Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Woah go go gadget long

So I was just going to continue the last post I started using the handy dandy edit command but I just realized how long it was so I decided that it would be better to just break it up a bit. Right now I am involved with the history of labor in the United States. That's cool though because the history of labor is INTENSE. Pre feminist movement the last time the workers revolted enough to get something to happen people died. A lot of people. That is what happens when you piss the people with the dynamite off. What I am reffering to is the stuggle for the mine workers to get some sort of non horrible working conditions. Mine owners were, for the most part, horrible human beings, who just simply didn't give a shit. Mining is dangerous in the best of times. In order to get to where we are no they had to literally attack some of the mine owners. It is a really cool history. For moar information pick up a copy of Dynamite: The History of Class Violence in America by Louis Adamic. At one point we had to kill our bosses just so that we could have something less than a ten hour work day. Crazyness. However, we are starting to drift. The point is though is that empolyers in america have always been dicks. Oddly enough with the advent of the civil rights movement, and the feminsist movement that came both during and after (its been a long movement) was the first time in American history where signifigant changes to the the way labor works in America.

This is neat. It is also one of the great unspoken benifits of Feminism that more or less has gone unacknowlaged. I think this is because this is mostly a side benifit with a narrow focus and not because they tried to do some good for everyone. Umm I guess I'll make sense of that right now! I hope... Okay so when women reentered the world place wholesale post WW2 they came into an increadbly hostile work environment, especially in terms of sexual harassment. LONG story short due to law suits both fivilous and worthwhile they have managed to change the way we talk and act at work, particularly twords women. The magnitude of this accomplishment can not be stated enough, and while it is still a problem it is no where NEAR as bad as it used to be, and assuming you work in a corporate owned establishment it can carry with it some real repercussions.

Women are also making progress in things like "in house" day care and maternity leave. Like I said in order for men to geth their work day reduced to ten hours we had to blow shit up. However, with the maternaty leave we end up back to something I said earlier. The changes that women made to the work place were only paticularly suited to them and not really to anyone else. Am I a fan of maternaty leave? Fuck no it isn't like I can get my punk ass pregnant. However, getting more sick time and better options for family leave? Yeah that is something that would of mattered a little bit more. Assholes. Also while women did a LOT of work to make the work place more hospitable to them they really have a long way to go and it would help if it were to be less narrowly focused. Because, back to the original point, work really sucks. Right now in front of me, here at Books a Million a manager is going through an employees bag before she goes home. If one of my managers would try to do that at work I would tell them to go fuck themselves. If law enforcment can't do that without a warrent then why the hell would I let some random asshole. That's me though and I am mean to my employers.

Last time I did this I really did play it safe for most of the post so I think I will try out another one of my "not safe" ideas. That is, for a variety of reasons, many women hit the workforce unprapared for the work force. *ducks* Does this statement apply to everyone? No heck the statement isn't even smoothly applied across the gender. Heck it isn't even restricted to one gender and what I am about to talk about can and does happen to men. It is just that it is more pronounced in women because of the way our society is set up. See Americans go through two very diffrent but drastically important parts of their life. The time between 15-18 when we go through highschool and stuff, and the years between 20-24. The amount of growing up people do during the years of 20-24 is incredible and I've seen it happen time and time again where people become radically diffrent during this time. This mostly has to do with the fact that you end up on your own for the first time, and a whole buncha other crap. During both of these times the desire for men to have sex with women is more or less at its peak. For whatever reason men do nice things for women so they can have sex with them. This is a practice that I have never understood, I also belive that is why my bed is empty. I dunno.

Every time a girl pouts and gets out of something, or sweet talks her way into an extension, or gets someone else to do something for her in exchange for nothing, it changes the way they interact with the world. I know some women who can get a ride downtown with one man, get dinner, and get a ride back with another man without fail. If they have enough sucess with batting eyes and making things happen with a smile then it comes as a rude shock when all the sudden it stops working. Work sucks. So it will more than likely happen there.

So what happens? They give up and return to the kitchen where all needs are taken care of for them by someone else.

Okay I am going to stop here because I am badly loosing focus and I want to go home. I will either pick this up again tomarrow or saturday.

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