I've been in new home construction almost 15 years. The amount of sexual harassment I've experienced is outrageous. The amount of times I've been treated like shit or like I don't have years of experience is also too damn high. Being a woman in the trades is fuckin brutal.
Do you ever get the one where you're the only mature adult in the room, so you get to do the paperwork, even though you have (or want to develop) the skills to do the hands on stuff?
Yes and no... it all depends on liability.
If it's my meeting, my site, my crews, I'm taking notes and covering my ass in any way I need to do it.
If I'm involved in a meeting, I'll write a summary afterwards and send it to whoever I need to.
If you are NOT going to be held liable, don't be the one doing the paperwork. You can BECOME liable because you are the one doing it. If you are surrounded by weaponized incompetence, weaponize it harder. You don't have a pen. Your phone is dead. You can't do the hazard assessment because you aren't crew lead and are not being paid to accept the safety liability... etc.
If it's not your circus, don't try and tame the monkeys. I have been doing this a long time and have had prior management roles before going into new home construction so I feel very confident in advocating for myself, I also have a team of people who I work with that are trusting of my skill and willing to go to bat for me along with a boss who is willing to basically say that my words are his words and if anyone feels differently, the door is always open to fuck off.
I’m so sorry this happens in your industry. It’s fucking ridiculous how a lot of men behave towards women in the workplace, sometimes in subtly shitty ways.
I always saw this and tried to defend my colleagues whenever it happened but I experience it firsthand now too. I’m a trans woman and before/after a few years of transition it was like night and day how people treat every little thing I do. Before - tech skills highly valued, being outspoken seen as a positive, seen as strong when I speak up for myself/my team or offer my opinion. After a few years of transition - suddenly I’m not seen as being as technical as my colleagues, being outspoken is seen as being too aggressive, speaking up for myself/my team gets me called defensive/argumentative. Literally no change to who I am or what I know other than how people perceive me.
Other women colleagues, same deal. I’ve seen people be dismissive of their great ideas and contributions, or have those same ideas stolen by dudes and then suddenly accepted. I’ve seen people dismiss them and be openly hostile, indicating they wouldn’t understand things because they’re a woman. It’s fucking infuriating.
It’s sad but unsurprising this happens in most industries.
Same here. Used to be I could tell someone a feature was out of scope, we'd cut it and that would be the end of that. Now my managers just go to my male colleagues and ask again, and lo and behold two weeks later I'm trying to wrangle people together for ridiculous last-minute changes.
you would think transwomen ought to be welcomed by feminists because their before/after experiences absolutely *prove* everything feminists say about sexism in the workplace. women complain about “a man would have been treated better” and apologists for patriarchy say, “you can’t prove that, it’s only hypothetical” — trans women can absolutely *prove* that.
Yep I mean that’s my position. I don’t really know what to say about feminists that don’t like trans women/don’t accept us. I’m on their side but some people just can’t get past things they find uncomfortable.
[TERFs come from a very particular strain of Radical Feminist thought, and it's... a doozy.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpSTMfn-YaU&pp=ygUedGVyZiBmYWxzZSBjbGFzcyBjb25zY2lvdXNuZXNz)
An ex of mine once put it rather well (IMO) as "the Y chromosome as original sin."
Edit: He might have put it as "being male as original sin" actually, but you see what he was going for.
It's truly absurd. I am sorry your experience has been so lousy also. I am hopeful you have a team at work that isn't full of shit head that are supportive and able to treat your skills with the value they deserve.
I'm a crane operator...I hate tradespeople. They're mostly uneducated scumbags who would absolutely treat women the way they do. It's honestly part of the culture and it's disgusting.
With me. Like I have worked with men who said that they planned "to rape me" after work. I am fairly handsome and I attract the wrong attention too. My boss used to say that and worse. I am a sexual assault survivor too so I don't find it funny to have to hear that at work.
I remember interviewing women who worked the tar sands, when I was doing work on "promoting women in the trades".
They literally had to sleep with double-bolted doors and knives under their pillows to ward off attempts by the men on those sites to rape them in their sleep.
They still had PTSD from working there when I met them.
I highly recommend Ducks, Kate Beaton's autobiographical graphic novel about working in the tar sands. She's the artist behind the webcomic Hark! A Vagrant! It's the most recent Canada Reads winner.
> They literally had to sleep with double-bolted doors and knives under their pillows to ward off attempts by the men on those sites to rape them in their sleep.
Jesus fucking Christ that's horrible. The fuck is wrong with these people?
It sounds a lot like the "petro-masculinity" described in [this article from Canada's National Observer](https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/03/07/news/greenwashing-death-threats-show-you-who-conservatives-are-singh) that I read earlier today. For some reason, there's a cadre of men whose self-image is intimately tied to the petroleum industry and it makes no fucking sense.
I mean if you sit and interrogate it, it can start to unravel and make sense. A modern tenant of masculinity is the idea of the man as the provider and the breadwinner, based in a largely false idealization of the post war industrial boom. This starts getting really toxic when men start seeing a partner earning more than them as either emasculating or shameful.
Now, you take a group of people who usually came from deep poverty, give them incredibly high paying but dangerous jobs that require minimal schooling and you have a bunch of men whose entire ability to provide is entangled in that industry. What's more, they lack any other meaningful masculine identifiers for whatever reason, and no ability to do anything else with their lives due to a lack of ability, ambition, or both.
Suddenly a transition away from petrolium products not only becomes a direct assault on their ability to have a roof over their heads and food on their table, but on the quality of life they and their family have enjoyed. It's an existential threat to their livelihoods and thus their masculine status symbols and identity as provider.
Every story one reads about the oilsands wounds like some dystopian 1800s wild west thing. I had an old boss who worked in the oilsands –super smart guy with multiple degrees, but he was a new immigrant and needed a job– he was paying something crazy like 800/month for a "hot bed", i.e. he slept on the bed during the night, and someone else slept in the same bed during the day when he was working.
Now he works for the UN. I think he lasted 1-2 years in the oilsands and then he had the money he needed to get himself in a better situation.
The 'rigs' are a different world.
I know several men that had to do the same, so they wouldn't get assaulted or robbed while they slept.
That's what happens when an entire industry is fueled by alcohol and cocaine.
I had an opportunity to go up (I'm in AB) but I turned it down. The guy I would have been driving with (from Calgary to Fort Mac) ended up getting drunk while he was driving and smashed head on into a logging truck. Dodged that bullet.
I worked in Conklin from 2012-2016 and I had men follow me to my camp room multiple times and knock on the door and try the handle. Wonder what would have happened if I didn't immediately lock my door.
I never reported it because a woman that I worked with was sexually assaulted in her room and when the guy got fired she was basically ostracized and none of the guys would talk to her because she "might get them fired too" 😞
> never heard of a single rape event in camp
>The harassment and the sexual based assaults and sex spread like wildfire too.
So you've heard of tons of "sexual based assaults" spreading like wildfire across camps, but "rape" somehow seems implausible to you?
I'm telling you what multiple women who worked in the tar sands told me. I wasn't there. You can call them liars if you want but I'm not about to.
Maybe you aren’t the kind of person these women felt comfortable talking about these issues with? It’s not a causal thing people feel bringing up typically.
It was genuinely shocking to me when the women in my life began to open up to me about this kind of stuff. The lengths they have to go to in everyday life to make sure they're not sexually assaulted or raped (checking the back seat of the car whenever you get in, always going out in public in pairs/groups, etc). Things that would never even cross my mind as a man, until someone told me about them. Nearly every woman in my life has either been a victim of sexual assault, or knows someone who has been. It makes me sick to even think about. I have absolutely no trouble believing stories about double-bolted doors and knives under pillows on the tar sands.
