June 25, 2017

"Pink-collar jobs are crap jobs for anyone... We need to reinvent pink-collar jobs so men will take them and won’t be unhappy — or women, either."

The closing quote (by a female lawprof) in a NYT article titled "Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree."

The title is a little ambiguous. "Their wives agree" means women don't want their husbands to be nurses, not the wives also don't want to be nurses, but if the closing quote is the point, then the wives also probably don't want to be nurses. (And by "nurses," the NYT means to refer to mostly to home health care workers and hospital assistants, and not the higher level nurses who are more like doctors and who I'm guessing don't appreciate seeing "nurse" as an umbrella term.)

If the closing quote is not the point — and the bulk of the article says it's not — then the problem is that men (and their wives) perceive the job as unmanly, but if they could get over that mental obstacle, men would like the job and be good at it.

There's a third theme, barely touched upon. The work actually is manly, in that it requires the lifting and moving of heavy patients, and men really are needed.

And a fourth theme: Many patients discriminate against men. Nature discriminates against men by killing them off at an earlier age. There are so many elderly women, and many of them don't mind saying that they won't accept a male health care worker. They're afraid of sexual predation. Whether men avoid the job because they're afraid of being thought of as a potential predator (or afraid of false accusation) is not mentioned in the article.

From the comments:
I am a female doctor and I find this whole issue surprising and disturbingly outdated. Gender does not register to my consciousness when working with a nurse, only their skill set. I have never heard the term pink collar but I find that as irritating as the rest of the article. Not all girls do pink. Not all nurses are women. Let's stop the a stereotypes! Nothing beats a good nurse period.
Ha, the female lawprof gets knocked by the female doctor. "Pink" is only used in that lawprof quote. But I think I see where the lawprof's thinking is. It's not that she sees women as "pink." She's implying that other people see women's jobs as insignificant and the old-fashioned term "pink collar" seems to embody that disrespect. And — I'm reading the etymology of the term now — that's always how the term worked:
The term "pink-collar" was popularized in the late 1970s by writer and social critic Louise Kapp Howe to denote women working as nurses, secretaries, and elementary school teachers. Its origins, however, go back to the early 1970s, to when the equal rights amendment, ERA, was placed before the states for ratification (March 1972). At that time, the term was used to denote secretarial and steno-pool staff as well as non-professional office staff, all of which were largely held by women. De rigueur, these positions were not white-collar jobs, but neither were they blue-collar manual labor. Hence, the creation of the term "pink collar," which indicated it was not white-collar but was nonetheless an office job, one that was overwhelmingly filled by women.
But if you don't know the origin of the term, it sounds as though it's insulting women, and it may also repel men from jobs we'd like them to take.

And why can't we stop the sex discrimination against the color pink? "Pink Wasn't Always So Girly/A short history of a complex color." Pink would like to break out of your crabbed little stereotypes and live a richer, fuller life.

63 comments:

Darrell said...

Today we say pussy-hat jobs.

rhhardin said...

There's a continuum from girly pink to pink pussy. 50 shades.

rhhardin said...

Blues are all the same

Catch a boat to England, baby
Maybe to Spain
Wherever I have gone
Wherever I've been and gone
Wherever I have gone
The blues are all the same

Laslo Spatula said...

From "With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture Since 1830":

In 1974, the strip-club owner Larry Flynt launched his even raunchier 'Hustler' with the battle cry "Think Pink," in reference to photographs showing female genitals."

The models didn't quite have 'pink collar' jobs, although I believe that umbrella should be open wider.

'Pink Heel' jobs:

Prostitute.

Escort.

Stripper.

That Woman in Accounting.


I am Laslo.

Laslo Spatula said...

If 'Pink Collar' is offensive, shouldn't 'Blue Collar' be considered offensive, also?

Just different sexes of pigeons in the pigeon-holes.

Or do we have more respect for a man welding than a woman typing?

Although the woman welder in "Flashdance" was pretty cool.

When she was dancing.

