Sexual politics and hubris
Bookworm on Dec 05 2006 at 8:51 am | Filed under: Feminism, Political correctness
The Washington Post has picked up and expanded upon the story about Bonnie Bleskachek, the Minneapolis fire chief recently fired for all sorts of sexual and discriminatory shenanigans. It makes for fascinating reading if you don’t mind that your local fire house sounds like a lesbian Peyton Place with a dollop of man hatred thrown in for good measure.
I don’t doubt that the women mentioned in the story (and there are many mentioned, since Bleskachek seemed to use her power to create a revolving bed situation) are good firefighters and, in the right situation, would be decent, disciplined individuals. Given power, and the probable belief that they were politically untouchable, though, they went wild.
It’s a nasty story and a reminder that victim and identity politics, by elevating one group above another, tend to create whole new victim cycles. It’s cliched, but I’ll say it anyway: “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Hat tip: Independent Women’s Forum
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“It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.”
–David Brin
She is clearly the wrong person for the job, and should be gone tomorrow. Fire departments, to a level not otherwise found outside the military, require everybody to trust everybody else; trust that promotion is genuinely earned; and maintain morale.
A reality about about fire departments that most of you will not like. I accept being in trouble about this. Nonetheless:
Women ought not to be there. Period.
It is a physical job that demands upper body strength, and it is one in which equalizers (like police guns) are not available. City after city has made headlines over the past two decades about having to have lowered the standards on the physical tests to make it possible for women to pass.
When you go into a burning smoke-filled building in which you can neither see nor breathe to find the fire, you do so in pairs. You also incidentally can’t hear, because you’re wearing a mask and breathing apparatus. You stay in physical touch with each other. If one of you goes down, the other can perform a rescue. That is why you do it that way.
But there are no fixed pairs: the first two available go in. And if you are a 6′2″, 240 pound male, you do not wish to be partnered with a 5′7″ 140 pound female - no matter how strong she thinks she is. And no amount of political correctness is going to make you (or your family, incidentally) happy about it. You know you can get her out if she goes down - how will she do if you become 240 lbs (plus 25 lbs of gear)of dead weight on the third floor? Can’t see, can’t breathe, can’t hear, remember.
That’s a very bad time to discover that she’s only there because the fix was in on the strength test to make some judge happy. Which is in fact what happened.
The trucks are no easier. Women can of course drive them - anybody can - but that’s only half the story. No fire department has enough people around to have one to drive, and another there who engineers. The driver is also the engineer.
Which is fine as long as life is perfect - all pumps these days have electric valves. Terrific: until they break. They all break. You switch to the manual overrides. I am 6′3″ tall, and weigh 205 lbs. (Which is probably leaner than the average American my size these days - but I am not a weed.) There have been times when I have been braced with one foot on the ground and the other planted against the side of the truck heaving with everything I had to get a stiff and uncooperative manual gate valve open, so water could flow through the hose. Could a woman do it? I don’t know. I’m inclined to doubt it. There’s probably one somewhere - but I haven’t met her.
It isn’t “Ladder 79″ and it isn’t “Flashback.” No one’s standing around without a mask; you can’t see an inch in front of you; and you aren’t being emotional on the radio. You are crawling on your hands and knees, in an enclosed little world, testing the floor as you go, swinging an axe out in front of you hoping not to encounter something soft, which would probably be an unconscious person whom you’re going to have to get out. Right now.
And the person partnering you, who is keeping one hand latched onto one of your air bottle straps (because if that’s you testing the floor and feeling out front with the axe then you’re the lead, and it’s your partner’s job to maintain contact) better be someone in whom you have faith. You need to know if you get in trouble you’ll have at least a fighting chance. If the floor begins to give way and you start to go down, that person will be strong enough to grab you with both hands, and physically haul you back.
You need to know that, and know it absolutely. There are enough doubts in there, you can’t be having doubts about your partner.
This lady has created far too many doubts. She needs to go.
I agree with you, JJ. I made the same point last year in connection with the story about the escaped prisoner in Atlanta who killed several people at the courthouse. The person he overpowered to begin his escape was a petite, mature woman who had a job as a sheriff’s deputy. He was a huge guy, and might have overpowered a man, as well, but I really don’t think the opportunities would have been the same. In some things, size really does matter.
I loved Brin’s Uplift War series. A true critical look at responsibility and humanity. Recommended for bookworms small or gigantic.
Well Bookworm, I see it as rather, it is not the size of the dog in the fight that matters, but the size of the fight in the dog.
