Feminism and a world designed for men

[Sue]

Office temp is a known problem men are expected to wear suits and ties. While women should wear dresses. So the temp is never going to please everyone.

Eh?

 

[Winot]

Eh?

I think dylanredefined is talking about societal expectation that women should wear fewer clothes than men.

 

[cheesethief]

But women feel the cold more - that's just a fact and it's just the way we're made. And most of us do dress for the temperature but having to wear 2 jumpers cos the aircon is on is just bonkers.

There's no easy answer to this one, I'm a bloke and am always hot. Doesn't mean I expect an office temperature to conform to my specifications though. The one point I would make is that it's inherently easier to warm up, than it is to cool down. In a cold office one can wear extra layers, in a hot office there are few options available whilst maintaining standards of decency. But what does really rile me is how cold people get all the sympathy... "Oh no, you're cold! that's awful, we must find a way to warm you up". Compared to "why is that man sweating all over his keyboard? looks minging, glad I'm not him...".

When you can't think straight, when the sweat's making your eyes sting, when your armpits are like swamps, when you'd rather die than spend another fucking day in a stiflingly warm, oppressive office... I'd give anything to be a cold person...

 

[Poot]

There's no easy answer to this one, I'm a bloke and am always hot. Doesn't mean I expect an office temperature to conform to my specifications though. The one point I would make is that it's inherently easier to warm up, than it is to cool down. In a cold office one can wear extra layers, in a hot office there are few options available whilst maintaining standards of decency. But what does really rile me is how cold people get all the sympathy... "Oh no, you're cold! that's awful, we must find a way to warm you up". Compared to "why is that man sweating all over his keyboard? looks minging, glad I'm not him...".

When you can't think straight, when the sweat's making your eyes sting, when your armpits are like swamps, when you'd rather die than spend another fucking day in a stiflingly warm, oppressive office... I'd give anything to be a cold person...

Try a hot flush.

 

[cheesethief]

Try a hot flush.

So you know how unpleasant it is to be horribly hot?

 

[Poot]

So you know how unpleasant it is to be horribly hot?

Yeah. Sorry. That wasn't terribly sympathetic and fwiw my hot flushes are caused by hormones and anxiety not the actual temperature, and if I sit them out for half an hour they do go away after a while.

I don't know what to suggest. Can you have a fan on your desk?

 

[farmerbarleymow]

The cupboards and things are what I come across most often. So many things designed for average height men despite the fact that most people are shorter than average height men.

Its an interesting area, and how various assumptions get baked in to the system to the detriment of whole groups of people.

Kitchens are my bugbear too - sinks are usually too low to wash up comfortably without getting lower back pain (I'm 5'11", so slightly above average for a man), but some cupboards are too high to reach. The kitchen where I live now has both problems - I can reach the front of the top shelf in the wall cupboards but can't get stuff at the back without standing on something, so they must have had someone at 6'4"+ in mind when they installed them, yet someone at 5'6" for the sink.

The office I work in either too hot or cold, depending on time of year and weather conditions. A cold snap means its freezing for everyone, and then as the landlord cranks up the heating it overshoots and turns into a sauna. Summer is unbearably hot given the amount of windows letting heat in. Rarely is it an ideal temperature for anyone, but as its an older crappy building this is to be expected.

 

[JudithB]

Thanks. discuss toilet provision by all means.

I'd like to ban all references to ID politics on this thread as anyone wanting to take the discussion that way should take it to the existing really long thread on that subject >>>

With you all the way sister

 

[JudithB]

I've often noticed that showerheads are placed too high for me too, though not my current one because I had installed myself and got in the bath to work out exactly where I wanted it.

Showerheads!

I expect I am not the only one who holds it in one's hand to keep one's hair dry because it is too difficult to reach and operate the thing that lowers the head.

 

[8ball]

I’ve only scanned the thread, but have we had the “pockets” talk yet?

(Someone posted a great essay on another thread about clothing design - I’ll see if I can look it up when I have a minute)

 

[mojo pixy]

That thread is here.