I am Laslo.

sinz52 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Laslo Spatula said...

"Although the woman welder in "Flashdance" was pretty cool. When she was dancing."

That's the problem with women taking non-Pink Collar jobs.

They're eventually going to give it up for dancing.

"What a feeling
Bein's believin'
I can have it all
Now I'm dancing for my life"

It's like women LIVE TO DANCE.

Until then, keep typing.

I am Laslo.

Michael K said...

This is nonsense. Male nurses usually go right into management if they have a BSN. Female nurses often prefer to work for male supervisors who seem far less likely to practice favoritism.

Michael K said...

They become nurse's aides because it can be a steppingstone to eventually becoming a registered nurse or even nurse practitioner.


Yes, I know many nurses who began as nurses aides while they went to school.

Nurses who are serious about a career should get a BSN and a nurse practitioner needs a Masters.

PAs are also very well paying jobs. I knew of a PA who worked for an orthopedic surgeon and made $250,000 a year.

Laslo Spatula said...

From the Internet: "A Gender-Studies Comparative Analysis of Flashdance..."

"Since the beginning of film, the role of women on screen has shifted dramatically. Reflective of women’s political history in the US, women in the film industry have often had their voices muted and their careers hindered due to lack of equality among their male peers, in terms of both respect and rights...

"An example of a film that features an independent female lead is Flashdance, which is about a young woman who works at a steel mill and as an exotic dancer, but who dreams of being a professional and making dance her career. The main character’s name is Alex, and she is clearly a symbol of the second wave of feminism in that she breaks many of the typical gender norms seen in films released in decades prior to the 1980s. She is not married nor does she have a male counterpart that she is trying to spend the film wooing, her character is motivated by her ambitious career goals, which is feminist-positive. However, there are many aspects of the film and of Alex’s character that do not fully embody the feminist movement, and I would even go as far as to say that Flashdance undermines the feminist movement in film in many ways..."

"The main issue I take with the film and with the main character of Alex Owens is that although she defies the typical gender norms for a female lead in a film, she does so by either acting hyper masculine or hyper feminine. During the day, Alex works as a welder at a steel mill, which is a very masculine profession. She wears clothing that is also very masculine, consisting mainly of suits that were popular during the eighties. Even her name, Alex Owens, is a masculine name as opposed to Alexandra, which would be the more feminine version. Although initially I liked this characteristic of the protagonist, the more I thought about it the more frustrated it made me. Alex could not simply be a strong independent female lead and hold onto her femininity at the same time. In fact, the times during the film where she is the most “girly” is at night when she works as a dancer. This was not a proper balance between the masculine qualities of the characters day job, because rather than simply being feminine and more true to typical female gender norms, she became hyper sexualized and objectified. .."

Leave it to Feminists to take the Fun out of Dancing.

"Just a steel town girl on a Saturday night
Looking for the fight of her life
In the real time world no one sees her at all
They all say she's crazy

Locking rhythm to the beat of her heart
Changing movement into light
She had danced into the danger zone
When the dancer becomes the dance"

I am Laslo.

Leslie Graves said...

The NYT article puts forward three different theories about why men don't want these jobs.

1. The job doesn't pay well.

2. The job is a stereotypically feminine job -- and some of these men don't want that because it might make them seem less masculine.

3. The job itself sucks...i.e., what you actually do when you are doing the job is, for some people (presumably more of whom are men) unpleasant, boring, demeaning or in some other way just isn't a good fit.

If we need to figure out a way to get more men to take these jobs -- both for the sake of the men and also because otherwise who is going to take care of old people? -- I would have appreciated it if the NYT article writer had put some care into seeking evidence that supports or undermines each of those theories rather than just randomly mixing them all up together.

I don't know if social scientists have put much thought into this, but it wouldn't be hard to design experiments to discriminate between those hypotheses.

MaxedOutMama said...

There are plenty of male nurses. However the job is difficult, and not every male is going to have the patience (even if he has the brains) to take the long coursework necessary to get a BSN.

