In a message dated 2/17/00 12:20:50 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

>       My vague impression is that most of the people carrying placards,
>       tying themselves to trees, and lying down in front of bulldozers were
>       women, but I'm not sure about that.  I think a lot of academic
>       preservation programs are almost entirely female now.
>
>       I have always wondered why that should be true.

I think it has to do with the fact that women are more intelligent than men.

Reminds me of a past life. This may not be polite conversation to follow, but
I think it is to the heart of the question.

The then 62 yr old stonemason I apprenticed under, Upstate NY farm country,
would not use the toilet if there was a woman in the house where we were
building a fireplace. He would never, ever leak behind the bushes if there
was any possible thought of a woman arriving on the site. I came up in the
trade thinking constipation was an occupational hazard.

The lesbian girlfriend (don't ask) I was flirting with at the time insisted
that she be hired on to do stonework. This was an otherwise dainty-built
middle-class Jewish girl from Brooklyn that could not understand that
standing all day in the hot sun busting igneous cobbles with a sledge hammer
might not be so much fun or that the pinkies at the ends of my fingers, a
result of lime burning away the skin and leaving open sores, did not go well
with prim cuticles. She was an artist, romance included. She got really angry
about this anti-feminist BS on my part.

What I really could not explain to her were the inhibitions the master had
over his bodily functions, and that it would effectively prohibit him from
ever teaching her, or any other, woman his trade.

It went further. He and his wife had lost a comfortable job & pension at a
local private school after one of the female students had accused him of
raping her... which was not very likely. This is the same stonemason who was
thrown out of school at the age of 12, in the mountains of California, for
having improper relations with a one-eyed girl in the playground on a
Saturday night. In that case he claimed she would not leave him alone and he
felt sorry for her. His attitude towards academic programs was as
straightforward as his chauvinism... the purpose of higher education being to
stage orgies and drug parties. We never did any work on campus as a result of
his sticking to his principles. You would never find him teaching in an
academic preservation program. Regardless, he left a lot of male stonemasons
behind.

Oddly, his inhibitions never did stop him from admiring, and talking about,
the legendary local lady that urinated standing up in the parking lot of the
local bar.

I would certainly not be comfortable to invite my female associates in HP to
partake of some of the impromptu toolbox and beer hall discussions that I
have attended over the years.

In respect of the female:male ratio in historic preservation if we look to
the chauvinist culture of the construction industry in general then it may
make sense that women would feel more comfortable in an emerging niche,
particularly one that embraces a more complex and intelligent set of values.

][<en