I received a private message like this before:
This is a typical male chauvinist rhetoric. They love to clamor about things like “men are the ones who defend the country” and “women don’t work in mines” and “men eat the 10-yuan box lunches, while women drink 20-yuan milk tea”… In short, they believe that women don’t work but want rights, and they are favored by society and take advantage of everything, blabla:
There’s also the so-called “Soviet feminism” that cgg loves to mention:
But first of all, the fact is that women work in mines:
But because “women don’t work in mines”, they can only go to black coal mines with no guarantee and more danger.
And in defending the country, women’s figures have never been absent:
It’s not that women can’t handle these jobs, but that these fields are systematically excluding women; it’s not that women haven’t participated in the historical process, but that their figures and contributions have been erased and their merits have been taken by men.
For example, in the 1980s in the United States, women miners’ changing rooms were smeared with feces by male miners, and even semen was mixed into their lunches, and after these things were exposed, it was the women miners who were collectively fired. For another example, the admission of male babies with reduced scores in military and police academies is already well known. And female soldiers’ recruitment will even require college entrance examination scores, and some areas even require the college entrance examination to reach above the first-tier line, and the physical examination is also more stringent. What are the standards for recruiting male soldiers?
Therefore, what men say, “Why haven’t we seen women working as miners to defend the country”, is completely disregarding the facts and then biting back. First, women are prohibited from entering, and then it is said that there are no women in this field because women are not capable.
And when they encounter successful women, they will say, “What does it have to do with you feminists that other women are great”:
But when they see other men working in mines and serving in the army, they immediately feel that this is equivalent to themselves working in mines and serving in the army. They have said it all.
And the more important error implied in this male chauvinist rhetoric is the use of the Tian Ji horse racing strategy: comparing women above the middle class with the most bottom-level men, as if women have a slight advantage, and then they begin to vigorously publicize that women today are riding on men’s heads. What about the women around these so-called “bottom-level men”?
When you see a bottom-level man, then there must be more women around him who are much more difficult and miserable than him, and he must also have the right to continue to oppress certain women. Think about it, even in villages with mentally retarded or congenitally highly deformed people who cannot take care of themselves, they will rack their brains to “get a wife” for him to take care of him.
Take miners as an example, male miners are hard and dangerous, that’s right. But, if you can realize that there are women who are nominally in the same class as them, but are completely invisible and silenced? They are still doing incredibly hard and heavy farm work in the fields, and after a busy day, they have to go home to cook and do housework, and the labor intensity is no less than that of miners. But what about the income? Many rural women work hard in agriculture for a year, and their income is only a few thousand yuan, far less than a miner’s monthly income. And this endless, repetitive life day after day will also torture and consume a person mentally and spiritually, which is why Chinese rural women have such a high suicide rate and are so eager to escape and work outside:
Comparing middle-class women with bottom-level men is completely a Tian Ji horse racing strategy, which proves that they don’t even see that there are bottom-level women in society. Otherwise, why don’t they ask middle-class men to work in mines? If you see this, you will understand that those so-called “women are not capable” and thus prohibit women from participating in physical labor are not “protecting women” at all, but are blocking the way of bottom-level women while opening a door for bottom-level men: working in mines is not much harder than doing farm work and housework in the village, but the income is dozens of times that of the latter.
It’s like this: one job is 975, with a monthly salary of two thousand; the other job is 996, with a monthly base of 40k. But the second job is only allowed for men, and all women can only roll in the first job, and then the men who do the second job see it and say: I really envy your women’s jobs are so leisurely, women are really protected too well and have too high a social status.
In fact, what determines the gender ratio of an industry is not the labor intensity, nor is it “protecting women”, but the salary and benefits. As long as it is a profitable industry, no matter how much or little work, dirty work or hard work, it will be monopolized by men. And women are not “willing” to stay in some seemingly easy industries, because those higher-paying and higher-status industries are deliberately and systematically excluding women.
For example, seafarers, this is a relatively profitable profession, and there is no high technical barrier, as long as you can endure hardship and loneliness. This should have been one of the ways for the bottom “people” to make money, but they systematically exclude women in the field of navigation through collective intimidation and creating yellow rumors, turning this industry into an outlet exclusively for the bottom “men”:
 
In fact, it’s not just the seafaring industry, every industry that allows women to make money is a disaster area for them to create yellow rumors and slander.
