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KitSileya

(4,035 posts)
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 09:23 AM Jun 2014

Men, women, and hard and dangerous jobs.

Blogger Fannie of fanniesroom.blogspot.no just posted a great rebuttal for all the MRA talking points about men having the right to earn more money because they do the dangerous and dirty jobs...

Men's rights activists (MRAs) often claim that men are "more naturally drawn to" more dangerous, more labor-intensive employment than women are, often citing the construction industry as an example.

Oftentimes, this claim is made in support of two conclusions: (1) Therefore, they claim, men "deserve" higher pay than women (if the MRA can even admit that a wage gap exists); and (2) Therefore, men make up the majority of reported workplace injuries and deaths, with either explicit or implicit argument that, somehow, this higher rate of male injury/death in the workplace is the fault of feminists. Because logic-reasons. Or, sometimes, the argument is that feminists are "hypocrites" for purportedly "not caring" about these statistics, or for not taking "enough action," to solve this dangerous situation for men.

...

And yet, what are men's rights activists doing to help stop men from harassing and excluding women from male-dominated jobs like construction?

Absolutely fucking nothing, of course.


This blog post is a response to Think Progress article What It’s Like To Be One Of The Only Female Construction Workers In America

Those hopes were dashed on the very first day. She went to the construction site along with another young woman and two young men. The first construction manager who came to get them 'literally split us down gender lines,' she said. 'He grabbed the two boys and said, ‘Come with me.’' As an excuse, he told the two women, 'Sorry, I don’t work with women in this job, it’s nothing personal.'

It got worse from there.

'These men I worked with asked me out on dates, which was totally inappropriate, commented on my body, commented on my abilities,' she said. That was the hardest part. 'What bothered me the most was the sexual harassment and feeling intimidated.'

Even the work she was assigned fell down gendered lines. She was given administrative tasks like making lists, taking pictures, and checking to see if others’ tasks were completed. 'They would tell me all the time, ‘Honey, stay here, this is really dangerous,’' she said.

She also wasn’t getting the training she had come for. 'Nobody explained things to me, nobody cared whether I was learning or not,” she said. The boys, on the other hand, were invited to meetings and given in-depth explanations of how things were done.

Valoy represents many women in her industry. The Department of Labor found that 88 percent of women in construction said they had experienced sexual harassment at work, compared to 25 percent of women in the workforce generally. And, according to NWLC, they 'are more likely to be concentrated in office positions…and least likely to be found in more labor intensive positions,' but those office positions pay less."
13 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Men, women, and hard and dangerous jobs. (Original Post) KitSileya Jun 2014 OP
Pretty stupid argument. malthaussen Jun 2014 #1
MRA arguments have never been the most logical ones. KitSileya Jun 2014 #2
I can dig it, malthaussen Jun 2014 #3
Well, Mal, maybe you have the privilege to just ignore boston bean Jun 2014 #6
Well, I did start out by saying the argument was stupid and specious. malthaussen Jun 2014 #8
Thanks for this, redqueen Jun 2014 #4
Before I clicked I knew it had to be commercial construction. JoeyT Jun 2014 #5
I'm a nurse ismnotwasm Jun 2014 #7
It's one of the most hurtful tropes, since it erases the dangerous work that kills women. Starry Messenger Jun 2014 #9
+1 nomorenomore08 Jun 2014 #12
When is the last time a man died bearing a child? n/t MadrasT Jun 2014 #10
Which is, a profound question. ismnotwasm Jun 2014 #11
Yet there are those who would tell you you *must* give birth whether you want to or not. nomorenomore08 Jun 2014 #13

malthaussen

(17,658 posts)
1. Pretty stupid argument.
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 09:50 AM
Jun 2014

Even if it were true, if men are drawn to "dangerous" jobs, it means nothing when talking about what the pay should be for those jobs or the "non-dangerous" ones. Stupid and specious. And crazy. So, if men are "naturally" drawn to jobs handling nuclear waste, that means that a male office worker should be paid more than a female one? Eh? Or that a male handler of nuclear waste "deserves" higher pay than a female doing the same work? Eh?