She wasn’t a killer, she wasn’t contemplating killing everyone in the court room, she wasn’t ready. So obviously she got defeated by someone who was thinking about killing, who was contemplating and planning, who was ready.
Brains can make up for bigness, but not if you don’t even have the brains to begin with.
It is the surprise factor that really kills people. It freezes your mind. People who freeze, in war and in fights, are in a small amount of trouble.
The same problem is with the Marines and Army concerning female tankers. They can’t crank the threads(or was it the gears), because it takes large amounts of upper body strength, if I recall. Infantry equipment is just getting heavier and heavier with the ipods and whatever other stuff they have. Until they have an “equalizer”, say, full powered exo-skeleton armor, then upper and lower body strength will matter quite a bit. A female can have more or less the same lower body strength, however, if she goes down or has to drag a buddy out of the line of fire, that requires arm strength and shoulder strength. In combat, being slow means you are dead. Lower strength means less acceleration, which means more time taken to cover the same distance. The body armor and infantry packs themselves, make our soldiers heavy infantry, slow to move, but not that slow given conditioning and optimizations. I recall hearing that the terrorists in Iraq could move a lot faster on foot through the buildings, because they just don’t have to carry a lot. Obviously that is not too critical an advantage, with a team working together, but it is still a problem to be considered.
That being said. Well trained, disciplined, and hardcore women can make it. Whether that is the Military Police that was ambushed by a guerrila ambush. Or any physical standard. The problem is, if you lower the standards, you don’t do anyone any favors because while this civilization of ours spoils us to thinking we have full control over nature, the wilderness ain’t like that. And the wilderness is quite large in the world and outside of the court rooms and halls of government. People who disrespect nature, will find that she will creep into their centers of peace, like a court room, and cause havoc because you just weren’t prepared. Nature despises weakness.
What on earth are you yokels babbling about upper body strength related to the Fire Chief story? Not the point.
And as a firefighter (and a woman) who has successfully and alone pulled a man out of a fire who then survived, you all don’t have a clue. Pheonix fire demonstrated after Bret Tarver died that it takes on average 15 fire fighters to rescue one downed. If you want to hire based on body type to save firefighter lives, then *only* women should be firefighters since we are smaller and easier to rescue when need be - and believe me, all firefighters may need rescue in their career.
Or you could all stop your yapping and admit what most of intelligent society realizes, after Darwin made it vogue, that diversity is a strength not a weakness overall.
And of course, the Fire Chief should get canned, just like a male would be for the same behavior.
Darnell, which parochialist school of philosophy did you graduate from?
You couldn’t yap with my dog.
And as a firefighter (and a woman) who has successfully and alone pulled a man out of a fire who then survived, you all don’t have a clue.
Great, another person who comes to this blog and starts ‘acting out’ because of personal axes to grind.
What you don’t have a clue is that this point was already made, when JJ and I talked about the lowering of standards. The lowering of standards means that women who do have the strength are let in along with those that don’t. That’s the problem. Not that “women can’t cut it, at all”.
That being said. Well trained, disciplined, and hardcore women can make it. Whether that is the Military Police that was ambushed by a guerrila ambush. Or any physical standard. The problem is, if you lower the standards, you don’t do anyone any favors because while this civilization of ours spoils us to thinking we have full control over nature, the wilderness ain’t like that.
I write enough that repeating myself is a bit annoying to people, but I deem it a necessity at this point.
It is a physical job that demands upper body strength, and it is one in which equalizers (like police guns) are not available. City after city has made headlines over the past two decades about having to have lowered the standards on the physical tests to make it possible for women to pass.
JJ’s position is more or less, he ain’t going to gamble his life on some “PC standard” to get things right. That makes perfect sense to me. My position is a bit different in color, but more or less, the same as his.
What on earth are you yokels
*snorts* Yokels. Can’t keep your professional gravitas away from your personal prejudices?
The story of corruption in the Minneapolis Fire Dept. is interesting. Just yesterday I learned of a local volunteer fire dept. which was shut down and its memebers jailed because
they were using the coin-drop fundraising program as their own personal piggy bank. Apparently, they were becoming rather obnoxious at the coin-drops, and hassaled the wife of a police chief from another district.
The idea that corruptible people are drawn to power aside, is a fire dept. more prone to corruption than other institutions?
You have an organization with a command structure, in which the members must depend on each other for their safety, which is generally viewed by the public to be heroes and not villians. Sounds like a good cover.
Al
It’s not a cover. In the age of the internet, that is more like a liability, because higher standards are expected.