THE FAIRER SEX

Short Stories on Male Privilege

No. 20

With Your Boots On

'We need to stop buying into the myth

about gender equality. It isn't a reality yet.'

- Beyonce

I

Bradley drove down the dirt road and drew up by the simple wooden cross. It now lay in several pieces, and numerous splinters were strewn about. That location was not, though, where the man had died - the cross was moved to make way for a new genset, after which some passing machinery had presumably crushed it. The man had been similarly crushed, while installing a side-tank. A grim irony.

Bradley, a roughneck with an oil-service company, was in the boondocks for a three-month contract. It paid top dollar. Largely on the strength of this job, he'd just proposed to his girlfriend, Emma. She had accepted. They were planning their life together. They would have a large family.

'You put your time in, son', the recruiter had said, 'and you'll be up a hundred grand at least. That's quite something for a guy your age. It beats stacking shelves, that's for sure. I sure hope you're good with heights, though.'

Yes, he was good with heights.

The money made a big difference. Back home his girlfriend worked for the same oil-service company; but jobs in HR hardly compared, wage-wise. There was a shift premium. There was an unsocial-hour premium. There was a boondocks premium. And there was overtime, lots and lots of it: drilling operations were 24/7. (Any unscheduled downtime, and corporate got very, very upset.) Overtime was not, generally speaking, optional. When the foreman came round with his clipboard, the correct answer, no matter how tired you were, was 'yes'. Only idiots said: 'I'm tired'.

The living accommodation was cramped and basic; there was nowhere to go during time off, not even a small town. Inevitably, the men sometimes got on each other's nerves. When arguments started, Bradley preferred to bite his tongue and think of the money.

And, as with all sites such as these, it was a female desert.

He opened the door to the pickup, got out and shielded his eyes. The sun's rays were peeping over the horizon.

The crew were standing about, waiting for the shift handover.

'Hoo-ee', Bradley said, laughing. 'Today's gonna be a real roast.'

Wind roared across the open plain, and angry clouds were approaching.

Hank, the oldest guy in the crew, batted the ice that clung to his beard.

The opposite weather was no better - you worked your balls off in sweat-caked clothes. Last summer, Bradley drank four whole litres of water in one shift, but hadn't passed a single drop of it.

'There's a new rig going up over there', said Wyatt, pointing with his middle finger. His forefinger had been taken off by a whiplashing cable. In fact, most men over forty had received some serious injury. Hank was slightly different, though: his wheezing chuckle switched almost immediately to a hacking cough, a souvenir of his twenty years as a coal miner. But Bradley had never seen the men bitch about their injuries. Instead, they turned each other's misfortunes into grim humour.

'We've set the drill-speed record for the field', said the foreman, approaching. 'Bonuses.'

There were whoops. A couple of men made obscene gestures toward other drilling rigs in the distance. The other crews returned the gestures.

They all turned to the sound of tyres on the dirt road.

'Fuck, not them again', said the foreman.

The car drew up and two suits got out.

'What is it this time?' the foreman asked the suits. 'Beetles or ants?'

The suits ignored this.

'We've discussed this more than once with your headquarters', said the taller suit. We were assured that you'd keep to the regulations. You have not.'

'We have.'

'You have not - your equipment is much too close to the protected habitat. You're endangering the toads. It is a question of toad safety. These toads are a protected species, and endangering them is a criminal offence.'

'Okay, okay, let's protect these goddamn frogs.'

'Toads.'

'Whatever. How far you want the machinery moved?'

'About two-hundred yards due east should do it'.

'It's boggy over there - it might make the cranes unstable. That's why we put the cranes over by your frogs.'

'Toads.'

The foreman turned to Hank and pointed to the new site. 'Do it', he said.

Hank walked off.

The foreman turned back to the suits. 'Just make sure your frogs don't go walkabout and get too near my cranes. I sure wouldn't want any of my cranes to . . . topple onto 'em. Elfansafety, an' all that. You know.'

The two wildlife inspectors went over to the toad's habitat and walked around, scrutinising the ground. One of them kneeled, and prodded with his finger. Then he picked up a stick, and prodded the ground with that.

'Bradley', said the foreman, 'Get up to the crown block - the inspection's overdue. Check for corroded sucker rods. Hooks as well. And this time you better not forget the sheave lube - otherwise I'll open a can o' whupass on ya.'

'Yes, boss.'