-- Mal

KitSileya

(4,035 posts)
2. MRA arguments have never been the most logical ones.
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 10:01 AM
Jun 2014

However, since we see them even here on DU, extra ammunition to shoot them down wherever they may pop up is a good thing. Which is why I posted both the response, which gives us arguments to counter their points, and the original story, sot hat we have evidence to point out that the "draw" towards dangerous jobs isn't gender-based, it is because one gender is routinely harassed out of these "dangerous" and "hard" jobs.

malthaussen

(17,658 posts)
3. I can dig it,
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 10:06 AM
Jun 2014

Last edited Tue Jun 17, 2014, 02:38 PM - Edit history (1)

... but I have a hard time dignifying idiocy, even by refuting it. It's one of those no-win situations. Let them get away with it, you're craven, but by arguing with them you publicize their foolishness. Since I don't believe the Truth will always triumph, I usually stay out of such fights.

It is amazing, though, the lengths to which boys will go to justify not liking girls.

-- Mal

boston bean

(36,460 posts)
6. Well, Mal, maybe you have the privilege to just ignore
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 01:19 PM
Jun 2014

this and in the meantime tell feminists how even discussing this bigotry helps MRA's. However, ignore them at your own and womens peril. I'm not mad or going ballistic here, I'm just pointing this out.

It would be nice to have your voice to add to ours.

malthaussen

(17,658 posts)
8. Well, I did start out by saying the argument was stupid and specious.
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 02:37 PM
Jun 2014

The difficulty I have is taking an absurd argument and going to the trouble of refuting it point by point, which would seem to validate that the position is reasonable. We see it all the time with the GOP making one crazy statement after another, and then having someone address the argument as if it has merit. I haven't been able to work out to my satisfaction what impact such refutation has on unbiased listeners, assuming there are any such. On one hand, it could be that such patient and determined refutation serves to sway the "undecided" to the side of reason. That's the optimistic outlook, but as I say I'm not so confident that Truth will triumph. The other side of the coin is that the "undecided" are really either not paying attention or are somewhat sympathetic to the crazy argument to begin with. In which case, might not acknowledgement serve to lend credibility?

On the gripping hand, your argument that we ignore them at our peril may just have the most merit of all. I simply am not confident which tactic is best, to attain the goal of shoving these idiots back under the rocks from whence they came. After all, voices have been raised in reason and opposition to a lot of crazy stuff (Benghazi and birth certificates and what-all else), yet in my subjective view the craziness seems to be flourishing. But that could be a perspective illusion, and who can say how much crazier it might be if those voices hadn't been raised? I certainly don't feel competent to judge. And I personally have difficulty suffering fools.

-- Mal

JoeyT

(6,785 posts)
5. Before I clicked I knew it had to be commercial construction.
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 11:37 AM
Jun 2014

Industrial construction the mill won't put up with sexual harassment. It doesn't even get that far, usually. Someone with some pull will step up and tell the guy to back off pretty quickly.

Women are terribly underrepresented there, too, though. :/

Edited to add: She's right about the work being stuff anyone can do. You're not allowed to pick up anything over fifty pounds alone, and I believe anything over 120 as a team. That's what cranes and bullrigging are for. Any MRA that claims it's work women just totally can't do has never actually done the work.

ismnotwasm

(42,443 posts)
7. I'm a nurse
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 02:10 PM
Jun 2014

I lift, push, pull and lift heavy equipment and machinery. I am exposed to multiple diseases every work day-- some deadly, some rare and untreatable, some drug resistant, some highly contagious, including airborne pathogens. I deal with every body oriface, and what comes out or goes in of them.

I take care of wounds on bodies so destroyed that I'm cleaning up feces before applying the dressing-- on the abdomen, usually, and no I'm not talking about colostomies, which, by the way I apply, and teach new ostomy patients. I've seen people try to eat and watch the food come out of some hole in their belly.

I deal with kidney disease, and am a dialysis trained nurse-- more potential for blood exposure. I work with liver transplants, before, during and after. They can get a condition called encephalopathy and occasionally become violent.