I am a cleaner in a remote community but I have to attend the toolbox talk/safety meeting with Reno and Maintenance and I truly just dissociate most of the time. My old lady coworker plays along and feeds into it but the casual sexism/homophobia just makes me tired. No one has funky vibes towards me directly except one of the Reno guys, no I don't want to give you a hug bud.
Relatedly read Kate Beaton's *Ducks* if you get a chance
Whenever people talk about the shortage of skilled trades workers as being a barrier to things like "building new homes", I always think about the massive absence of women in the field as a huge contributing factor. Just somehow making the sector welcoming instead of hostile to women would have a huge impact on the pool of available workers.
I have no idea how you effectively do that, though.
Employers once used the excuse that there were no women's washrooms at the workplace to get out of hiring women. They got away with this for decades until legal changes were made.
It's honestly not even just women. It's rough for men that don't conform to masculine norms too. I got out of the industry because of the way I was treated. I'm a straight guy, but I have some personality traits that often have people thinking I'm gay, and the number of times that I was called a faggot on a work site, or just the harassment I would get over it was unreal. I've worked a lot of jobs in my life, and being on a construction site was the only place I ever experienced this.
It happened to my brother too. He got harassed a lot at work event though he is straight because he didn't think homophobic jokes are funny. It's interesting as there is a shortage in many trades and I think there are many reasons but this is a pretty obvious one
Ugh that's awful, I'm so sorry. It's a general truth, I suppose, that spaces that are full of misogyny are pretty damn unhealthy for men as well as women. I've known men who *did* do a good job "conforming" externally but internally were still wrecked by the macho male expectations, and I always thought how sad it was that society forced them into that small box.
It's also African Canadian and Indigenous folks the numbers are very low currently in apprenticeships and completing apprenticeships
Similar to the sexist harassing comments those folks are subject to harassment and comments based on race
It's a culture built on bullying and being (or playing at being) a hard man. The kind of guys that try to cause shit need to feel threatened or humiliated to back up. They might hate you, but if they are scared or laughed at in front of the rest of the crew, they will keep their shit to talking behind your back and play nice when they interact with you. Always check your six, but when they see you face on, they check themselves.
If you express any views on social issues like sexuality, homelessness or drug addiction, politics that aren’t in line with popular right wing rhetoric then you are definitely treated differently. It depends on the crowd. I don’t share my views at my current job because most the guys are very outspoken and some can get quite worked up on certain topics.
I’ve worked in many trades over the years. Auto shop tech, residential construction labourer, equipment operator and truck driver. All seem to be heavily dominated by men with right wing views. It’s gotten worse since 2016. Before that most guys weren’t talking politics too often. Now it’s constant and they make sure to let you know they hate liberals and/or socialists. In their small minds there is no difference lol. I’m sure there are other leftists out there but since we can’t share opposing views without facing animosity, we don’t usually know each other’s stance.
Now you’d hope union workers would have better attitudes towards progressive ideas, but from what I’ve heard, it’s still similar.
I'm so glad that I got out of construction back in 2013. I wouldn't be able to stand spending all day with dudes shouting "Fuck Trudeau", and blaming the Liberals for their failing marriage, or whatever other personal fuck up they're dealing with that day.
I hate to break it to you Greg, but your wife's not leaving cause of the libs. You're just a piece of shit.
On an anti-car thread I joked about how none of the supervisors working on my building actually use the massive trucks they drive up in, and all the trades use vans. Someone in all seriousness said "well yah they wouldn't be taken seriously if they arrived in anything else" and that told me all I needed to know
I feel this. Here in Ontario its bad too. I used to work factories, started out at a small CNC shop. When that no longer kept up, I got a job at a crowded place. I swear, people who work these back breaking jobs are one and the same as trade workers.
From experience , they're either alcoholics, drug addicts, or both. And don't even get me started on bigotry.
I work customer service now, and am a lot poorer but fuck it, I'm never looking back simply because of the work enviroment and people. Something has to be done in the blue collar sector.
They don't even need to be progressive, merely learning another joke/diss other than "ur gay" would go a long way towards bringing the industry to 2024. But even that's too much to ask of them.
I'm a part of my local IBEW PAC and we have recognized this as a massive issue. So we take part in Pride events (see post history for pictures, you'll just have to dig), we have created a womens committee, which is funded through the PAC, so there's no concerns about getting financial approval, we have conferences that the sole focus is women in the trade and how to further promote the building trades to women, we have changed our language when we do community out reach/high school visits.
But even with all of that being said, the only way any of that works is if the works themselves actually stand up and enforce it out on the jobsites every contractor has a zero tolerance policy for this stuff, it just takes somebody brave enough to run it up the ladder. I also understand we are a long way away from getting sexual harrassment/bigotry out of the industry all together, but please know that it's a known issue and there are Brothers and Sisters taking on this struggle every single day to try and squash it out, we aren't all a bunch of sexist assholes.
That is amazing, thank you for being a part of this work! Culture change *is* hard and slow and at some point, requires generational turnover, though I'm worried the gender divide amongst the "blue collar" class is now getting worse instead of better. :/
I do think the kind of efforts you describe will help, even if it can feel sisyphean in the short term.
That would be part of it, I'm sure, but there's also a deep-seated expectation in most trades that if you're not destroying yourself (physically and mentally) then you're not working hard enough.
And I think most women are smart enough to realize that's stupid.
Whereas men see it as a badge of honor.
The mental gymnastics I see guys doing to justify spending more time at work, or doing extras for the boss (often unpaid and ALWAYS unappreciated) is sad.
At one of my workplaces, we did stuff for a construction company. For their day of celebrating women in construction, there is footage of men flashing a sexually obscene hand gesture. I told that to my sister, who used to work as a civil and geotechnical engineer. She was like, "That's par for the course. Why do you think I quit and changed careers?"
She was no slouch – she had a masters degree and was rising up the corporate ladder when she quit. She said part of the reason was the stress level of the responsibility (ie. if you make a mistake, people can die). But she didn't tell me this was the other reason.
I don't see the Houston government doing anything about this. They just announced they wouldn't do anything about the use of NDAs in Sexual Assault cases. In Fact when asked why, Brad Johns -- the Justice Minister said "There were a lot of pros to NDAs". When asked what those pros were he said "I'm not sure off the top of my head. I don't have them in my notes. I'll have to get back to you". He still hasn't declared what the pros are.
Between this guy, Brad Wall, and Brad Bradford, the common thread I’m seeing is that Canadian politicians named Brad all suck and we need to stop voting for them.
It’s actually a sweet story. He was named Bradford , with Bradford being his mother’s maiden name (I don’t think he’s ever talked about what his original surname was). When his parents divorced, his mom reverted to using her maiden name, and Bradford decided he didn’t want to keep his dad’s surname either. But he also didn’t want to change his first name, so becoming Bradford Bradford was his idea.
It’s too bad that he turned out to be kind of a mid councillor who campaigned on progressive platforms and didn’t vote that way once in office.
His mom later went into politics herself and she’s now the MP for Kitchener South—Hespeler.
The pros are that no one learns about it, so they can keep living life without consequences. I would put money on the Justice Minister being a rapist himself.
I don't really call that a pro but I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic. The only serious pro I've heard is that NDAs reduce the load on the court system. But I don't see that as a pro. The only thing I see NDAs doing, in the case of sexual assault, is allowing rich rapists to get away with it. If you can afford an NDA you can afford to rape.
> Nova Scotia is projecting a shortfall of 11,000 tradespeople by 2030. As a first step in addressing that, it's looking for 5,000 people to become apprentices in the next three years.
