Fatal Accidents And Violence While At Work1
In the United States, in 2005, men were 54% of the workforce but 93% of workers who died at work due to fatal accidents or violence (pdf link). (The raw numbers are 5300 men, 402 women).2 For women at work, the most common cause of death was highway accidents, followed by homicide. For men at work, the most common cause of death was also highway accidents, followed by “contact with objects and equipment” and then by falls. Looking at risk ratios, the most likely workers to die of accident or violence at work are agricultural, fishing and lumber workers; in terms of raw numbers, however, construction workers are killed the most often.
There are a little over 200 workplace suicides each year, about 94% of which are men. (Interestingly, although in all other areas of workplace death non-whites — and especially non-white immigrants — are disproportionately likely to be the victims, a disproportionately high number of workplace suicides are committed by white workers.) The most likely occupations for workplace suicide are police, farmer, and soldier.
Death Due To Workplace-Related Disease
Workplace deaths due to accidents and violence tend to get a lot of attention, because they are dramatic and relatively simple to measure. But, in terms of total numbers, they’re a minor problem. Deaths due to workplace-related disease and toxic exposure are a far larger problem, killing over 100,000 Americans a year, according to the International Labor Organization’s estimates (pdf link).
I couldn’t find clear figures comparing female and male deaths due to work-related disease and exposure in the United States. But according to the ILO, in established market economies as a whole, 240,700 men and 46,298 women died in 2002 due to work-related disease; put another way, 84% of workers who die due to work-related disease are male. (These figures are estimates; workplace mortality due to disease is not possible to measure with pinpoint accuracy).
Occupational Segregation
What causes the discrepancy in workplace deaths? The main cause is “occupational segregation” – the tendency for some jobs to be mostly held by men, and others to be mostly held by women. The most hazardous jobs — whether due to exposure to dangerous substances, or to risk of falling or being in a highway accident — are disproportionately held by men. (Contrary to popular belief, people in risky jobs are not usually paid extra to compensate them for danger).
Occupation segregation, in turn, is caused in part by workplace discrimination, both in the form of employers preferring a particular sex, and in the form of on-the-job harassment and discrimination making blue-collar women, or a pink collar men, know that they’re unwelcome.
Occupational segregation is also caused by self-segregation, as many male workers feel uncomfortable applying for female-dominated jobs, and vice versa. There is, in my opinion, a vicious cycle functioning; the lack of pink-collar male, and blue-collar female, role models and mentors makes it less likely that future workers will cross the occupational gender line.
Conclusion
While we should fight occupational segregation, getting rid of occupational segregation won’t solve the tragedy of work-related deaths; more women and less men dying is less sexist, but still not a net improvement in terms of saving lives. What’s needed is more pro-active government intervention to make workplaces safer3 , along with a reform of tort laws to make it easier for workers and their survivors to successfully sue employers. (Edited years later to add: And, of course, we need more unionization of workplaces.)
The problem with a dry term like “occupational segregation” is that, while it’s accurate, it also obscures how disproportionate male deaths in the workplace are caused by sexism. Nearly all of the causes of occupational segregation, in one way or another, are themselves caused in part by sexism. Workplace deaths are a clear example of how sexism harms men in the United States.
- In this blog post, I’m concentrating on workplace deaths. But it’s also the case that men are more likely than women to be injured at work. [↩]
- This number does not include illegal jobs. My impression is that prostitution — a female-dominated job — and drug dealing — a male-dominated job — are both relatively high-mortality jobs. My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that including illegal job mortality might reduce the male/female mortality discrepancy a bit, but it certainly wouldn’t eliminate it. [↩]
- There’s no reason that this has to consist solely of micro-management and regulations. For instance, the government could offer tax breaks for companies that can rigorously prove that they’ve reduced workplace accidents and fatalities by a substantial amount. [↩]
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Seems like the entire issue is one of safety, not sexism. If sexism was the cause of workplace accidents, then merely bringing more women in would automatically solve the issue. Ergo, sexism is not the issue.
The real question is why the issue is framed as sexism at all? Who benefits from framing the issue this way? (We already know it’s another way to blame women, so no need to go there.)
My bill is in the mail, please pay promptly.
But seriously, excuse me! It’s men who decided way back when that they were in charge, men who decided they would do “manly” jobs and women would be little fragile flowers who stayed home and popped out baby flowers. When women first went into the work force, it was men who heckled and harrassed women into only taking certain “suitable” employment.
Now men are complaining about how they don’t like their “manly” occupations. Come over here and listen to my violin. * You missed it, it was that small.
Feminazi:
1) I have “Alas” set up to automatically put any comment that uses the word “Feminazi” into moderation. So if you don’t want all your posts put in moderation, choose a new handle.
2) Speaking of handles, did you know that I can see your IP address? Which means that I can that another poster here has posted from the exact same IP address as you. Maybe that’ s a coincidence, but probably not.
3) Your analysis is too simplistic. The problem of high workplace deaths is caused by things other than sexism. The extreme gender imbalance in workplace death is caused by sexism.
4) The men most likely to die on the job are men who have very little economic decision-making power; few of the ones dying on the job are wealthy, and they are disproportionately non-white and immigrant. Conflating the men in charge of hiring and the like, with sewer workers who die when a ditch collapse, is not a very useful analysis.
It’s true that blue-collar sexual harassment by men is part of the reason for the discrepancy in who works which jobs. But it’s only part of the reason; and there’s no reason to believe that the men who die are in all cases the same men who harass. So I don’t think your “blame the victim” approach to men dying at work makes much sense.
Amp,
Okay, I honestly was not enamoured of the drawing of Mary Black you did a few posts ago and (sorta) asked for comments on. I frankly was not sure it was your work until I read the comments. Perhaps doing charactures of real people is not really your thing.
Anyway, I love the drawing for this one. The guy looks good, and the screw is perfect. Is the shirt design an intentional homage to Charlie Brown, the ultimate Everyman who always gets the bad end of things?
I was thinking that, too…CB’s shirt, only [spooky ghoul voice] soaked in blooooood [/spooky ghoul voice].
the number one cause of women’s workplace deaths are “homicides.” I’ll bet most of those are related to domestic violence.
Wow, it does look like Charlie Brown’s shirt. The screw’s messing with my depth perception, though. “Considers” Nope, I like the caricatures of people better, although my favorites are above Amp’s link lists. I’m not very good at character exaggeration, myself.
In the other part of my post,
I really like suggestion number three, in that it seems businesses would most likely reduce hazards and the like for tax breaks as an incentive before they’d reduce hazards and possible deaths at a cost to them. I also wish more would pay decent wages and pay on time, but it might just be the people in my area.
How can you say:
?Contrary to popular belief, people in risky jobs are not usually paid extra to
?compensate them for danger.
The whole point of your post seems to be that men are disproportionately hired for such jobs. I thought it was well-known that women’s jobs tend to be lower-paying. The extra pay is not explicitly compensating for danger, but it tends to work out that way.
I’ve worked in several dangerous jobs where it seemed like masculine values worked against taking safety precautions and enforcing safety rules. (I mean a group of men all trying hard to prove they aren’t cowards, maybe with a woman or two trying to prove she’s at least as tough as they are.)
