Dr. Catlyn Collins is an assistant professor of sociology and of women, gender, and sexuality studies at Washington University in St. Louis. She is also a published author of a book titled Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving.
Her areas of research are gender inequality, work, families, and social policy
According to Glassdoor, the average salary of an assistant professor at Washington University is $105,700.
Add in speaking fees and book sales and it’s clear that she is in at least the top 5% of American incomes.
On Wednesday, she wanted to show the world how virtuous of a person she is, so she Tweeted this:
If you are at all curious, the average salary for an MoDOT highway maintenance worker is $31,788.
So here is this professor, with a Ph.D. in Sociology, shaming a road crew worker who she probably makes four times the salary of and most likely only has a high school diploma and on the job training, about a sign that he did not create and is required by law to put up.
I have a couple of thoughts on the matter.
First:
Why does the sign say men working?
We can go through the history of the English language where “man” or “men” has been used as a genericization of all people, e.g., “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
But the engineer in me says that we know highway safety is a thing. A sign that is too long and complicated to read will be a driver distraction. At highway speeds “Men Working” is two words, 10 letters, and it conveys a message easy to understand.
If the sign were to be written and approved by an assistant professor of sociology and of women, gender, and sexuality studies it would probably say “men women transgender non-binary two-spirit working” and by the time you are done reading that at highway speeds, you’ve plowed your car into the back of a road crew service vehicle.
Even “people working” is longer and harder to pick up at a glance.
You want your sign to be as easily visually digestible as possible to send your message while keeping drivers’ eyes on the road. “Men working” does that in the least amount of letters.
Second:
I have never worked road construction but I have worked outside in heavy labor before.
Here is the annual high and low temperatures for St. Louis, Missouri.
A road crew worker is someone who needs to be able to work in winter below freezing and summer at 90 degrees and high humidity.
One of the the most physically intensive jobs I’ve ever had was at the paint booth at a factory in Indiana. We had to wear our PPE which was steel toe boots, jeans, and a long sleeve shirt under a Tyvek suit (a large plastic bag) in a factory with no A/C in Indiana in the summer, next to a giant pass-through oven to bake on the powder coat we were spraying.
It had to be 120 degrees in the paint booth between the near 100 degrees outside and the baking oven inside.
I remember bringing two 2.5 gallon mini coolers to work every day, filled with ice and Country Time lemonade. The coolers and a new large bag of potato chips would be empty by the time I went home. My shirts would have big white rings from all the salt in the sweat I lost during my shift. And I lost weight doing it.
The paint booth paid well, better than assembly, because it was harder and considered as skilled job (dropping rivets was entry level).
The factory hired women. We never had a woman stay on the paint booth for more than a day.
I’ve worked several jobs like that. Piping inspection engineer at a refinery was another, but substitute the Tyvek suit for a set of Nomex coveralls, and Indiana for Philadelphia.
I’m not saying women are incapable of hard work, I’m just saying I’ve never personally experienced women who wanted to be out in the blazing sun of summer or the freezing winds of winter pouring asphalt.
What I can guarantee is that no woman who would be turned off to a job by a sign saying “men working” has the endurance to actually pour boiling asphalt in the sun, heat, and humidity of a Midwestern day in August. Mother nature is far more oppressive than a road sign.
Lastly:
This is why so many on the Right get accused of being anti-academic. Because this is the shit that we see that makes us hate academia.
I am proud of my Ph.D. Mine is in engineering, and I walk a factory floor every day in composite toe boots. I don’t act like I am better than the people in assembly. I am there to help them by solving problems with my skills.
This type of academic elitism is all about reminding the non-academic non-elite about their place.
Think about this guy. He works hard in the cold rain of the Midwest right now. At the end of the day he might go to a bar with some coworkers and have a beer, every part of his body hurting.
That is the kind of toxic masculinity that this professor raves against.
So when Lefties talk about universal free college, we don’t think that we’re going to get more people on road crews fixing our highways. We think we’re going to get more sociology majors shaming those guys on Titter for working hard. And we don’t want to tax dollars to pay for that.
Maybe I am reading too much into this, but this Tweet is the kind of thing that makes me say “you know what, it’s time to shut down every sociology department in every college in America and transfer that money to community college construction programs.”
That’s assuming she deigned to get out of her car into bad weather and demean herself talking to a prole instead of just making the entire conversation up in her head.
