For every step forward in gender equality — like eliminating the tampon tax — there always seems to be a step backward right around the corner, like making a joke out of putting birth control in vending machines. So we know pay gap didn’t budge much even under the Obama administration, and maybe President Hillary will be able to do more about it when she’s finished sentencing Donald Trump to the Phantom Zone, who knows. But one New York City pharmacy is taking the issue into their own hands. The Daily Dot reports that Soho’s Thompson Chemists has enacted a “man tax,” where anyone carrying the Y chromosome has to pay 7 percent more, while women shop tax free.
“We thought it’d be a great idea with all the political things going on — with Clinton being such a woman and the other guy and his womanizing,” owner Jolie Alony told the site. “We wanted to share that women deserve to get a break, and men deserve to be charged 7 percent more. Women are spending more in general and we make less, so we deserve to have a break.”
It’s not technically legal, according to city pricing laws, but the owners told the Daily Dot they’re paying the difference in price out of their own pockets fornow. And surprise, some male customers are not happy about it.
“I will almost always prefer a non chain if I can go for it. Shit like this is why you go out of business,” one commenter wrote on Reddit.
“This is the reason why some people don’t take feminism seriously,” another humorless person wrote.
Another commented:
“Be man.
See discriminatory price policy.
Walk down block to non-biggoted [sic] store.
Pay fair price.”
It’s a publicity stunt, sure, but gender pricing has been a very real thing for a long time, meaning women have paid more for things like shampoo, tampons and mortgages for ages. But it’s good to suddenly see so many commenters care about gender-biased pricing now.
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what about the Trans-Gendered?