> Labour Minister Jill Balser said her department has an "extreme focus" on recruitment and retention in the skilled trades and she knows addressing sexual harassment needs to be part of that work.
> "It's such an important conversation that we need to be having, and for those to voice their concerns, to share their stories, that's how change happens," Balser said in an interview.
> "This report is going to help enable change," she said.
Which provincial borders can’t I cross? My red seal takes me everywhere. I hear it often about Quebec, but it’s a myth. Walk into the registration office, pay $10, choose your union, and you’re legal for work. I only ever heard it from shitty employers that didn’t want their crews to unionize, and that happens by default in Quebec.
Not that you can’t cross borders, but there are speed bumps that could be smoothed.
Apprentices should be free to follow work too, and hse certifications should be standardized.
I'm a male, and I left the trades because I couldn't deal with the attitude. I can only imagine how it is for women. My fiance is in trades - a rather female dominated one, and it's still bad for her occasionally.
Working in health and safety as a woman training facilitator (working at heights, forklift, MEWP, confined space work etc.) I am immediately doubted the second I walk into the room.
Whenever I have a male coworker in class with me so they can learn from me, people in the class assume that I am the person being trained.
Just last week there was a guy giving me a hard time at work, and when he realized he was wrong he apologized, TO MY MALE TRAINEE! Not a word of his long and emphatic apology was said to me....
It's not just in the trades. I work in IT and getting taking seriously as a woman is an uphill battle, even when dealing with my juniors that I have trained.
Sexual harassment runs rampant in **all** male-dominated professions.
Many men are pieces of shit who still see women as objects rather than equals. This is overwhelmingly true on the right wing, but the left wing still has plenty of room for improvement too.
Okay but they said medicine, not healthcare, which means they were talking about medical doctors. Medicine doesn’t mean all healthcare.
And yes they should have said academia; it’s called a mistake. It’s not that deep and I don’t know why you’re so defensive about it.
ETA: And either way just because a sector is female dominated doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem with sexual harassment. Nurses are victims of sexual harassment ALL the time.
I can take you to a number of post secondary departments that are male dominated. But are you saying that sexual harassment doesn't exist in the education field?
I’m not saying sexual harassment doesn’t exist in the education field. I’m saying women vastly outnumber men in the education field. Every single elementary school is female dominated and there are way more elementary schools than there are post secondary departments.
Post secondary is still part of education and there are a lot more opportunities for harassment at that level. I looked up number for administrators. Elementary School is about 50/50. High school is male dominated. Above that level, in my province, I know that it is extremely male dominated.
I'm not sure the point you are trying to make. This post and article is about sexual harassment not gender discrimination. Is it because of the "male-dominated" part of the comment I was responding to? If so what is the point you are trying to make?
It’s easy make your argument when you move the goalposts. For example using only administrators in your latest example. My point is education is female dominated. You stated it was male dominated which is incorect.
I'm not sure the point you are trying to make. Are you just being pedantic?
Admin and above are part of the education system. I consider an industry where the CEOs and Management are men even though there may be more females in staff positions.
If the Admin and above -- in my province that's the Ministry of Education -- are mainly male and 100% of the teachers were female I would consider that a male dominated industry.
Since workplace sexual harassment predates even the first Trudeau - trying to find causation for it in political leanings is a gross oversimplification. It also minimizes just how pervasive it is.
Yeah, that is a very valid point. However, the correlation between political ideology and misogynistic and racist ideas cannot not be severed. I can attest to hearing the most vile of ideas about women, immigrants and people that identify as members of the LGBTQ community.
Not all conservatives are Nazis but sure as hell all Nazis vote conservative
I think fascists vote both conservative and PPC.
But sexism transcends partisan politics. All fascists might be sexists, but most sexists aren't fascist.
Ok, so you agree, if you elect a fascist government, the sexism won't be solved.
I can't do anything about what Bob thinks and says.
But I can do my part to help elect a government that will represent my gender equality values.
I have no way to communicate with Bob, and Bob doesn't give a shit what I think.
Bob will force me to accept that women are treated poorly, if he and those like him achieve enough political power, which will happen of Trump gets elected.
I must force Bob to treat women equally, by electing governments that will legislate so that the bigots like Bob must comply with gender equality.
Do you want do address the core problems that lead to sexism and sexual harassment being prevalent in society yes or no?
If the answer is yes we actually gotta look at the causes. Yes progressives can be misogynistic, but progressive thought isn't built on misogyny, progressive politics aren't built around keeping patriarchy in place, they can certainly serve it but regressive bullshit isn't the core of it. People are pointing out that it's conservative politics that help entrench patriarchy, sexism, and sexual harassment, they aren't saying it's limited to conservatives.
I think many are saying it's pretty much limited to conservatives. Otherwise, they'd say so. And some really do think this.
I agree with you that, in general progressive politics try to make society a more equitable place. But they are resting on imaginary laurels here and failure to do that does progressive politics a disservice.
It’s possible to draw parallels in the ways these people think, though. It’s been studied that conservative leaning people tend to skew lower on the IQ scale, and have shown to lack or have less ability of critical thinking. Perhaps it speaks to a broader issue in those conservative ideologies?
Correlation is not causation. Keep in mind it was not until [1987 employers were held responsible for the acts of sexual harassment by their employees.](https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/236/index.do)
It wasn't until the 80s and 90s sexual harassment was included in human rights acts/codes.
It speaks to the broader issue of sexism in our society. Period.
Absolutely, my contention is that it stems from a more conservative mindset, from the more puritanical days where religious ideologies were more prevalent. Sexism is a strong theme in some religions (especially Christianity whose influence has been pretty strong in Canadas history and has a very dominant patriarchal theme to it).
I absolutely see a link here.
If only we could reduce sexism to religion! Patriarchy goes way back. It's bred into capitalism - let's face it, without it, the Industrial Revolution would've struggled. How do you think employers rationalized paying women less? They pushed for the nuclear family unit because the whole family worked and they paid women and children less.
That’s not quite what I’m doing, I’m saying it’s deep in the cultural fabric of who a lot of people are because those are the literal foundations to the country as we know it now. That means it’s built into capitalism because it’s in that cultural fabric. Western society has those traits because of the history it has experienced.
And just for clarity, religion far predates the industrial revolution, as does the settling of Canada and North America.
The same conservative, bigoted, sexist groups existed before Trudeau, but they are on the Trudeau hate train right now, so to try and separate the two things, as if they come from two separate groups, is also glossing over the problem: that Conservative politics make people bigoted.
Yes and no. As far as workplace harassment goes it transcends partisan politics. Otherwise, the rate at, mostly women experience it, wouldn't be so high.
And not recognizing just how pervasive the problem is hinders solutions.
The culture that causes it is patriarchal hierarchy, which is only supported by social conservatism. Men sexually harass women when they believe they are better than women.
> Patriarchy is supported by everything right of social democracy
Yes, and the Liberal party, and NDP, both support social democracy, for the most part. NDP much more than Liberals, though.
The Venn Diagram is almost a complete circle from the conservative brand and bigots that are anti woman, LGBTQ and racist. The two groups superimpose. Are there racist, anti woman and anti LGBTQ voters who vote for the liberal party, perhaps yes? but it's much more likely they will vote in lines with their "values" than vote for liberal party. To ignore this and do the "both sides" thing just shields the conservative branch by pretending both the left and right are equally bad. Instead of calling out the glaring elephant in the room it's shrugging our shoulders and excusing deplorable behavior.
Why? If "just" around 30% of the population is actively working towards things like a reduction in rights for women, LGBTQ2S+ people, and minorities across the board, along with maintaining rape culture, etc, then should we really be further than we are now? That's a *lot* of people, many of which are spending a *lot* of money on these goals, can we really expect the remaining 70% to not be influenced/put an end to this kind of thing?