And then everyone in the Starbucks started to clap!
I assumed she shouted out her (barely-cracked) window at the poor guy. Didn’t get out, didn’t have an actual conversation other than those four lines.
Wow, is that face her RBF?
Oh gawd, That is a bad Resting Bitch Face. It can be overcome!
So true. I am female and used to work far harder than this condescending leftist could ever imagine. Working with racehorses, that can bite, kick, and throw you off. Mucking out manure filled stalls, hauling 5 gallon buckets of water, 90 pound bags of salt, stacking dozens of hay and straw bales, and all in snow, rain, heat and freezing cold. I earned 450.00 a month plus room and board 6 days a week for THAT. It must be nice to paid so handsomely merely to THINK like a retard.
Many people don’t react well when presented with a major non-sequitur in what they’re concentrating on, especially when it’s not something they’re usually engaged with. With zero warning, when he’s focusing on doing his job, it’s not surprising if he responded with bewilderment. (If the conversation even happened – props to Thirdpower for that thought.)
I’d like to see how she’d react if I were to burst in on her working on lecture notes, and demand an immediate, right-now response to whether she thinks a spin-glass lattice or Bose-Einstein condensate is the better choice for pursuit of high-bit-count quantum computing. And why.
Spin glass lattice, obviously because anyone who thinks otherwise is a racist and should be deplatfomed and driven from society.
Imagine her teaching in her classroom and someone comes and demands to know why the air conditioning isn’t working.
Huh?
The whole supposed exchange amounts to proof that this “professor” does not know the English language. Hardly surprising given the subjects she works on.
10 bucks says that “awkwardest face” actually meant the worker was thinking “How do I stuff this stupid bint down a manhole so I can get on with my work?”
I suspect that the professor, being a Right Thinking member of the Democratic Socialists, is more upset by the “working” part of the sign.
Depending on what I’m doing, and how dangerous a lapse of concentration could be, my response could be (and has been), “get the f**K out of here right now!”
“Maybe I am reading too much into this, but this Tweet is the kind of thing that makes me say “you know what, it’s time to shut down every sociology department in every college in America and transfer that money to community college construction programs.”’
Dude! I’ve been thinking that very thought, about multiple “majors”, for nigh onto decades, without Ms. Superiority Complex’s self congratulatory preening!
Reltney, you’re not reading too much into this. It is long past time to shut down every sociology department in the country, along with every “studies” department, also. These university fields are nothing by grievance group studies, providing sinecures for leftist Democrats.They don’t do meaningful academic work and do nothing but indoctrinate students into leftist ideology.
Maybe I am just looking at this the wrong way or something…
This is, in my experience, the first time that I have seen or heard of a feminist demanding that women be in construction (or any other hard, labor intensive, dirty) job.
She is actually seeking equality!
One of the problems with feminists is that they are about domination and control. Simply have equality is not enough, they have to be the CEO. I will support any feminist that is fighting for more women longshoremen, welders, heavy equipment operators, sanitation workers, plumbers, etc… When feminists start protesting because not enough women are placing concrete or working steel, I will believe it is about equality.
And, like manna from heaven, here comes a professor that did exactly that.
OK, I know that was not her intention in any way, but the practical outcome is that she just demonstrated that women should be working hard construction on an equal footing with men.
I read it as simply she saw something she could be outraged at and offended by.
She certainly, from her own account, wasn’t asking how to apply for a job on his crew.
That’s brilliant!
Next time some feminist bi… er, person complains about the lack of female representation in my industry (information technology), I’ll tell her which technical certifications to seek and where to go to apply for an entry-level position.
Just like every other person — guy, gal, or whatever — did to get here.
Just avoid the phrase “learn to code” I suppose… 🙂
Edit:
I suspect what you will uncover is that there are many people – male and female – who want all the perks of a given position without having to go through the bother of earning them. It’s just a little more obvious, in a physical sense, when someone tries to bluff it in a field where you have to get it right to get it to work. Electrical engineering, programming, physics, hydrology … that sort of thing.
And at the same time, she can work to combat the rampant discrimination against men in nursing, elementary education, and … sociology …
A good friend of mine has a PhD, he got his working for a fence company. Post hole digger.
Could anyone let me know what “Do you think maybe they’re related?” is supposed to mean?
This woman is a grievance collector. If she’s upset over something that trivial, someday she’ll go violent.
