By David Futrelle
Well, feminism was fun while it lasted, but now it’s time for us to negotiate our terms of surrender to the Men’s Rights Activists. And all because of this post in the MRAmemes subreddit by some dude called MRA-automatron-2kb..
Yes, that’s right, the earplugs in the lavender-colored box are somewhat more effective than the ones in the blue box. And you get a few more of them at a slightly lower price.
Well, you could get that if you were a lady, because obviously men are barred by law from buying anything lavender. Clear misandry — and clear proof that it is men, not women, who are discriminated against by boxes of earplugs. Checkmate, feminists!
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@occasional reader
They are probably coding female instead of just saying smaller, for marketing reasons. I find standard ear plugs a bit too big to fit at all ( I think they fit the average woman but not as well as the average man ) so would buy these if there weren’t any available clearly marked size small. I’d prefer an unambiguous size marker, of course.
Has anyone read Criado-Perez’ „Invisible Women“.. There’s a lot of info about how most safety equipment ( like earplugs) is usually designed for the average sized man, and then sold as if it’s for the average person. The stuff about car safety features is absolutely horrifying. It’s still assumed women don’t drive for safety requirements. It’s bad enough in ear plugs where its just the size but a lot of safety equipment, including seatbelts and airbags, assume no-one has breasts.
At work, we keep a box of earplugs outside our data centre for people working in there (DCs are noisy places). They’re not gendered, so I guess feminism has won at my workplace?
@numerobis, yeah, the difference in price here is the shape, and possibly also the material, as those yellow and pink stripey ones seem to be made out of a different kind of foam from the cylinder ones.
I think “women’s” earplugs might be a good and necessary thing, as I strongly suspect that women have smaller ear canals on average (although if that’s the case, I don’t know why they don’t just label these as “small” so it’s clear what the difference actually is, and, you know, because not everyone with small earholes is a woman).
I’m a woman with small ear canals, and to get foam plugs into my ears, I have to roll each one agressively between my thumb and middle finger and then stick it in my ear quickly before it expands again, and once they’re in, the pressure is a bit uncomfortable. A couple of times, male coworkers at noisy jobs have asked me why I did that, and when I explained, they said that they could just stick them right in, no problem.
And those lavender ear plugs, per their label, are also “ultra soft.” Ultra soft! If that isn’t misandry, I don’t know what is.
@Moggie
She definitely needs new misandry-plugs.
@Kat
I doubt these men would want ultra soft though, it would be too feminine and emasculating. Real men only use cactus and rock earplugs. /s
I’m not alone! I’ve had the same problem with earplugs. I can’t slip them in, the pressure as they expand is really uncomfortable and they *still* don’t stay in. As the plug expands against my canal it kind of…squeezes itself out and then falls off. The same thing happens with earbud headphones. I just can’t keep the things in.
One thing I’ve tried with earplugs that helps is to make a “custom pair” by trimming some cheap regular foam plugs to size, using nail scissors to do it. Then they’re small enough to fit and stay in with no problem.
Re: products being designed with men in mind. I am starting to see it more and more. Smartphones, for example: many Android models are now too big to comfortably fit in my hand. They’re fine for the average male hand though.
Probably the actual equivalent – same shape, same foam – to the Girls Only plugs are to the right of them on the shelf. This is a very carefully framed photo comparing two different products, not the same-but-gendered product.
@Naglfar:
Real men don’t use earplugs, because noise is good! If you want to sell more earplugs to men, you’d need to put “tactical” in the name, and use a camo pattern on the packaging.
(I do use PPE when needed, but I’m a soy beta cuck)
@Moggie
Unfortunately, lots of men appear to think that way. Whenever I go to concerts or other loud events I bring ear protection and use it if it gets too loud, but I rarely see anyone else using it. There seems to be a reason why men are much more likely to experience hearing loss compared to women.
I was gonna say, the T probably stands for tactical.
@Naglfar – MGTOW would seize on that as an excuse to point out that men spend their lives in hazardous conditions (power tools, the military, shooting ranges, rock bands, jet planes, loud motors and industrial equipment) while women get to laze around in 10 decibel conditions. Except that quieter leaf blowers are available, and rock bands don’t need to have the amps turned up to 11, and not wearing hearing protection is 100% on them.
Harley Davidson introduced quieter exhaust systems some years ago, and the knee-jerk response among many buyers has been to install illegal aftermarket exhaust systems to restore the noise level. Gotta be able to give the finger to society, even at the cost of their hearing.
This is their sloppy, shitty attempt to respond to the pink tax. I hope. In which case, the fact that men could buy it is moot.