There are also tons of medical techs. I am completely used to seeing men in "nursing" type positions, and I see a lot of them. I do not think there is any discrimination whatsoever.

This seems really aimed at nursing-aide jobs, which are very poorly paid. It makes no sense for most people to aim for that as a career. Many of them make less than 20K a year. Often no benefits. Men don't want to train for these positions because they are crap jobs.

Laslo Spatula said...

More "Flashdance" significance in female careers:

From NBC News:

"Hey Women, Want a Hot Career? Become a Welder"

"Six years after the start of a deep recession and a growing call for more middle-class manufacturing jobs, one American industry is tackling workforce development in a unique way. Welding is courting fresh recruits—women in particular.

Mention women welders and "Flashdance" might come to mind. The 1983 movie starred Jennifer Beals as a welder by day and dancer by night. But the industry has advanced beyond the bulky machinery depicted in the film.

The welding industry is recruiting new workers, women in particular, as available work is outpacing qualified tradespeople.

Modern welding techniques are highly specialized and can include automation. Shop floors are brighter and cleaner. Welders work on specialized structures for the marine and aerospace sectors, even on custom cars for reality TV shows.

Despite cool projects, available work is outpacing qualified tradespeople—largely due to an aging workforce.

Welding groups aren't recruiting women at the exclusion of men. Instead, they're reaching out to everyone—including a targeted push at women.

There are few women in the field: only 3 percent of U.S. professional welders are women.

"Since there's a shortage of skilled workers and the pay is good, welding is a marvelous opportunity for young women," said Nancy Cole, last year's welding society president. Only the second female president in the group's 95-year history, Cole traveled to some 26 states and 13 countries in 2013 to stump for manufacturing and welding..."

I am Laslo.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Lots of entry level nursing jobs are held by recent immigrants. Make sure you don't notice that.

If I understand the article correctly all we need to do to solve this social problem is change how people think and feel which would fundamentally alter economics conditions in the relevant markets. These alterations would bring about the outcome the author believes would be superior to the current reality. It's so simple! I am surprised no one has thought of this before.

SDaly said...

The idea that pink "switched" from a boy color to a girl color is an urban myth based upon selective highlighting of atypical evidence. A researcher did a broad text search of 19th Century writings and found, surprise, that blue was for boys.

MD Greene said...

Trying to remember the last time an op-ed in that publication said women were a bad fit for a given career because "feminine identity dies hard" or "their husbands would disapprove" or "women don't want to do X."

richlb said...

@Laslo

That all reminds me of a great joke from the failed Muppets TV show a year ago.

Discussing the previous evening, which included drunken karaoke:

Kermit: Scooter, where are your glasses.

Scooter: They fell off my head while I was singing "Maniac" and I accidentally stepped on them like 200 times.

Meade said...

Crap-collar.

Chris N said...

Once you walk down '-Ism' alley, it's thought to get back to a regular street.

Tommy Duncan said...

Clearly, government intervention is needed. Title XI for men in nursing is one obvious answer. Another solution would be to mandate that a certain percentage of XX chromosome nurses be randomly forced each day to self-identify as male. The most preferable solution would be to provide pay subsidies to XY chromosome nurses, along with housing vouchers and free cell phones.

Henry said...

I have a friend who became a health aide for a group home after a varied career as a real estate salesman, bartender, farmer, etc. He was beloved because he was big (and patient) and could get invalided adults around without drama.

robinintn said...

HoodlumDoodlum: "Lots of entry-level nursing jobs are heels by recent immigrants." Yes. And from extensive experience with hospitalized parents and grandparents, the majority of these are male. The way they perform in their jobs ranges from casually, coldly incompetent to calculatedl, planned cruelty. They destroy any goodwill created by the rest of the staff, who are mostly very good, and complaints of course result in revenge, so unless we can be there 24/7, it means more suffering and fear by people who are already ill and/or dying.

David said...