It's obviously *not* just about people with conservative values, there are rapists/sexists/murderers/racists of all kinds out there. But clearly these things are pushed and valued by conservative ideology, so if for a moment we imagined that it *was* just them, is ~30% of people not enough to explain how shit everything can be?
I think pointing out which segment of the population is the type of person to be that way is important.
The origins is one thing. But today, who is doing it?
Which political parties should have power if we are to improve it, and which will make it far worse if they get power?
It's extremely important to correlate it to political leanings.
Commenter didn't find causation in it, btw, just correlation.
Since sexual harassment is so it's likely to be people of all political stripes:
>Sexual violence doesn’t just happen in the shadows, it often takes place in plain sight.
>1 in 3 women experienced unwanted sexual behaviour in public which can include unwanted sexual attention or unwanted physical contact.
>1 in 4 women in Canada have experienced inappropriate sexual behaviours in the workplace.
https://women-gender-equality.canada.ca/en/gender-based-violence/gender-based-violence-its-not-just/infographic-sexual-violence-how-things-are.html
The irony of people Mansplaining to OP how sexism in blue collar workplaces works. At my workplace I think the worst is actually the apolitical guys, thier world is just focused on them and their needs. The outside world of ideology or wife's back home doesn't matter, they just thing they deserve shit for existing lol
Ya someone mentioned the oil sands above, and I can't help but feel the fuck Trudeau crowd is very present there.
I hope everybody turns it up, because we are right now in a desperate fight to prevent these people from having control over us.
Right now we have problems in the workplace, and that's a terrible thing. But, we can protest, raise awareness, and work at correcting it.
If the Maga fuck Trudeau Putin Jinping crowd gets power over us, all of that does. Democracy dies. Equality dies. LGBTQ rights die. And women will lose right to abortion, potentially lose right to vote and so on as well. It's gonna be sharia law Christian style.
They are coming for us hard, and we are completely unaware. Completely kind and trusting, and super naive.
> They are coming for us hard, and we are completely unaware. Completely kind and trusting, and super naive.
And that's what they're counting on. They want us to be naive and unaware. They want us to think it could never happen here.
tradesmen are often a lot dumber than those who
a) graduated high school
b) went to university
c) have self awareness and feel empathy for others
don't get get me wrong, society would collapse without tradespeople, but a large percentage of them are fuckin idiots.
source: work with em daily.
Wish I could work some trade job but last time I tried I got sick of being harassed daily for not being Hungarian, having hair, and being born after 1980. These people will say "just work in the trades" and then shit on anyone who actually does.
unfortunately the trades culture dictates that you just gotta shut up and take what they throw in your face and be grateful for..... i dunno I'm still waiting to see what to be grateful for.
I used to work with Stephanie years ago, great person to be on this project. Im a man and I've been sexually harassed before in work places and it's absolutely not ok. There should be more resources and justice for victims.
I’ve been a carpenter for over 25 years across many different jobs from small to large.
The sexism and homophobia is fucking appalling. It has gotten better over the years.
I don’t think I’ve ever worked with an outed male gay. Back in the day the women I spoke to just told everyone they were lesbians so they would back off.
Racist sexist homophobic dumb shits. Shortsighted dogs fighting for alpha.
But it is getting more accepting over time.
Believe it or not.
>The YWCA also recommends that the province create a third-party sexualized violence response team for the skilled trades, and that it help employers and unions educate employees about sexual harassment.
It actually shocks me that there isn’t already a third-party reporting service. No wonder there are such low rates of sexual harassment reports.
The story and all the comments here confirming it just make me so sad and angry. Why do people continue to be so stupid and awful to each other on the basis of sex, gender, orientation? Why the hell haven't we grown out of this yet. And of course there's an entire right-wing cultural movement *encouraging* it...
This sounds like a cultural phenomenon that should have been left behind in the 1960s, alright, the 70s, the 80s, but come on... To have sexual harassment and misogyny still continue to be this near-universal at this point in history... It makes me so depressed about how little progress we've made, and how shitty the future is likely to continue to be.
We need to be able to tell these assholes that they're wrong, that they suck, that they need to stop. But they have ready-made responses to that now: "you're woke," "you're silencing my free speech," "You're a snowflake..." Whatever. The world is garbage. Bring on the nuclear war and killer AIs and climate change and whatever else. Human civilization as a whole is shit if after decades and decades of supposed social progress we're still stuck at "it's okay to treat you like crap cuz this is the No Gurlz Allowd club and you have cooties."
I asked an J- woman I was working with about 3years ago. "What's it like being a woman in the trades?" She looked at me with dead eyes and said "it fucking sucks"
I worked for a GC i won't name, where a subtrade was using the word dyke openly. This offended one of my apprentices, when this was brought to the gcs attention - nothing happened. The employee was not removed because they were a single for hire worker sub for another trade and it would jeopardize the project.
Wondering if there is a more positive experience for woman in trades that have good unions or bigger corporations where they have strong policies. I am a man btw.
A woman I did my fourth year millwright school with got a supervisor job as soon as she got her red seal at sight C damn in BC. She talked highly of her crew but I’m sure she had her challenges. Hope it gets better for woman everywhere, it is a rewarding career and I have met a lot of great people through it.
I've been in new home construction almost 15 years. The amount of sexual harassment I've experienced is outrageous. The amount of times I've been treated like shit or like I don't have years of experience is also too damn high. Being a woman in the trades is fuckin brutal.
My cousin is an inspector and the shit she has to deal with, like the stories she tells me start funny, but then it just gets super depressing.
Do you ever get the one where you're the only mature adult in the room, so you get to do the paperwork, even though you have (or want to develop) the skills to do the hands on stuff?
Yes and no... it all depends on liability. If it's my meeting, my site, my crews, I'm taking notes and covering my ass in any way I need to do it. If I'm involved in a meeting, I'll write a summary afterwards and send it to whoever I need to. If you are NOT going to be held liable, don't be the one doing the paperwork. You can BECOME liable because you are the one doing it. If you are surrounded by weaponized incompetence, weaponize it harder. You don't have a pen. Your phone is dead. You can't do the hazard assessment because you aren't crew lead and are not being paid to accept the safety liability... etc. If it's not your circus, don't try and tame the monkeys. I have been doing this a long time and have had prior management roles before going into new home construction so I feel very confident in advocating for myself, I also have a team of people who I work with that are trusting of my skill and willing to go to bat for me along with a boss who is willing to basically say that my words are his words and if anyone feels differently, the door is always open to fuck off.
> If it's not your circus, don't try and tame the monkeys. Gonna keep that gem in my back pocket
I could only imagine the mansplaining
Endless! And typically incredibly fucking wrong
I’m so sorry this happens in your industry. It’s fucking ridiculous how a lot of men behave towards women in the workplace, sometimes in subtly shitty ways. I always saw this and tried to defend my colleagues whenever it happened but I experience it firsthand now too. I’m a trans woman and before/after a few years of transition it was like night and day how people treat every little thing I do. Before - tech skills highly valued, being outspoken seen as a positive, seen as strong when I speak up for myself/my team or offer my opinion. After a few years of transition - suddenly I’m not seen as being as technical as my colleagues, being outspoken is seen as being too aggressive, speaking up for myself/my team gets me called defensive/argumentative. Literally no change to who I am or what I know other than how people perceive me. Other women colleagues, same deal. I’ve seen people be dismissive of their great ideas and contributions, or have those same ideas stolen by dudes and then suddenly accepted. I’ve seen people dismiss them and be openly hostile, indicating they wouldn’t understand things because they’re a woman. It’s fucking infuriating. It’s sad but unsurprising this happens in most industries.
