The Titanic sank 100 years ago today, and Men’s Rights Activists are still pissed off about it.
They’re not really pissed off that it sank. They’re pissed off that the men on board were more likely to go down with the ship than the women. You know, that whole “women and children first” thing.
Some MRAs were so pissed off about this that they were planning to march on Washington on this very day in an attempt, as they put it, to “Sink Misandry.”
You don’t know how much I would have loved to see this, a dozen angry dudes marching in circles on the National Mall carrying signs protesting the sinking of the Titanic and demanding that in all future sinkings of the Titanic that women and men be equally likely to drown in the cold waters of the North Atlantic. For that would be justice at last!
But, alas, due to unspecified logistical problems this march was cancelled some months back, and so misandry remains unsunk.
Or does it?
For you see, it turns out that the whole “women and children first” thing was not really a thing. Oh, on The Titanic it was. But women unfortunate enough to be passengers on sinking ships that weren’t the Titanic (or the HMS Birkenhead, which sunk off the coast of South Africa in 1852) weren’t able to push ahead to the front of the line. That, at least, is the conclusion of a new Swedish study (link is to a pdf of it).
The chivalrous code “women and children first” appears to have sunk with the Titanic 100 years ago.
Long believed to be the golden standard of conduct in a shipwreck, the noble edict is in fact “a myth that has been nourished by the Titanic disaster,” economist Mikael Elinder of Uppsala University, Sweden, told Discovery News.
Elinder and colleague Oscar Erixson analyzed a database of 18 peace-time shipwrecks over the period 1852–2011 in a new study into survival advantages at sea disasters.
Looking at the fate of over 15,000 people of more than 30 nationalities, the researchers found that more women and children die than men in maritime disasters, while captains and crew have a greater chance of survival than any passengers.
Being a woman was an advantage on only two ships: on the Birkenhead in 1852 and on the Titanic in 1912.
The notion of “women and children first” may have captured the popular imagination, but it’s never been an official policy for ship evacuations. It wouldn’t be fair, nor would it be an efficient way to get as many people as possible to safety.
Nor was “women and children” strictly enforced even on the Titanic. True, my great-grandfather, the mystery writer Jacques Futrelle, was one of those who went down with the ship, while his wife and my great-grandmother, writer Lily May Futrelle made it off safely (in the last lifeboat). But there were many men who survived, and many women who died.
If you want to get mad about the sinking of the Titanic all those years ago, get mad at the White Star Line for not bothering to equip the ship with lifeboats enough for everyone on it. Blame the captain, for ordering the ship to continue plowing ahead on a dark, foggy night into an area of the Atlantic where numerous icebergs had just been sighted by a number of other ships. Blame the crew for botching the evacuation – for the strange lack of urgency after the ship hit the iceberg, for the lifeboats leaving the sinking ship with half as many passengers as they could fit.
Much like the iceberg that sank the Titanic, Elinder and Erixson’s research has poked a giant hole in the “women and children first” myth. Of course, MRAs aren’t interested in historical accuracy. They’re looking for excuses to demonize women and feminists. So I imagine we’ll be hearing about the Titanic from them for years to come.
Here’s another tragic sinking, of yet another ship without a sufficient number of lifeboats:
EDIT: I added a couple of relevant links and fixed a somewhat egregious typo.
Hot damn, this one is stupid.
I suspect he’s Buttman. I really hope there aren’t two people in the world that willfully obtuse.
There are some interesting discussion papers online about the best way to distribute disaster relief after major catastrophes. In Food Security and the Allocation of Emergency Relief Funds after the 2010 Earthquake in Haiti, Damien Echevin argues that the primary consideration should be targeting the poorest, most vulnerable households. What that means in Haiti, both pre- and post-earthquake, is that aid should be prioritized for households headed by women, households with more infants and children, households with fewer adults, households with more pregnant and nursing women, etc.
Echevin also notes that a survey meant to show who was getting access to food relief was problematic, since
Also, estimates are that 10,813 individuals in Port-au-Prince were sexually assaulted in the six weeks after the earthquake, 10,489 (97%) of which were women or girls.
Yeah, things were just sunshine and lollipops for women and girls in Haiti post earthquake.
Sorry it’s behind a paywall, but http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13623699.2010.535279 is the link.
Again, with blockquotes hopefully right:
How do you define “those most in need” and why?
Plausible so far.
Non sequitur.
The only thing you showed me is that men are not considered disposable when we can afford not considering them disposable.
Basta, you haven’t shown that making men disposable was either the motivation or the actual effect of the methods of providing disaster relief in Haiti after the earthquake.