The women the law prof hangs with seem to want men who make more money and have more status than a nurse. It's all about appearances. Jobs with uniforms are always suspect with this group, except maybe doctors.

David said...

"Female nurses often prefer to work for male supervisors who seem far less likely to practice favoritism." Must not say that even if true.

Michael K said...

not every male is going to have the patience (even if he has the brains) to take the long coursework necessary to get a BSN.

No but that is what you do if you want a career in nursing. You can get an RN in junior college with an AA degree but you will never get into administration where the higher salaries are.

A long term RN with lots of experience can get to $100 k but is then at risk for a new hire who makes 25% of that.

Michael K said...

"Must not say that even if true."

It's why nurse supervisors don't like nurses talking to doctors.

Bob Boyd said...

Maybe Mark Zuckerberg could sit down with these mixed-up fellas and 'splain to them how dumping bed pans for low pay actually is one their values after all.

Fernandinande said...

We need to reinvent the fNYT so when They say "we need to reinvent pink-collar jobs" they don't really mean "men should be more like women".

cacimbo said...

"We need to reinvent pink-collar jobs so men will take them and won’t be unhappy"
Delusional. You can not "reinvent" the ugly reality of cleaning vomit, feces and urine. Will robots eventually do these ugly jobs?

Have to say my personal experience was completely opposite robinintn. During a two week hospital stay almost all the health workers were great and one of the male aides was the best of the lot.

cubanbob said...

One of the crap jobs that needs eliminating is propagandist/shill/whore for the progressive wing of the Democrat Party. As for home care aides, if they could get better paying jobs, they would. Having employed a number of them to care for my late father and now for my mother-in-law the money isn't so bad for unskilled labor since most of the time all they are doing is watching TV or being busy with their cell phones.

robinintn said...

Cambino, yes, I get that it's hit or miss, but, for my family, it's been 'miss' each time there is a male immigrant involved. I'm trying to count, and it's up to 5 or 6, so it's something I look out for in advance now.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Maybe Mark Zuckerberg could sit down with these mixed-up fellas and 'splain to them how dumping bed pans for low pay actually is one their values after all.


Perhaps Z could instead do something with robots, machines or other automation that would take away the most unpleasant aspects of the job (e.g., wastes). That might make it attractive to more people to do the higher-level stuff.

Bob Boyd said...

I have a friend who is a macho guy by anyone's measure, mountain climber, extreme skier (back before GoPro and Youtube he was jumping off cliffs into avalanche chutes), big game hunting guide, horse-packing outfitter, taxidermist, restored muscle cars, and on and on.
Anyway, we used to get out in the mountains a lot and this guy had taken an interest in learning the names of the wildflowers and native plants. We're hiking one fine spring day, wildflowers are blooming all around us and he starts naming them as we walk.

He's saying things like, "Here's how you can tell this is a type of fuckin' Lilly."

"I think this is a fuckin' Fairy Bell"

"This here is your fuckin' Baby's fucking Breath."

His conversation is not normally so laced with profanity and I realized he was proud of his knowledge and wanted to show it off, but he was a little uncomfortable saying the somewhat unmasculine names of the blossoms so he was unconsciously inserting the F word. We had some pretty good laughs when I pointed it out.

I told him he needed to publish The Real Man's Guide to North American Wild Flowers.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

HoodlumDoodlum wins the thread.

Nurses, with actual degrees, make good money and don't have to do the crappy part of the job that nurses' aides take care of. Plenty of men are going into those jobs.

Nurses' aides have to do all kinds of disgusting things and get crappy pay. Anyone, male or female, that has a better alternative is going to take it. If you want more people to take these jobs make the pay competitive.

This reminds me of one of the more stupid episodes of South Park. For some reason all the illegal aliens decided that they didn't like the US and started heading back to Mexico. In one scene they showed a couple of workers at a hospital walking off the job. The upshot was that all the cheap labor leaving the US was going to lead to economic collapse and bunches of crap jobs not getting done because nobody in the US would do it. The idea of raising wages to get people to take those jobs is not even considered.