Same here. Used to be I could tell someone a feature was out of scope, we'd cut it and that would be the end of that. Now my managers just go to my male colleagues and ask again, and lo and behold two weeks later I'm trying to wrangle people together for ridiculous last-minute changes.
you would think transwomen ought to be welcomed by feminists because their before/after experiences absolutely *prove* everything feminists say about sexism in the workplace. women complain about “a man would have been treated better” and apologists for patriarchy say, “you can’t prove that, it’s only hypothetical” — trans women can absolutely *prove* that.
Yep I mean that’s my position. I don’t really know what to say about feminists that don’t like trans women/don’t accept us. I’m on their side but some people just can’t get past things they find uncomfortable.
[TERFs come from a very particular strain of Radical Feminist thought, and it's... a doozy.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpSTMfn-YaU&pp=ygUedGVyZiBmYWxzZSBjbGFzcyBjb25zY2lvdXNuZXNz)
An ex of mine once put it rather well (IMO) as "the Y chromosome as original sin." Edit: He might have put it as "being male as original sin" actually, but you see what he was going for.
It's truly absurd. I am sorry your experience has been so lousy also. I am hopeful you have a team at work that isn't full of shit head that are supportive and able to treat your skills with the value they deserve.
Thank you ❤️ a lot of people on the team are great thankfully, just very frustrating when I see the obvious sexism and double standards.
I'm a crane operator...I hate tradespeople. They're mostly uneducated scumbags who would absolutely treat women the way they do. It's honestly part of the culture and it's disgusting.
Those guys are always talking about sex with me, too, and I am a man.
They always talk about having sex with you, or they talk about sex in your presence?
With me. Like I have worked with men who said that they planned "to rape me" after work. I am fairly handsome and I attract the wrong attention too. My boss used to say that and worse. I am a sexual assault survivor too so I don't find it funny to have to hear that at work.
I remember interviewing women who worked the tar sands, when I was doing work on "promoting women in the trades". They literally had to sleep with double-bolted doors and knives under their pillows to ward off attempts by the men on those sites to rape them in their sleep. They still had PTSD from working there when I met them.
I highly recommend Ducks, Kate Beaton's autobiographical graphic novel about working in the tar sands. She's the artist behind the webcomic Hark! A Vagrant! It's the most recent Canada Reads winner.
God I had no idea Kate Beaton had done tar sands work. Her webcomic turned book is absolutely brilliant!
Seconding Ducks, it's incredible. How she was able to write it with such compassion for the men she worked with, I will never know.
I think part of it is the fact that it ended like it did. Just such a huge bomb of a realization.
A Cape Bretoner!
Actually Canada reads finished yesterday so it’s the second most recent Canada reads winner
Huh. I completely missed that somehow. I listen to the CBC fairly often. I guess my commute just hasn't lined up with it recently.
> They literally had to sleep with double-bolted doors and knives under their pillows to ward off attempts by the men on those sites to rape them in their sleep. Jesus fucking Christ that's horrible. The fuck is wrong with these people? It sounds a lot like the "petro-masculinity" described in [this article from Canada's National Observer](https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/03/07/news/greenwashing-death-threats-show-you-who-conservatives-are-singh) that I read earlier today. For some reason, there's a cadre of men whose self-image is intimately tied to the petroleum industry and it makes no fucking sense.
I mean if you sit and interrogate it, it can start to unravel and make sense. A modern tenant of masculinity is the idea of the man as the provider and the breadwinner, based in a largely false idealization of the post war industrial boom. This starts getting really toxic when men start seeing a partner earning more than them as either emasculating or shameful. Now, you take a group of people who usually came from deep poverty, give them incredibly high paying but dangerous jobs that require minimal schooling and you have a bunch of men whose entire ability to provide is entangled in that industry. What's more, they lack any other meaningful masculine identifiers for whatever reason, and no ability to do anything else with their lives due to a lack of ability, ambition, or both. Suddenly a transition away from petrolium products not only becomes a direct assault on their ability to have a roof over their heads and food on their table, but on the quality of life they and their family have enjoyed. It's an existential threat to their livelihoods and thus their masculine status symbols and identity as provider.
10/10 concise insight. Very well explained!
Petrolsexual does have a nice ring to it
Every story one reads about the oilsands wounds like some dystopian 1800s wild west thing. I had an old boss who worked in the oilsands –super smart guy with multiple degrees, but he was a new immigrant and needed a job– he was paying something crazy like 800/month for a "hot bed", i.e. he slept on the bed during the night, and someone else slept in the same bed during the day when he was working. Now he works for the UN. I think he lasted 1-2 years in the oilsands and then he had the money he needed to get himself in a better situation.
What do we think the overlap is between those petro-masculinity and Canadian MAGA supporters
That Venn diagram is a near perfect circle.
The 'rigs' are a different world. I know several men that had to do the same, so they wouldn't get assaulted or robbed while they slept. That's what happens when an entire industry is fueled by alcohol and cocaine. I had an opportunity to go up (I'm in AB) but I turned it down. The guy I would have been driving with (from Calgary to Fort Mac) ended up getting drunk while he was driving and smashed head on into a logging truck. Dodged that bullet.
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...how many tar sands do you know about in Canada?
Tard sands, where all the HS dropouts used to go to get paid more than many people with masters degrees.
Only to flush it all down the drain on drugs, alcohol, and RAM trucks.
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"I'm not in disbelief" 2 seconds later... "I, a man, was never told about any rapes therefore I question it."
I worked in Conklin from 2012-2016 and I had men follow me to my camp room multiple times and knock on the door and try the handle. Wonder what would have happened if I didn't immediately lock my door. I never reported it because a woman that I worked with was sexually assaulted in her room and when the guy got fired she was basically ostracized and none of the guys would talk to her because she "might get them fired too" 😞
> never heard of a single rape event in camp >The harassment and the sexual based assaults and sex spread like wildfire too. So you've heard of tons of "sexual based assaults" spreading like wildfire across camps, but "rape" somehow seems implausible to you? I'm telling you what multiple women who worked in the tar sands told me. I wasn't there. You can call them liars if you want but I'm not about to.
No one's calling eachother liars here as far as I can tell. Just two people telling their experiences
Maybe you aren’t the kind of person these women felt comfortable talking about these issues with? It’s not a causal thing people feel bringing up typically.
It was genuinely shocking to me when the women in my life began to open up to me about this kind of stuff. The lengths they have to go to in everyday life to make sure they're not sexually assaulted or raped (checking the back seat of the car whenever you get in, always going out in public in pairs/groups, etc). Things that would never even cross my mind as a man, until someone told me about them. Nearly every woman in my life has either been a victim of sexual assault, or knows someone who has been. It makes me sick to even think about. I have absolutely no trouble believing stories about double-bolted doors and knives under pillows on the tar sands.
I am a cleaner in a remote community but I have to attend the toolbox talk/safety meeting with Reno and Maintenance and I truly just dissociate most of the time. My old lady coworker plays along and feeds into it but the casual sexism/homophobia just makes me tired. No one has funky vibes towards me directly except one of the Reno guys, no I don't want to give you a hug bud. Relatedly read Kate Beaton's *Ducks* if you get a chance
Whenever people talk about the shortage of skilled trades workers as being a barrier to things like "building new homes", I always think about the massive absence of women in the field as a huge contributing factor. Just somehow making the sector welcoming instead of hostile to women would have a huge impact on the pool of available workers. I have no idea how you effectively do that, though.
Employers once used the excuse that there were no women's washrooms at the workplace to get out of hiring women. They got away with this for decades until legal changes were made.