Rigorous enforcement of safety rules, from the top down, is the most effective way I’ve seen to reduce risks. It seems to be the only way to replace attitudes like, “You’re brave and efficient and you know what you’re doing, so you don’t need to waste time with that stupid safety harness every time you go up. Don’t waste time up there!” with attitudes like, “You’re smart and efficient and you know how to do the job right, with the safety harness and all the regulation gear. Don’t make the company to lose certification!” People internalize these attitudes, and pass them on to their colleagues, and they can be really hard to change in a person who has been working with one mindset for 30 years or so.
1) Yes, it was an intentional homage to Charlie Brown, for the reason Decnavda said. And I agree I’m not great at drawing caricatures, but I plan to keep trying. :-)
2) Tut2bene, Homicides are actually the number two cause of women dying at the workplace; the number one cause is highway accidents.
Adrian, I wrote an entire other post describing why “danger pay” is largely a myth. So for a detailed answer, please read that post.
But the short answer to your question is, male-dominated jobs pay more than female-dominated jobs (on average) regardless of the danger level. There are, after all, countless male-dominated jobs that aren’t dangerous at all, but those jobs get paid the male wage premium just the same. So the higher pay is related to sex, not to danger.
But I very much agree with you about how “masculine values” can make the men who hold them less safe.
2. I am a snarky hag!
3. While I agree with you that sexism hurts men too, I see no reason to give them any slack for it considering they were responsible for it in the first place. That’s like feeling sorry for an arsonist when his house burns down. Patriarchy is a social construct; you know the drill.
4. Men who consider themselves powerless are the ones most likely to be misogynists -kicking the dog as it were. As soon as they realize that women are people too, then they will quit viewing “pink-collar” work as beneath them and gravitate towards that line of work, if they genuinely desire.
Can we cut the crap, please? The only reason some people are bringing this argument (about workplace fatalities) to the table is that some people are trying to say that teh evil woman has “an extra” that they don’t get and “it’s not fair, waaah!”
If this were not so, those same types of people would have complained about only men having jobs outside the home all those many years. The answer to that (non-existent) complaint is to get women working outside the home, and amazingly enough some people fought that as well.
You’re willing to assume that all these idealogies are from different groups; I’m assuming it all stems from the same place: misogyny. While your attitude is commendable and I admire you greatly for all you’ve done for women over the years, I believe that in this one case at least, your presumption is misguided.
I am NOT saying we need to ignore workplace safety, OR that men should be prevented from doing any particular job. I AM questioning the motivation. Given society’s very long-standing habit of viewing women as less than completely equal, cynicsm seems appropiate.
One tactic I have noticed the mra’s seem to favor is turning the scorecard upside down, although that’s not quite the right phrase because I don’t like the idea of points or describing men and women as adversaries. Obviously I’m doing a lousy job of explaining myself, but this entire argument is a perfect example. The only thing preventing men from entering “pink collar” work is their OWN misogyny. Yet, magically, this is not their fault. It’s beautiful, in a completely schizophrenic way.
Heh, I liked the Mary Black one okay. I mean, the text on green was a little eye-bending, but I liked the composition.
This one is adorable, but sort of … disturbing for the topic? It feels a little like, funny, for the subject of men dying? I can imagine, if I were more connected to this issue, feeling either insulted by or hurt by this illustration.
“So I don’t think your “blame the victim” approach to men dying at work makes much sense. ”
Other than the obvious ” it’s your system, you benefit from it (even those with little economic power) so fix it”. Men being the victims of their own systems is just a variation of ” but patriarchy hurts men too”.
The fact that more men die *is* used to justify paying women less. Often. And while I agree the gender imbalance needs to be fixed, I have a problem with adding to the number of women who die because of male “values”.
It should be noted that there are a fair number of women who are injured or killed on the job that don’t show up in the statistics: sex workers.
(And yeah, I know that male and trans sex workers die/get beat up, too, but there are a lot more gals out there than guys.)
It should be noted. Perhaps in a footnote.
Oh, wait…!
Y’know, it’s not as if Amp posts much at all about the ways in which being a man can kind of suck. The overwhelming majority of his posts and those of his co-bloggers are about the ways in which the patriarchy oppresses women. This is as it should be, because the patriarchy oppresses women in some really brutal fashions, and benefits the overwhelming majority (if not all) men.
However, the patriarchy is an inherently hierarchical system, and in an inherently hierarchical system, there will be some members of the privileged class who end up disposable, crushed on the bottom of the pyramid that they can’t overturn individually any more than any one person can. In some cases this is gay men. In some cases this is men of color. In this case it’s going to be overwhelmingly lower income men.
Amp doesn’t write about this a lot, and I think that’s right.
Every single time (that I can remember) that he’s written about it though, even quite a while back when the topic of male victims of childhood sexual abuse came up, there’s someone who posts to say that discussing this isn’t important because they’re men and it’s all their fault anyway.
I’m a man. Part of the reason that I consider myself a feminist is that I do believe that the patriarchy hurts men too. Yes, of course it gives us huge advantages, but I think it’s a dysfunctional system that hurts everyone involved, and I believe that I, personally, would be better off in a world without a patriarchy, even after giving up my privileges. I believe I would be happier, I believe my relationships would be healthier, I believe that the people I love would have better lives. I think it would be a net positive for all of us. I believe that there’s a better world waiting.
I also believe that talking about the ways that the patriarchy is fucked up, yes, even for men, is going to help convince other men that feminism isn’t a horrible bugaboo coming to make their lives hell . . . it’s about trying to end a fucked up system that’s lasted far too long.
—Myca
“There’s no reason that this has to consist solely of micro-management and regulations. For instance, the government could offer tax breaks for companies that can rigorously prove that they’ve reduced workplace accidents and fatalities by a substantial amount. ”
Waves hand! My Dad worked on an oil-related project in Canada in which they actually did receive some kind of financial kickback for having a low number of work-related deaths and injuries. I’m not sure exactly how it worked, but I know that every single accident was tracked and that, as the company knew this, they were VERY careful with their people, so I think that using both carrot and stick seems to work fairly well.
Adrian said…”I’ve worked in several dangerous jobs where it seemed like masculine values worked against taking safety precautions and enforcing safety rules. (I mean a group of men all trying hard to prove they aren’t cowards, maybe with a woman or two trying to prove she’s at least as tough as they are.) I’ve worked in several dangerous jobs where it seemed like masculine values worked against taking safety precautions and enforcing safety rules. (I mean a group of men all trying hard to prove they aren’t cowards, maybe with a woman or two trying to prove she’s at least as tough as they are.) ”
This is important to consider too. It’s a way in which sexism has actual, demonstrable negative effects on men. In a similar vein, prostate cancer should be a disease with almost 0 mortality rate as it’s very treatable if caught early, but sadly this is not the way things actually play out since many men don’t take good care of their health. Again, sexism kills, for both men and women. More so for women, indeed, but men aren’t immune either.
I used to manage an OSHA training program at a university in California, and probably 85% of the students were male. Unskilled workers — particularly construction workers and truckers — displayed the most bravado, and were the most resistant to employing good workplace safety practices. But the class clowns always snapped to attention when the trainers got to the part where they talked about the incidence of impotence in adult lead poisioning. You could hear a pin drop.
As long as people are working to make profit rather than things people need this is going to be a huge problem. And it is sexist that more men than women die at work . Of course, fixing that sexism wont fix dying at work.
On another note, if being a mom was a paid job in this society more women would be understood to be dying at their jobs relative to men. Not so much in the first world (I am in almost no danger of this) but overall worldwide.
meatpacking continues to be one of the most dangerous jobs, and among the lowest paid. It is somewhat segregated by sex based on the kind of meat; more men process beef which is more dangerous, and more women process chicken which is also dangerous but less so.