So, you know, typical Libertarian thinking. Invite in bunches of people from the third world, exploit them, and expect a Libertarian paradise to spontaneously form.

Bruce Hayden said...

Dr K: "Yes, I know many nurses who began as nurses aides while they went to school."

Friend's daughter just got her BSN after starting that way, and was thankful that she came up that way. But was surprised at how few of her fellow students had the low level nursing training. It appears to have benefits in understanding the entire patient care process. She is planning on going back to school in a couple years, but doesn't know if she should go to Med School, get an MS, etc, so is working at a big hospital right now to get a good view of what is what. Her father, with others coming up behind her in the family has pointed out to her that grad school is on her.

Woman I went out with some, and have kept up with, had a nice career as a surgery PA. Got to do work in surgery that the real surgeons (like you) didn't want to, or couldn't economically, do. She loved it.

tcrosse said...

I ran into a few male ER nurses who had been Medics in the service. No pink collars there.

MaxedOutMama said...

Ron & others: The pay for CNAs cannot increase in most cases, because the pay scale is essentially set by the Medicare/Medicaid/other govmt ins program reimbursements, and they are too low to allow for higher pay for the workers that do most of the actual patient care.

So these jobs will remain crap jobs. Oddly enough, ACA has made them even crappier in many cases, because the insurance mandate means that now it is very difficult to get full-time work from one employer. It is totally impossible to provide the mandated insurance if most of the work is reimbursed on the Medicare/Medicaid scales. So now it's 28 hours a week for one employer, and 15 for another.

ACA has had terrible economic effects, but they are never discussed.

Rana said...

Yes, what young man in his early 20s would want to earn $70K fresh out of nursing school?

Ron Winkleheimer said...

"Ron & others: The pay for CNAs cannot increase in most cases, because the pay scale is essentially set by the Medicare/Medicaid/other govmt ins program reimbursements, and they are too low to allow for higher pay for the workers that do most of the actual patient care."

Oh, I have no doubt that is the case. Which is why there will continue to be a shortage of people taking the jobs.

http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/nursing-aide/salary

vs

https://www.reference.com/business-finance/much-garbage-collector-make-per-year-cddf1eecafb2a4e6

Strangely, I haven't seen any articles about how we need to change women's attitude towards being garbage collector.

holdfast said...

An old Army buddy of mine is a nurse. He's the kind of guy who has a 5 o'clock shadow at 10am, so we tease him a little but he really does love his job, and by all accounts is good at it. He wanted to be a doctor, but didn't really have the academics for med school (or the funds), and so instead did his nursing degree while working part time as a nurse's aid and also as a combat engineer in the Army Reserves. Now he's an ER nurse in civvie life and a Lt. in the Army Reserves (and apparently in Afghanistan the only nurse who wore a sidearm under scrubs in the ER).

rcocean said...

A lot of RN jobs are well-paid and in demand. There's a lot of competition for ER nurses.

Frankly, i could never be a nurse because like most men I don't have the patience to deal with "difficult" people. You get a lot of demanding women, whiners, odd balls, etc. and you have to be "sympathetic" or at least fake it.

I noticed that most of the medics in our area are men. I guess driving around in truck with a siren and dealing with "emergencies" is attractive to men.

rcocean said...

News flash: women and men are different. Most women don't want to work in physically demanding, dangerous, or dirty jobs. Conversely most men aren't interested in nursing, child care, or doing repetitive, low paid, indoor work.

JAORE said...

Here is a radical thought. If a job is crap, if the pay is below your worth, if the job is simply "beneath" you, get a different job.

Now this may require some effort on your part. You know, adding to your education, acquiring a new skill set, effort, punctuality, climbing the ladder based on merit, staying sober.

Or even, not choosing a career that you KNOW has all the hallmarks of a crap job by your definition.

Yeah, yeah, I know teachers are "worth" more than athletes. But they are not paid more. Do those entering the profession not know this? If not, are they really bright enough to teach our youth?