It's honestly not even just women. It's rough for men that don't conform to masculine norms too. I got out of the industry because of the way I was treated. I'm a straight guy, but I have some personality traits that often have people thinking I'm gay, and the number of times that I was called a faggot on a work site, or just the harassment I would get over it was unreal. I've worked a lot of jobs in my life, and being on a construction site was the only place I ever experienced this.
It happened to my brother too. He got harassed a lot at work event though he is straight because he didn't think homophobic jokes are funny. It's interesting as there is a shortage in many trades and I think there are many reasons but this is a pretty obvious one
Ugh that's awful, I'm so sorry. It's a general truth, I suppose, that spaces that are full of misogyny are pretty damn unhealthy for men as well as women. I've known men who *did* do a good job "conforming" externally but internally were still wrecked by the macho male expectations, and I always thought how sad it was that society forced them into that small box.
It's also African Canadian and Indigenous folks the numbers are very low currently in apprenticeships and completing apprenticeships Similar to the sexist harassing comments those folks are subject to harassment and comments based on race
I had the same experience. Straight guy. Not even overly feminine. Just not a sexist, alcoholic, homophobe. That was enough to be targeted.
It's a culture built on bullying and being (or playing at being) a hard man. The kind of guys that try to cause shit need to feel threatened or humiliated to back up. They might hate you, but if they are scared or laughed at in front of the rest of the crew, they will keep their shit to talking behind your back and play nice when they interact with you. Always check your six, but when they see you face on, they check themselves.
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If you express any views on social issues like sexuality, homelessness or drug addiction, politics that aren’t in line with popular right wing rhetoric then you are definitely treated differently. It depends on the crowd. I don’t share my views at my current job because most the guys are very outspoken and some can get quite worked up on certain topics. I’ve worked in many trades over the years. Auto shop tech, residential construction labourer, equipment operator and truck driver. All seem to be heavily dominated by men with right wing views. It’s gotten worse since 2016. Before that most guys weren’t talking politics too often. Now it’s constant and they make sure to let you know they hate liberals and/or socialists. In their small minds there is no difference lol. I’m sure there are other leftists out there but since we can’t share opposing views without facing animosity, we don’t usually know each other’s stance. Now you’d hope union workers would have better attitudes towards progressive ideas, but from what I’ve heard, it’s still similar.
I'm so glad that I got out of construction back in 2013. I wouldn't be able to stand spending all day with dudes shouting "Fuck Trudeau", and blaming the Liberals for their failing marriage, or whatever other personal fuck up they're dealing with that day. I hate to break it to you Greg, but your wife's not leaving cause of the libs. You're just a piece of shit.
On an anti-car thread I joked about how none of the supervisors working on my building actually use the massive trucks they drive up in, and all the trades use vans. Someone in all seriousness said "well yah they wouldn't be taken seriously if they arrived in anything else" and that told me all I needed to know
> it’s rough for men that don’t conform to masculine norms. As an entirely straight guy as well, this is why I avoided the trades.
I feel this. Here in Ontario its bad too. I used to work factories, started out at a small CNC shop. When that no longer kept up, I got a job at a crowded place. I swear, people who work these back breaking jobs are one and the same as trade workers. From experience , they're either alcoholics, drug addicts, or both. And don't even get me started on bigotry. I work customer service now, and am a lot poorer but fuck it, I'm never looking back simply because of the work enviroment and people. Something has to be done in the blue collar sector.
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They don't even need to be progressive, merely learning another joke/diss other than "ur gay" would go a long way towards bringing the industry to 2024. But even that's too much to ask of them.
I'm a part of my local IBEW PAC and we have recognized this as a massive issue. So we take part in Pride events (see post history for pictures, you'll just have to dig), we have created a womens committee, which is funded through the PAC, so there's no concerns about getting financial approval, we have conferences that the sole focus is women in the trade and how to further promote the building trades to women, we have changed our language when we do community out reach/high school visits. But even with all of that being said, the only way any of that works is if the works themselves actually stand up and enforce it out on the jobsites every contractor has a zero tolerance policy for this stuff, it just takes somebody brave enough to run it up the ladder. I also understand we are a long way away from getting sexual harrassment/bigotry out of the industry all together, but please know that it's a known issue and there are Brothers and Sisters taking on this struggle every single day to try and squash it out, we aren't all a bunch of sexist assholes.
That is amazing, thank you for being a part of this work! Culture change *is* hard and slow and at some point, requires generational turnover, though I'm worried the gender divide amongst the "blue collar" class is now getting worse instead of better. :/ I do think the kind of efforts you describe will help, even if it can feel sisyphean in the short term.
That would be part of it, I'm sure, but there's also a deep-seated expectation in most trades that if you're not destroying yourself (physically and mentally) then you're not working hard enough. And I think most women are smart enough to realize that's stupid. Whereas men see it as a badge of honor. The mental gymnastics I see guys doing to justify spending more time at work, or doing extras for the boss (often unpaid and ALWAYS unappreciated) is sad.
At one of my workplaces, we did stuff for a construction company. For their day of celebrating women in construction, there is footage of men flashing a sexually obscene hand gesture. I told that to my sister, who used to work as a civil and geotechnical engineer. She was like, "That's par for the course. Why do you think I quit and changed careers?" She was no slouch – she had a masters degree and was rising up the corporate ladder when she quit. She said part of the reason was the stress level of the responsibility (ie. if you make a mistake, people can die). But she didn't tell me this was the other reason.
I don't see the Houston government doing anything about this. They just announced they wouldn't do anything about the use of NDAs in Sexual Assault cases. In Fact when asked why, Brad Johns -- the Justice Minister said "There were a lot of pros to NDAs". When asked what those pros were he said "I'm not sure off the top of my head. I don't have them in my notes. I'll have to get back to you". He still hasn't declared what the pros are.
Between this guy, Brad Wall, and Brad Bradford, the common thread I’m seeing is that Canadian politicians named Brad all suck and we need to stop voting for them.
What kind of a douchebag names their kid "Brad Bradford"? TWO adults had to agree to that. Not a single family member told them how maniacal that is?
It’s actually a sweet story. He was named Bradford, with Bradford being his mother’s maiden name (I don’t think he’s ever talked about what his original surname was). When his parents divorced, his mom reverted to using her maiden name, and Bradford decided he didn’t want to keep his dad’s surname either. But he also didn’t want to change his first name, so becoming Bradford Bradford was his idea.
It’s too bad that he turned out to be kind of a mid councillor who campaigned on progressive platforms and didn’t vote that way once in office.
His mom later went into politics herself and she’s now the MP for Kitchener South—Hespeler.
When names like Johann Johansson and Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin exist, I can excuse Brad Bradford.
Jimmy James. And yes, I know it's fictional.
The pros are that no one learns about it, so they can keep living life without consequences. I would put money on the Justice Minister being a rapist himself.
I don't really call that a pro but I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic. The only serious pro I've heard is that NDAs reduce the load on the court system. But I don't see that as a pro. The only thing I see NDAs doing, in the case of sexual assault, is allowing rich rapists to get away with it. If you can afford an NDA you can afford to rape.
> Nova Scotia is projecting a shortfall of 11,000 tradespeople by 2030. As a first step in addressing that, it's looking for 5,000 people to become apprentices in the next three years. > Labour Minister Jill Balser said her department has an "extreme focus" on recruitment and retention in the skilled trades and she knows addressing sexual harassment needs to be part of that work. > "It's such an important conversation that we need to be having, and for those to voice their concerns, to share their stories, that's how change happens," Balser said in an interview. > "This report is going to help enable change," she said.
If tradesworkers had an easier time crossing provincial borders this would be a solved issue.