I agree with Adrian who says,
I worked as a secretary in a construction shop throughout university, then lived with a tinner for 10 years and an electrician for going on 6 years. From my somewhat limited, second-hand experience, I’d say that part of the accident rate has to be sheer goofy carelessness (/bravado) as well as drug and alcohol use at work. I left the tinner because of his drug habit. The electrician doesn’t dare (as far as I know). But so many of the guys on a construction site are under the influence of something. My guy has even categorized them by trade: the roofers are stoners, the masons are drunks, the framers are coke-heads, etc.
I don’t think it’s blaming the victim to suggest that getting all wobbled-up on something then climbing on a roof is asking for trouble. And the bosses don’t help. Some bring a cooler of beer for the guys at lunch. It seems to be part of the dynamics of a construction site to feed the workers pints. Keep the workers happy, and they’ll work harder! Apparently, it’s such a crappy job, they’ve got to get wailed to cope with it.
I also know of many guys with missing fingers – all through “funny stories” of being wasted while using heavy machinery.
Darwin awards for the round!
(Amp, I hit enter accidentally part-way through the previous post – please delete)
It’s kind of disturbing to see the knee-jerk reactions about how “men are in charge and developed the system, now they’re whining about getting killed on the job” and the like.
An 18-year-old guy looking for a job played no role in the development of social hierarchies or systems.
And this view completely focuses on men from a class, or group, or stereotype, point of view, which means that it is not reality. As an example of that, what would you think of someone who said that it’s OK for little girls to be beaten to death by a parent, but not little boys, because the majority of parents who kill their children are … women. So women better clean up their own house before little girls get protection. You’d probably think the person asserting that was nuts – and you would be right.
Also, there is a big focus on instituting safe workplace practices, which is a good idea anyway. But you are always going to have accidents and problems in industrial and construction settings. It’s just the nature of the beast, if you have people up on a roof pounding in tiles, or working with hazardous chemicals or working with sharp cutting objects etc.
It’s kind of disturbing to read the reaction to this. The point couldn’t be made more clear that men are simply crap.
Mandolin writes:
I could see that. It seems to me that it’s common to see relatively lighthearted editorial illustrations accompanying even serious op-eds in publications like The New Yorker, though, so I’m kind of trying to follow their lead.
Nemo, I agree that it’s disturbing, but keep in mind we’re talking about only two comment-writers here (one of whom self-identifies as a “feminazi”), not everyone on the thread.
I think a bad dynamic has been developed because so many MRAs and anti-feminists have used concern for men’s welfare as camouflage for antagonism towards feminism in general and antagonism towards acknowledging that women are harmed by sexism. As a result, many feminists have become very suspicious of anyone talking about sexist harms to men. I don’t think that makes it right, but I do think it’s a bit understandable.
Pheeno wrote:
The particular aspect of the system we’re talking about is not one that those with little economic power are able to fix. So telling them to fix it is unfair.
As I’ve said many times on this blog, I believe that patriarchy does hurt men. So I don’t really see this as a negative.
Nor do I really think this can be said to be the system of poor working men. Talking about “men” as if we were a simple, united group ignores aspects like class and race. (It’s true that men who are killed at work are victimized by sexism; it’s also true that almost no wealthy men are among those killed at work.)
And I’ve posted about why that argument in favor of the wage gap is bullshit. But just because a tragedy is used for garbage purposes by anti-feminists, doesn’t make it okay to dismiss the harms of the tragedy itself.
As I said in the post, I’m not in favor of trying to equalize workplace deaths by raising the female death toll; what I want is the male death toll lowered. And I’m convinced it can be lowered a lot, especially regarding deaths caused by workplace-related disease.
Regarding the folks who have commented about the connection between bravado/machismo and workplace accidents, I tend to agree with you, and thanks for posting.
I wonder if anyone’s done quantitative research on this? One could survey all the workers on a construction site (or on several construction sites) with one of the standard tests social scientists have developed for measuring belief in traditional sex-role ideology. I suspect that men who measure as highly devoted to traditional notions of masculinity, would also be the men who are most likely to be injured at work, after controlling for factors like job title.
Myca, I agree 95% with your post. Thank you!
So of course, I’m going to respond to you about the 5% disagreement. :-P
This could be read as implying that if I did decide to focus my entire blog on how sexism harms men, that would be wrong. If that’s what you mean, I disagree.
I don’t do that because harms to men are not my primary interest; but if it were, and I blogged about it all the time, that would be perfectly fine, in my opinion. Specialization is legitimate, and it’s not true that everytime someone specializes in subject A they’re implying that subjects B C D and E are unimportant.
I don’t know what conclusions you can draw from these stats, especially in regards to gender, gender roles, sexism, etc.
The #1 killer for men in the workplace is also transportation, which seems to me to be a difficult stat to break down into a meaningful social extraction. My reasoning is that, assuming the majority of transportation fatalities involve two or more vehicles/parties, then the issue is not job risk, but overall highway and road safety. Or even more important, it is to many degrees an issue of personal awareness and responsibility rather than inherent job risk. Driving is risky as it is. That particular risk does not increase because of one’s employment (well, with a nod to big rig drivers who most likely would not be driving tankers etc., during their personal time, but who knows).
QGrrl;
I used to have a job working with truckers, and not just on big rigs either. Time pressures imposed by the boss are a big reason that driving is such an unsafe job and a big reason why driving for your job is more dangerous than driving for yourself.
Not to mention that the bosses calculation that a few dead truckers means less overall than a higher rate of profit makes the rest of us civilian drivers substantially less safe as well.
Ralph Nadar campaigned on just hat issue, but many protections for drivers and the rest of us have been rolled back in the last 25 years.
Amp;
as for macho pressures at work, i’ve looked for quant and qualitative research on this and haven’t found much. Please direct me if you see something.
Oh, totally. I don’t disagree. When I say “this is as it should be,” what I mean is more that I believe that (of course) the overwhelming majority of feminist writing should not be about how the patriarchy hurts men. Your case is interesting because you’re one of the more well-known feminist bloggers, so maybe (maybemaybemaybe . . . I’m conflicted) there’s an obligation not to focus on PHMT . . . but at the same time, I don’t think you necessarily would be as well known and respected as you are if you spent all of your time writing about PHMT, so it’s all a cycle. . .
Anyway, yeah, I agree.
Absolutely, which is part of what drives me crazy about the, “I don’t care about this,” responses. It costs nobody anything to say, “Boy, that sucks.”
Saying you care about this doesn’t mean that you don’t care about the wage gap, and people who say that they don’t care about this don’t get, like extra ‘care points’ to apply towards the wage gap.
It’s reasonable to think it all sucks.
—Myca
Is there any information available as to whether women and men in high risk jobs have the same or different mortality rates? That is do, for example, women coal miners (police personnel, construction workers, etc) die in work related accidents more often, less often, or as often as men?
Maybe I’m just slow this morning, but I’m a little confused about highway accidents being the #1 workplace killer for women. Are we counting to/from work? Or is there a higher proportion of females in driving-oriented jobs than I would have assumed?
Men are less likely to want to enter into professions which are women-dominated and women are less likely to want to enter into professions that are male-dominated, but are the reasons the same?