Under the gender division of labor in a patriarchal society, bottom-level men can do harder but more profitable work, and elite men can do less tiring and more profitable work, but women of every class have no choice but to be excluded from those seemingly “easy” but actually disproportionate to the salary and labor intensity of miscellaneous work. Its characteristics are low pay, poor environment, poor stability, difficulty in rights protection, and not being seen or recognized by society:
Just as men like to say “there are no women on construction sites”. I don’t know if these people are talking nonsense to a certain extent or if they haven’t seen a construction site at all. The real dirty and tiring work on construction sites, such as swinging a sledgehammer and pulling cement, is often done by women, while the well-paid skilled workers or technicians are the fields monopolized by men. In addition, you can also go to the temporary labor market to take a look, and the price of many temporary jobs is not even based on how much work is done, but on whether it is a female worker or a male worker. I remember that a friend said that she asked those male workers why they charged by gender, wouldn’t it be fairer to charge according to how much work was actually done? Those men immediately surrounded her and flew into a rage: “What do you know”, “It’s always been like this”… This is the so-called “there are only class issues, not gender issues” and “the essence of gender contradictions is class contradictions”.
Recruitment limited to men happens in all aspects and industries. When we see that there are no women in the mines, what we should see is not “men are doing all the dirty and tiring work”, but countless poor women are deprived of the opportunity to make money and develop: it’s not that they can’t bear hardship, their lives are harder and more bitter now, but these industries prohibit women from entering, and then they bite back and say that women are not willing to come. cgg asks every day why little fairies don’t go to the mines and construction sites, but why don’t they ask male academicians, male rich people, and male officials to go to the mines, move bricks, and eat 10-yuan box lunches? First, they directly erase the existence of bottom-level women who need these jobs that are hard but can make money, and then they try to pull all women to the bottom of society so that they can always stand on women’s heads. For such rhetorical traps and scams, you must see through them.
Therefore, if you encounter male chauvinists who ask with ill intentions, do you support women also having the right to work in mines? My answer is: Of course I support it. I support poor women having the right to become formal miners, construction site technicians, seafarers, security guards, truck drivers, and repairmen, I support the vast number of women having the right to become technical backbones, enterprise managers, and cadres of government institutions and public institutions, and I support high-level women having the right to become national leaders. At the same time, I also support sending all the male rich people, male high-ranking officials, male academicians, and male chauvinists who are clamoring online to work in mines, go to the battlefield, drill into sewers, and eat 10-yuan box lunches. Aren’t they always saying “men are working in mines” and “men are the ones who defend the country”, it’s time to show their prowess.
Finally, I want to emphasize that women’s low social status is not because they don’t work, women have already worked enough.
When women are attacked for not working, it is precisely because they have worked too much. If women really don’t work at all and take more money, then no one would dare to say a word at that time – working too much proves that they are in the downstream of power, and they will naturally be pointed at more by men who are afraid of the soft and bully the hard, while the group that really doesn’t work and takes more money, on the contrary, no one dares to mention them.
Therefore, I think it should be repeated countless times: labor is neither power nor can it bring rights. The control of labor capacity, the control of the labor process, and the possession of labor products are power, and they also determine rights. The real problem women face is getting less for more work, or even getting nothing for more work. What should be strived for is to increase labor remuneration, improve labor conditions, improve labor security, and the right to enter important fields that were previously monopolized by men, rather than the abstract “right to participate in labor”:
Therefore, no wonder men are very fond of advocating “working women”, in fact, they just want women to continue to be their cows and horses. It’s like a capitalist saying to a worker that you are poorer than me because you don’t work overtime enough, which is shameless and malicious. The real reason for women’s low status is precisely not that they work too little, but that they work too much and fight too little.

Summary: This article exposes the brainwashing package of male chauvinist rhetoric from four angles: disregarding facts, double standards, Tian Ji horse racing, and wrong attribution.
Discover more from 自由档案馆
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.