 

[newbie]

- or translation programs that when asked to translate 'He is a nurse' & 'She is president' into turkish that hasn't got gendered pronouns, then back in to english it became 'She is a nurse' & 'He is president'

That's the programme. I tried the translation- google gave a choice, one with both she, the other both he. So it's not all software, what was cited was an example of bad practice. I wonder to what extent the other examples reflect the current state of AI- after all facial recognition software that doesn't recognise black faces is failing dismally to do its job properly, as is job finder software that ignores women applicants which is clearly not going to always get the best candidate.

I was more struck by the point that by default services like Alexa and Siri- which users boss around- are identifiable as female while satnav- which instructs the user- has a male voice. The underlying assumptions there are pretty clear, as soon as someone points them out.

 

[kabbes]

One of the dangers of AI algorithms is the inherent assumption many people tend to have that they must be neutral and fair because they are applied by a machine. But they are neither of those things because even under sophisticated machine learning approaches, the machine is being given its priorities and assumptions by a human. A generally white male human with no social science educational background, at that.

 

[mr steev]

I was more struck by the point that by default services like Alexa and Siri- which users boss around- are identifiable as female while satnav- which instructs the user- has a male voice. The underlying assumptions there are pretty clear, as soon as someone points them out.

Virtually all Satnavs have a female voice as default, because apparently most people find female voices more cordial and calming

 

[Pickman's model]

Virtually all Satnavs have a female voice as default, because apparently most people find female voices more cordial and calming

yeh a point i first encountered in michael crichton's 'the andromeda strain'

 

[newbie]

Virtually all Satnavs have a female voice as default, because apparently most people find female voices more cordial and calming

That's not what the programme said, however ours is female, but whether that was default or changed I can't remember.

 

[8ball]

That thread is here.

It wasn't that one, but thanks for looking. I think it was FabricLiveBaby! that posted it, it was a pretty detailed history of clothing design, but there is a lot of stuff on the subject if you Google "female clothing history pockets".

 

[8ball]

Virtually all Satnavs have a female voice as default, because apparently most people find female voices more cordial and calming

And they don't yell stuff at you like "NOT THAT LEFT!!, THE *OTHER* LEFT!!!".

(default female voice on my satnav is quite stern)

 

[newbie]

One of the dangers of AI algorithms is the inherent assumption many people tend to have that they must be neutral and fair because they are applied by a machine. But they are neither of those things because even under sophisticated machine learning approaches, the machine is being given its priorities and assumptions by a human. A generally white male human with no social science educational background, at that.

No doubt, but for AI to do it's job properly it simply can't ignore 50% of the population or fail to recognise all non-caucasian facial features. Which makes me wonder the extent to which these cited examples are historic, or cherry picked (as with the Turkish translation).

 

[newbie]

Kitchens are my bugbear too - sinks are usually too low to wash up comfortably without getting lower back pain (I'm 5'11", so slightly above average for a man), but some cupboards are too high to reach.

I'm 6'3", so all sinks and basins, standard height worksurfaces and office furniture is too low. I understand the points made upthread about cupboards and so on being too high, but frankly I'd love the option to get a comfortable working height by something as simple as standing on steps. For the most part there really isn't any solution, so, like a lot of tall people I too get backache from using space designed for those shorter than us.

 

[Pickman's model]

I'm 6'3", so all sinks and basins, standard height worksurfaces and office furniture is too low. I understand the points made upthread about cupboards and so on being too high, but frankly I'd love the option to get a comfortable working height by something as simple as standing on steps. For the most part there really isn't any solution, so, like a lot of tall people I too get backache from using space designed for those shorter than us.

not to mention, i expect, the occasional bruised head from low doorways

 

[mr steev]

That's not what the programme said, however ours is female, but whether that was default or changed I can't remember.

Hmm. I've never heard a male voice on a satnav (unless it's been changed to Brian Blessed). There is a gender stereotyping going on though, on top of the research of what voices people prefer. Women have historically been the secretary/assistant/librarian etc

 

[newbie]

not to mention, i expect, the occasional bruised head from low doorways

It's remarkable how short previous generations were.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

As an aside...