I think the reasons play into sexism in society at large. Meaning that women are reluctant because they know they are likely to face dscrimination, racial, gender and/or sexual orientation(even if they’re straight given how sexual orientation is often assigned to women in male-dominated workplaces by male workers(i.e. two female police officers working together are in the “lesbian car”) and possibly harassment and retaliation which is a serious problem and has been in male-dominated professions like mining, firefighting and law enforcement. There’s well-known sexual discrimination and harassment litigation in all these fields and others but despite some victories, it’s still a serious issue.
Also, the lack of female employees in male-dominated professions often affects women and girls in general by denying them role models in terms of seeing that there are women working successfully in these professions. Some law enforcement agencies send their female officers to visit elementary schools as part of their education program in their recruitment and retention strategies.
Whereas for men entering female-dominated professions like nursing and elementary school teaching for example, there’s this feeling in society that these professions aren’t as valued as male-dominated professions and that men who enter into them are suspect in terms of their male identity and their sexual orientation as well. They are seen in a way that women are and thus are devalued most often by other men.
Men may also be exposed to a lack of male role models in these professions as well, as they may not be viewed as masculine enough. How many young boys see male nurses? And the percentage of male teachers starts to increase and even become the majority in high school and beyond, not elementary school.
They may be assigned derogatory slurs or labels usually assigned to women.
That’s fair!
They certainly aren’t unimportant.
My objection to specialization in PHMT is basically just that we have such a tendency as a culture to focus on a men’s perspective, that I would worry about … I guess, feminist cooption. So I support the idea of specialization in theory. In practice, I’d worry it woudl turn into MR activism. Maybe that’s ignorant of me.
“Whereas for men entering female-dominated professions like nursing and elementary school teaching for example, there’s this feeling in society that these professions aren’t as valued as male-dominated professions and that men who enter into them are suspect in terms of their male identity and their sexual orientation as well. They are seen in a way that women are and thus are devalued most often by other men.”
——————————————————
A big problem with men in elementary school today is that they are suspected of being pedophiles from the get go.
Needs to be repeated.
Isn’t it obvious that anyone interested in feminist issues would already know that “patriarchy hurts men too”? That some would continuely harp on this exclusively (as the mra’s tend to do) leads me to further assume that they generally equate the damage done to men as equal to the damage done to women, a comparison which would disturb any rational person.
This is why all those mra sites which list selective acts committed by individual females are offensive as well. If they are doing that to say “look, women are bad too!”, then they are implicity stating that (in their minds at least) women are either all good or all bad. If they started with the premise that women are fully human, the fact that some women do bad things would be obvious and listing individual examples would be redundant.
These same mra’s also conviently ignore the fact that it is men who commit the majority of violent crime, AND more importantly, that women have had institutionalized secondary legal status since recorded history. No nuanced discussion of these wider issues and their effect upon narrower pockets of injustice is even considered necessary. They then use all of their Bad Women examples to bolster arguments which justify the continued treatment of women as less than fully equal.
Please. Show me one mra site that is not misogynistic at it’s core.
In any event, if some male percentage of accidents and fatalities are a function of testosterone and subsequent disregard of risk mitigation, then is it still sexism? Seems like just telling young men that they are at risk of increased bravado would not alleviate the problem. They’d need something more which they could relate to.
I’m glad that you point out that evening out the number of women and men in these dangerous positions is still sexist and that we need more proactive government intervention. There’s really no excuse that there are so many deaths each year due to work related accidents. It seems like we need to focus a great deal more on safety.
Juan Rodriguez
Editor, JustJobs.com
To get the falsity of the “danger premium” myth, you have to be able to recognize that there is not one monolithic Man. Some men are making up the higher proportion of dangerous jobs. Some men are making up the high end of the wage gap. There’s some overlap, but not all that much. To the extent that you assume that those are necessarily the same group, though, you’re accepting validity of the danger premium, and by extension the wage gap: the Man has the more dangerous jobs, the Man has the higher wage. I assume that I’m not the only feminist here who’s not so much in favor of the wage gap (to put it mildly), so I’ll assume that those arguing against pointing out how Patriarchy Hurts Men Too are with me so far.
The thing is, once you accept that premise, you’ve got to be willing to extend the same logic to MRAs and PHMT. Some men support the patriarchy. Some men are hurt by it. I’m sure there’s some overlap there too, and frankly I agree with the impulse to say “screw you” to anyone who wants to have their cake and bitch about it too. But the people – male and female – who argue that the patriarchy hurts men (as opposed to anti-feminists, who seem more inclined to argue that feminism hurts men) are generally not hating on women through the other side of their mouth. Amp, for sure, is not. The point is that patriarchy hurts people, and both men and women are people, which I’m sure we can all agree on.
[If I had a chalkboard and could draw a couple of Venn diagrams, this would all be much easier. I hope that’ll be a feature of Web 4.0, a sketchpad commenting feature.]
I really wish I could remember which Vonnegut book I first read this in (I say first bc he does have that tendency to throw the same idea into multiple stories), but: We all just got here.
Nobody now living made all these stupid rules, they were already here when we showed up. It does nobody any good to place the blame on anyone but those continuing to perpetuate the stupidity, and the ones actively pointing out the problems aren’t generally those people.
Nemo writes:
Or gay. Or losers. Or any number of other negative things.
JustJobs editor writes:
Some of the jobs where men dominate are just plain dangerous and nothing can be done to make them not be dangerous. Or at least, nothing can be done that would still allow the jobs to be done can make them be un-dangerous. A couple of days ago I was looking at OSHA requirements for workplace safety and several of them made it 100% impossible to finish the job, or in some instances, to even DO the job. So, people just ignore OSHA and get hurt anyway.
I think the biggest cause of workplace accidents amongst blue collar workers is the fact that blue collar workers tend to not be the sharpest people on the planet. When I was younger I watched people (men …) blow dirt off their clothes with pure oxygen from gas cutting torches. It was really hard getting them to understand what was so dangerous about this. We could get them to understand that using oxygen and natural gas was a bad idea, but it was just about impossible to get them to understand what was so dangerous about pure oxygen.
Well said, Defenestrated. Excellent points.
I think what I would add is that to me there’s really not that much difference between saying, “These men are dying because of the patriarchy. They made the problem, let them fix it,” in this situation and saying the same thing in reference to, say, gay bashing.
The overwhelming majority of men who are dying here are doing so because, according to patriarchal rules, they’re the losers. Just like gay men.
No, of course the situations aren’t the same, but they’re both men, and they’re both victims of the patriarchy.
—Myca
“It’s kind of disturbing to see the knee-jerk reactions about how “men are in charge and developed the system, now they’re whining about getting killed on the job” and the like.
An 18-year-old guy looking for a job played no role in the development of social hierarchies or systems.”
Its kind of disturbing (yet not surprising in any way) to see people interpret pointing out the system you *still* benefit(regardless of individual mens role in developing it) from is the problem into blaming men for whining. Women have no agency in a patriarchy. Feminists have been pointing out the various ways in which this system hurts men too. It benefits men (that 18 year old included) far more, and thats why there hasnt been change. Pointing out the fact that until the benefits stop heavily outweighing the negative isnt blaming men. Its expecting men to actively do their part in ending it. Its going to take men “cleaning their own houses” because men at the moment have the power to do it, and have the only voice other men steeped in the system *listen to*. If what women said mattered, this would have ceased to be a problem years ago. It *is* mens system, regardless of who created it. It caters to men, its made to fit men, it works for men and male voices are the only voices it values. But from that you get that MEN are crap?
Amp wrote
“The particular aspect of the system we’re talking about is not one that those with little economic power are able to fix. So telling them to fix it is unfair.”
