face to face with...?

I just had quite an intense morning. I'm working at HCW, doing the usual office things (reading halfheartedly, wandering out to the playground to take occasional naps, shattering Chris' Snake II high score on my cell phone) when one of the Board of Directors comes in (HCW is a community club, run by the home owner's association) to do whatever it is that she does with the homes and the people that reside in them.

Apparently, she and Dana (boss) have quite the relationship going. I listened to them argue in circles and not listen to each other whatsoever for at least three hours, at which point they were still in the same little arguing box, not having made any productive ground. They started to talk about the problems here with the pool, and kids not following rules that is backed up by the fact that many parents expect lifeguards to serve also as babysitters.

BOD lady suggests to Dana that he should not hire female lifeguards for the summer.

I've been blocking out most of the conversation for quite some time now but I have feminist radar, you know, that's always on with a little red light that blips calmly when all is well and goes berserk when I hear discrimination. I keep my feminist radar in excellent condition, spit and polish every morning, regular service trips...

Now, honestly, I think the sort of blatant sexism of the sort BOD lady is projecting is rare and/or contained to small segments of the greater population, so the things she said didn't make me angry in the sense that sexism is rampant and raging in our communities and affecting the status of my employment. Rather, it was personally insulting.

Her reasoning: Girls have trouble being tough with kids and enforcing rules. Come to think of it- this is all she said, with no backup example or anecdotal 'proof'. She told one story about watching a lifeguard discipline a kid and subsequently get bitched out by the kid's parent, after which I was fully expecting her to launch into a flood of tears and quit passionately on the deck of the pool, leaving to mother a hoard of beautiful cherubic children and scrub her husband's feet...but no such ending materialized. Just a sort of basic assumption that it would be for both the club's and the female lifeguard's own good that she not work here as kids are out of control and ill-behaved.

To her credit, she did not know that I am a lifeguard.

However, I am a lifeguard. I have worked in numerous settings: rec pools, lap pools, lake beaches, athletic club pools, and camp pools; I have never made a save but you could reasonably credit that to the efficient manner in which I enforce rules and regulations. I can swim fast; I have no qualms kicking kids out of a pool if they disregard my authority (in fact, it is a pleasurable activity).

The look on my face must have been priceless, because Dana laughed when I stood up fast from my chair and affixed BOD lady with my patented death stare.

Don't argue societal conceptions of gender with a feminist lifeguard. We are mean and we have whistles.

At any rate, I may have impressed upon her in my diatribe the importance of chucking that particular assumption out the window (and cheers to Dana for his example that our weakest lifeguard is a man- and a bodybuilder), but our argument was likely just as circuitous as the earlier ones.

Also, she seems like a pushy and opinionated lady. I doubt that she is projecting her own inability to govern the actions of children onto us, so from wence comes this attitude that women are weak and incapable of discipline? She might be pulling a Phyllis Schfaly on me (Phyllis is a darling right wing shill dedicated to sending women back into the home with their kids, yet last I checked did most of her own work outside of the home).

Interesting to me in this whole experience is the very nature of such a comment seeming so out of place these days. Such a hiring policy as she would see fit to enable is naturally illegal and discriminatory, and in a profession such as lifeguarding rendered outdated. Lifeguarding has been one of the more gender integrated jobs I've worked (okay, it's really the only job I've worked) and, as in real life, inability to do your job properly is an individual fault and not the result of the placement of your gonads.

I guess that would make me optimistic that I don't run into this more often (although I'm still peeved), and that most people would immediately disagree with BOD lady.

Hm, I can't decide...am I optimistic, peeved, or just generally amused?

Or maybe this is one of the reasons to be a feminist. So you can reduce your opponents to a quivering lump of poorly argued jelly.