No sexism in dirty jobs
A true meritocracy
Ski patrolling, like so many other blue collar jobs, is a true meritocracy, if the merit of measure is a physical necessity and if you are at the bottom rank.
When the stakes are tangible and real, such as providing first aid in an inhospitable environment, or clearing a clogged shitter if you’re a plumber, you either can and want to do the job, or you can not, or do not want to.
There’s a natural entry and exit threshold to the job. Before anything else, comes the question: do you really _want_ to do this, because you better get comfortable, being uncomfortable.
How well you can do it is a matter of experience, the system you are embedded in, the opportunities you are given, interests and talents.
Some may ride skidoos better than others, but get squeamish and puke right next to the heavily bleeding injury they’re treating, some hold a steady hand when handling explosives, but have questionable customer service skills. Yes, men are stronger and that’s why you rarely see a female bricklayer, but women in blue collar jobs, like cleaners and truck drivers will light a fire under your ass if you’re ever messy or late and they don’t care if it’s Mary or Joseph’s ass.
I find this quite satisfying and, more importantly: less political than work environments littered with abstract KPIs, ROIs and people “circling back” on things in general wanker-nomics talk. I can honestly say, as a ski patroller, ski instructor and ropeway technician on the lowest ranks, sexism was always really far down on my list of problems.
Derogatory comments for not being, or indeed being, from a certain place? Sure.
Obnoxious, entitled customers? Absolutely.
Complacency? More than I care to admit.
Unqualified bosses with little to no leadership skills? Hell, yes.
Not making enough money? You can’t spell ski professional without ‘broke’.
Gatekeeping? A phenomenon ubiquitous in the outdoor industry.
But somehow, sexism never seemed pertinent to the more miserable, and thus most revealing days on the job.
It seems to me that blue-collar, aka: dirty, co-workers, understand what it takes to do the job, are not as prone to sexism because we simply don’t have the time for it. Some jobs are so tough (and sometimes gross), nobody contemplates identities, since everyone’s busy DOING THE ACTUAL JOB and simply expect others to do the same.
A meritocracy of character
To be clear. I am not saying sexism doesn’t exist.
The systematic rolling back of women’s rights in increasingly autocratic states, the overwhelming and continuous violence against women and the shameful lack of men standing up for women's rights on a daily basis are undeniable.
I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t mention the harassment I’ve experienced by a man who was a fellow ski patroller. However, I am sure he would have (and has) done so no matter what environment he was in. When I called it in, my (male) co-workers and boss protected me, and sadly he wasn’t the first or the last man who ever treated me poorly. Notably, the ski patroller has since been shunned by society (unemployed, divorced, lost social standing in town), because his anti-social behavior was just too far outside the fringes on what a community will accept.
In other words...I’ve never seen someone who was being sexist not also be a dick to other people, animals and nature in general. I’ve never met or worked with anyone who I experienced sexism from, or heard that they were a covert racist, who would have simultaneously been considered a great leader or an admired mentor. For example, a key executive at a company I used to work for is widely considered a choleric narcissist, as well as a sexist. When workers (both male and female) talk about her, her greed and incompetence are mentioned long before her apparent need to diminish other women, whilst publicly broadcasting her love of the sisterhood.
Or take my aforementioned personal case of male harassment. When I told people what was up, nobody was surprised. Not because they’d seen his behavior towards women in the workplace before (I was the first female ski patroller this place had ever had), but because he had belittled our colleague M. because he suffers from tremors, got into a seemingly unprovoked fist fight with colleague T. (though we all know he was just jealous of T’s superior mustache and skiing skills) and so on and so so forth.
No one is ever only a sexist.
If you behave like a dick towards the opposite gender, you probably behave like a dick everywhere else in life.
It is not gender that divides us. It is quality of character. It is whether or not individuals choose abuse, physical or emotional, as their weapon of choice over the hard work of honest introspection and personal growth. When you leave the dirt behind and climb up the white collar ladder, much of that quality of character is quickly and easily diluted by money and power. “But it is men that hold most of the money and power!” I hear you say. And that is true. But that is correlation placating as causality.
Who’s merit is it anyway?
What I see everyday is not so much a gender war, but a class war. Sexism, like ageism or racism, is a convenient distraction from greed to retain its stronghold over the world. It is no accident that greed and pride are named the foremost destructive of the seven sins.
As the ingenious late comedian Ralphie May said on racism: “Where I grew up in Arkansas there was no black and white. We were all just broke. What’s your color? Poor.”
The (deteriorating) meritocracy we live in was built by men for men. The standards of success were set when humans settled into an agricultural, non-nomadic lifestyle and by many measures are a victim of their own success. In the richer corners of the world, as we reach the age of what I call the neo-humanities, powered by AI and a mostly self-actualized work force, those merits will adapt. With AI taking over much of the processes that give value reward in the interest of things rather than people, the humanities are propelled into a new renaissance of power.
With that, predominantly female traits like emotional intelligence paired with emotional sensitivity, or a more peripheral view on problem solving are working their way into what is considered a measure of success. This process can’t happen fast enough, as we should all aim for a gender union, rather than a distracting gender war.
What will remain are the dirty jobs. There is no place like the bottom of the ranks that reflects what is going well and what is going badly within a society. As long as we need and/or choose to get down and dirty with each other, and become farmers, cleaners, nurses, plumbers, electricians, and sometimes even ski patrollers, we should ask ourselves one question above all else:
Is it moral integrity that props us upright, or the illusion of importance on the carpet of glittery quicksand that is pride and greed? It is only if we succumb to the seventh of the seven sins, sloth, and become indifferent, we become truly de-humanized and the earth will get rid of us quicker than a golden retriever shakes off a watery coat.
So whichever way you’ve indexed the personal inequalities and unfairnesses you’ve experienced lately, you have a choice to make. Will you get bogged down in an ideological war zone, where you see the sexism - racism - whatever-ism and stop there, or will you aim for what we all want more than anything else?
To be judged by our quality of character.
To live in a union of abilities not a war of weaknesses.
If the latter overpowers the former, face it, name it, step over it, and move towards a world that rewards the merits you deem worthy. To know what those are, you too, must improve your quality of character.