Who’s left? Women have even less power to fix it, even though we’ve been trying for how many years now? Those mens voices *still* matter more.
“But just because a tragedy is used for garbage purposes by anti-feminists, doesn’t make it okay to dismiss the harms of the tragedy itself. ”
Well thats nice, and not what I did.
“As I said in the post, I’m not in favor of trying to equalize workplace deaths by raising the female death toll; what I want is the male death toll lowered. And I’m convinced it can be lowered a lot, especially regarding deaths caused by workplace-related disease. ”
Then you’re going to have to reach other men. The cold hard fact is that your voice matters to them more than mine does. No matter what their class, theirs is still more valued than mine. So while you may not like it, telling you to fix the system you still benefit from is the only way it will get fixed. God knows women trying hasnt worked yet, and these figures perfectly illustrate that.
Pheeno, if you got a sex change and became a man, what would you do?
Keep in mind that some men (still) support wife and kids, some are just trying to get through the day without another problem, some can just barely cope with working. Some are depressed, some are unemployed, some are disabled, some are old. Keep in mind that the undertone of your comments, that men just naturally have power and structuring capability and the approval of society, isn’t necessarily the full truth.
Also keep in mind that your strongly held belief that “society” only listens to men, and never listens to women, that individual men have tons of power to change things, may not be entirely accurate.
My impression is that you are so focused on your interpretation according to classes of people (in this case, divided by gender) that you can’t see other aspects of reality that may be present – people are only cogs in their respective groups, according to your view, and each group is a big amorphous blob that acts on its own as a unit. Kinda sorta.
“Then you’re going to have to reach other men. The cold hard fact is that your voice matters to them more than mine does. No matter what their class, theirs is still more valued than mine. So while you may not like it, telling you to fix the system you still benefit from is the only way it will get fixed. God knows women trying hasnt worked yet, and these figures perfectly illustrate that.”
——————————————————–
Here’s what I get out of those statements:
Women are good and insightful and have tried to change things, but society doesn’t pay any attention to them. Men are dense, kind of stupid, and wallowing in their utter privilege. But society pays full attention to what they say; unfortunately they are too dense to do the right thing, or more likely just want to keep their privilege of dying more frequently at work.
I saw a book by a woman who disguised herself as a man for a while. She was surprised that things weren’t as she thought. Maybe you have a distorted view of how men’s lives really are. It’s a possibility to think about.
Keep in mind that some men (still) support wife and kids,
And some women support husband and kids. What’s your point?
“And some women support husband and kids. What’s your point?”
——————————————-
I probably should have left that out.
I’m not sure, I can only go on my perceptions of society – is the pressure to support the family equally distributed today among men and women?
Since my experiences are statistically insignificant, maybe it is. I still hear quite a few comments (even from feminists) that the man better “step up to the plate” and the like. And the distribution of alimony paid ($7 billion per year men to women / very little woman to man) is also something to think about.
Probably someone will ask about concrete figures, so:
http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/04statab/fedgov.pdf
Document 475, “Alimony Paid” line.
Ooops, I meant Document 477.
Formerly Larry,
Usually there are a lot of things that can be done to make work safter, but they cost money. One problem wiht OSHA regs is that they tend to be overly reliant on workers’ responsiblity for working safe rather than companies responsibility to provide the right equipment, organize the most long-term safe approach to work etc etc.
As for working class people not being bright, I think saying something like that makes you sound like a bigoted moron, personally.
“Pheeno, if you got a sex change and became a man, what would you do?”
In what sense? Work wise or feminist activist wise?
“Also keep in mind that your strongly held belief that “society” only listens to men, and never listens to women, that individual men have tons of power to change things, may not be entirely accurate”
We live in a patriarchial society. At some point, in order to end that and affect change, the group that benefits from a patriarchial society is going to have to do more. Individual men may be in lower classes, but women are still in the sex class. Which barely renders us human, much less important enough to listen to. Even here the suggestion that men do more gets a defensive reaction. What, feminists aren’t doing enough?
“is the pressure to support the family equally distributed today among men and women?”
This is the result of gender roles. Guess what system came up with that? Guess who has been (for some years now) decrying this very example of gender roles?
“unfortunately they are too dense to do the right thing, or more likely just want to keep their privilege of dying more frequently at work.”
More like they want to continue keeping their priveledges of being the focus of society, the ability to rape women with few consequences, make the most money, gain the highest political offices, have the most representation and the least responsibility to change what benefits them, regardless of who it injures.
But kudos for adding in an MRA reason to pay women less and ignore the male priveledge checklist.
“And the distribution of alimony paid ($7 billion per year men to women / very little woman to man) is also something to think about. ”
So is the fact that women and children make up the largest impoverished group of people.
“Which barely renders us human, …”
———————————
I think I’ll check out of the discussion with that kind of rhetoric.
Do you even believe yourself what you say? Maybe the problem is that people don’t take YOU seriously (you, not because you’re a woman) so you generalize that to your group.
Last I checked, humans had autonomy over their own bodily organs and it wasnt up for debate. Valued human beings have doctor written prescriptions honored. Valued human beings aren’t labelled slutty liars when attacked. Valued human beings aren’t treated as commodities to be bought and sold. They aren’t reduced to a reproductive duty.
is the pressure to support the family equally distributed today among men and women?
More anecdote, but…In my experience the pressure is fairly equally distributed or more on the woman. But then, in my experience, the main pressure comes from situations where one spouse has lost his or her job and the other is pressured by economic necessity rather than social expectations to support the family. It’s my impression that pink collar jobs are often “safer” (ie less likely to disappear in a layoff) and easier to come by, possibly because they are less well paid and lower status, than blue or white collar jobs. Therefore, it is often the woman who is left to support the family when her spouse/partner can’t or won’t get a job. But again this is just anecdote.
It would also depend on your definition of support.
Financial? Or everything else.
And given the numbers of single mothers and the laughable concept of child support, I’d say the pressure is on the mother. If all that was required of me was to bring home a paycheck, I’d think I got off rather easy.
If all that was required of me was to bring home a paycheck, I’d think I got off rather easy.
Well, speaking as a father, let me know where I can get that deal. I’m expected to do a lot more than bring home a paycheck. (Not that I mind.)
Pheeno, the only reason I recently got a blog was to have a “street address” as it were, a place where people could find me if they wished to continue various discussions long after a thread a died somewhere else.
At the very least, you need the same, as I would like a way to somehow read more comments of yours, regardless of what blog you’ve left them on. You write well, and make good points.
Last I checked, humans had autonomy over their own bodily organs and it wasnt up for debate.
I take it you haven’t been following the abortion debate then? Or the various “excusable rape” scenarios? Women’s rights to control their own organs–particularly their sex organs–are very much up for debate.
Which is my point. *OUR* bodies are up for debate. We *aren’t* treated as humans. I cant even expect a man to pull out in the middle of sex if I tell him to stop. But pointing that out women aren’t treated as humans was called rhetoric.
“Well, speaking as a father, let me know where I can get that deal. I’m expected to do a lot more than bring home a paycheck. (Not that I mind.) ”
Get a divorce. Then you can have MRA’s argue that writing a check every month is the equivalent to giving birth and raising a child as the primary care parent. Or talk to pro forced birth advocates. They seem to think having kids is a piece of cake.
I take it you haven’t been following the abortion debate then? Or the various “excusable rape” scenarios? Women’s rights to control their own organs–particularly their sex organs–are very much up for debate.
