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.
@ballgame:
Wow, that’s a pretty impressive piece you’ve got there; claiming that men sacrificed their lives for women, yet still managed to survive more often. Either those men were really incompetant at both sacrificing their lives and saving women, or something isn’t quite right about your reasoning.
Ballgame. Pro-tip: When the Titanic proves to be an exception in the numbers compared to the main sample, you don’t back up the majority of your argument with the exception.
Damn! You got me, kirbywarp. If only I had addresed that!
Oh, wait:
ballgame, do you have a point in writing this essay and posting it here? Because the rest of us are kind of tired of the disaster porn, and if you can’t state your point succinctly we are liable to start hurling limericks in your general direction.
Uh, except that, in the era in which it occurred, it wasn’t the exception, Flib. Prior to the end of World War I, captains were just as likely to issue the ‘women and children first’ order as they were not to issue it.
Anyway, if you look at the actual study, the researchers conclude that “the sinking of the Titanic was exceptional in many ways and that what happened on the Titanic seemse to have spurred misconceptions about human behavior in disasters.”
There’s even a graph that compares survival ranks in the Titanic with other disasters, and there are stark differences in who ends up surviving. You argue that “women and children first” is common, and that would be supported only if two things were true:
– Giving a “women and children first” order increases the survivial odds of women and children over men compared to when the order isn’t given
– More women and children survive in general over many disasters
The first point was supported by the study, though not supported very well. The second was disproven. This is why talking about relative survival rates is not changing the goal posts: its an expected outcome of the hypothesis that “women and children first” was the “unwritten law of the sea.”
Some other interesting conclusions from the study:
@ballgame:
Sorry, but I can only type so fast. 😛
Interestingly, although the “women and children first” order is given more often on British ships, women and children fare worse on British ships as compared to other nationalities.
Ballgame -> Continues to insist it isn’t an exception -> Clearly hasn’t read the appendix and methodology section.
Your basing your opinion entirely on an order of WCF, qualifying it with a time scale, and making an assumption of behavior. Good way to ignore the rest of the study if you ask me.
@Kirby you ninja’d me, you ball of puff!
Wait… there were only seven women on the Birkenhead? And thirteen children? And that’s an example of how misandric “women and children first” was? For fucks sake, it’s twenty people! If the lifeboats could only hold that many people, than the problem is the lifeboats, not the chivalry. In any case, a total of 76 people escaped by lifeboat, so 56 men escaped on whatever remained.
And wow, I had to reread this a couple times to make sense of it.
But earlier, it notes that
So the odds of women surviving natural disasters has actually increased since WWI, the same cutoff point where ballgame claims that “women and children first” became less common. This world of ours, I swear…
So, Ballgame, is feminism or chivalry to blame for the whole “women and children first” thing? Because if I’m not mistaken, chivalry (at least in the sense that most people envision it) is/was a manifestation of paternalism, which of course is not feminism. Apparently feminism is to blame for everything. Even stuff that happened before feminism. Now that’s a feat in itself, eh?
Because this is such an issue for some, they did a study to investigate the phenomena. Although looking at the results, I anticipate MRAs will try to poke holes in it since it doesn’t resoundingly support their contention that these paternalistic attitudes towards women and children (which were enforced by men by the way) are yet another symptom of the systemic misandry that has always existed.
I think David did a post about it because this issue has been such a shrieking point for MRAs who then turn around and tell feminists to STFU about not getting the right to vote until 1920.
… Is ballgame gone? Did we scare zir away with facts?
I wanted to see kirby and Flib toy with ballgame some more. 🙁
Hey, over on ballgame’s blog, they have an interesting approach to dealing with the hostile comments that seem to breed at anti-feminist web sites:
I suppose that is better than AVfM…
The odds of even being in a maritime disaster is very small anyway. The MRA’s that use the phrase “votes or boats” want to make the choice for women to get preferential treatment on sinking ships but not equal rights in the rest of the world. No thank you, MRA’s. I prefer to have equal rights, and everyone on a sinking ship should have lifeboats. Ta da, problem solved.
ballgame, I don’t know what you MRA’s are trying to accomplish talking about the Titanic all the time. I don’t have a time machine to be able to go back and time and prevent it. I do think the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) convention was helpful following the Titanic disaster, and the international maritime safety laws are important. Beyond that, I don’t know what you’re expecting from feminists with this.
Oh, chivalry, no question, Lady Zombie. I’m not claiming that ‘feminism is to blame.’ I’m merely pointing out that ‘women and children first’ wasn’t a myth, it was a very real and very common occurrence (“common” = “happening half the time”) on ships prior to the end of World War I, as the study shows quite clearly.