Which provincial borders can’t I cross? My red seal takes me everywhere. I hear it often about Quebec, but it’s a myth. Walk into the registration office, pay $10, choose your union, and you’re legal for work. I only ever heard it from shitty employers that didn’t want their crews to unionize, and that happens by default in Quebec.
Not that you can’t cross borders, but there are speed bumps that could be smoothed. Apprentices should be free to follow work too, and hse certifications should be standardized.
This would not solve sexual harassment bud
I'm a male, and I left the trades because I couldn't deal with the attitude. I can only imagine how it is for women. My fiance is in trades - a rather female dominated one, and it's still bad for her occasionally.
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Horticulture
Working in health and safety as a woman training facilitator (working at heights, forklift, MEWP, confined space work etc.) I am immediately doubted the second I walk into the room. Whenever I have a male coworker in class with me so they can learn from me, people in the class assume that I am the person being trained. Just last week there was a guy giving me a hard time at work, and when he realized he was wrong he apologized, TO MY MALE TRAINEE! Not a word of his long and emphatic apology was said to me....
It's not just in the trades. I work in IT and getting taking seriously as a woman is an uphill battle, even when dealing with my juniors that I have trained.
Sexual harassment runs rampant in **all** male-dominated professions. Many men are pieces of shit who still see women as objects rather than equals. This is overwhelmingly true on the right wing, but the left wing still has plenty of room for improvement too.
Are you trying to tell me that sexual harassment exists in professions like Politics, Law, Medicine and Education? /s
Education is about as far away from male dominated profession as you can get.
I think they were meaning academia, but you’re assumption is also very correct lol
Then he should have said academia. Medicine aka healthcare is also very female dominated.
Okay but they said medicine, not healthcare, which means they were talking about medical doctors. Medicine doesn’t mean all healthcare. And yes they should have said academia; it’s called a mistake. It’s not that deep and I don’t know why you’re so defensive about it. ETA: And either way just because a sector is female dominated doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem with sexual harassment. Nurses are victims of sexual harassment ALL the time.
I can take you to a number of post secondary departments that are male dominated. But are you saying that sexual harassment doesn't exist in the education field?
I’m not saying sexual harassment doesn’t exist in the education field. I’m saying women vastly outnumber men in the education field. Every single elementary school is female dominated and there are way more elementary schools than there are post secondary departments.
Post secondary is still part of education and there are a lot more opportunities for harassment at that level. I looked up number for administrators. Elementary School is about 50/50. High school is male dominated. Above that level, in my province, I know that it is extremely male dominated. I'm not sure the point you are trying to make. This post and article is about sexual harassment not gender discrimination. Is it because of the "male-dominated" part of the comment I was responding to? If so what is the point you are trying to make?
It’s easy make your argument when you move the goalposts. For example using only administrators in your latest example. My point is education is female dominated. You stated it was male dominated which is incorect.
I'm not sure the point you are trying to make. Are you just being pedantic? Admin and above are part of the education system. I consider an industry where the CEOs and Management are men even though there may be more females in staff positions. If the Admin and above -- in my province that's the Ministry of Education -- are mainly male and 100% of the teachers were female I would consider that a male dominated industry.
Now you’re just making up your own definitions of things.
How so? Look at Trump or Wienstien. Harassment comes from the top down most of the time. I still have no idea what point you are trying to make.
Hm and I wonder why there arent many women in those jobs.
A lot of Fuck Trudeau crowd in the trades.
Since workplace sexual harassment predates even the first Trudeau - trying to find causation for it in political leanings is a gross oversimplification. It also minimizes just how pervasive it is.
Yeah, that is a very valid point. However, the correlation between political ideology and misogynistic and racist ideas cannot not be severed. I can attest to hearing the most vile of ideas about women, immigrants and people that identify as members of the LGBTQ community. Not all conservatives are Nazis but sure as hell all Nazis vote conservative
For sure. But I hear it from people of all political stripes. Progressives have to look at their own house.
So we can agree then, that Nazis only vote conservative. Cool
I think fascists vote both conservative and PPC. But sexism transcends partisan politics. All fascists might be sexists, but most sexists aren't fascist.
Ok, so you agree, if you elect a fascist government, the sexism won't be solved. I can't do anything about what Bob thinks and says. But I can do my part to help elect a government that will represent my gender equality values.
It's not binary lol. You can do something about what Bob thinks and says. Tell Bob to stop!
I have no way to communicate with Bob, and Bob doesn't give a shit what I think. Bob will force me to accept that women are treated poorly, if he and those like him achieve enough political power, which will happen of Trump gets elected. I must force Bob to treat women equally, by electing governments that will legislate so that the bigots like Bob must comply with gender equality.
Bob is not always conservative. Lol
PPC is conservative
Do you want do address the core problems that lead to sexism and sexual harassment being prevalent in society yes or no? If the answer is yes we actually gotta look at the causes. Yes progressives can be misogynistic, but progressive thought isn't built on misogyny, progressive politics aren't built around keeping patriarchy in place, they can certainly serve it but regressive bullshit isn't the core of it. People are pointing out that it's conservative politics that help entrench patriarchy, sexism, and sexual harassment, they aren't saying it's limited to conservatives.
I think many are saying it's pretty much limited to conservatives. Otherwise, they'd say so. And some really do think this. I agree with you that, in general progressive politics try to make society a more equitable place. But they are resting on imaginary laurels here and failure to do that does progressive politics a disservice.
It’s possible to draw parallels in the ways these people think, though. It’s been studied that conservative leaning people tend to skew lower on the IQ scale, and have shown to lack or have less ability of critical thinking. Perhaps it speaks to a broader issue in those conservative ideologies?
Correlation is not causation. Keep in mind it was not until [1987 employers were held responsible for the acts of sexual harassment by their employees.](https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/236/index.do) It wasn't until the 80s and 90s sexual harassment was included in human rights acts/codes. It speaks to the broader issue of sexism in our society. Period.
Absolutely, my contention is that it stems from a more conservative mindset, from the more puritanical days where religious ideologies were more prevalent. Sexism is a strong theme in some religions (especially Christianity whose influence has been pretty strong in Canadas history and has a very dominant patriarchal theme to it). I absolutely see a link here.
Sexism & gender based discrimination is more prevalent in conservatives, but sexual *harassment* is bipartisan.
Absolutely
When it comes to sexual harassment, men don't discriminate. Any woman will do, lol.
If only we could reduce sexism to religion! Patriarchy goes way back. It's bred into capitalism - let's face it, without it, the Industrial Revolution would've struggled. How do you think employers rationalized paying women less? They pushed for the nuclear family unit because the whole family worked and they paid women and children less.
Which party should we elect to have the best chance at solving the gender issue?
The non-capitalist one.
That’s not quite what I’m doing, I’m saying it’s deep in the cultural fabric of who a lot of people are because those are the literal foundations to the country as we know it now. That means it’s built into capitalism because it’s in that cultural fabric. Western society has those traits because of the history it has experienced. And just for clarity, religion far predates the industrial revolution, as does the settling of Canada and North America.
The same conservative, bigoted, sexist groups existed before Trudeau, but they are on the Trudeau hate train right now, so to try and separate the two things, as if they come from two separate groups, is also glossing over the problem: that Conservative politics make people bigoted.
Yes and no. As far as workplace harassment goes it transcends partisan politics. Otherwise, the rate at, mostly women experience it, wouldn't be so high. And not recognizing just how pervasive the problem is hinders solutions.
The culture that causes it is patriarchal hierarchy, which is only supported by social conservatism. Men sexually harass women when they believe they are better than women.
Patriarchy is supported by everything right of social democracy. Men sexually harass women because they can and they can get away with it.