Dianne, I think that pheeno’s point is that women aren’t treated as valued human beings. If they were, there would be no debate surrounding these basic human rights.
Men’s rights to control their own organs is just as nonexistent as women’s. Why is it necessary to try and seize ownership of the oppression? Nobody has bodily autonomy in our current system, and if bodily autonomy is truly the end product that is desired, then fight for that, instead of for narrow privileges for one group.
That would also have the beneficial side effect of prompting a debate about the merits and demerits of bodily autonomy per se, which is not a simple or one-sided question.
Is anyone proposing that men should be forced by the state to donate any of their internal organs for the good of their children? If your child will die without your kidney, will the state force you to donate the kidney?
I don’t understand what you mean by this. Under what circumstances does Donald Trump lack bodily autonomy?
[Comment moved by Amp to the open thread, since the discussion is off-topic here. Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with thread drift; it all depends on context, and in many cases I don’t mind thread drift at all. But in this particular case, I thought moving the digression about bodily autonomy to a different thread made sense.]
I have several disagreements with how you’re discussing patriarchy, Pheeno.
First of all, we don’t just live under a patriarchal system. We live under a patriarchal, racist, classist, ablist, heterocentric, transphobic, imperialistic system. But your comments (like “It *is* mens system, regardless of who created it. It caters to men, its made to fit men, it works for men and male voices are the only voices it values”) ignore that the system of oppression is multi-dimensional, not just female/male.
Secondly, your arguments are putting things in absolutes, but in practice the system is not absolute. In our society, is is more likely that a man’s voice will be valued than a woman’s; but it doesn’t follow that all men’s voices are in all circumstances more valued than all women’s. A male immigrant digging ditches does not have a more valued voice than Barbara Boxer’s.
If you ask me if men in general should do more, I’d agree wholeheartedly. But to look at the specific case of men who are killed by the work they do and say they benefited from the system is missing the forest for the trees. Yes, they doubtless did benefit in some ways from being male; but on net, they were harmed more than they were helped. And they were harmed, in part, by sexism.
The impression that you and Miss Andrea are blaming the men for their own deaths is what is getting a defensive reaction. Not the idea that men ought to be working against the system.
That impression is because the ” you just hate men/you said all men are rapists” type reaction happens to the best of us.
“First of all, we don’t just live under a patriarchal system. We live under a patriarchal, racist, classist, ablist, heterocentric, transphobic, imperialistic system. ”
Those are all rather common subsets of patriarchy. If you start off with the concept that men are better than half the human race, its not hard to start adding to it.
“Yes, they doubtless did benefit in some ways from being male; but on net, they were harmed more than they were helped.”
When you stack it against the myriad ways they benefit, and consider that it perpetuates women being raped and killed daily then Im not so sure.
At any rate, to help this work related death situation you *must* eradicate the system. And women shouldnt bear the bulk of that burden. Men are simply going to have to pick up their fair share of the load. Basically (and excuse the generalization) if men are getting men and women killed, who is the onus on to stop it?
pheeno, I’d argue that sexism, racism, ablism, etc., are all manifestations of the same fundamental human glitch – whether their power is in physical strength or economic control or sheer numbers, people tend to want to abuse it. Even the most homogenous civilization has women or else it dies out, so that’s the form of abuse that shows up across the board in history. And I agree with you that misogyny sets the stage for both the bases and the expressions of a lot of other kinds of hatred.
But forms of oppression all operate in separate, though complementary, ways in our culture. I think I get the theory behind what you’re saying (and I agree with parts and disagree with parts of that theory) but as a whole I’m not sure it’s realistic to expect theory to match up so neatly with practice. That hatred of women underlies homophobia, for example, doesn’t mean that gay men have a stronger voice in our culture than women. In fact, gay men have the weird twisted version of misogyny on top of the power of numbers against them, and do in fact have fewer specific legal protections than women do.
I’m also just confused by the context of whipping this out here: I might be misreading you, but it comes off as an attack on Amp for having written the post. But you’re also saying that men should be doing their part to end patriarchy, and dog knows Amp writes about feminist issues all the damn time. Talking about how patriarchy hurts men is part of that: those proverbial 18 year old boys don’t know of any reason to be feminists, because our society doesn’t advertise any of the (many, well-founded) reasons. Given that the world isn’t already perfect, it’s important to spell those reasons out for it.
“pheeno, I’d argue that sexism, racism, ablism, etc., are all manifestations of the same fundamental human glitch – ”
Well that’s pretty convenient and clean.
“Even the most homogenous civilization has women or else it dies out, so that’s the form of abuse that shows up across the board in history.”
It’s absent in several cultures one can still find today.
“That hatred of women underlies homophobia, for example, doesn’t mean that gay men have a stronger voice in our culture than women.”
No it doesnt. They’ve been “demoted” to the position of women. And they’re treated accordingly.
“Talking about how patriarchy hurts men is part of that: those proverbial 18 year old boys don’t know of any reason to be feminists, because our society doesn’t advertise any of the (many, well-founded) reasons. Given that the world isn’t already perfect, it’s important to spell those reasons out for it. ”
And it needs to start with fathers, brothers, uncles, buddies ect. An 18 year old man isnt going to listen to women if the men in his life (or male “role models”) haven’t taught him to, but instead have shown him how he benefits from sexism. And while he may not have created the system, he still benefits from it and I doubt anyone has put a gun to his head and forbade him to pick up a book. God knows the info is out there. So no, I dont think its too much to expect that men be responsible, inform themselves and NOT wait until they figure out it hurts* them *before they bother. And I dont think its too much to expect men to start fixing the system that they perpetuate, conciously or not.
No one has an issue with women fighting the system that gets them killed by the thousands. But mention that men should fix it, why thats victim blaming, and men are *individuals* and its unfair to make them fix it when they didnt start it ect ect… Talk about priveldge.
I merely pointed out that these “sexist” deaths were the result of their own misogynistic desire to avoid pink collar work. So yes, I guess I am blaming them. So what? Pointing out the obvious makes me a bad person? Or just someone who points out the obvious?
What do you call someone who can’t handle the truth?
I read somewhere that most email communication is wrongly interpreted about 40% of the time. So I guess I should always include a disclaimer: This isn’t about you.
Miss Andrea,
People die doing the dangerous jobs because the jobs are either fundamentally dangerous (Alaskan bush pilots) or because the jobs are allowed to be dangerous to keep them cheap (farm work and slaughterhouses). That the people who die are men is because men are discouraged from taking pink collar jobs, and women are discouraged from taking blue collar jobs, but the problem isn’t that men are dying doing these jobs, but that people are dying doing these jobs. The fact that the patriarchy means that it is men dying instead of women is not really a solution to the problem.
pheeno,
Do you claim that all the societies that aren’t patriarchies (which one’s are you claiming this of?) lack all other forms of class oppression?
I didn’t think it was about me; I have a pink-collar job, after all. (When I was hired, my boss told me she almost didn’t hire me because of my sex.)
But I do think that your view is overly simplistic. Both women and men are subject to social pressures and sanctions; the reason men don’t apply for pink-collar jobs in droves is sexism, but not only their internalized sexism, and not only misogyny.
Everyone has some internalized sexism. Everyone could, in theory, have overcome their social programming and made different choices. But in practice, not everyone has the clearsightedness, or the internal strength, or the motivation, or the whatever to do that. The solution isn’t to say “he should have been stronger, he should have done better, so we don’t have to care about his death”; the solution is to try and be part of a movement to change the system. Because no one can do it as an individual.
