I found this on the Men’s Rights subreddit today. PLEASE HELP!
In a lucky coincidence I am also looking for some pictures:
- A librarian with an Animal Rights sign
- An EMT with a “No Blood for Oil” sign
- A cloak room attendant with a “Make Love Not War” sign
- An orthodontist with an “I Like Ike” sign
- A bunny pushing a tiny shopping cart full of carrots
Oh wait, I already have that last one. Never mind.
You are aware that there is a woman on this thread who is currently training to run into burning buildings, but women as a whole “just aren’t interested.”
Like, ok.
I had no idea what you could be talking about — after all, what reason is there to think that feminists are any less grateful to firefighters than any other group of people — until it occurred to me that perhaps you mean feminists don’t thank men in general for being of the same gender as most firefighters. In which case, yeah, sorry, I’m not going to thank you for things that other people have done. Misandry!
Male burden? Are men being made the become firefighters against their will or something?
My father was a firefighter. It kinda ruins the whole vibe.
He would definitely never have been involved in anything remotely MRA-esque, either.
Or one of those guns that pops out a flag when you shoot it?
I would like to extend a special thank you to this noble fighter of fires.
http://40.media.tumblr.com/fac5b9c26f67fb697eea16dd71f862d3/tumblr_ndtejn1Gqd1qdedm3o1_500.jpg
Ooh, are we doing the whole “useless statistics put forth in service of an agenda without the slightest nod to context” thing? Let me try:
Roughly 85-89% of arsonist are male, so…
I don’t really care.
Many thanks to all the firefighters out there. And the bunnies. And especially the firefighting bunnies.
One of my neighbors is a firefighter. I made cookies at Christmas and gave him a batch on a festive aluminum foil tray. Does that count as appreciative enough, or did I have to announce “As a feminist, I present these sugar stars, gingerbread squirrels, and Wookie cookies as tribute”? ‘Cause I think that would have weirded him out more than the “Happy holidays, and thanks for everything you do” that I did say.
@Chronic
I said 95% of firefighters are men. You know that means the other 5% have to be women right? I never said all women don’t want to be firefighters.
@Viscaria
I think that because feminists are always going on about how horrible men are but never acknowledge that most of the modern privileges they have in life that they take for granted (their house, running water, electricity, rescue services, etc.) are overwhelmingly provided for them by men.
@Spindrift
In a way yes. Individual men aren’t forced to be firefighters just like we’re not forced to be coal miners, construction workers, scientists, etc. but as a whole we are forced to do it because women aren’t signing up in large numbers to do the job.
In what fucking universe do feminists hate firefighters? What the hell is going on here?
@4th: so what do you think the reason is that women aren’t signing up for these jobs?
@isodore: Because they’re not interested and again I don’t have a problem with that but it’s like I told Viscaria, my problem is with feminists who sit there whining about male privilege and refuse to acknowledge the privileges they have thanks to the work men do.
I don’t actually accept much of anything you’ve said here, but even if any of it were true, I’m still not getting why that means I should thank you, who are not, as far as I can tell, a firefighter, for the work of actual firefighters.
I am fascinated to learn that the true victims of the hostile environment for women in the sciences is in fact the gatekeeping male scientists themselves, as they would all have rather been painters, but were forced into their dangerous profession by the vacuum created by a lack of women.
“I think women just aren’t interested [in being firefighters]” suddenly becomes “I never said all women don’t want to be firefighters.”
Can you make up your mind?
Why do you think women aren’t interested in these jobs?
How is it that women can simply choose not to pursue certain careers because of a lack of interest, but men apparently can’t make that same choice? Is this part of the “all women are wealthy, all men are working class” myth?
Ah, good old Town Hall, where you can read the work of every dreary syndicated conservative columnist in existence, including such talents as Dave “When You Cant Afford Rush” Limbaugh, Nazi enthusiast Pat Buchanan and Phylis Schlafly’s reanimated corpse. Good stuff.
Like most typical MRAs, 4th Survivor always keeps abreast of current events, which is why he’s sharing a not ripped from today’s headlines column from November 2013. If you’d like to read something about that story that isn’t a poorly written recap of NY Post articles and instead involves actual research, here you go:
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/12/united_women_firefighters_fdny_sarinya_srisakul_wendy_tapia_brenda_berkman.php
I enjoyed this exchange.
childrenofthebroccoli
the 4th survivor
Rough Translation: “I don’t know a single fucking thing about the history female firefighters and have no interest in researching it because I don’t care about the subject at all. My ignorance and disinterest doesn’t stop me discussing it because it seems like an easy opportunity to pretend battle imaginary feminists with my vigorous stawmanning.”
The 4th troll: “I deserve to reap limitless appreciation and gratitude because I share a single trait (a penis) with most firefighters, who in general are great people, but I am not in any way deserving of condemnation because I share a single trait (a penis) with most arsonists, who in general are kind of terrible people.”
It’s like trolly thinks he has a selective membrane around him that allows him to absorb greatness from other men by osmosis, but all the disgusting crap that other men do is stopped at the membrane.
As a firefighter–
Fuck off, 4th.
No, really, FUCK OFF.
When you blather on like that you add to an environment that makes it much less likely women who would do well in firefighting will pursue it. It’s voices like yours that drive them away.
Also, are you suggesting that as a feminist I don’t properly appreciate my own volunteer efforts at firefighting?
Show your math.
4th Dipshit: Do read the rebuttal article to the one you posted. Two noteworthy elements:
1: Leaking an employee’s medical information is actually illegal. Someone in the chain of command would’ve had to be responsible for that.