Hell, I ran into this in the engineering field:
To advance I must relocate, wah, wah, wah.
Didn't you know this when you took the job?
Yes, but I don't WANT to relocate, poor, poor me.

The people that left the "hard engineering" jobs for management get the top pay, wah, wah, wah.
Didn't you know that's true everywhere?
Yes, but I like engineering and don't like (/am grossly unsuited for) management, poor, poor me.

Feel the same way about anyone who is mystified when they discover their grievance studies masters is worthless.


John henry said...

Something nobody has mentioned about pink collar jobs is that they tend to be woman and particularly motherhood friendly. Moreso than most other jobs at least:

1) Flexibility in leaving the workforce for a while be it a couple months or a half-dozen years. Think of a tax lawyer or a computer design engineer: If they take even a couple of months off they are going to be way behind when they come back. A couple years? They might as well not even try.

Compare that to a nurse or health technician, especially at the lower levels or a teacher, office worker. They can take 20 years off and the job is still, more or less, waiting for them to slide right back into.

2) Less likelihood of rotating shifts, especially the graveyard shift and weekends.

3) Less time and money investment in education required.

4) Less likelihood of getting injured or killed on the job. I think the risk to men is 10 times or so greater.

5) Less mental stress

6) Way less physical stress.

All of the above tend to reduce the amount of money one will earn.

There are plenty of exceptions to all of those. Even with the exceptions, it is still the general tendency.

John Henry

John henry said...

Ahhh...

Now that I read to the end of the comments, I see Rcocean touched on some of the issues I mentioned above.

John Henry

John henry said...

Re Women garbage collectors:

Could most women even do the job physically?

There are some exceptions but most women, and even a lot of men, do not have the physical strength or stamina to schlep 50-75# trashcans all day, every day.

There is no physical reason why most women could not be CNC machinists or welders or a host of other typical "male" jobs, though.

Other than those I listed above.

John Henry

Anonymous said...

No matter what field of nursing, from the high tech nurse to the nurses aide, moving the patient will be a part of the job. Primary care nursing (which encompasses twisting, turning, lifting, rolling of the patient) crosses most fields of nursing. There are nurses aides on the units but they don't do all of the physical work by any stretch of the imagination. Having a strong male nurse to help with the heavier patients is a God send. If you're a nurse practioner you may find yourself dealing with the physical side of nursing less often, BUT floor nurses, no matter what unit, in general are expected to be able to handle the strenuous side of nursing.

Michael K said...

"a nice career as a surgery PA. Got to do work in surgery that the real surgeons (like you) didn't want to, or couldn't economically, do. She loved it."

The Ortho PA I mentioned was an assistant at surgery, then saw all the postop office patients.

The doc did the surgery and saw new patients.

I used to talk to PAs all the time who ran Workers Comp practices for Orthopods with four offices. All the docs wanted to do was the surgery and the PAs did all the office practice.

I didn't approve but that was the way it was. Some of those phone calls were coaching the PAs on some cases they could not get help with from the doc they worked for.

My ex-wife was a Nurse Practitioner and used to call me for advice on tough cases. The GP she worked for didn't have the time.

We finally got married again last year.

Her patients included my daughter-in-law's family and they loved her as a family doc.

holdfast said...

@rcocean

My friend, I think, feels the same - which is why he prefers to work ER/trauma - people who are ripped apart, dying, bleeding all over the place, etc. tend not to be whiny or needy.

Michael K said...

"Could most women even do the job physically?"

Waste Management has it all automated.

Michael K said...

"which is why he prefers to work ER/trauma "

I discussed this in my book. Surgery requires an ego willing to take a "well" person, make them sick with surgery and get them well again.

Trauma patients are at maximum "sickness" on admission. As long as you have steady nerves, the psychology is quite a bit different.

You either save them or they were hurt too bad to save.

John henry said...

Mary, Michael,

Where garbage pickup is automated, women can do the work. Though I would point out that there is still a fair amount of physical labor involved.