Bradley ran to the rig and shot up it.

The men watched with amused expressions. The rookie was keen to prove his worth to himself, as well as to the rest of the crew.

When Bradley reached the racking board the foreman was now beneath him, looking up.

'Look for cracks in the shaft support!' shouted the foreman.

'Boss', said Wyatt, walking up to the foreman, the well's a bit unstable.

'Nah, the salt water'll quieten it down', he replied. 'That's what salt water's for, ain't it. We don't have blowouts on this field.'

Bradley reached the crown block.

The crew got to work on the drill deck. Tools clattered. Muscles tightened and strained. Voices shouted. Boots thudded. The chill wind soared, and cables sang in appreciation.

Presently the crew felt a rumbling through their feet. They froze, and looked anxiously at each other. When the wellhead ruptured with a colossal clang, they leaped in unison and ran, a couple of them tumbling as they did so.

Eventually they turned to see the well eject the drill-string, which ascended hundreds of feet, snaking and spooling like a monstrous strand of gigantic spaghetti, a sight that was weirdly amusing and horrifying at the same time.

At the same time, a thick cloud of black smoke, intermingled with flames, ascended in a flash to the crown block.

The derrick, now a bent and twisted hulk, groaned and toppled, ejecting a flaming projectile which, arcing downwards, thumped to the ground.

Other men were rushing over from neighbouring rigs.

'Bradley's dead, man', said Wyatt.

'Jeez', someone grimaced, 'jump fifty feet or get roasted. Tough choice. I guess the fire decided for him.'

'Shut the fuck up', said the foreman, taking his helmet off and wiping his face with his sleeve.

They stood in silence, looking down at the human steak, sizzling as if on a grid-iron, blackened and charred on the outside; red and raw on the inside.

A few hundred yards off, a croaking sound drifted across the plain.

II

Gladys stepped gratefully into the office - a chill wind swept the parking lot, and sleet pestered the window. She looked out, shuddered, and felt the central heating radiator. Warm, thank God.

She went to the kitchenette, set the coffee percolator going, and saw that its electrical socket was lose. Tutting, she went to her desk and called the maintenance department.

The other women filed in. Small-talk ensued for a few minutes.

When all were seated and perusing their computer screens, Gladys said: 'Have you seen the wages the field operatives are now getting?'

'They're pretty good', said Emma.

'They're only roughnecks', said Gladys, 'yet they get twice what we do, some of them three times as much. They're even paid more than college graduates. The gender pay gap is still going strong, I see. Equal pay-day is now March 15. Women must work for 439 days, to receive the same pay as men do in 365 days. That's male privilege for you.'

Emma put her coffee cup down with unusual force.

'Speaking as a woman, she said, 'I find your falsehood offensive. If you want more pay, why don't you just get a job as a field operative like my roughneck fiancé?' No. Because these are men's jobs.'

Gladys opened her mouth, then closed it. Finally, she ventured, 'There's no such thing as a man's job. Or a woman's job, for that matter. There are only jobs. It's just that women tend to find oil-field jobs unappealing. However, that's not women's fault - the patriarchy socialises them into this attitude. If we got rid of the patriarchy, then women would apply. We need to dismantle patriarchal gender roles.'

'We hear all the time about equal pay day', said Emma. 'How about equal fatality day? Men do all the dangerous jobs - logging, trawler-fishing, roofing, construction, garbage collection, farming, trucking, mining. The statistics vary little year-on-year - men account for about 95% of workplace fatalities. When was the last time you heard of this gap? Exactly. Never. Equal fatality day means this - women would have to work for twenty years, before they died in the same number as men do in just one year. And what do we hear from feminists? Crickets. Some equality! All we hear from feminists, is how offensive it is to say garbage man, rather than garage person. Have you ever seen a garbage woman? Exactly. Never. You throw a hissy-fit if anyone says "manhole", but I've never seen a woman go down one!'

'Well, men choose these jobs, don't they?' said Gladys. 'Men leap into these jobs, because they've been socially conditioned to show how tough they are. Toxic masculinity harms men too, you know. They compete with one another to show how tough they are. They take stupid risks. Women would know better.'

'In the United States, around 4500 men die every year in workplace accidents. Contrast that with Vietnam - about 3000 men died every year. Do the math.'

An electrician entered the office.

'Over there', said Gladys, pointing to the electrical fitting by the coffee percolator.

