By David Futrelle
Donald Trump isn’t the only man who refuses to wear a protective face mask because he thinks it’ll make him look like a wuss. A new study from researchers at Middlesex University and Berkeley reports that men are less likely than women to wear masks because, for too many of them, masks are for sissies.
“Men more than women agree that wearing a face covering is shameful, not cool, a sign of weakness and a stigma,” the researchers write, “and these gender differences also mediate gender differences intentions to wear a face covering.” Men are also less worried than women that they’ll catch the coronavirus themselves — a bit ironic because in fact men have been hit harder than women by the pandemic and they are far more likely than women to die from it.
One man who won’t be wearing a mask any time soon is a Redditor called shmederalreserve333, a conspiracy-minded fellow who thinks that those of the male persuasion are right not to worry about the pandemic. As he sees it, women are too worried about coronavirus, mostly because they’re a bunch of irrational babies desperately in need of a real man to come along and put them in their place.
“To me it seems like mostly women are very afraid,” he writes in a recent post to the Conspiracy subreddit.
Men are generally not concerned but will play along to avoid conflict with the GF. Single dudes like me, are really not concerned and many are not even wearing masks.
So why are women so scared? Good old-fashioned female irrationality, magnified by evil NWO food and the fact that they work outside the home.
I think this unnatural fear of germs comes from being hyper feminized and not being able to think rationally. The extra estrogen in our diet and the other hormone influencing foods. Combined with the fact that historically women have only had a few responsibilities, take care of the kids, cook food, etc. except for the past about 50 years women have slowly gained more and more responsibilities. It’s not insane to think maybe women aren’t ready to have all these responsibilities and are getting overwhelmed.
His proof? The lack of female billionaires.
think about how many women are independently wealthy? not many big names come to mind. Sure actresses and politicians. But thats about it. What about fortune 500 companies founded by women? Any companies at all founded by women that made millions? not many at all.
This goes to show that women just can’t handle jobs.
It’s clear men are more fit for providing for a family, so why are women still trying? Men we need to come together and regain our position as the leaders of the free world. If all men where just Real with women instead of being cuckolds and following whatever the woman does. Thats why I’m single I don’t want to be a follower, and all the women want to be leaders.
I’m not sure that’s why you’re single, dude.
To all my Married dudes out there, try disagreeing with your wife about anything. It’s not going to end well.
It’s just another way the nwo is creating Order out of Chaos.
tl;dr women are already overwhelmed with modern society and for most women understanding germ concepts is too difficult.
Oh, I think most women understand germs a lot better than you do, dude. That’s why they’re wearing masks to protect themselves and others while you’re out there being a potential disease vector.
You are, dude. You’re the vector. And also kind of an idiot.
Indeed, shmederalreserve333’s theory here was so ludicrous that even the regular inhabitants of r/Conspiracy thought it was a bit much — with nealy 70 percent of those voting on it giving it a thumb’s down. Oof. When your conspiracy theory is too far out for even the conspiracy, er, enthusiasts in the conspiracy subreddit, you know you’ve fucked up big time.
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Wow. this post is the Gish Gallop on full display, jumping from bad premise to bad premise without even pausing for breath.
@Snowberry
Is this something that many conservatives believe? I hadn’t heard it before but it doesn’t surprise me.
@Lizard People Operative
If it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty open about my participation in the International Jewish Conspiracy.
I was reading about Semmelweis the other day, so when I read this post, my mind immediately jumped to the reactions Semmelweis encountered back in the day when he suggested that his fellow doctors wash their hands before attending a birth. The midwives he’d studied had washed their hands before attending the mother, and so he concluded this was a factor in preventing puerperal fever (what we’d call postpartum infection today). Rumors and other agents of confusion meant that his findings and conclusions weren’t circulated very accurately, but one factor seems to have been grounded in belief perseverance – in this case, the belief that an obstetrician was a gentleman and therefore could not be a vector for infections due to the state of his hands.
@ Vicky P
The funny thing about Semmelweis is he recommended washing with chlorine, not because it is just about the best disinfectant there is (he didn’t know that) but because he thought it was best at masking the smell of corpses.
So still a hint of ‘miasma’ thinking there; but of course he was a product of his time.
He thought that the major problem was that doctors performed autopsies whereas midwives didn’t; and that ‘cadaverous particles’ were the disease vector.
I’m sure you’re familiar with John Snow and the street pump?
@Naglfar:
Conservatives aren’t great at object permanence.
I saw more men than women wearing masks in the first weeks of the lock down, but now it’s evened out. I live in a manufacturing, tradesmen, farming, fishing sort of county. I shall let the men in physically and mentally demanding roles that I know that according to the dingbats of Reddit and Trump, that despite their general alignment with social ideas of ‘man-ness’, they aren’t in fact men because they are sensible enough to wear masks.
