Types of work
Nov. 19th, 2004 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI have a half articulated thought that I started to write as a reply to an essay but I can't figure if it belongs there. So, clumsily worded, I put it here-
It is possible to broadly classify jobs by the genders that usually are associated with them. 'Male' jobs are the big one offs, the things where they can do them and then point and say it is finished, done, completed and achieved. 'Female' jobs are the ones where finishing them means you have maybe a day before you have to do them again. The difference between architecture and housework.
Or stopping the apocalypse vs nightly patrol.
Buffy did the housework version of vampire slayage, and we saw her go out to do it. Angel might have done patrols sometimes, but what we saw was the 'get job, do job, all done' version.
Giles, doing Watcher work, does much the same thing over and over again, no glory to it. Not usually noticeable. Kind of the female-work version, not the big discoveries version of knowledge you get in a typical Science narrative or the big fights version of heroism. But he doesn't give up, he keeps on doing the work. Hero to me.
Xander also isn't the architect, the guy that gets famous for having 'built' a place. He's the guy who does the unglamorous repetitive bit, and then does the repairs. Again. And again. And again.
Yet Xander=construction is a typically male job, so my categories need a bit of tweaking, but this is as far as my thought got so far.
It is possible to broadly classify jobs by the genders that usually are associated with them. 'Male' jobs are the big one offs, the things where they can do them and then point and say it is finished, done, completed and achieved. 'Female' jobs are the ones where finishing them means you have maybe a day before you have to do them again. The difference between architecture and housework.
Or stopping the apocalypse vs nightly patrol.
Buffy did the housework version of vampire slayage, and we saw her go out to do it. Angel might have done patrols sometimes, but what we saw was the 'get job, do job, all done' version.
Giles, doing Watcher work, does much the same thing over and over again, no glory to it. Not usually noticeable. Kind of the female-work version, not the big discoveries version of knowledge you get in a typical Science narrative or the big fights version of heroism. But he doesn't give up, he keeps on doing the work. Hero to me.
Xander also isn't the architect, the guy that gets famous for having 'built' a place. He's the guy who does the unglamorous repetitive bit, and then does the repairs. Again. And again. And again.
Yet Xander=construction is a typically male job, so my categories need a bit of tweaking, but this is as far as my thought got so far.
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Date: 2004-11-19 12:53 pm (UTC)