The implication is that the sign saying “men working” is illustrative of sexism in the industry. Said sexism is expressed and encapsulated by the use of a sign that uses the word men instead of something gender neutral. The persistence of said sexism shuts women out of the industry and hurts/damages women. If said sexism didn’t exist, more women would work in the industry but they are discouraged from attempting to work in the industry due to the latent sexism as expressed by a “men working” sign. The comment was thus meant as a snarky jab of yea no kidding women don’t work in the industry, just look at how non-inclusive that signs makes it.
I think that sums it up.
Unrelated to this comment, but college is overrated, over priced crap that is functionally useless for most people. If college was free for everyone you are 100% correct, that wouldn’t mean tons more engineers, that would me tons more philosophy, history, sociology, and psychology etc majors because they are easy. It is exactly what happened to me, I tried mechanical engineering for three years before I gave up and got an English and a Philosophy degree simply so I’d have something to show for my time and money. I’ve since asked an old boss if it made any difference to him and the answer was like, oh yea I forgot you went to college.
Matt, the key thing this mentally defective alleged professor did not understand is that the word “men” IS gender-neutral. Anyone with an understanding of basic English knows this. Only those who are pathologically stupid or professional axe-grinders (but I repeat myself) do not.
They would disagree with you and say men is not gender neutral regardless of the historical, dictionary, or common usage or meaning and say another word should be used that is not exclusionary. This is not a new sentiment in that area of “study”, as I first encountered it around 10 years ago myself.
i don’t know about philosophy, history and sociology, but psychology isn’t easy at all
Fair enough. I suppose it always matters what level of scholarship you are at too.
At any rate, my point was everyone has their natural abilities, and more people fall into finding the liberal arts easier for whatever reason than they do math and the sciences. At least that is my experience.
If the sign were to be written and approved by an assistant professor of sociology and of women, gender, and sexuality studies it would probably say “men women transgender non-binary two-spirit working” and by the time you are done reading that at highway speeds, you’ve plowed your car into the back of a road crew service vehicle.
We did an exercise like this in a Technical Writing course.
(For those unaware, “technical writing” isn’t necessarily “technical”. It’s more like, “writing for a specific purpose to a specific audience”.)
We took the “slippery when wet” road sign and had a good time coming up with alternatives that are technically more accurate, but completely unusable as road signs.
IIRC (it was many years ago), the winner was something like, “friction coefficient of driving surface approaches zero while covered by aqueous substances” (offered by a physics student).
Imagine trying to read and parse THAT while traveling 65 mph (29 m/s) along a wet road.
The moral of the story is, road signs might seem like they could have been written by toddlers, but they were actually carefully designed by language experts to impart as much critically-relevant information as needed, in as few words/letters as possible. It’s much, much harder than it sounds!
As an aside: Does this lady really think the child of the female construction flagger killed by an inattentive driver gives two sh!ts that the sign was technically inaccurate by only referencing “MEN”?
Archer: bravo! You likely have given, in that one question, more thought to that worker’s child, that this preening self righteous posturing shallow self important nitwit has, in x e r (see what I did there?) Life.
And, the worker she reports lambasting, likely has done more to make her community a safer, better, place, this week, than Ms. Virtue Signalling has since…….ever.
And that working man’s name? Albert Einstein.
Can’t think of much to add. Well stated thesis. Whatever the merits of this or that argument, the fact that a professor thought this was an argument worth picking with some poor road worker shows what a pathetic creature she is.
She’s lucky his work implement didn’t go through her windshield…or her brainstem.
How about one rule, “don’t be a cunt”?
For what it’s worth, the exchange likely never happened.
There is something else wrong with academia.
Most published research findings are false:
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21598944-sloppy-researchers-beware-new-institute-has-you-its-sights-metaphysicians
More here:
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/articles-and-links-arranged-by-subject.html#articles_by_subject_bogus_science
I think we’d all be better off telling these folks to simply F O. Ignore their petty greievances and move forward. No good can come from paying them any heed , just as no good will ever come from them.
While I attended WashU Chancellor Danforth shut down the Sociology Dept for political non-sense. I hear it re-opened recently and returns to its questionable form.
Well written post. However, I think this conversation only occurred in her mind. The butthurt contained in the post is probably real.
Me: Why don’t you apply for the job, Caitlyn?