It had taken maintenance an entire hour to respond. That was not good enough. Office safety should be prioritised.

Emma's phone rang.

'What? The police?' she said nervously.

III

Help Wanted

We have vacancies for field operatives on our drilling rigs: drilling hands, pump mechanics, rig mechanics, electrical linemen, roustabouts, tool-pushers, welders, crane operators, derrickmen, floormen.

We offer an excellent working environment: driving rain, freezing cold, biting winds, baking sun. You will be covered in dirt, caked in sweat, and inhale clouds of choking dust. Serious injuries and fatal accidents are an ever-present risk: falling from heights; electrocution from high-tension cables; burning or scorching by flames or hot equipment; crushing by machinery. If injured, you will be many miles from medical assistance.

In return, we can offer an attractive range of benefits. (1) If you are killed or injured, the company will evade compensation by retreating into a legal labyrinth contrived especially for that purpose. (2) Whenever the 'pay gap' comes up, which is all the time, especially on the BBC, feminists in cushy jobs will ignore the true nature of your work; so that, by comparing apples to oranges, they can fallaciously claim that women are defrauded. Also, this claim will remain entirely unchallenged by lazy or unprincipled journalists.

As part of our diversity policy we particularly welcome applications from women, who are underrepresented among our workforce. Curious, isn't it. Not.

Wasserschlegel read it through and chuckled. Obviously, it was a spoof. His retirement was not far off; and he had a second career lined up as a writer. Anti-feminist satire was like shooting fish in a barrel. Feminist fish in a bigoted barrel. Hey, that was good. He wrote it down in his notebook.

The office buzzer rang. 'Mr and Mrs Brandon are here, Mr Wasserschlegel', said the secretary.

'Send them in.'

He put the spoof advert back in his desk. He never showed it to clients, not as a rule. Not at Wasserschlegel, Wasserschlegel, Wasserschlegel and McCormack. The spoof advert was strictly for his second career.

'We want to know how we stand', said Mr Brandon, placing his hand on his wife's. 'We don't think Bradley understood the risks. Not really.'

'I've represented several families', said Wasserschlegel. 'There have been six fatalities on this particular oil field so far this year. Oil companies are very skilled at evading responsibility for accidents. First of all, the business employing the worker, and the business operating the well, are different entities - that's not an accident, and it's where the problems start. There are also layers and layers of contractors and subcontractors - it's like a big onion. They insulate themselves by hiring what they call company men to oversee the wells - they're not employees of anyone, but independent contractors. Oil-field contracts are also very good at shielding companies. You'd be forgiven for thinking that no-one's responsible for anything on an oil field. In your son's tragic case, the well operator misjudged the pressure in the well. But equally, the well operator didn't have any employees on site. No, really. And the situation with the emergency-egress line is ambiguous. I work closely with government regulators, and - this is privately my view - I think civil servants have difficulty unravelling all the legal shenanigans. The oil companies run circles around them.'

'There must be safety regulations', said Mrs. Brandon. 'Laws.'

'Contractors can insist on safety, but they all know that if productivity suffers, they'll simply be replaced. Companies also bid low to get the job, then subject the men to unrelenting pressure to complete on time, which creates an understandable tendency to take shortcuts. It should be admitted, of course, that crews do like competing with one another. Last but certainly not least, oil companies skimp on safety training because it costs money. How much safety training did your son get?'

Mrs Brandon looked questioningly at her husband.

'He had one day, then he was on site, working.'

'As it happens the safety standards are quite good, legislatively speaking; it's their poor enforcement that's chiefly the problem. Unannounced inspections would certainly help. Also, fines should be increased by at least a factor of ten.'

'It always comes down to money in the end', said Mrs Brandon.

'Well, not quite. Better enforcement would need more laws, which would in turn require the political will to enact those laws. But when men work in dangerous jobs, the political will to protect them seems to be lacking.'

'You mean they'll get away with it?' asked Mr Brandon.

'Oh, they'll pay up eventually - it's purely a business decision to them. They'll balance the cost of litigation against the cost of compensation. When the two come into balance, that's when they’ll pay. Actually, they're quite happy paying fines and compensation - to them, they're just like any other overhead. They're pin money as well.'

When the Brandons left, Wasserschlegel leaned back in his chair and thought. Although he never said so to grieving relatives, not explicitly at any rate, these men were considered disposable, not just by their own employers, but by society in general.