I guess I should have included a disclaimer: This isn’t about you. :-P
I don’t think you’re a bad person, and I’m sorry if I gave that impression. I do think you’re a person who disagrees with me ideologically, but lots of people disagree with me ideologically.
The problem with pointing out “the obvious” is that what’s obvious is, in this case, simplistic and mistaken. Men’s lives (like women’s) are constricted by sexism, and in many cases also constricted by other factors (personality, individual quirks, racism, classism, etc.). To simply say “he should have done pink collar work,” as if the reasons he didn’t do pink collar work have nothing to do with a larger system of sexism and sex roles that we are all marinated in from birth, is to put the blame where it doesn’t belong.
[Edited to desnark a bit]
That’s the second time you’ve suggested that anyone here has said that men as a group don’t have a responsibility to fix what’s wrong.
Could you please directly quote anyone on this thread saying such a thing?
The closest I can see to anyone saying that, in this thread, is my comment #2. But it’s also obvious, in that comment, that I was not responding to the claim that men in general are responsible for trying to fight the effects of sexism, but rather to the claim that it’s appropriate to respond to concern about men who get killed by saying “I’m playing the world’s smallest violin.” If you thought I was saying “men as a group don’t have a responsibility to fix what’s wrong,” then you are very mistaken.
OK. I realize several people have said this, but … I’m going to try rephrasing it anyway, because I really don’t think the positions expressed here should be that far apart.
Or maybe I’m totally misunderstanding eveyrone’s arguments, in which case, please correct the heck out of me.
So:
Men have set up a system that benefits them as a class.
Men, as a class, have set up a system that fucks over a certain group of men, who die disproportionately.
Men, as a class, have a responsibility to fix the system that benefits them as a class, both because it injures other classes, and also because it fucks over certain subsets of their own class.
Women, as a class, have a responsibility to fight against the system that is oppressing them. Or perhaps not responsibility, since they aren’t the ones who created it, but — you know — it’s a good idea.
Women and men are thus hopefully allied in fighting against the systems of oppresison.
Unfortunately, in the real world, women take on a disproportionate burden of this fight, and also, because of the system they’re trying to change, have less actual power to change the system.
Thus men, at this point, have a greater obligation to step up to the plate, both because there aren’t enough of them doing it, and also because they are the ones who have the systemic control.
Men have to solve this problem which affects men.
Unfortunately, because we’ve all been braced with terminology that deals with men and women as opposed forces rather than allies, and because we’ve all been subjected to MRA arguments that see any gain for women as a blow against men, it’s hard not for a woman to see “sexism causes disproportionate male deaths” and translate that as “women are causing a disproportionate number of men to die.”
When in fact, it’s that men are causing a disproportionate number of men to die.
And they should cut it out.
You know, preferably with our help.
*
Also, I’ve decided I was being a jerk with my reservation about a blog specializing in PHMT. I think a blog specializing in PHMT would be kind of great, just as I think a blog specializing in “religious men can too be feminists committed to the ideals of social justice” is great, even though sometimes I can’t really deal with reading Hugo on account of me being an atheist and not really interested in the way he talks to anti-feminists. I would hope that a PHMT blog would be something I could read and participate in, but even if it’s something that would turn out to nettle me, as a feminist in my position, who cares? Surely there are people who need to talk about PHMT, and as long as it didn’t turn into PHMM (Patriarchy Hurts Men More) or EFBAPATIFOTS (every feminist blog anyone pays attention to is focused on this subject) — and really, the latter’s quite unlikely — who am I to object?
“That’s the second time you’ve suggested that anyone here has said that men as a group don’t have a responsibility to fix what’s wrong.
Could you please directly quote anyone on this thread saying such a thing? ”
How about I quote the stats you posted that show the majority in this society do not, evidently, think they do? To quote someone else “its not all about you”. If you (and other men here) don’t share the mentality the men Im talking about do, why are you identifying with them and becoming defensive? If you recognize the need for more to step up and be more active in ending this, and Im talking about the men who don’t, why on earth do you assume Im talking about *you*? You aren’t the sun and my thoughts on this dont revolve around you.
Read mandolins translation. Its correct.
mando;
where amp says this:
he is saying something different than what you are saying.
to me, the difference is that men probably all contribute to making dangerous jobs more dangerous for men via macho crap. True. but that is a secondary result of the fact that anyone is doing that job in this way in the first place, which is not primarily the result of patriarchy, but of the class system, which most men are not responsible for and dont benefit from.
Actually, I’d guess that everyone who has posted here so far is more similar than not in idealogy even you Amp! Btw, when I wrote my disclaimer, I wasn’t thinking of anyone in particular. I realize most men have a tendency to get defensive when the subject of women’s oppression comes up, even though they themselves are not guilty of oppressing women. It’s difficult (and time consuming and wordy) to always include enough information so that they don’t feel personally attacked.
It reminds me of conversations with people of color about racism. It’s much easier to find a place where everyone has already figured out that it’s ok to talk about various aspects of injustice without someone immediately assuming everything is about them personally.
People of color know that there are folks within traditional power structures who are cheering them on and hoping and working for true equality, but POC also are painfully aware that some folks still want them to sit at the back of the bus. It’s difficult for POC to talk to both groups at the same time.
Disclaimer: It’s not about you, it’s about an infinitely larger system of which you are a infinitesimal cog
Amp did not start out his original post talking about the class system. He started out by talking about sexism.
I agree that classism is a large part of why those men chose those jobs. I merely pointed out it was their own attitudes which prevented them from pink collar work.
That is all. No more, no less. (Though I did take some potshots at the mra’s. Incidently, did anybody ever find any mra’s which aren’t just trying to justify women’s second class status? I’m not being as snarky about this as some people would assume. Also, Amp is doing a better job at men’s issues than the mra’s, lol!)
“to me, the difference is that men probably all contribute to making dangerous jobs more dangerous for men via macho crap. True. but that is a secondary result of the fact that anyone is doing that job in this way in the first place, which is not primarily the result of patriarchy, but of the class system, which most men are not responsible for and dont benefit from.”
Absolutely.
However, Amp’s claim, as I understood it, was that it was sexist for more men to suffer, not that it was classist. Obviously, these are interlocking systems of oppression. And just as obviously, the class dimension is only part of the story, since we are talking about specifically male deaths. Class is a gendered experience, just as gender is a classed experience.
Since the patriarchal male-dominated system is the axis we discuss when we’re discussing male versus female statistics, it seems to me that an analysis of “Is this sexist?” must, while perhaps presupposing a class dimension, also look at the male/female axis, which is what I was attempting to do.
“However, Amp’s claim, as I understood it, was that it was sexist for more men to suffer, not that it was classist”
Allow me to correct myself: not solely that it was classist.
I’ll go on to say that it is classist, and that I, as a daughter of a priveleged class, have therefore a responsibility toward these men and toward that activism, in the same way that class of men men bears a responsibility toward adjusting the systems that oppress the class of women. I, too, am an oppressor.
let me clarify–by “all” i did not, in fact mean “all,” just that it is possible for working class men to contribute to gender of oppression of men on the job as opposed to the oppression of wage work, which working class men cannot be held responsible for.
I think, ideally, that men and women would both have equal access to all kinds of work, an that men should not have to disproportionately bear the burden of unsafe work.
