For the past 40 years Labor Day has included celebration of
the change in the labor force -- the addition of women. The first
Labor Day after 9/11, though, reminds us that one aspect of the
labor force has experienced no more change than the "Glass
Ceiling". That might be called the "Glass Cellar": the
predictability that virtually 100% of the firefighters and
police officers who gave their lives at the World Trade Center
would be men; that 100% of the recently trapped coal miners were
men; that in the Gulf War men were killed at a 27 to 1 ratio
over women (even though women constituted 11% of the military);
that, overall, 93% of the people who are killed at work are men,
a figure that has remained stable. To this day, the more a
profession is a "Death Profession", the more it is comprised of
men: construction; lumberjacking; welder; cab driver; garbage
collector; coal miner; trucking; firefighter. Virtually no large
office building or bridge is built without a man dying in its
construction, whether as a coal miner, lumberjack, trucker,
welder, roofer, or construction worker.
The psychology that perpetuates this Glass Cellar includes
calling our firefighters and police officers "heroes". "Heroes"
comes from the Greek word "serow", from which we get our words
"servant" and "slave".
We think of someone who is a hero as someone who has power.
In fact, a servant and slave possess the psychology of
disposability, not the psychology of power. Many men have
learned to define power as "feeling obligated to earn money that
someone else spends while he dies sooner". Real power is best
defined as "control over our own lives".
Why do we praise men as heroes when they compete to be
disposable? Virtually all societies that have survived have
done so by preparing women to be disposable in childbirth and
men to be disposable in war and work. By teaching men to call
it "glory", "duty" and "honor" to die in war we, in essence,
"bribed" men to think of themselves as more of a man by being
more disposable.
The question this Labor Day is whether the incentives and
laws that produce male labor are producing the men most capable
of loving. I think not. To be successful in war, or as a CEO, it
helps to repress feelings, not to express feelings. But to be
successful in love it helps to express feelings, not repress
feelings. To be successful as a dad, it helps to be with
children, but the Father's "Catch-22" has been to receive the love
of his family by being away from the love of his family (whether
at work or at war).
The more a man values himself the less he wants to die. To
teach a man to value himself by dying -- to give him promotions
to risk death, to tell him he's powerful, he's a hero, he's
loved, he's a "real man" -- is to "bribe" a man to value himself
more by valuing himself less.
It was part of our genetic heritage to socialize both sexes
for disposability. Women have questioned that genetic heritage;
but neither sex has questioned that genetic heritage in men.
The result is that women are still falling in love with a sex
that is less well socialized to love. Is that good for our
children's genetic future?
Warren Farrell, Ph.D. is the author of the international
bestsellers, The Myth of Male Power and Why Men Are
The Way They Are, as well as Women Can't Hear What Men
Don't Say and Father and Child Reunion. He is the
only man in the US ever elected three times to the Board of
Directors of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in New
York City. He has taught at the School of Medicine at the
University of California, San Diego, and currently resides in
Carlsbad, CA. He can be visited virtually at
http://www.warrenfarrell.com.