More information on vulnerable populations in Haiti, in support of the argument that aid should target those that suffer the most:
From the article Principles and Practice of Disaster Relief: Lessons From Haiti
Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine, v.78/3
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/msj.20251 (paywalled again, dammit)
This guy’s Fact Shield rivals NWOslave’s.
By the way…
Here is a picture of UN forces maintaining order in a line of men waiting for food.
You were saying?
Sigh. Okay, BASTA, I’m going to explain this again.
The Haitian earthquake caused a catastrophic loss of life and damage. One million people were left homeless. The Haitian government did not have the human resources, infrastructure, or money necessary to cope with the overwhelming needs of the victims. The UN Food Service Program set up lines for everyone at first, but some men bullied women, children, and the elderly to steal their food and resell it back to them for a profit. The Food Service workers then set up distribution centers for women only to ensure that vulnerable populations could also have food, not just the strongest men. Cloudiah provided you with academic documents explaining how marginalized groups were the most vulnerable after the earthquake and needed extra assistance. Zie also gave you proof that some lines provided food for the men who did not have any female relatives to share with them. You want us to believe that all of this supports your theory that men are considered disposable during and after disasters, but I’m not buying it.
I were saying that the picture shows the military shooing men away.
Then this picture:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/01/26/world/012610HAITI_index-5.html
shows a man who must have been a bandit who intended to hoard food. Otherwise the police wouldn’t pull him out of the line as he neared the front, would they? What other reason could they possibly have?
Only there is no evidence at all that the military were shooing men away. You’re just making it up.
And, Basta, that other picture just proves what I’ve been saying about how the elderly are among the most vulnerable. Again, there is nothing that says he was pulled out because he was a man. Maybe he was being crushed? Maybe there was no food left? You do not get to make up your own facts.
No, because it was neither the motivation nor the effect of those methods. It simply was the method.
And other men. Let me know when you get that, and we can resume from there.
Dude. Are elderly people and children all female now? Because either men spontaneously cease to exist after middle age, or the very phrase you pulled out of Kendra’s post to prove your supposed point contradicts it.
I think you’re onto something here. He thinks making shit up is an acceptable form of argument.
Gee, who else is into the concept of male disposability and loves trolling?
No, fuckwit. The demographic that matters here, and the one you and Kendra want to erase from the discourse, is men who are neither children nor elderly NOR bandits.
Cloudiah, your interpretation of the photo you linked to is just as made-shit-up as mine.
Basta, if you’re a man and you’re turned away from a women-only food site, you have options. You have places to go.
If you’re a woman and every food site is open to people who will bully you out of line or steal your food, you have nowhere to go.
…wow.
I’m hoping this was some sort of bad phrasing and you did not literally mean to say “the only people who actually matter are young, able-bodied men,” but honestly, given the general attitudes of our trolls, I have to wonder. (Also, between this and the “male disposability” nonsense, you are starting to sound like yet another incarnation of this blog’s most persistent Whack-A-Troll. Please don’t be him. We are all incredibly sick of him.)
That said, if I am kind enough to assume you’re not actually THAT big of a shithead, and just suck at expressing yourself, can you explain what exactly you think was going wrong for young, able-bodied men? They were able to wait in line. They were not being denied food and supplies. They were just not able to wait in the separate lines for women. I’m sure some young, able-bodied men did not manage to receive aid, because the Haitian earthquake was called a disaster for a reason – lots of people within all demographics got screwed over, because there were not enough resources to go around. What actual evidence do you have that young, able-bodied men were proportionately more screwed over than people in other demographics, considering that is the exact opposite of the reports from people who were there and the general patterns of such events?
It’s pretty clear that “police pulled him out of the line” photo shows both men and women still in line. The guy might have been pulled out of line for reasons other than evil misandry.
Sigh, Basta, I didn’t make shit up about the photos. In the first photo, there was a caption that explained that the UN forces were maintaining order in a food distribution line; those in the line were men. Ergo, there were food distribution lines for men as well as women in Haiti. In the other photo, there is no explanation for why the man was taken out of the line. I have no interpretation of that one either.
By the way, you’re the fuckwit here. I called it earlier this morning. You’re welcome.
Hellkell, you think? I’m not getting that vibe, but Basta certainly is tiresome and obtuse. Seems more consistently angry and hostile than our other little friend, but I haven’t recognized any of his other socks either.
Bite your tongue. There are no other reasons!
Isn’t evil misandry the only reason anything bad (or even mildly unfortunate) happens to men, ever?