Although I think this is relevant as part of a larger discussion about how we/the system create outcomes based on erroneous and arrogant first principles:


This article outlines the problem with the way the majority of sociology and psychology studies take their samples from a small band of people, and then apply findings to the wider collective.

WEIRD is an acronym for Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic.

How normal is WEIRD?



Also a side issue, but also very interesting is the finding that lab mice and rats fear male technicians more than they do female technicians, and this has probably skewed findings for decades. Some of what I’ve read suggests that it has long been recognised, but nothing was done about it, either to study or to remedy the problem, and I can’t help help but wonder if that inertia was based in some kind of patriarchal lockdown.

Lab mice fear men but not women, and that's a big problem for science

 

[Pickman's model]

Hmm. I've never heard a male voice on a satnav (unless it's been changed to Brian Blessed). There is a gender stereotyping going on though, on top of the research of what voices people prefer. Women have historically been the secretary/assistant/librarian etc

historically men were librarians, among them mao zedong, casanova, liebniz. it started to become a predominantly female profession in the nineteenth century because women were cheaper to hire, so when dewey of dewey decimal fame promoted the recruitment of women he wasn't intending to be progressive but economical.

 

[Winot]

I'm 6'3", so all sinks and basins, standard height worksurfaces and office furniture is too low. I understand the points made upthread about cupboards and so on being too high, but frankly I'd love the option to get a comfortable working height by something as simple as standing on steps. For the most part there really isn't any solution, so, like a lot of tall people I too get backache from using space designed for those shorter than us.

*6'4" fistbump*

When we had our kitchen built we had them raise the surfaces by about 2-3" (there is a standard plinth that they can use). We don't have any high cupboards or shelves and my OH and kids (who are all relatively tall) don't have a problem with the surface height.

Kitchen design is an argument for associative mating.

 

[8ball]

Also a side issue, but also very interesting is the finding that lab mice and rats fear male technicians more than they do female technicians, and this has probably skewed findings for decades.

That's pretty fascinating. I expect the inertia might just have been down to it being one of many, many, many things that need more attention and don't seem to get looked at - ask any scientist and they'll bend your ear for ages about their particular peeves.

But I can see how supervisors of grad students might be saying the experiments should be focused on the mice and not the experimenters, and/or pushing their own existing avenues of research (you get an effect where visible research in an area leads to more researchers picking up the baton, so the distribution of stuff being looked at gets very lumpy).

Also (unscientifically, obviously), when it comes to dealing with experiments involving mice, every one I've ever met except one has been female (the experimenters, not the mice).

 

[Thora]

Getting medication while pregnant (otc stuff like decongestant or hay-fever spray) is the one that really winds me up. You can't find out what the actual risk is (probably no real risk) but it's easier just to say no to pregnant women, "be on the safe side".

Also car seat belts never fit me.

 

[kabbes]

All experiments contain assumptions, bias and subjectivity. The different between quantitative and qualitative research is that the former pretends this doesn’t exist whereas the latter explicitly discusses it.

 

[Thora]

There's no easy answer to this one, I'm a bloke and am always hot. Doesn't mean I expect an office temperature to conform to my specifications though. The one point I would make is that it's inherently easier to warm up, than it is to cool down. In a cold office one can wear extra layers, in a hot office there are few options available whilst maintaining standards of decency. But what does really rile me is how cold people get all the sympathy... "Oh no, you're cold! that's awful, we must find a way to warm you up". Compared to "why is that man sweating all over his keyboard? looks minging, glad I'm not him...".

When you can't think straight, when the sweat's making your eyes sting, when your armpits are like swamps, when you'd rather die than spend another fucking day in a stiflingly warm, oppressive office... I'd give anything to be a cold person...

Are you objecting to women wanting the world to conform to their specifications?
Or pointing out women actually don't have it that bad and should stop complaining?