But what I really wish is that work was as safe as possible and that we lived in a classless society. Reducing sexism in this situation goes only a small way toward solving the problem for men.
“I think, ideally, that men and women would both have equal access to all kinds of work, an that men should not have to disproportionately bear the burden of unsafe work.
But what I really wish is that work was as safe as possible and that we lived in a classless society. Reducing sexism in this situation goes only a small way toward solving the problem for men.”
Ditto.
I take all in this sort of context to mean “as a class,” so it didn’t particularly bug me. I’m sorry if my reaction reflected a misunderstanding of your ideas.
no, no–I just did want anyone else to be confused, a possibility i realized existed upon a second reading.
I thought that was kind of what mra meant. Like how we might say skinhead when we mean white supremacist: if we don’t mean nazi, even if the person’s head is indeed covered in skin, it’s usually clearer to just say ‘bald.’
In a contextless world, fighting specifically for more rights for men could be an independent action, but given that they already have way more rights, it necessarily means actively maintaining women’s second class status. To bring it back to racism, you couldn’t work to give white people more rights (more? I’m not sure how many more we can fit in our knapsack anyway) without intrinsically pushing POC further down.
Now, if someone’s working to give everybody more rights, they might just be a plain old activist. :D
“…but given that they already have way more rights, …”
———————————————–
For instance?
Nemo, are you asking for a defense of the existence of feminism?
Around the world:
The right to drive.
The right to divorce.
The right to not bear children.
The right to have a voice in government.
The right to choose one’s spouse(s).
The right to work.
The right to own property.
In the US:
The right to join the clergy of just about any religion.
The right not to be tested for HIV if they don’t want to be.
Not having their right not to bear children infringed upon and threatened.
That’s just off the top of my head, and just speaking legally. In practice, there are a whole lot more. Maybe ‘perks’ would be a better term for them, though.
The right not to be tested for HIV if they don’t want to be.
Why should anyone have this right?
Whether or not anyone should have this right, surely we can agree that we shouldn’t have a system where some people have the right and others don’t, which is our current system.
—Myca
Yeah, what Myca said
;)
I’ll admit to not being up to the minute on the public health policy around HIV, but as far as I know, nobody has the right to not get an HIV test if the public health authorities wave their magic wand. Am I wrong?
Sure, but you’re dodging the question.
I’ll put this in more right-wing terms.
We could all have our guns taken away at any time if the government declares a state of martial law and a national security emergency.
First, they’ve not done that.
Second, even if they had, only taking guns away from white men would be out of line.
As a left-winger, I may be in favor of the government forcibly taking all our guns (and that’s a discussion for another time), but even if I’m in favor of that, that’s an essentially different proposition than them only confiscating the guns of one racial/gender group.
As it is, the right of men to not be tested is unquestioned, but the right of women is not. Argue for universal testing if you like . . . and I might even agree . . . but that’s not what we’ve got right now, and I think it’s disingenuous of you to not acknowledge that.
—Myca
pheeno writes:
This all assumes that men aren’t raised to believe that they are entitled to what they are asking for and/or that what feminists claim isn’t just plain wrong.
Here are men, dying for hearth and heart, and what are those women doing? Why, women are telling men just how evil it is that men are doing this.
So much of the cult of masculinity is about how men exist to protect and provide for women and children, and men have plenty of evidence that they are doing this, and paying for it with their lives. So, gee, why can’t women just be more grateful?
One of these days I’d like to start reclaiming the term “men’s rights activist”. I’d like to start with the rights for men to wear skirts and heels and makeup, take pink collar jobs, and express emotions in ways not traditionally masculine, without fear of harrassment or violence or social control, or the need to retreat to a few little urban enclaves.
In tilting the balance, this makes it easier for women to occupy roles other than the role defined as “not-man”, because if no territory is “not-man”, no territory defined as the forbidden, unsought, unpaid and disrespected territory, and all roles are occupied roughly equally by whoever wants to occupy them — if there is no “not-man” side to dump shit on — then the shit, and the privilege, kinda gotta flow more equally.
The redistribution of power is not the redistribution of those positions in which power is placed (i.e. women vying with men for places in the boardroom; no one vying for places in the copier room) but rather the redistribution of power from those positions to all positions (i.e. everyone vying for places in the boardroom and the copier room when the copier room arrives on a fairer footing and the people who work there are treated more equitably.)
But I’m digressing way off the topic of the thread. To address that, I’ll say:
Men seem to be expected to “put up with” the risk of death and dismemberment. Women seem to be expected to “put up with” unlivably low wages and lack of advancement. Everyone in the US seems to be expected to “put up with” insufficient sleep, overlong hours, poor health (in my last actual job, I had a health plan which only had medical offices open during the job hours, and if I actually went to the doctor, I would be penalized in various ways… Gregor Samsa’s predicament does not seem so far off) lack of vacation time, and other such disgusting conditions.
Every time I work a job, I’m left having to pretend that this is OK, because it’s more OK than being penniless and homeless.
In other news, China just called Bush out on human rights conditions.
The people who run the country, mostly men, have been driving it into the ground. This shit needs correcting.
Myca,
I seem to remember a mandatory AIDS test when I got married. I could be wrong, but are you SURE there are no mandatory tests for men?
But that’s not the best response. I might also note that the pregnancy-related tests are the result of the fact that women, duh, carry babies and all that. Women are not men.
Which is why they have certain sets of rights that are different from those of men (men don’t get to choose re abortion, for example) and ALSO why they have certain sets of responsibilities that are different from men (men don’t have the tendency to pass diseases to their children in utero directly; it happens through the mother as a conduit.)
It is true that sometimes logically-based policies can have the appearance of sexism. AIDS testing for pregnant women and HPV vaccination preferentially for girls are two great examples. But though i am a feminist I am also a scientist and in situations like this, science wins.
That’s an interesting argument, and a pretty good one. I’ll have to think about that a bit more.
What biology-based legal responsibilities would you say men have that women do not?
—Myca
the easiest one is lack of rights and not a responsibility per se: men don’t (and shouldn’t) have any say in making abortion decisions.
There are other legal responsibilities as well. please note that I think these are generally justified. nonetheless, the reality is that (pursuant to the abortion/ conception physical differences) the current laws re things like parental rights and child support mean that post conception a man’s responsibilities are largely determined by the woman and the government, while a woman’s responsibilities are more under her control-theroretically, at least.
Women get hit with some extra physical responsibilities as a result of pregnancy. There is simply no equivalent for men that I can think of, mostly because we’re one shot guns. Post conception, there’s little we can do to affect our kids’ health through direct physical action. There is PLENTY we do indirectly, which is why the above-mentioned control issues exist.
“The right to join the clergy of just about any religion.”
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I don’t know if “right” is the right word.
Religions are private organizations. On the other side of the coin, I’m not sure that men would have the “right” to join the women’s Olympic Track & Field Team, or Podunk High School’s women’s gymnastics team. Or work out in Curves, or demand a high-up post in NOW.
Now people can certainly demand that the Catholic Church change to what they want it to be (I guess), but I’m not sure that people have a natural *right* to demand anything from a private organization.
“Not having their right not to bear children infringed upon and threatened.”
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That one’s kind of shaky, because the US Supreme Court actually created a right (some would say out of thin air, since there’s nothing like it in the Constitution) to have an abortion.
That right exists today. It starts stretching logic to turn that around to a fear that the right may be taken away, although it hasn’t been, and to call THAT a right that women are lacking. Or something like that.