The Death Professions: “My Body,
Not My Choice”
Мел are not human beings, they are human doings.1
We frequently hear that women are segregated into low-paying, dead-end }obs in poor work environments such as factories. But when The Jobs Rated Almanac2 ranked 2 SO jobs from best to worst based on a combination of salary, stress, work environment, outlook, security, and physical demands, they found that twenty-four of the twenty-five worst jobs were almost-all — male jobs.* Some examples: truck driver, sheet-metal worker, roofer, boilermaker, lumberjack, carpenter, construction worker or foreman, construction machinery operator, football player, welder, millwright, ironworker. All of these worst jobs have one thing in common: 95 to 100 percent men.5
Every day, almost as many men are killed at work as were killed during the average day in Vietnam.’* For men, there are, in essence, three male-only drafts: the draft of men to all the wars, the draft of everyman to unpaid bodyguard; the draft of men to all the hazardous jobs — or "death professions." When men are not legally drafted, they feel psychologically drafted.
Just as women provide a womb to create the children, men often provide a financial womb to support the children. Many men are motivated to enter the death professions to provide this financial womb. The unspoken motto of the death professions is "My body, not my choice."