Kendra, the bionic mommy, I’m not an “MRA,” I’m a feminist (though perhaps best thought of as something of a dissident feminist), and in fact agree with much of your two comments here.
I’m not an “MRA,” I’m a feminist (though perhaps best thought of as something of a dissident feminist), and in fact agree with much of your two comments here.
You aren’t fooling anyone of being a feminist. You are on feminist critics for Christ’s sake. XD
oops quote fail let me retry that
You aren’t fooling anyone of being a feminist. You are on feminist critics for Christ’s sake. XD
I mean also even your tags on the article you linked to show it was meant for men’s rights activists.
There are many Democrats who are strongly critical of the Democratic Party, jumbofish (and in fact I’m one of them). I guess by your logic those people aren’t really Democrats.
Most of those tags would also be applicable to the overwhelming majority of Man Boobz posts. Does that mean David Futrelle isn’t a feminist?
@Ballgame, in your post you said
I don’t know how ship crews can ensure there is always a perfect 50/50 ratio of people boarding lifeboats, especially on ships with more men than women, like the Titanic. Why not just have a policy giving preferential treatment to children and caregivers? Don’t worry about the gender ratio of people being saved; just make sure that children are saved first.
Why are we still discussing this as if not having redundancy in lifeboats is the correct solution?
lulzwhat.
Antifeminist and MRA ISsues: No
Double Standards: Yes, but like the rest of your idiot site you pretend this is mostly against women XD
Male disposability: An idiotic myth, and No.
Masculinity: Not really.
Fallacies: Unnecessary
Fact Checking: Yes.
2/6 is not ‘most’.
Look, when you spend more time whining about feminists than anything else, and buy into anti-feminist myths, and explicitly write posts in support of anti-feminists, you are running out of room to claim to be a well-meaning critic posting constructive criticism in good-faith. That you think we’re as dumb as the bulk of your readership is not going to fly well here.
@ballgame:
Part of the myth about “women and children first” is that women and children disproportionally survived maritime disasters as a result of the policy. Hence cries of misandry. However, as the study claims, women and children disproportionally died in such disasters.
That is the myth that has been shown to be a myth. That and the fact that “women and children first” was an unwritten law over all disasters. In fact, the policy was only enforced if the captain ordered it, which wasn’t all the time.
And anyway, as David writes:
The notion of “women and children first” may have captured the popular imagination, but it’s never been an official policy for ship evacuations.
So yeah. What you’re left with is a “policy” that was followed at the captain’s discretion as a result of the misogynistic concept of “chivalry,” and in fact did not overall do a whole lot of good for women and children. Myth busted.
Manboobz is a mocking site. Respectively the tags show what is being mocked. You site is a serious site about your concerns with feminism. Respectively the tags show the serious material you are talking about . Get it now?
I have my own issues with the mainstream feminist movement (and certain other strands of feminism) but I can acknowledge it without running to mra blogs to show how wrong certain feminists are. How am I suppose to see you are a feminist if you don’t seem to support much if any aspect of it? Lets see you always post support for mra writing are critical of feminists and don’t appear to support it in any shape or form….Yeah that really tells me you are not a mra and a feminist with some issues with the feminist movement.
Jeez, ballgame. This is why I stopped reading Feminist Critics a long time ago.
Dude, I am aware that men on the Titanic “died so that women might live.” MY FUCKING GREAT GRANDFATHER WAS ONE OF THEM.
But the fact is that most of those on the Titanic died BECAUSE THERE WEREN’T ENOUGH LIFEBOATS, AND THE EVACUATION WAS A FUCKING MESS, oh, and also because THE SHIP PLOWED AHEAD AT NIGHT IN CONDITIONS OF ALMOST ZERO VISIBILITY IN AN AREA OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC THAT SEVEN FUCKING OTHER SHIPS HAD WARNED WERE FULL OF ICEBERGS.
The evacuation was so badly bungled that the lifeboat my great grandmother was in (and which she barely made it into, and which was the last non-collapsable one that left the ship) left the ship half empty. With 1500 people, male and female, still on the ship.
And the lesson I’m supposed to draw from this is “women and children first” was the biggest problem here? How about HAVE ENOUGH FUCKING LIFEBOATS SO THAT EVERYONE CAN GET IN ONE. How about, when you hit an iceberg, start evacuating the ship right away. How about, don’t send the ship plowing ahead in the dark where there are icebergs?
Even if every seat in the lifeboats had been taken by a man, hundreds of men would have died.
Yes, it was “women and children first” (mostly) on The Titanic. But “women and children first” isn’t the general policy that many people incuding MRAs think it was or is.
The idea that somehow this is a live issue today is beyond silly. It’s the MRAs, not the feminists, who talk about it as if it were a live issue. It’s the MRAs who talk about marching on washington about this. I was responding to their profound silliness.