This had always been the case. The Victorians who built so much of today's infrastructure were even more relaxed about workplace deaths. Their small-scale engineering projects usually took a dozen lives or so; large-scale ones took several dozen. All men, of course. Yet today we drive through those tunnels, or over those bridges, or walk past those buildings, without giving those men a second thought. There are no plaques - these men's names are now lost to history. If women were historically oppressed, as feminists invariably claim, then this was a very odd way of oppressing them. Men were dying out on the oil field, and they were seen as disposable. Who was being oppressed, exactly?

Interestingly, whenever the media covered oil-field accidents, reporters stated that x-number of 'workers' had died; or that x-number of 'people' had died; and yet they were all men. Gender-neutral terminology even in death, it would appear; unless a woman was killed, in which case her sex would be explicitly stated.

Wasserschlegel pulled out a newspaper article he'd clipped that morning. According to this article, the previous year had been 'especially dangerous for female journalists'; a claim it justified by saying that 19% of the fatalities were women; not that 81% of fatalities were men. Of one thing he was certain: if women took oil-field jobs in significant numbers, then unsafe working practices would be outlawed faster than you could say 'patriarchy'.

IV

Workplace Gender Equality Agency

Senatorial Oversight Committee

(Transcript)

SENATOR. In advance of this meeting, I submitted a written question to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency concerning workplace safety. You replied, by letter, that the agency does not collect any data on workplace safety in connection with gender equality. The question of whether or not employees are in a fit state when they leave work, or indeed if they get home at all, is surely of glaring importance. The statistics are not in dispute: women get home from work far more reliably than men do. Is not this a gender-equality issue in employment?

CIVIL SERVANT. Senator, we collect data on six gender-equality indicators, as prescribed by legislation.

SENATOR. As prescribed by legislation, yes; but does this legislation prohibit you from collecting data on workplace safety, as it relates to gender?

CIVIL SERVANT. Senator, as I said, we collect data on six gender-equality indicators. I will read them out for you. We collect data on the gender composition of the workforce; renumeration and gender equality; employment terms, conditions and practises as they relate to gender equality; consultations on gender equality between employers and employees; sex-based discrimination in hiring practises; and gender equality as it pertains to career progression to senior levels.

SENATOR. Are you prevented from doing anything else beyond that?

CIVIL SERVANT. Senator, the legislation is quite descriptive as to what we collect data on. We collect data on six gender-equality indicators.

SENATOR. You have said that. It is not what I'm asking. I wonder why you take no interest in workplace safety and gender, since men compromise the overwhelming majority of workplace deaths and injuries. Would you collect such data if the statistics were inverted, and twenty women died for every man?

CIVIL SERVANT. I really couldn't say, Senator.

SENATOR. You really couldn't say. Do you think that if more women worked in jobs that entail danger and hardship, jobs that are highly paid because of that danger and hardship, then that might help close the gender pay gap that we hear so much about?

CIVIL SERVANT. I really couldn't say, Senator.

SENATOR. You really couldn't say. It seems to me that some of your gender-equality indicators are rather vague. There's nothing vague about a man who ends up six-feet under. Death is a rather straightforward and easy statistic to collect, is it not. Tell me, are you truly interested in workplace gender equality, or does your idea of equality only work one way?

CIVIL SERVANT. Senator, I must tell you that I find your question offensive.

Endnotes

·        American Enterprise Institute, ‘Equal Pay Day’ This Year Is April 12; the Next ‘equal Occupational Fatality Day’ Will Be in the Year 2027 | American Enterprise Institute - AEI

·        Collins, W. (2019. The empathy gap - male disadvantages and the mechanisms of their neglect. Section 3.5, 'Occupational health and workplace injuries and deaths'. LPS publishing.

·        Farrell, W. (1993). The myth of male power - why men are the disposable sex. Chapter 4, 'The death professions - my body, not my choice'.

·        Investor.com, Gender Pay Gap? What About The Workplace Death Gap? | Investor's Business Daily (investors.com)

·        Global Citizen, 2017 Was Especially Dangerous for Female Journalists (globalcitizen.org)

·        Lazarus, (2435) Male Workplace Deaths and Accidents - YouTube

·        PBS NewsHour, (2204) Why North Dakota’s oil fields are so deadly for workers - YouTube

(c) Cufwulf Montagu

Cufwulf@aol.com