A Powerhouse of Lies in New Zealand
By Men's Activism News | Tue, Nov 16 2010, 09:33 PM
Article here. Excerpt:
'It was a spiel I was used to. When men die on the job, they are not men. They are “workers,” “firefighters,” “soldiers,” and other professional labels designed to distract us from the idea that they are human beings. Sometimes, they are even reduced to something as generic as “personnel.”
Anything but men.
And of course I listened to this with the certainty that if by any chance any of those “workers” happened to be female, I would have heard the now ubiquitous woman inclusion. The tour guide would have to work from an amended script, telling us that 16 “workers” died, including one woman.
...
But what got to me, what made my skin crawl and turn a bit crimson, I am sure, was on the wall behind me; a backlit testimonial standing above the row of exciters in the machine hall.
{image}
It’s worth reading and thinking about. There I was, standing above the plant’s machine hall, housed in a space carved out of a million metric tons of solid rock, listening to a female plant employee tell me about the “workers” that died building her place of employment, with a glowing sign on the wall behind me that cast the men who did it all like a bunch of drunks and derelicts.'
'It was a spiel I was used to. When men die on the job, they are not men. They are “workers,” “firefighters,” “soldiers,” and other professional labels designed to distract us from the idea that they are human beings. Sometimes, they are even reduced to something as generic as “personnel.”
Anything but men.
And of course I listened to this with the certainty that if by any chance any of those “workers” happened to be female, I would have heard the now ubiquitous woman inclusion. The tour guide would have to work from an amended script, telling us that 16 “workers” died, including one woman.
...
But what got to me, what made my skin crawl and turn a bit crimson, I am sure, was on the wall behind me; a backlit testimonial standing above the row of exciters in the machine hall.
{image}
It’s worth reading and thinking about. There I was, standing above the plant’s machine hall, housed in a space carved out of a million metric tons of solid rock, listening to a female plant employee tell me about the “workers” that died building her place of employment, with a glowing sign on the wall behind me that cast the men who did it all like a bunch of drunks and derelicts.'