I have made a couple of masks for my sister to us on public transport so she can still get to work.
The men in my life are giving worries, because of their unwillingness to take precautions. They won’t wear masks. I should probably make my step-dad some, since he does most of the shopping for various vulnerable people, even though he’s vulnerable himself. He has diabetes, heart problems and some interesting oedema leg stuff going on. He refuses to stay indoors, although he does try social distancing with strangers. He struggles with that because he likes talking to people. There’s many a person in northern Lincolnshire who’ve been approached by a big, bearded Cornish man making odd jokes. He has trouble staying still, has to always be doing something and bounces around a bit before hyperfocusing on a project for a bit. He’s dyslexic and anxious, I actually think he’s ADHD too. He just can’t cope with being stuck in the house for more than a few hours at a time. He refuses to wear a mask even though he delivers food and meds to my gran and meds to me and rarely takes me shopping. Mum wants him to start wearing a mask because she worries he’ll get sick.
My dad is managing better, because he’s been furloughed by work and is hypervigilent about his health these days – his wife has done that, after he spent years trying to drink himself to death. He’s avoiding people, staying home doing his jobs and only going out to walk the dog, go shopping or take his wife to her doctor’s surgery cleaning job. But he won’t wear a mask.
They’re both in their 60s, both diabetic and both pottering on as usual. I worry about them both. I don’t think they’re refusing to wear masks out of some bizarre idea of masculinity, but out of stubbornness. If I didn’t love them I’d slap them. Well, not ’til after the lock down ends because I am self-isolating as much as I can. I have a weird cold that won’t go away, had a cough for 10 days and my asthma is playing silly buggers. Yay!
@Alan
Yeah, for all intents and purposes, the state of medicine at that time was barely out of the “four humors” school. Thanks for the video! I wonder what John Snow would think of our modern IVs and other rehydration techniques, and I like to think he’d be glad to learn that public health is an actual specialty now.
Amtep:
Nah, hunting was of marginal importance in recent historical times. I think Masse Mysteria meant city people and/or upper classes.
@ Vicky P
John Snow’s work led to the creation of London’s massive sewer network, including the Embankment. The designer was a guy called Bazelgette. One of his descendants went on to create the Big Brother TV series.
Cue obvious jokes about pumping out crap being the family speciality.
@ Alan
Ha, have you read Pratchett’s Dodger? Bazelgette gets a cameo appearance in that one.
@ Vicky P
Which one? The useful one or….
But no; I’m woefully out of touch with Pratchett. I like all the interviews I’ve seen with him; but I’ve only ever read one book!
@Alan
Dodger might be right up your alley. It’s a standalone, so it’s easier to get into than any of the Discworld books. It does suffer from the problems of Pterry’s later works, when he was fighting the Embuggerance (his posterior cortical atrophy): a lot of his characters sound alike, as opposed to his earlier works where you could easily distinguish Vimes from Lady Sybil from Carrot from Angua even if the speakers weren’t identified.
That having been said, Dodger is brimming over with historical figures, not only Charles Dickens, but Henry Mayhew, Angela Burdett-Coutts, Benjamin Disraeli, Sir Robert Peel, and Joseph Bazalgette. Pratchett admitted that he fudged a few things here and there to get all these people on stage, but the results are worth it. I just can’t help but wonder what the book would’ve been like if Pratchett had been able to give it just a bit more polish.
@Amtep
Like Lumipuna said, I’m pretty sure the saying is from more modern times. From what little I’ve read in novels (and what I remember from children’s books) I’d guess haymaking was a thing all the people did together, young and old, because there’s so much to do. I always assumed the “easiness” of the task had something to do with it being a straightforward kind of a thing that’s physically tasking. I sure wouldn’t know where to start and how to get it right, though.
@Masse_mysteria
This sentence made me laugh a bit because in slang, a “haymaker” means a boxer or certain kind of punch, so I originally pictured people of all ages having a huge boxing match. I assume that’s not what you meant, but it was a funny mental image.
I think I’ve recommended it on here before, but anyone who’d like detailed information about John Snow and that cholera outbreak should read The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson.
It’s fascinating but graphic, so don’t read while eating unless you’re really brave!
@Victorious Parasol and Alan Robertshaw
Regarding Semmelweis: a classic example of someone with a solid experimental result not being believed because he does not have the theory to back it up. He reduced puerperal fever cases in his first ward by 90% experimentally, and still got mocked.
I’d say unbelievable, but it’s totally believable. I can’t find the reference I read it in, but somewhere I read that it became the fashion among some men to on purpose do an autopsy and then go straight to the maternity ward in specific defiance of his findings. How very like the men who won’t wear masks today.