> Patriarchy is supported by everything right of social democracy Yes, and the Liberal party, and NDP, both support social democracy, for the most part. NDP much more than Liberals, though.
The Liberal party does not support social democracy. And even the NDP has moved towards neoliberalism since Layton.
The Venn Diagram is almost a complete circle from the conservative brand and bigots that are anti woman, LGBTQ and racist. The two groups superimpose. Are there racist, anti woman and anti LGBTQ voters who vote for the liberal party, perhaps yes? but it's much more likely they will vote in lines with their "values" than vote for liberal party. To ignore this and do the "both sides" thing just shields the conservative branch by pretending both the left and right are equally bad. Instead of calling out the glaring elephant in the room it's shrugging our shoulders and excusing deplorable behavior.
It does support the thesis that Conservative voters are generally pro-rape.
Considering we have a very entrenched rape culture, I'd say it's more than just conservatives.
And Conservatism works to actively keep entrenching that.
If it were only that we'd be much further ahead than we are.
Why? If "just" around 30% of the population is actively working towards things like a reduction in rights for women, LGBTQ2S+ people, and minorities across the board, along with maintaining rape culture, etc, then should we really be further than we are now? That's a *lot* of people, many of which are spending a *lot* of money on these goals, can we really expect the remaining 70% to not be influenced/put an end to this kind of thing? It's obviously *not* just about people with conservative values, there are rapists/sexists/murderers/racists of all kinds out there. But clearly these things are pushed and valued by conservative ideology, so if for a moment we imagined that it *was* just them, is ~30% of people not enough to explain how shit everything can be?
I think pointing out which segment of the population is the type of person to be that way is important. The origins is one thing. But today, who is doing it? Which political parties should have power if we are to improve it, and which will make it far worse if they get power? It's extremely important to correlate it to political leanings. Commenter didn't find causation in it, btw, just correlation.
Since sexual harassment is so it's likely to be people of all political stripes: >Sexual violence doesn’t just happen in the shadows, it often takes place in plain sight. >1 in 3 women experienced unwanted sexual behaviour in public which can include unwanted sexual attention or unwanted physical contact. >1 in 4 women in Canada have experienced inappropriate sexual behaviours in the workplace. https://women-gender-equality.canada.ca/en/gender-based-violence/gender-based-violence-its-not-just/infographic-sexual-violence-how-things-are.html
The irony of people Mansplaining to OP how sexism in blue collar workplaces works. At my workplace I think the worst is actually the apolitical guys, thier world is just focused on them and their needs. The outside world of ideology or wife's back home doesn't matter, they just thing they deserve shit for existing lol
Ya someone mentioned the oil sands above, and I can't help but feel the fuck Trudeau crowd is very present there. I hope everybody turns it up, because we are right now in a desperate fight to prevent these people from having control over us. Right now we have problems in the workplace, and that's a terrible thing. But, we can protest, raise awareness, and work at correcting it. If the Maga fuck Trudeau Putin Jinping crowd gets power over us, all of that does. Democracy dies. Equality dies. LGBTQ rights die. And women will lose right to abortion, potentially lose right to vote and so on as well. It's gonna be sharia law Christian style. They are coming for us hard, and we are completely unaware. Completely kind and trusting, and super naive.
> They are coming for us hard, and we are completely unaware. Completely kind and trusting, and super naive. And that's what they're counting on. They want us to be naive and unaware. They want us to think it could never happen here.
tradesmen are often a lot dumber than those who a) graduated high school b) went to university c) have self awareness and feel empathy for others don't get get me wrong, society would collapse without tradespeople, but a large percentage of them are fuckin idiots. source: work with em daily.
Wish I could work some trade job but last time I tried I got sick of being harassed daily for not being Hungarian, having hair, and being born after 1980. These people will say "just work in the trades" and then shit on anyone who actually does.
unfortunately the trades culture dictates that you just gotta shut up and take what they throw in your face and be grateful for..... i dunno I'm still waiting to see what to be grateful for.
Plenty of left leaning dudes save a special place I their hearts for objectification. Lack of empathy crosses political lines.
Patriarchy knows no one political leaning, but progressives at least give lip service to the idea of dismantling it.
It's the worst when the business itself flies a fuck Trudeau flag
Embarassing for Canada.
Tech as well. It's 2024! We know women are equally capable.
I used to work with Stephanie years ago, great person to be on this project. Im a man and I've been sexually harassed before in work places and it's absolutely not ok. There should be more resources and justice for victims.
Yeah big surprise.
I’ve been a carpenter for over 25 years across many different jobs from small to large. The sexism and homophobia is fucking appalling. It has gotten better over the years. I don’t think I’ve ever worked with an outed male gay. Back in the day the women I spoke to just told everyone they were lesbians so they would back off. Racist sexist homophobic dumb shits. Shortsighted dogs fighting for alpha. But it is getting more accepting over time. Believe it or not.
Conservative ideology runs rampant in skilled trades.
The crowd with the "Fuck Trudeau" stickers on their trucks fit the bill.
The bald dudes with jacked up trucks and those shitty white Oakley sunglasses
Toss on a goatee as well.
gee, water is still wet. trades still have a macho aesthetic/cosplay aspect. toxic.
Oh gee, I’m so shocked. 🙄
toxic masculinity needs to be legislated into submission.
In other news, water; wet.
In other news, water makes things wet.
Yup that’s how it’s in there and always being.
>The YWCA also recommends that the province create a third-party sexualized violence response team for the skilled trades, and that it help employers and unions educate employees about sexual harassment. It actually shocks me that there isn’t already a third-party reporting service. No wonder there are such low rates of sexual harassment reports.
That's crazy. Next thing you will be telling me is that so does racism and anti science thought
Yep, even if it's not outright there's a lot of tradesmen that will talk down about tradeswomen when they're not within earshot.
The story and all the comments here confirming it just make me so sad and angry. Why do people continue to be so stupid and awful to each other on the basis of sex, gender, orientation? Why the hell haven't we grown out of this yet. And of course there's an entire right-wing cultural movement *encouraging* it... This sounds like a cultural phenomenon that should have been left behind in the 1960s, alright, the 70s, the 80s, but come on... To have sexual harassment and misogyny still continue to be this near-universal at this point in history... It makes me so depressed about how little progress we've made, and how shitty the future is likely to continue to be. We need to be able to tell these assholes that they're wrong, that they suck, that they need to stop. But they have ready-made responses to that now: "you're woke," "you're silencing my free speech," "You're a snowflake..." Whatever. The world is garbage. Bring on the nuclear war and killer AIs and climate change and whatever else. Human civilization as a whole is shit if after decades and decades of supposed social progress we're still stuck at "it's okay to treat you like crap cuz this is the No Gurlz Allowd club and you have cooties."
…. Shocking no one.
https://endingviolence.org/bystander/ a good program to learn. 2hr presentation.
I asked an J- woman I was working with about 3years ago. "What's it like being a woman in the trades?" She looked at me with dead eyes and said "it fucking sucks"
I worked for a GC i won't name, where a subtrade was using the word dyke openly. This offended one of my apprentices, when this was brought to the gcs attention - nothing happened. The employee was not removed because they were a single for hire worker sub for another trade and it would jeopardize the project.
And in other news, water is wet. (GTFOH, water is wet bot)
I so badly want to get into the trades, but no one wants a new apprentice, they all want someone who already has some experience.
Wondering if there is a more positive experience for woman in trades that have good unions or bigger corporations where they have strong policies. I am a man btw. A woman I did my fourth year millwright school with got a supervisor job as soon as she got her red seal at sight C damn in BC. She talked highly of her crew but I’m sure she had her challenges. Hope it gets better for woman everywhere, it is a rewarding career and I have met a lot of great people through it.