Brenda the builder
Before I write anything I will say how grateful I am for all the hard work and bra burning that happened in the name of feminism which I benifit from probably more that I even realise! Also there are still a number of places where something needs to be done.
But sometimes it goes too far and you need to stop your whinging, shut up and get on with it- I had a bad experience with a lecturer who just didn't shut up about the evils of all males.
There were a few issues with the builders in the area of a bunch of girls building houses and sexism. But was there really......? or are we just so ready to lable people and start ranting on about feminism. Some of the builders were reluctant to let us do brick laying, rendering , basically anything buildning wise rather than just carrying heavy stuff and found it funny.
1. Even in Aust, if I saw a bunch of girls on a building site I would consider it slightly amusing- more in a 'thats diff good on them' than a 'what the hell do they think their doing' kind of way but realistically there are many more male builders than females.
(bra burning arguement would be that females don't become builders because we've all been socially conditioned to not want to be. Good point, but as a girl who grew up playing with car and train sets as well as barbies and really enjoyed building houses I don't think this is 100% true.)
2. Was brick laying next to Ben and the builders did like working with him- but that was more (in my opinion) because he just got stuck into it and didn't get upset with every criticism going on about them being sexist. Ben coped as muck slack as me, if not more and it was completely frustrating at times esp when one builder showed you one way of doing it then another builder came along and redid all your work a slightly diff way- we learnt patience!
Totally understand where the arguments on both sides a coming from but think its so easy to get into a blaming mindset that you can bring a lot of it on yourself.
But sometimes it goes too far and you need to stop your whinging, shut up and get on with it- I had a bad experience with a lecturer who just didn't shut up about the evils of all males.
There were a few issues with the builders in the area of a bunch of girls building houses and sexism. But was there really......? or are we just so ready to lable people and start ranting on about feminism. Some of the builders were reluctant to let us do brick laying, rendering , basically anything buildning wise rather than just carrying heavy stuff and found it funny.
1. Even in Aust, if I saw a bunch of girls on a building site I would consider it slightly amusing- more in a 'thats diff good on them' than a 'what the hell do they think their doing' kind of way but realistically there are many more male builders than females.
(bra burning arguement would be that females don't become builders because we've all been socially conditioned to not want to be. Good point, but as a girl who grew up playing with car and train sets as well as barbies and really enjoyed building houses I don't think this is 100% true.)
2. Was brick laying next to Ben and the builders did like working with him- but that was more (in my opinion) because he just got stuck into it and didn't get upset with every criticism going on about them being sexist. Ben coped as muck slack as me, if not more and it was completely frustrating at times esp when one builder showed you one way of doing it then another builder came along and redid all your work a slightly diff way- we learnt patience!
Totally understand where the arguments on both sides a coming from but think its so easy to get into a blaming mindset that you can bring a lot of it on yourself.
posted by Mim @ 4:20 PM
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