More from MSN: "Does the Reverse Glass Ceiling" Exist?

Upon reading the article twice, I didn't see squat mentioned anywhere, about any discrimination or "glass ceiling" men may (and no doubt do) face. Instead the author lauds a couple guys, as if to say "there is little problem here". Also, why is she interviewing a psychotherapist? And a female one at that..if I was a man, I most definitely would NOT go to a female therapist, if I had issues about workplace discrimination, as a male suffering under females. It is so totally bogus, to consider psychotherapists "experts" on issues like these. The only expert she quotes is Farrell, and she calls it "his specific take" on the issue, when he says that men do not choose fullfilling jobs because they are under pressure to support a family. "His specific take"?? What planet has this lady been living on??? Maybe she's the proverbial "single mom who does it all"? (in which case, I'd ask her if she gets child and wife support from her ex, who needs to be in a high-earning occupation so she can make a living writing one article per month - and a shitty one at that).

-ax

Yes ax, the article is mainly twaddle that carefully avoids answering the question.

But what is a "reverse glass ceiling" anyway? Anybody ever come across a reverse ceiling? What does it look like, and do I tread on it or duck under it? Perhaps any builders reading this can inform us how you build it and where you put it. Does she mean a floor - in which case we all know full well there is a certainly a glass one when it comes to who does all the dirty, dangerous and shitty jobs that women won't touch.

When will people learn to call a spade a spade, and that it doesn't become a "reverse spade" just because a female is found to be holding it? A glass ceiling is a glass ceiling whoever creates it and whoever is above or below it. Except of course when it doesn't exist at all...

However, there IS something Warren Farrell calls "the glass cellars of the disposable sex" (men of course). It pretty much has nothing to do with what this lady is talking about, but it does comply somewhat with her blueprint for all these glass structures.
The "glass cellar" is what keeps men low down in dangerous, dirty, unrecognized jobs like miners, construction workers, loggers, firemen, truckers, trash men, radioactive fuel and waste workers, etc, etc.

These men take these type jobs so they can support their families, but cannot move upwards. Thus they are "trapped below", looking up through glass to those who are somewhat better off job-wise.

Farell also mentions that men in these jobs have ritual-like methods whereby they deny or minimize the dangerous aspects of the work, for example in the use of humor..a trash man might be nicknamed "acid-man" because he was accidentally sprayed with battery acid when the truck started to compress someone's trash. Or a fireman might be called "The human candle" because his helmet fell off during a fire, and he ran out of the burning building with his hair and scalp on fire.

As an interesting aside, I have previously worked in the nuclear power industry. Probably the most common form of humor along these lines, among radioactive-material workers, is to say to each other that they are receiving "rads to the 'nads" - a reference to their gonads (reproductive organs) being exposed to radioactive rays (a "rad" is a measure of radiation energy used by the industry). Depressing, isn't it?

-ax