The real response is that the fact that the item is NEW not only establishes male as default, as always, but also helps explain the price point…
@Buttercup
But it’s oppression to have to turn the amps down or buy a quieter leaf blower. /s
Destroying one’s ears to own the libs?
@ buttercup
But it’s one louder!
@Alan Robertshaw
Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
This is reminding me of how my doctor told me she feels bad for my hearing loss because it wasn’t preventable (it was that or die) and it happened when I was a baby. She said she feels differently when it’s an adult who goes to too many concerts. It made me pretty uncomfortable because whether or not a health condition was preventable shouldn’t be a factor at all for my doctor. I feel bad for the HoH/deaf adults with “preventable” hearing loss that she treats.
@ naglfar
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These go to eleven.
These are the only type of earplugs I can wear – I guess I have small canals. Like a previous poster I have to roll them small and can always feel them in.
I just can’t take the loud noises anywhere. I actually started wearing them at the gym I was going to for Zumba class. The music was so loud in a little room. What was amazing is that I could still hear everything perfectly well.
Having ear plugs with me lets me enjoy things like bands at street festivals. I can’t even go near a live band it hurts; the ear plugs let me get close.
Until these style ear plugs came along I never could wear them, I couldn’t get them in my ears. I can’t even wear earbud headphones because if I can even get them in my ear, they never stay in.
I do buy the cheapest with the most protection – I’ve had bright pink “girl” ones and boring beige “boy” ones. Frankly, I like the pretty color better!
Masse_Mysteria-I was thinking the same about the ‘new item’ thing. Most products for women are more expensive than products for men, even when the product is pretty much identical.
Moggie-Lol! It is not surprising that she could still hear her husband talk. Fun fact. Ear plugs
in general are pretty bad at blocking sound, since most of what we hear is actually the sound vibrations moving through our skulls. The best ear plugs only block about as much sound as us putting our fingers in our ears. I have very sensitive ears, so even with ear plugs, I still hear EVERYTHING. It really makes being a night shift worker suck.
sunnysombrera-I get the same problem. The pressure ear plugs cause can make taking them out extremely difficult and extremely painful. I had to cut them back, too.
The first time I wore a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, I felt like a medieval peasant being shown a motorbike: this is sorcery! But so useful! They won’t do much to block sudden noises, but for steady sound like machinery they are amazing, if you can afford them.
Moggie – Wait till you try out the new ‘Noice’-canceling headphones.
(Credit to Seth Meyers’ joke writers on Daily Show)
@Naglfar, Alan, et al:
Back when I attended The Who’s ‘The Kids Are Alright’ tour at the Tacoma Dome, there were folks handing out earplugs in the parking lot as you came in. Granted, this was in 1989, and I don’t think toxic masculinity had yet reached the same quasi-religious ‘help help I’m being repressed’ level it has now.
(Yes, I was there the night Pete Townshend managed to injure his hand doing his trademark windmill riff and had to miss the encore as a result.)
I have earplugs both for concerts and for some times I was sharing a room with someone who snored loudly. I always used the little cylindrical ones.
We used to wear earplugs like the “T-shaped” ones in the food processing plant I worked at between semesters during university. They fell out of everyone’s ears all the time, but were helpfully held together by a length of plastic string that sat behind your neck so you never had to worry about losing an earplug in the vegetables we were working with, which I suppose was a plus. We probably wasted a lot less new sets of earplugs that way, too – on any given shift my plugs probably fell out six or seven times, and no one was going to work in that plant without hearing protection. I wonder if the “women’s”-style earplugs would have done a better job of staying in place.
I’ve gone to a lot of concerts over the years sans-earplugs. My friend and I used to always joke about having to yell at each other on the drive home because we couldn’t hear anything after the bands blasting us with heavy guitars and drums for a few hours, but now that I’m older with a very real amount of hearing loss, I have to say I regret that.
Also, if you look at the right-hand side of the picture, the next product over is a box of 18 pairs of waterproof earplugs. Based on the source here, I’d be willing to bet that those are actually even cheaper and that what we’re seeing here is just typical cherry-picking to prove a non-existant point.
@ jenora
This is the moment that Pete Townsend permanently damaged his hearing. Courtesy of Keith Moon adding a few more pyros than was planned.
But I used to work in live music and I often wore earplugs until I actually needed to hear the band. Although it’s less volume and more waveform that can be a problem.
“Earplug argument against feminism? Usually when I pull out my buttplug, there’s some antifeminist discourse on it.”
@AcidTrial:
Ugh, I used to have to wear those to go swimming as a kid (I was prone to ear infections at the time). Horrible waxy texture, like fiberglass insulation dipped in olive oil.