Interestingly, I always thought previously that there was some gender discrimination involved as well, since the first ward was staffed by male medical students and the second ward by midwives, but this has admittedly been my own assumption that midwife = female. It may have been more of a professional rivalry (stemming from gender discrimination originally, but I digress). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1088248/
I also recommend the Ghost Map. It is a fascinating work, taking you back to pre-scientific medical thinking and tells the very well-written story of one of the earliest medical scientists.
So if we all start wearing masks, we won’t have any more risk takers, and therefore no more billionaires? Not really seeing a downside here.
Of course, wealth and risk taking aren’t correlated. Plenty of billionaire entrepreneurs start off with a safety net of inherited money and/or inside access to the network of privilege. When they do take chances, it’s with other people’s money. Their own stash is rarely at risk. It’s the investors and employees who take the loss.
I guess that’s the same thought process the OP has. He feels fine, why should he inconvenience himself? Let others take the fall. “Me first. You not at all.” Because that’s how superior providers think.
It’s easy to brag about death and germs when you’ve never had to confront them up close. He’s never lost a baby to miscarriage. He’s never had to go identify his parent’s bodies in a mortuary. He’s never had polio or smallpox. He grew up in a cushy world with vaccines and antibiotics. Death is as abstract to him as the surface of Mars. That isn’t courage. It’s privilege.
It’s also easy to be stoic in the face of death when you have zero empathy, when a deer is just a target and the grandma you infect with COVID-19 would probably have died of something else anyway. I doubt the world will miss him much when he’s gone, either. If you sow indifference, you reap indifference.
We have an estrogen shaker on the table, right next to the salt. I reach for it whenever I need to feel a little more fearful.
@Lizard People Operative: Hi and welcome!
@Big Titty Demon
Oh, absolutely. Sadly, I can imagine that sort of “you can’t tell ME that I need to change my behavior! I’ll do that thing you say is bad, and I’ll do it MORE!” reaction. I’ve worked with a LOT of doctors over the years. I’ve encountered that attitude more times than I care to remember. It’s why I’m so happy when I deal with doctors that don’t think “MD” stands for “mostly divine.”
@Big Titty Demon
There 1000% was a huge, huge amount of gender discrimination involved.
@Buttercup
That’s pretty much the bottom line of all these jackasses. They’ve never in their lives experienced a single moment of genuine danger or hardship, and cannot conceive of such a thing actually happening to them, to you get bravado mixed with whining.
I’m curious. At what point in history was making a household run and raising children not a lot of responsibility? Also, can anyone, anyone at all, point out to me a time in history when women did not participate in the labor force? Any time at all. I’ll wait.
Again, I need to know what color the sky is in their universe.
I have worn a mask today to get my groceries. I barely could bear it, because I am unaccustomated to it and tend to hate with a passion anything that touch my head. (I never use headphones exactly for that reason already). So I guess I can empathize with not wanting to wear one. On top of that, I do believe I have had the covid already so I feel like I am unlikely to be an host anymore.
Despite that, and despite my burning hatred of most humans I know, I far prefer to wear a mask than having a chance however faint to kill someone else. I don’t want people to randomly kill me, so I feel forced to not risk killing anyone.
Also, it’s obviously hypocritical. At that point, I don’t think they can be unaware of the deadliness of the current epidemic. They just prefer to disguise their whims as rational and explainable stuff.
As a side note, at least in France, masks seem like a pretty costly endeavor for lower income family. In particular, I hope most poor worker get mask for free, because when it cost 10-40 cent the hour of masked protection and poor people making <7 euros the hour, that could collapse their budgets 😡
@Buttercup
And even when it is their own stash, they know the fed will pay them out billions instantly using other people’s tax money.
I still haven’t gotten my estrogen yet, but I am afraid of the virus already. Not sure if that’s good or bad.
@Some Chick in Texas
Green? It’s the only color I’ve never seen the sky on Earth as, so probably that’s it.
My neighbour sewed me a mask and I’m happy I can wear it when I’m going on the bike path (it can be harder to avoid coming close to others there). Like Moggie said, it’s more a protective measure for others than for yourself, but if these guys are so rational, why avoid doing something that might make others feel better and wouldn’t harm them?
@Alan Robertshaw – I also liked the Extra History series on the 1918-20 flu outbreak. It might be slightly morbid to watch it these days, but it was fascinating.
Men have traditionally ignored taking care of their health more than women. Women were better about annual checkups, getting the recommended tests, etc., while more men preferred to wait until they finally had to meet the cardiac surgeon.
So, that tradition, whatever weird subconscious notion it springs from, seems to be operative here as well.