Choosing a guise, whether it's religion or anything else, that has been recognized by employers in allowing a man to keep his long hair is not only living a lie, but also enables society to continue its erroneous perception. Our judicial system and legislature has spoken with regard to equal rights for women, minorities and homosexuals, now we need a judicial decision or legislative action regarding equal rights for men with long hair in the work environment. I believe the answer is in our Constitution, not religion.