Caitlyn: I wouldn’t be caught dead doing manual labor
Me: Then why do they call it “Manual”?
The *Blank Slate* by Stephen Pinker explains the science behind gender differences. The Kindle version has a 2017 update, but the science was irrefutable when originally published in 2003.
This women is lacking basic knowledge available 15 years ago, but is too arrogant to see her ignorance.
Lady, if you don’t want to spend the time to learn, or expend the mental energy required for common sense, then just please be quiet and stop polluting our world with spaghetti-think.
How about ‘WORKERS’? That’s even shorter.
[…] Go here to read the rest. My sainted mother was one of the most independent persons, let alone women, I have ever encountered. She agreed with my sainted father who succinctly described feminism as “games for rich women”. […]
“Maybe I am reading too much into this.”
No, you are not. Not even close. Here permit me to have a shot at it.
She is riding in her car (that was invented and constructed by men), to her nice easy comfortable job (in a building that was put up by men), on a roadway system that was designed and constructed by endless gangs of male construction workers all over America.
She is able to complain about her feelings being hurt on a platform that reaches all across the planet because male engineers invented the internet, laid the wire for broadband, sent the satellites into space, invented and developed the microprocessor which allows for computers the size of phones and the protocols which allow for a satellite to pick out a specific cell phone out of a city full of cell phones….. Yea, exactly…. etc…. etc…. etc… You all know I have only scratched the surface of the surface of what males have accomplished, and what males have constructed all over the world.
I will once again begin to believe in the future of my country, when we are capable of breeding men who can (and will) say to women like this pseudo feminist bigot: “Honey, men run the world because men built it. You can complain about us or parasite off us, but you can’t do both.”
I do facilities work, and the sign I put up to keep people like Dr. Collins from falling into the holes I am digging or bothering me while I am trying to earn a living say “WORK AREA”. It scares them into their air conditioned offices to surf Pinterest immediately.
“Work Crew” would fit on the sign just as well. The diamond shape is what makes it awkward.
Edit: It occurred to me that I’m advancing the patriarchy by attempting to correct her stated problem rather than simply listening and commiserating. My apologies.
Dr. Catlyn Collins should spend a year working on a road crew.
I worked a summer on a roofing crew in Texas. The job paid $10/hr back when the minimum wage was $3.75, and required working up on rooftops all day during the summer, when the temperature got up well over 100 on the ground. It was much hotter on the roofs.
Despite the job listing being posted on the college jobs board all summer long advertising a job for $10 an hour, we never once had a woman show up to work on the crew.
I don’t hold that against them – if I’d had a better option to make that much money I wouldn’t have worked roofing either – but I seriously doubt that “muh patriarchy” was what kept women off the roofs.
I particularly like the suggestion that sociology and grievance studies departments be shut down and the education funds be transferred to teach valuable skills in community colleges.
But in her defense, she’s using her extensive training to make our society more woke and he’s doing what? Building a road?
I like the way she got her face in the picture so that we know exactly who it is that is virtue signaling.
I agree wholeheartedly with this post and with the responses to it as well (though I did not read them all).
But I did not see the name of the author. Am I just blind?
Who wrote this?
And her tweets are now “protected.”
Excellent observation, many academics lack real world experience as do many politicians. There’s just one thing: you’re assuming that free education for all doesn’t include trade schools, but it does. There are many sociology and other liberal arts majors who aren’t working in their field. They’re at Starbucks or on telemarketer phones. Eventually this gets down to the students choosing majors and they’ll realize they need to pick a major that will help them earn a living. Some will look to trade schools and they might even go, if they can afford it.
Also, you’re not the only one who will be paying into a system that will be available to your kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews, etc. That sociology professor will also be paying in, only she and the people in Congress will be paying a bigger chunk of their paycheck.
If I were a Republican Congressman and was going to participate in drafting a “college for all” bill, I’d draft it so that it only provided money for the hard sciences, engineering, medicine/nursing/PA, and vocational degrees. No soft sciences, liberal arts, social sciences, or other BA degrees.
If education is an investment (which I agree with) then we should only be investing in programs with a valuable ROI. If your really want to major in women’s studies you can pay for that yourself. If you want free college than you have to major in something useful and economically valuable to society.
So here is this professor, with a Ph.D. in Sociology,
Meaning she has never done anything worth $h!t in her whole life
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