I've been bitten through the skin, been spit on, puked on, bled on, been exposed to exudate or pus from wounds. And of course, feces and urine. I've been hit, had my hair pulled, been threatened, been inappropriatly propositioned.

I'm ACLS certified. I take care of cardiac patients. I've seen 35 year olds stroke out in front of me. I've seen after a fall, the blood pooling rapidly under someone's head. Strokes. Seizures, heart attacks, codes, Wounds, chonic disease, cancer, death. Smells. My God the Smells.

I do leach therapy on what we call flaps, a piece of transferred tissue to another part of the body when the venous system is not returned blood fast enough. Yes, leeches.

I could go on for pages. So tell me how constuction is more 'hard' or 'dangerous' than what I do again? I could make the average construction worker puke over dinner just talking about my day.

And gee, I'm just a nurse.

Starry Messenger

(32,375 posts)
9. It's one of the most hurtful tropes, since it erases the dangerous work that kills women.
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 03:50 PM
Jun 2014
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2002/03/clean-rooms-dirty-secret

Just because you're not a fucking lumberjack or stevedore doesn't mean you aren't doing dangerous work as a woman.



By all measures, Armida Mesa was an unlikely candidate for breast cancer. She is Latina (Hispanic women have a lower rate of the disease than most ethnic groups); she has given birth to two sons (childbearing also lowers susceptibility); she doesn't smoke or drink; and neither her mother nor any of her seven sisters has any history of the disease. Why Mesa beat the odds and was diagnosed with cancer in 1984 at age 40 will never be known for certain.

Mesa, now 57, believes she knows why she got sick-and why her co-worker Suzanne Rubio died of breast cancer at age 36, and why several more of her acquaintances also developed cancer. They all worked at an IBM semiconductor plant in San Jose, California, making the silicon chips that run computers, cell phones, and other high-tech products. Now, along with 250 other semiconductor workers and their families, Mesa is trying to prove that the toxic mixture of chemicals used in high-tech factories has caused cancer in workers and birth defects in their children-and that their employers knew of the hazards but did not act to protect them.

"This is a forgotten group of workers," says Dr. Joseph LaDou, director of the International Center for Occupational Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, who has studied the industry ever since large-scale semiconductor manufacturing began in the 1970s. In the United States, nearly 300,000 people work in semiconductor plants; about one-quarter perform jobs that put them in routine contact with the toxic chemicals that are used to produce chips. Worldwide, the total number of semiconductor workers is estimated at more than 1 million, with US companies like Motorola and Intel dominating the market and investing billions each year to build new plants in places like Malaysia, the Philippines, and China.

As the industry continues to expand, LaDou predicts that health problems among workers, many of them women and minorities, will mushroom. "It's quickly going to become a much larger problem than anyone ever conceived," he warns. "We could be looking at an epidemic larger than what we went through with asbestos."

In the "clean rooms" where chips are made, workers don protective clothing, including head-to-toe "bunny suits." But the garments are not meant to safeguard humans; they are designed to keep impurities from contaminating the chips. Air is constantly recirculated, but the filters trap dust, not chemical fumes. Over the course of their shifts, workers breathe or come in contact with dozens of known or suspected carcinogens, including toluene, cadmium, arsenic, benzene, and trichloroethylene. They also can't escape the compounds created as the various chemicals combine-mixtures whose toxicity has never been tested, except on them.

<snip>

ismnotwasm

(42,443 posts)
11. Which is, a profound question.
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 09:30 PM
Jun 2014

We fight for reproductive rights, we know every pregnancy is a risk, we know we are the only human able to carry a pregnancy to term, but our bodies are resilient, we know we can take this risk.

Which in no way lessens the fact that is a risk, a life threatening one. And when countries like the US show a blatant disregard for women's reproductive rights, downplay the the risks of pregnancy, have a disgraceful maternal mortality rate, well it makes this Me Tarzan you Jane thought process even more ignorant and disgusting.

nomorenomore08

(13,324 posts)
13. Yet there are those who would tell you you *must* give birth whether you want to or not.
Thu Jun 19, 2014, 12:39 AM
Jun 2014

I'm anti-death penalty (and anti-violence generally) but assholes like that aren't worth the ammo it would take to shoot them.

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