What to wear? Skirt, blouse, prosthetic penis?
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It’s always tough to decide what to wear to work every day.
For Pauline Davis, 45, a worker at a snack food plant in Pennsylvania, it was especially wrenching. She chose to wear a prosthetic penis because she was contemplating gender-change surgery.
The device was covered by her clothing, but Davis mentioned it to co-workers, one of whom told management. Davis was fired, the Philadelphia Daily News reports.
This week, Davis sued her employer, J&J Snack Foods of Moosic, Pa.
In court papers, Davis argued that her firing was discriminatory. Why? Because a male co-worker wore women’s clothing to work and took hormone treatments, but wasn’t fired.
Davis’ lawyer, Lalena J. Turchi, said her client’s fake penis was completely concealed and ‘in no way interfered with her ability to do her job,’’ the newspaper reported Friday.
Davis’ job, by the way, was packer/line inspector, a position in which either an actual or prosthetic penis would seem immaterial.
After she was fired in early 2010, Davis filed a civil rights complaint later in the year in federal court in Scranton, Pa., with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Philadelphia, according to the Daily News.
Her federal lawsuit seeks back pay, punitive damages, and damages for suffering and humiliation.
-- David Zucchino
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