From: taumeson	Date: April 11th, 2008 07:09 pm (UTC)		(Link)
	Re: i must assume you thought people wouldn't agree

actually i assumed nobody would respond ;)

out of all my female friends, and this is true, not an exaggeration, you have the strongest work ethic and have always had some of the hardest jobs. healthcare is like that, definitely. nurses and healthcare support have far shittier jobs than administrators and doctors.

you, my dear, are RESILIENT. you take a licking and keep on ticking. and women do seem to endure better than men.

so no...no overall truth to be found here. BUT. when i think about sucky, painful jobs or jobs that require suffering, i think of male dominated fields. oil rigs, firefighters, sanitation, etc. this is part and parcel with the idea that society has accepted that men should do the suffering and we tacitly perpetuate it. prison rape is a norm, but i think if it happened more at women's prisons we would hear more about it. men often lose their kids during contested divorces.

i'm not saying that women don't do their own share of suffering. but if you think back 100 years, the woman is breaking her back tending the house while the man is getting shot at on the western front. being a single parent informs strongly informs you of the difference between housework and outside work. they are two different types of suck, where work outside the home can be 100x worse than work inside the home.

	From: yittleone	Date: April 11th, 2008 07:42 pm (UTC)		(Link)
	Re: i must assume you thought people wouldn't agree

I agree that most physically trying jobs are done by men. I don't think I've ever seen a female sanitation worker, and I was always the only girl in home depot that showed up in a work van. The lack of fairness when it comes to divorce/child custody still astounds me. And I think there's probably more of a sense of reward to the backbreaking work done in the home which makes it more easily endured (not necessarily easier to do) than that done outside the home.

It is a society of norms that perpetuates these roles of men being the ones who keep everyone else safe, and women keeping everyone nurtured. I can't say one type of suffering is worse than another. I think both genders suffer, the type of suffering is too different for me to draw a direct comparison.

Even I leave many jobs undone to wait for Hal to do them, because men are built to do certain things. Our bodies are different, capable of carrying different burdens. I honestly don't know any man that would be as enduring through a pregnancy and childbirth as a woman is. And if they were, we'd be a society filled with only children because I couldn't see a man volunteering for that type of suffering a 2nd time. At the same time, I don't think most women are built to be firefighters or sanitation workers or put their lives on the line in the military while leaving a family at home. Even if physically capable, most women I know wouldn't endure that kind of suffering.

So again, I think the types of suffering are just different.

	From: yittleone	Date: April 11th, 2008 07:50 pm (UTC)		(Link)
	Re: i must assume you thought people wouldn't agree

Oh and the jail thing - our sentences are still not consistent or fair across the genders. But rape most certainly exists in women's prisons. Just as treejumpers will be preyed upon in a men's prison, women who have hurt or killed kids will be shredded in a women's prison. I don't know any stats on the matter, but many women who get raped in prison feel that in some way that is their punishment for whatever got them there in the first place - which may be why it's not reported as much.