US Congress Introduces Tie Ban Bill

As part of the new wave of Financial Regulations sweeping Wall Street, US Congress has today introduced a new bill banning the wearing of neckties in all public areas. The introduction of the bill has been anticipated for several months and has generated worldwide attention from both men's groups and political leaders, keen to take strong action in the wake of the fiscal fallout from the Global Financial Crisis

The neck-tie ban has incited strong responses in European countries, where recent financial turmoil has stirred up public anxieties about the potential for financial terrorism. However, some centre-right politicians have criticized the ban. In a speech in Cairo last year, French President Nicholas Sarkozy argued that Western countries should not be “dictating what clothes an American man should wear”.

American civil liberty groups have also been critical of the ban, arguing that it breaches First Amendment rights to freedom of expression. However, constitutional lawyers have disputed this interpretation. The First Amendment enshrines the rights of Americans with respect to religion, free speech, freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Supporters of the Bill have noted that it makes no reference to fashion.

President Barrack Obama, a supporter of the Bill, has argued that the public has the right to demand strong action against the Wall Street institutions that have caused the GFC. He urged leading men's fashion houses to "Pay attention to Main Street, not just Wall Street". Obama noted that the neck tie became fashionable in the 1920s, less than a decade before the onset of the Great Depression and hinted at a potential relationship.

Responses to the ban from men’s rights groups have been mixed. Some groups have argued that the necktie has long been a symbol of male oppression and that the ban will be instrumental in liberating men who have been constrained by the practice. Richard Short, a leading men’s rights activist, has argued that the necktie is irrevocably intertwined with phallic symbolism “by forcing men to display this phallic representations in their business and formal public dealings, we are effectively defining them solely in terms of their sexual identities. By forcing men to wear ties we have taken away their capacity to show emotion and empathy in their public life and turned them into caricatures of large, floppy penises. Ultimately, this focus on the ‘swinging dick’ was the key factor that underpinned the Global Financial Crisis.”

However, other groups have argued that the ban will be counterproductive. Will Schlong, an activist, has argued that enforcing the ban would be detrimental to the men involved. Schlong has long argued that many men have limited opportunity to determine whether or not they wear ties, and are often constrained by what their wives and girlfriends put on their beds in the morning "how can we be issuing fines to these men, when their wives are the ones dressing them?" he argued at a recent rally to oppose the ban. Schlong has further concerns that some men, who’s wives prefer to see them dressed in formal attire, will become further socially isolated if their wives and girlfriends forbid them to leave the house altogether.