MRA History Korner: Women never worked outside the home because there was no air conditioning

I guess the triangle factory was air conditioned?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire

@Fruitloospie I felt a bit concerned about that posting them too, but I also think it’s kind of important to point out that there are lots of women who work RIGHT NOW, not just in history, in places that really do not have heating and air conditioning and cafeterias, ffs – since this dude appears to have forgotten the existence of most of the rest of the world. Idk, though, I get what you mean :/

There was no central air or heating so it was frigid in the winter and stiflingly hot in the summer

My dearly departed grandmother built herself a house that was heated solely by an iron stove. I was pretty impressed by this, but it turns out the idea didn’t originate in the 1960s and, in fact, people have heated their shelters with some form of indoor hearth since for-fucking-ever. Just a little fun fact for Reddit historians.

http://img.pandawhale.com/47321-hell-no-nathan-fillion-gif-4ew5.gif

Whelp, this should be a textbook definition of Historically Inaccurate.

Time to break it down:

Women didn’t go to colleges in centuries past because it wasn’t pleasant.

Most likely because it was made impossible by men, and women who did break the social norms of not going to school were ostracized by society, their families, and punished for it (mostly by men).

There was no central air or heating so it was frigid in the winter and stiflingly hot in the summer […]

Does he think that women didn’t work before 1902, when the air conditioner was invented?

Or that women didn’t work until it became a common thing in buildings? Because even in 1902, the air conditioner was only used to make sure paper didn’t wrinkle and ink for printing stayed aligned. It sure as fuck wasn’t for human comfort.

In fact, we didn’t see air conditioners in homes until 1914, and were only available for rich people, and we didn’t see those little window ledge ones until 1931, and those cost roughly between 10-50 thousand dollars, or 120-600 thousand dollars in today’s money.

So, no one really had air conditioning before then, so I don’t see why women wouldn’t work unless there was one. I mean, I’m sure they would have been used to it and just went anyways.

[…] no cars so you had to walk or ride a horse if you were lucky enough to own a horse

Yeah, so men and women had to walk. What, do you think women didn’t have legs or didn’t know how to walk until cars were invented either?

Women weren’t doctors in the past because that was hard and dangerous as well, no sterile hospitals, fully air conditioned.

Of course, I could step back and remind you that women were actively discouraged from attending college, but, as so many other people here have so wonderfully pointed out, nurses, midwives, and medicine women were things.

Of course, some herbalists were burned at the stake for witchcraft, but nope, not dangerous at all, amirite?

Some kid would go to the doctor of the area in the middle of a rainy night and say come quick ma is real sick, and sometimes ma would have a communicable disease and doc would die as well.

And so would nurses, and so would her family. Disease was dangerous for everyone, not just the doctors, not just the menfolk.

Seriously, stop getting all your historical information from old western shows like Bonanza or Gunsmoke.

Even secretarial work, no central air or heat, cafeterias, indoor plumbing, none of that stuff was available to the average person up until less than a century ago.

And yet, women still worked. Shocking, I know.

Though, I’d imagine if you had to work in the same conditions as those women a century or so ago, you’d sue your employer.

It wasn’t until enough men died inventing and building these incredibly comfortable wonders that women demanded a chair at the big table.

“Okay, you’ve made working a lot easier, now give us jobs!”

Nah, not how it worked.

Women as a collective should be praising men as a collective for being so damned nice as to allow them the luxury of staying at home while men worked themselves into an early grave millennia after millennia.

No, NWOSlave, you can’t claim you invented the air conditioner because peen. If you could, I could claim that you should be “praising women as a collective” because Ada Lovelace helped give you the internet, and she was a woman, and I could claim that you should be praising me for wi-fi because of Hedy Lamar. She was a woman, and I’m a woman, so praise me for the luxury of internet usage!

And no, you don’t get a cookie for “allowing” women to stay at home, because you and your ilk think we ought to because “that’s a woman’s place”. So fuck you.

Also, the only people who have the fucking luxury of staying at home are upper class people. Most of us still have to work, and gladly do so.

“I find it strange that practicing law in a comfortable well-heated office is considered too demanding an occupation for women, yet laboring from dawn’s first light in crowded, drafty, ill-lit sweatshops is not.”
― Shirley Tallman, Murder on Nob Hill

Even if it were true that only men ever used to work in medicine, does he think all sick people went to hospitals to either convalesce or die? No. During large epidemics particularly, people were sick at home and maybe if you were lucky a doctor would visit. Who took care of sick family members the rest of the time? Traditionally, female family members. Which means they came into the most contact with the germs.

I’ve never worked in an air conditioned building. Is it an American thing?

I sometime wonder if they thrive to create the ignorance equivalent of a black hole.

Um… my job isn’t air conditioned NOW. This is an especially stupid MRA.

@Alan

I’ve never worked in an air conditioned building. Is it an American thing?

Yup. For some reason TPTB have decided every indoor space in the US has to be air conditioned to the point where it feels like you walked into a meat locker. I like having an AC but my personal definition of room temperature doesn’t lean towards freezing, even in the summer.

Yet another idiot who learned their history from watching The Flintstones and Little House on the Prairie.

I like having an AC but my personal definition of room temperature doesn’t lean towards freezing, even in the summer.

Especially when it’s 98 degrees outside so you’re wearing a tank top and shorts and they decide it should be 65 inside.

@ raysa

Wow, that is hot. Over here it’s cold that’s associated with killing of old folks; hence the name winter fuel allowance is so important to us (not that it’s particularly generous)

Oh, and that is a brilliant book. Be interested in your thoughts when you finish it.