When my children were little, we had many toy diggers, and a particularly prized jumble-sale purchase known as the Big Red Truck, which despite its inconvenient size and humble origins inspired such passion it made several international moves with us. The Big Red Truck had levers so you could tip Lego all over the floor, and a tailgate allowing processions of plastic animals to board for an implicitly final journey.
I found myself thinking about the centrality of toy construction vehicles to the play and fantasy lives of little boys this week. That play is one of the ways boys learn masculinity, a small-world fantasy of power and throbbing engines, a way to overrule the toy people and smaller cars on the carpet. There’s research but you can watch any playground; boys are socialised to dominate shared space. Our local playgroup also had a toy petrol station, part of a multistorey car park, whose double-digit prices were already comically dated.
Even 15 years ago the oil wars were already raging and it was already obvious that there was infinite demand for a finite resource and that burning oil was destroying the planet. The petrol station wasn’t an inspired addition to children’s play, but many small boys enjoyed putting the nozzle into holes and making pumping noises.
There is no reason, of course, why girls should not play with diggers and oil, but it is not expected or encouraged. The identification of masculinity with the burning of fossil fuels and the intimidating capacities of big vehicles starts before children can walk. Fantasies of omnipotence and domination are natural to toddlers only beginning to learn the hard truth that other people are human too, but good men outgrow them.
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Girls are taught to mimic the work of care, minding dolls and small animals, perhaps cooking. They tend to play at the edges of shared spaces, quieter and out of boys’ way.
I thought about the centrality of caring play to girlhood this week, watching (low) paid carers, not all but mostly women, prevented from visiting those who depended on them; hearing the anguish of unpaid carers of all genders, who might themselves have a thing or two to say to the Government but lack the big vehicles from which to speak. I saw vigilante roadblocks controlling who, including women in labour, could go to hospital.
One man with a big truck, which may or may not have been red and undoubtedly had many exciting levers, made headlines by asserting that he and his henchmen “had the country by the balls”, but – the men in suits hesitating for days before sending in the men in uniform – they also had the half of the country that does not have balls, or big trucks or anything resembling proportionate political representation. I wondered how differently it might have been received if they had “grabbed the country by the tits”, or, as another man in command of many big trucks has recommended, “by the pussy”.
Later, when the men in uniform had done their jobs, another big truck owner claimed he “was sorry to have put anyone out”. Isn’t “putting people out” the point of public protest, legitimate and otherwise? And what other consequence was likely to ensue from roadblocks and checkpoints? But anyway, he said, the suffering of others had been necessary to prevent the bankruptcy of businesses “passed down father to son” and that there had been “grown men close to tears” over fuel prices.
[ Nervously tracking my son’s flight I realise the freedom in embracing not knowingOpens in new window ]
Those tears, I hope, are dried by the €750 million of public funds that won’t now be available to invest in renewable energy or public transport or the mental health of children or better maternity care or even paternity leave. The unshed tears of men with big trucks are costly indeed, and what price matrilineal heritage, how different would Ireland have been this last century if the tears of grown women were a national emergency requiring unlimited expenditure?
