Karl Kruszelnicki – he of the lurid
shirts, gushing vocalisation and honorary doctorate – took time out from his minor
celebrity lifestyle to publish on Tuesday 28 February 2017 on ABC RN Online a
piece on the gross unfairness of temperature settings in offices shared by
women and men workers – It is here:
A convenient summary follows (with my
annotations in bold italics):
Worldwide, sales of air conditioning units go up by about
20 per cent each year. But apart from the cost and energy involved in cooling
our buildings, modern air conditioning set-ups all have a fundamental flaw—they
are sexist. You see, men love aircon, but women often shiver…
Women usually have both lower height and weight, and a
higher percentage of body fat than men. In fact modern researchers reckon women
pump out about a third less heat than men do, and so don't need as much
cooling. And the solution to that would be…
The second problem is also obvious—women tend to wear
lighter clothing, and expose more skin. In an office you don't often see a
man's naked knees. Not this, but the opposite…
The third problem is a little more subtle, and it's
related to the 'glass ceiling', where women are less likely to get promoted
regardless of their qualifications. Boo the patriarchy. Boo? Are we eleven?
And so, the men (oh gawd, which men?) get the more
attractive corner offices with lots of glass and great views, while the women
are clustered more towards the centre of the building. Karl you may have been distracted
by the reflection of your attire, but most office layouts now are open plan
with few individual offices; and where they do exist, the offices tend to be
located in the interior of buildings. Both men and women typically sit in cubicles. It’s not necessarily like the ABC or Sydney Uni out there, you know…
Now one factor here is that glass leaks heat like crazy,
and so in summer, the men in the corner offices want the aircon running colder.
That’s
because men want to work without being trapped, fully-clothed, in an office
sauna, Karl.
Another factor is that the aircon vents are usually
closer to the centre of the building. So the women in their lighter clothes are
directly in the blast of the cold air squirting out of the vents, on its way to
the warmer corner offices. So please, let the women move to the
windows and men will take the walls. Bring it on. And take your cardies with
you.
Cardigan wars aside, there's a bigger issue with air
conditioning—the cost. But the cost could help end the days of sexist aircon. But alas
not end your sexist arguments, Karl…
If we just set the thermostat to a slightly higher
temperature, we can save energy and money. According to Richard de Dear, a
professor of architectural and design science at the University of Sydney, just
resetting the thermostat from 22 to 25 degrees Celsius could cut a quarter off
the cooling bill.
At that lady-friendly
temperature, suitless men can chill out (oh really, chill out at 25 degrees C in
trousers, shirtsleeves and enclosed shoes?) and women won't have to
battle a cold front while they're fighting the glass ceiling. And
men can sweat with no solution other than disrobing, while women feel
comfortable – until they witness their male colleagues in Y-fronts, man
boobs-a-bouncin’…
Or maybe not.
How about instead, Karl, you just arrange for a reversal of the clothing norms
– men wear shorts, sandals and tank tops to work and women wear trousers, long-sleeved
shirts and enclosed shoes – and then it will be thermally fair and equitable for
both sexes based on BMI and surface area to volume ratios. What’s good for the
ganders should be good for the geese, right?
And while you’re off doing that, Prof de Dear, rather
than glibly insisting we raise the indoor working temperature to 25 degrees C, could
get cracking on the design and construction of thermally efficient, well-insulated
and ventilated office buildings that deliver temps of a comfortable 22 C in
summer and 18 C in winter. In the meantime women can hang on to their work cardies…
What is most
galling about Kruszelnicki’s piece is not the fatuous and superficial
thoughtlessness, but his emphasis on the shallow sexism of women’s experiences
while blithely unconscious of the deeper sexism and bias in assuming that
remote architects of any system, being mostly men, clearly act in the interests
of all or most men. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The
overwhelming majority of men do not want to wear hot clothes in summer, especially
in Australia. The people who employ them – a small proportion of men and,
increasingly women – along with society in general, deem that Homo officiis don this ridiculous garb
to meet an oppressive ‘standard of dress’, and yet happily approve of women at
work wearing climate-appropriate clothing of dress or skirt or shorts, sleeveless
tops and open shoes. Then Karl and co have the temerity to blame men for the dress
codes, while women enjoy the score or more sartorial options available to them.
Fuck off. We
need to call this out for the sexist drivel it is. ‘Some men benefit, therefore
men benefit’ and ‘all (or most) beneficiaries are men, therefore all (or most)
men are beneficiaries’ are really crap arguments; and anyone who can’t see why
needs to go do some first year analytic philosophy. Or just Google ‘affirming
the consequent’ and ‘the fallacy of composition’ – it’ll be quicker. Even esteemed
science journalists and professors of architecture should be able to get it.
These are in
reality examples of a deep sexism we can call ‘man-blaming’. Coming from
otherwise intelligent and well-educated men, it typifies an irksome gender bias
among a certain class of intellectual cuckold.
They conflate the gender of the few beneficiaries with their sex entire. It is
such an egregious case of slipshod reasoning that one must conclude either that
the men arguing the point have a pathological loathing of their own sex, or
that they are at best blindly unconcerned about the intellectual merits of the
argument in their case.
So, Karl, rather
than write self-indulgent articles pandering to your ‘feminist’ credentials, go
change the customs of dress and encourage the design of better buildings for all
the office slaves to work in.