Many areas still have manual trash collection. The trash collector stands on the back of the truck, jumps off, picks up the garbage can or bag and lifts it (36" or so) into the truck hopper.

Not many women can do that.

John Henry

Yancey Ward said...

Having intimately dealt with close relatives who have spent significant time in hospitals and rehabilitation facilities in recent years, I can tell you the jobs are not glamorous- for either the nurses or the aides/orderlies. It is literally impossible to glamorize the cleaning of shit and piss, or the inserting and removing of catheters. My observation is the nurses are 95%+ female; the orderlies/aides are about 75% female, and the men in that subgroup are predominantly used for muscle tasks in lifting and moving patients.

Where I do see more men, however, is in the rehabilitation fields of occupational and physical therapy- both as the practitioners and as the aides, but even there you see more women.

I could see myself doing this- it really wouldn't bother me to do work that is mostly done by women in the field, but the one thing that would keep me from doing so is the same reason I wouldn't want to work in day care/education for young children- as a male you can't really protect yourself from false allegations of abuse without literally recording every single second of every single day on the job.

William said...

I didn't read the article, so perhaps this is an unfair comment, but you get the sense that such articles tend more to perpetuate than to diminish such stereotypes. I had a friend whose careeer arc took him from EMT to emergency room nurse. He had previously been in the Marines and was a combat veteran of Vietnam. There are are lot of male nurses in the ER, and most of them have fairly macho backgrounds.......If you work with sick people, at any professional level, you will be called on to perform icky tasks. Men don't mind getting mud and grease under their fingernails, but they're more squeamish about shit and blood specked phlegm than women. I'm not saying women are enthusiastic about blood specked phlegm, but they're a tad less repulsed by it.

Michael K said...

"Many areas still have manual trash collection."

Oh, I know but have not seen that in many years.

Hey Skipper said...

Nothing beats a good nurse period.

That sentence is missing a comma, period.

(BTW, Laslo, that is quite the roll on which you are.)

Rabel said...

A large Black man shaved my scrotum once. He was wearing scrubs and gloves and seemed to be quite an expert in his task. I assumed he was supposed to be doing what he did but I didn't actually ask for ID or a work order. For the sake of accuracy I should add that it was only part of one side of the scrotum but there was definitely testicle manipulation involved.

Those are the facts, but what if this had been Jennifer Beals in her Flashdance years instead of the large Black man? What if I had engaged Jennifer in a discussion of pink jobs during the shaving? What if I had objected to having my naughty bits handled by a beautiful, young, dancing Welder Woman? Ok, that last one may be somewhat implausible in my case but the point is that some jobs are better done by men and some by women. If we accept the natural order of things we'll all be happier in the end.

PS, the warm lather felt pretty good but - It did not move!

Quaestor said...

And why can't we stop the sex discrimination against the color pink?

In WWII pink piping was used to distinguish members of the Panzerwaffe from other branches of the German army and the Nazi SS. Gives a new dimension to the term feminazi, does it not?

Michael K said...

"some jobs are better done by men and some by women. "

We discovered the technique of an sub-ICU nurse who was really good at putting on condom catheters for patients who were incontinent but did not require a Foley catheter.

Somebody finally looked into the curtains and found she was doing a little jerkoff to help get the condom on.

Worked like a charm and happy patients, too.

SgtPete said...

I' a hetersexual married male nurse who sometimes wears pink scrubs. What do I call myself? SgtPete, RN

Anonymous said...

"We discovered the technique of an sub-ICU nurse who was really good at putting on condom catheters for patients who were incontinent but did not require a Foley catheter."

I was very good inserting urinary catheters in old men with prostate problems. I was also quite good at inserting IV's. Getting into narrow places was my forte.

pdug said...

isn't "Gender does not register to my consciousness" like

I don't *see* race.

Douglas B. Levene said...

How about an article about why women don't want to work as hard rock miners or sandhogs or roofers or telephone linemen?