taintedgypsy
Posts: 228
Joined: 2/10/2007 Status: offline
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I looked at my options when I had my daughter and decided to get a degree while she was a toddler. I was on my own with her and no way was I going to raise her on welfare ... I was horrified to find the only jobs available meant she would be in child care before and after school and in most cases at netball on a sat without me and they did not pay that well. I found this an unacceptable option. I found jobs that did not involve me working weekends and had some flexability that allowed me to drop her at the bus and be home for her when needed. I worked back when she had netball practice or youth group but I was there to pick her up, with the orchard she could catch the buss to the orchard from school if I needed to work back. I worked in pouring rain or searing heat, I worked when I was sick and more than once I stood in a shower in tears in the morning praying for the muscels in my back to unlock, but my body got stronger and I moved on. I worked picking strawberries to pay for christmas, and picking mushrooms in putrid humid sheds. I have worked as a roof plumbers assitant, offsided on a coke truck, dug irrigation ditches, and picked citrus (150-200 kgs an hr all carried in a 30kg back on a shoulder harness). I have worked in factories and orchard sheds where you put 40 crates on a pallet every 20 mins. I have worked in quarries stemming holes with buckets of gravel, handled explosives and even shoveled turkey shit one year to make ends meet. I am 45 this month and back working in an orchard, and I just spent 3 days picking oranges at a tonn a day. I have no trouble with working physically hard and actually enjoy the level of fitness and the peace of the trees. There is something truely satisfing about driving the tractor back to the shed with full bins behind you. A sense of achievement, a definate end to the day with a smile on your face and a good days work under your belt. I was the only woman employed in so many cases I have lost track. I have always had to sell myself to get the job and then deal with the men who would not accept a woman on the team, though there were also plenty who did. I have not done a job where the man next to me was paid more because of gender, if I could do the work than I got paid appropriately, this has never been a problem. The problem has always been that men and women judge a woman in a traditionally male job so harshly. My hands are work worn, scarred, and callassed at different times and they are a testament to years of hard work. I have been told that my back was to muscled for a woman, that my shoulders were to square, that my body lacked softness and that I have a man's hands, ugly, work worn and hard. I was put down and really hurt by comments to a stage where I use to hide my hands when I was out ... ashamed. then there were those that presumed that I am big enough and ugly enough to look after myself, treated me with roughness and disregard because it was all I deserved. Presumptions that I was morally lax because I worked with men. Disrespected and handled because surely I must expect that working with all those men. Women who never invited me in for a cup of tea because I must be butch to do that job, or excluded me because I obviously couldn't be trusted arround their husbands. Never asked out to dinner or given flowers, they just presumed that with the job she does she be happier with a beer at the pub. For a long time I hardened and lived up to the expectations of others, building walls arround myself till I did not know who I was. After a while I started to take it to heart and felt ashamed of my strength and ability, made to feel less than female because of the jobs I took. No consideration for the fact that I had a daughter to support and that I was doing the best I knew how. I have even had Doms tell me I could not possibly be submissive because I wear steel caps and can drive a truck lol. I walked into a hotel for dinner 6mths ago when I was working for an explosives company servicing quarries. I was wearing a long skirt and nice blouse, my hair was down and I had makeup on, one of the men I worked with choked on his beer and stated "fuck you really are a girl". I laughed and started wearing a hot pink hat to work to remind them that I was a girl. I carried the joke on, you laugh or you cry. We have come along way from when women were paid half wages, women can work where they are able too if they want to, it may not be an easy road but it is possible to walk it if you have the strength and ability to set that first foot on it. However the attitudes of society to women who choose to work in what has been traditionally a males world still have along way to go. If anything working hard in steelcaps and hadhats has made me value my own feminity, treasure the softness within my soul and appreciate that which is the submissive me. As I shed the past that led to my being ashamed of who I am, I am finding renewed strength. In learning to accept myself I am finding forgotten nooks and crannies of joy and places of power from within that make me smile when I look in the mirror. I will not allow people to decide who I am anymore, I will walk tall and proud in my steelcap boots and take pride in my acheivements. I have wasted to much of my life listening to others, it is time to put aside those who do not appreciate who I am. Just my 2 cents worth
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..."Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass ... It is about learning to dance in the rain." Equal Opportunity Slut (Yeah ... best of both worlds lol) warm smiles to all
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