An Australian MP who has so far built here career on identity victim status decided to remind the Australian legislature just how hard the Coronavirus has been on women because sexism or something.
COVID-19 is a gendered crisis.
Nurses, nurse aides, teachers, child carers and early-childhood educators, aged-care workers and cleaners are mostly women.
They are on the frontline of this public health crisis and carry a disproportionate risk of being exposed to the virus. pic.twitter.com/uY56bDmlJ7
— Mehreen Faruqi (@MehreenFaruqi) March 25, 2020
Sure, the virus infects men at a higher rate and kills them at a much higher rate, but so what.
Yes, many nurses are women, but equipment and facility maintenance (including in hospitals) is overwhelmingly male, so are the hazardous waste and garbage disposal workers who have to handle all the infected biowaste that these hospitals are putting out. Don’t forget the overwhelming male dominance of first responders like police, firefighters, and EMT’s.
Not to mention the factory workers and truckers making and shipping this sudden demand for PPE across the country.
Many people have a role to play in tackling this crisis, but apparently only women are suffering.
I guess asking the hospital maintenance men who are keeping the building in operation to work double shifts isn’t as bad as asking the nurses to work double shifts.
Maybe it’s just me, but this moment, this identity politics grievance-mongering just seems extra grating.
We are in the middle of a pandemic that threatens not just lives but the collapse of the global economy, and yet “women and minorities hardest hit.”
For the last couple of weeks the grievance-mongers have either been silent or ignored because of the enormousness and enormity of the situation.
(Except for the “China virus is racist” which seems to be ChiCom coordinated propaganda.)
For what it’s worth, it’s been a pleasant respite from all of that bullshit.
Hopefully, as society goes back to normal, we will remember what it was like not to hear identity politics grievance bullshit and normal people will start to tell the grievance-mongers to stuff their griping up their asses.
In a time of dire circumstances, we learn very quickly what is important and what is not. It was made crystal clear in the last couple of weeks that the people who can make, ship and stock, toilet paper and hand sanitizer are infinitely more valuable to society than idiot celebrities and grievance-mongers.
Let’s not forget that in the post-Coronacrisis world.
Covid-19 is bad, but the silver lining I see is people coming together (metaphorically; they’re still doing the “social distancing” thing), helping each other out. People are seeing needs, and finding ways to fill them.
“See a need, fill a need.” — Bigweld (from the movie Robots)
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'” — Fred Rogers
People are bringing groceries to their elderly neighbors, so that those neighbors don’t have to go out and risk exposure. Distilleries are collecting the “heads” (the unusable first bit of alcohol from a batch) that they would normally use to sterilize equipment, bottling them up with vitamin E and essential oils to make hand sanitizer, and giving it away. (So much for “corporate greed”.) Car companies are retooling to make McGyver’d respirators. (Again with the “corporate greed’.) Restaurants are offering complimentary meals to first-responders and health workers, and donating their extras to provide hot meals to shelters and high-risk people. And hobbyist sewers are making reusable masks by the thousands, and providing them free of charge.
This is all grassroots. There’s no overseeing entity telling people what to do. People are doing it on their own, sharing their experiences with each other, and inspiring others do pitch in.
Covid-19 has the potential to unite the people of this country like nothing else since 9/11. That’s my silver lining.
So of course, the SJW and identity politics crowd must sow as much division as possible, lest they lose their power and relevance entirely.
These people are scum.
This reminds me of something I read a number of years ago: that Americans are far more charitable than Europeans. And that this is because Europeans have been indoctrinated that taking care of people is what the government is supposed to do — so by implication there isn’t any need for charity.
That’s not to say that charity is entirely dead in Europe, but the way it’s done in the USA is on quite a different level.
Talk about scary things; that shirt/blouse/bra thing she’s wearing, yikes!