THE FAIRER SEX
Short Stories on Male Privilege
No. 6
The Glass Floor
'Our country was built by strong women, and we will
continue to break down walls and defy stereotypes.'
- Nancy Pelosi
Monday, 4.58am.
Adam wakes two minutes before the alarm, leaves home and drives through the housing estate to the motorway. At the depot he speaks briefly with Barry his foreman about the pick-ups for the day. He climbs into his truck, places the daily schedule on the passenger seat, and returns to the motorway. His first pick up is on the other side of town, a construction site where a skip packed with concrete slabs awaits him. At the site he turns the truck round and backs up, dismounts, and uses the hydraulic gear to lift the skip onto his truck. He returns to the driving seat, waves to the crew, and drives off to the waste-processing site, where the concrete will be broken up for hard core. On a near-by trading estate he spots a mobile café and stops briefly for a bacon-and-egg sandwich and a mug of tea. He returns to his truck and drives to the motorway.
It is now 6.25am.
On the motorway Adam passes a maintenance crew. It is still dark, and the crew works under brilliant construction lights. Chris drives the paver, which lays the asphalt. Danny follows with the roller, which compacts it. Eddie holds a rake, to assist manually with levelling. They have been working since 4.00am. The asphalt steams and stinks as it leaves the roller. To accommodate the approaching rush hour, the middle lane was re-opened at 5.00am; this is also when the sleet stopped; but the chill wind is unabated. Many motorists ignore the 50mph speed limit. Eddie briefly removes his helmet, and wipes his forehead with his forearm. He considers which time of year he dislikes the most. In winter you can wrap up, but sitting on a construction vehicle is no help if the cabin is unheated, or when there's no cabin. At least manual work warmed you up. In summer there was no way to cool down, and your shirt got sweat-soaked. The unending traffic noise was another stress, but eventually your ears tuned it out. The same could be said for the traffic fumes and your nose.
It is now 6.57am.
Frank, George, Harry and Ignacio drive past the maintenance crew in their refuse truck. They must visit 2000 homes. Their route is very precisely timed: an average of no more than fifteen seconds per house. They drive onto an estate in which the five-bedroom houses have long, winding driveways. Frank is driving: he stops to let the other three dismount. There then begins the crawling, in which the men run alongside and bring the wheelie-bins to the truck. The hydraulic gear grabs the bins, tips them upside down while shaking them, brings them back down; the crew then return them to the drive entrances. A pervasive stink soaks into their clothes; but eventually the nose tunes it out. When George took this job, he made sure to start his shifts with an empty stomach. Following the truck is Jack and his son Karl: they clean the bins with water-jets, for householders who ask for this additional service.
It is now 7.39am.
The noise made by the refuse truck wakes Grezell Clotworthy, Professor of Feminist Studies in the Gender Studies Department at the University of Bolixford. She gets up. A familiar play now takes place in which her three children are given breakfast, and packed off to private school. She makes a mental note to call her bank: the child-support should've been paid into her account the previous day. Aurora, her Filipino maid arrives. Professor Clotworthy hands her Filipino maid the minimum wage, before leaving to teach feminist studies at the university.
It is now 9.10am.
Professor Clotworthy drives down the winding road to the entrance of the housing estate. She passes Larry and Mark, who are sitting in a hole at the side of the road. They are diagnosing a fault in the cable transmission. They have been working since 6.00am, but at last have a good idea of where the fault is. Larry strips some insulation from a cable. Mark checks the potential with a voltmeter. There is a small puddle close by, and the passage of Professor Clotworthy's car splashes them.
It is now 9.32am.
On the arterial route, Professor Clotworthy drives through a brief section of open countryside. In the distance, Nick and Oliver are at work in the field. Nick uses a spade to dig a ditch, or rather re-dig it, as it has silted up - the field was not draining properly. Oliver has brought the tractor with its trailer as close as possible, but he must still carry all the fence posts the remaining thirty yards. His shoulder is getting sore. The sleet has started again. A few minutes later it turns to hail, which stings their faces. But the two men continue working regardless.
It is now 10.18am.
Professor Clotworthy parks her car, and shivers as she walks into the Gender Studies Department, where she heads for her office, and converses briefly with her secretary about her schedule of meetings for the day. The warmth is welcome; it is provided by steam, which arrived along a conduit underneath the road from the boiler house, where Philip tends to the boiler. He carefully observes the gauges for pressure and temperature. He has been at work since 5.00am.
It is now 10.30am.
Professor Clotworthy enters a lecture theatre where thirty students are assembled; she delivers her third lecture on Patriarchal Architecture. She tells the students that urban spaces are imbued with toxic masculinity; that cities are endless processions of upward-thrusting buildings; that office blocks are phallic monuments to male privilege; that cityscapes are patriarchy written in stone, concrete, metal, glass and brick. This is a world made not just by men, but also for men. Cities, after all, reflect societal norms; of which sexism is the deepest-rooted one. This injustice - 'skyscraper rape' - has a hand in gender-based discrimination, sexual harassment and the wage gap. What we need, is feminist urban planning. What we need, are feminist architects.
It is now 11.40am.
Professor Clotworthy has a tutorial with a Ph.D. student, at which they discuss an appropriate title for the student's forthcoming thesis. They agree on Fart Rape - A Passive-Aggressive Weapon of Male Power. The thesis argues that gas issuing from the male anus is, in effect, a poorly veiled threat of anal rape; that when this threat was made to straight women, it was 'heterohysteria', and when it was made to gay men, it was 'homohysteria'. The student asks Professor Clotworthy for her overall opinion of the thesis: was it 'seminal'? Professor Clotworthy warns the student about 'masculinist vocabulary', and refers her to the department's regulations about safe spaces. She refers to the BBC's campaign to stamp out 'fishermen'; it should be 'fisher person'. 'Yes', says the student, 'but there are no women on trawlers, that's why we never say 'fisherwomen' ". Professor Clotworthy tells the student that that's beside the point.