2: The test itself is arbitrary, unrelated to the work being performed, and biased towards men. Firefighters do not have to run a mile and a half during their duties; instead, what matters is their ability to perform a number of detailed and dangerous tasks in coordination with their teammates. Including a sprint through an obstacle course is a filter deliberately added to favor a subset of the applicants.
In short, dipshit, yes, the article you linked is, indeed, an example of that sexism in action.
Chronic Lurker, you’re fine! I’m starting my Temp position on the box-bulance Monday and then doing all of the testing Wednesday Friday and Saturday next week.
Also, Chief is going to introduce me to a potential new lady-live-in for out here on Thursday (at my last Fire Drill as a scene support firefighter as opposed to Fiirefighter-1, hopefully)!
The 4th Troll is good at looking at a single statistic and attempting to milk it for all its worth. I’ll give them that!
Fun thing he fails to consider: His stat is almost certainly a strictly career firefighter number. Finding good data on volunteer firefighter numbers and gender ratios is a bit harder. Where you and I are at, there’s a much higher percentage of women on the volunteer side than on the career side. Men still outnumber women, by quite a bit, but it’s much less extreme.
Also, I’ve said this before, the actual call volume and number of calls responded to has an even closer split between men and women! It’s a much, much, much harder statistic to track because not all volunteer departments make their annual reports include gender ratios of volunteers and gender breakdown of response numbers.
There are also a few reasons women don’t get into firefighting as much, some involving bad admin, and some involving this pesky thing called lack of privacy.
For example, I’m a live in at the station I live in because there are actually bedrooms and bathrooms. I can’t be a live in at the station closest to the university because it only has a single bunkroom and a single bathroom and there are already three guys living there.
The department doesn’t want to have a woman live and sleep in the same room as three guys. Go figure. There are still women who volunteer out of that station, but no women as live ins.
That bunny better lock his carrots up tightly.
https://vine.co/v/OEmvzXiQrIn
My daughter’s a nurse in a children’s hospital. But at least once a year she and a lot of other nurses, especially those from the burns unit, go out into the city’s streets and carry a sign, not an MRA special, but a Shake The Boot sign and collect money for hospital facilities for kids with burns injuries. (For those who don’t know, kids with burn injuries have to back to hospital again and again for years for various surgeries and therapies – of which you do n.o.t. want to know the details.)
http://www.apff.org.au/shake-the-boot.html
And then, of course, there are the women who volunteer to fight bushfires, mostly alongside the men volunteers, often as captain of the firefighting crew.
http://www.cfsva.org.au/about-us/special-interest
I have also tutored women trying to get through the extremely demanding professional firefighter’s course here. They start out with 1000+ applicants for 20ish jobs. They prune down the list until they have about 80 to start the 20 week course. Every week at least 2 of the lowest scoring candidates are excluded until the last part when they start actively selecting in favour of the best of the best. (One woman was never going to make it in her wildest dreams. One prime requirement is mental arithmetic – being able to calculate travel times and ETAs en route to an incident among other things like water volumes and the like. She was beyond hopeless. She should have come for tuition for a few months before applications opened and then she might have had some chance. The other I don’t recall the details – but both of them did far better than the men in their groups when it came to handling those huge ladder trucks. They got their super duper class big truck Driver’s Licenses at first try.)
I am a geologist (a woman working in science and in mines! Fancy that!) And I am familiar with the whole sexist living arrangement thing. In exploration camps we have large tents that can usually sleep up to 4 people, but for comfort they would often only have 2 or 3. I have had so many camp managers and exploration managers flat out REFUSE to have more than one women’s tent (or rarely not have one at all).
So they would not hire women because that would mean they would have to spill over into a second tent and disrupt the cushy two-to-a-tent living arrangements of the men. Meanwhile, we were packed in at 4 to that one tent.
Oh god, the 4th survivor, another white collar kid who thinks blue collar jobs in the western world are still some sort of Dickensian nightmare staffed entirely by strapping young lads. You are adorable. And wrong.
Women have fought long and hard to be able to work in firefighting, sanitation, mining, factories, etc. You know why? Because these jobs pay well, usually have union support, and require little to no education. In fact, it has often been women who have helped improve those jobs for men. I worked in a factory in college and people called it “winning the lottery”.
And, unlike you, I am basing my knowledge on actual facts, rather than the just so stories I tell myself so I can sleep at night thinking I’m better than women. Have a read:
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/31/nyregion/2-female-sanitation-workers-earning-high-marks.html
http://www.labornotes.org/2014/10/women-lead-sanitation-strike-massive-education-complex-china
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/agency-man-world-women-sewer-workers-sue-dep-unfair-treatment-article-1.418539
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2449512/Pays-OK-hours-stink-Meet-Britains-female-SEWAGE-apprentices.html
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-07-26/news/0207260005_1_construction-supervisor-deep-tunnel-william-ryan
http://www.amazon.com/Daughters-Mountain-Central-Appalachia-Studies/dp/0271029048
http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/coalMine.html
http://libraryguides.berea.edu/womenandcoal
http://cwcs.ysu.edu/about/current-projects/journalism/articles/female-coalminer
I’m going to guess you won’t listen to any of this, though. Ultimately, all that matters to you is believing what you believe regardless of reality. Side note, even if everything ever in the entire universe was invented and run by men, that’s still no reason anyone owes you any praise just because you also happen to be a man. Real life doesn’t work that way, kiddo.