It is now 12.30pm.
Professor Clotworthy proceeds to the refectory, where she has lunch with several feminist academics and students. There is a consensus that men are nowadays largely irrelevant - women have little need of them. They discuss their concerns about men's-rights groups on-campus, and their hidden agenda to re-institute patriarchal norms of oppression. A notorious activist, Milo Yiannopoulos, has been invited to speak. Such events were loudly picketed by feminist organisations demanding 'safe spaces' for women, and using threats to get them; they threw milkshakes because women lack any real power. This time, the university might pass security costs to the men's-rights activists, rendering the event financially unfeasible, causing it to be cancelled. The advertised topic was 'reforming the divorce courts'. But this was an attack on a fundamental right: the right of women to divorce their husbands, and then to live off their ex-husband's money.
It is now 1.30pm.
Professor Clotworthy attends a meeting in the Gender Studies Department, the subject of which is the 'Glass Ceiling', and how to address it in the course syllabus. There are not enough female Members of Parliament. There are not enough female judges. There are not enough female CEOs. Women are held back, just because they are women. They condemn four departments in the university - economics, business studies, physics, engineering - where women are still under-represented. The twelve women propose writing a letter to the Guardian; the seven female professors concur. The only man in the room nods, and thinks of his pension.
It is now 3.00pm.
Professor Clotworthy returns to her office to continue writing a paper which she will send to the Journal of Feminist Glaciology. This was easily her best work. What she writes is this:
We here present what we believe is the first formulation of the glacier - and, by implication, the cryosphere generally - as an epistemological, postmodern discourse. By assembling a sizable nomological formulism, we demonstrate the existence of a postcolonial, hymen-centric ecology with substantial dynamic, static and feministic social-ecologic implications that both raise and ameliorate latent but nonetheless invidious aspects of toxic masculinity. We argue that the sensual, embodied and pristine nature of the glacier is somewhat analogous to the patriarchalist conception of 'womankind'.
It is now 4.00pm.
Professor Clotworthy stands up, puts her coat on and leaves for home. One storey above, Philip presses the control and the platform descends to allow him to clean the window of Professor Clotworthy's office. He runs his squeegee across the glass. Goggles protect his eyes from the spray of the cleaning fluid. Gloves protect his hands from the bitter cold. The wind nearly knocks him off balance, but he's secured by a harness. He is chilled, and flexes his fingers to try and bring some blood into them. Across the road, Sam backs his HGV around a snaking driveway to reach the construction site. Philip hears the pip-pip-pip of the reversing truck, looks down and sees a crew unloading lumber. Several men are at work in the construction site. Toby scoops a load of mortar with his trowel, lays it down, chops it a little, then places another brick on top. Tim and Umar knock nails into the lumber with their nail guns, and fasten rafters with rafter ties. Above them, Victor secures tiles to the rafters.
It is now 6.13pm.
Victor and Warren arrive with their sewage truck. Victor lifts the manhole cover and pushes the suction hose down the cesspit. Warren pushes the start button, and the pump raises sewage into the tanker. A frightful stink of stale latrine pervades the whole area, and passers-by hurry past, holding their noses. Victor and Warren talk about last-week's event: a sewer pipe burst, and on arriving they found the road strewn with toilet paper and faecal stools. One mile away, William and Henry don hazmat suits and breathing apparatus. They then climb awkwardly down the vertical ladder in the manhole, and wade, waist-deep, through human excrement. They must clear a 'fat berg': this is a blockage full of condoms, wet-wipes and tampons, items that should not be flushed down the toilet. First though, they look carefully for hypodermics. They realise that one of them will have to crouch down, such that his entire body is submerged in human excrement.
It is now 8.00pm.
The door to Professor Clotworthy's office opens. Quincy and Ralph enter: they are moving the filing cabinets and desk to the newly decorated office on the floor above; for Professor Clotworthy is the new head of department. To avoid disruption, the move is made during out-of-office hours. Quincey tips the desk until it is nearly vertical, otherwise it will not pass through the doorway. They juggle and wiggle the desk through the doorway. They huff and puff, until they reach the lift. Ralph straightens up, and places a hand in the small of his back. Quincey adjusts his lumber support belt.
It is now 11.00pm.
Xavier, Yousef and Zack arrive as an emergency response to a reported gas leak. They surround the site with signage and fencing. It is raining, and wind blows droplets into their faces. They dig, and three feet down they uncover the gas main. The noise they make wakes the neighbourhood, and dogs bark. Professor Clotworthy awakes, and thinks about her work that day. Only when the glass ceiling is broken, will women rise to the jobs they truly deserve. We needed more women in parliament, more women judges, more women professors, more women chief executives. Attitudes had to change - women were not there to serve the needs of men. She knew her work was undervalued, but she would do it anyway; for it was of the greatest importance to society.
Endnotes
Camille Bissel (2019). 'Fart Rape.' Yes, you read that right: https://www.pressreader.com/usa/benton-courier-weekend/20190825/281552292518928
Leslie Kern (2020). 'Upward-thrusting buildings ejaculating into the sky' – do cities have to be so sexist? | Architecture | The Guardian
Warren Farrell (1992, pp. 83). The Myth of Male Power.
Mark Carey, M. Jackson, Jaclyn Rushing (2016). 'Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research.' Progress in Human Geography, 40(6).
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