Great post. This week, Danica Patrick (one of the few female race car drivers) said women will always be underrepresented in racing because it requires a level of aggression and risk-taking that doesn't come naturally to most women. Now she's getting a lot of negative press for being sexist and having "internalized misogyny." Jalopnik said DP should have called it "competitive" rather than "masculine." I almost can't believe they're being serious.
DP's scandalous comments:
"And at the end of the day, I think that the nature of the sport is masculine. It’s aggressive. You have to, you know, handle the car — not only just the car, because that’s a skill, but the mindset that it takes to be really good is something that’s not normal in a feminine mind, in a female mind. You have to be, like, for me, I know if somebody tries to bow up or make it difficult on me, I would go into like an aggressive kill mode, right? You just want to go after them, and that’s just not a natural feminine thought. I say that because I’ve asked my friends about it, and they’re like, “Yeah, that’s not how I think.” https://www.boundingintosports.com/2023/07/former-nascar-driver-danica-patrick-accused-of-internalized-misogyny-after-calling-racing-a-masculine-sport/
A lot of differences in psychology can be attributed to this. The male body suffers no internal danger over its lifecycle, so we take absorb the external risks instead. Over thousands of years, this has created a mindset suited for that.
Is it because men - very generally speaking of course - are better at being obsessive, determined to master (literally) one skill? As my wife reminds me, she can multitask a great deal better than I can? Is there something in this culturally or biologically? And does it matter that much if these are complementary skills?
Quite! And no one cared - CPS didn’t even do him for indecent exposure due to mental health and I had to walk past his flat every day to enter or leave mine
Classic. Indecent exposure really needs to be taken much much more seriously, not least because it’s a sex crime that’s particularly likely to escalate to more violent offending
I loved this commentary except for one point. Greta Gerwig cowrote the Barbie film with her beloved Noah Baumbach. I think the film is actually pointing out the problems modern men face not derided them for the position they find themselves in. I think conservative Catholic columnist Douthat's take on this is correct: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/09/opinion/barbie-ken-ideology.html
What are your thoughts on his piece? Thanks for your fabulous content Louise! (BTW, why does none of the media pay attention to Baumbach's contribution -- a media bias . . . . ?)
I had this conversation once with my therapist (a woman). She observed that women want me to share their innermost selves with them, but they aren’t going
I think that the idea that modern manual labor is somehow low status and dispensable might be a bubbled up city belief. They keep the entire modern city life running but office confined city people never interact with these men, they're taken for granted. Travel outside of cities and speak to rural women, blue collar men are highly sought after. "Low skilled" manual labor jobs actually pay very well compared to the typical rural non colleged educated woman (usually waitresses or bartenders) and even most college educated women. The trades have seen one of the largest spikes in new workers in recent years precisely for this reason. The city confined jounalists have painted this out to be a depressed generation of boys dropping out of college, the reality is most of these men are getting into the trades and actually outpacing new graduates at least in the unites states. The college educated women just never interact with blue collar men (unless of course they need anything fixed) so they dont understand how finacally better off the blue collar men are than them. I think the journalists who shaped city peoples perception of the rural low status man who's been "devalued" are just out of touch, that's not reality. The same way robots aren't taking nurses jobs, they're not taking manual labor jobs. These men will be just fine. The "boy crisis" is mostly a crisis of fatherlessness not an economic devaluing. Manual labor jobs will only become more valuable as our infrastructure continues to need more and more work
Agreed that it isn't women's responsibility, but I've yet to see anyone claim it is. My only issue is when people are actively hostile to us even acknowledging our situation long enough to find the vocabulary for it.
Great post. This week, Danica Patrick (one of the few female race car drivers) said women will always be underrepresented in racing because it requires a level of aggression and risk-taking that doesn't come naturally to most women. Now she's getting a lot of negative press for being sexist and having "internalized misogyny." Jalopnik said DP should have called it "competitive" rather than "masculine." I almost can't believe they're being serious.
DP's scandalous comments:
"And at the end of the day, I think that the nature of the sport is masculine. It’s aggressive. You have to, you know, handle the car — not only just the car, because that’s a skill, but the mindset that it takes to be really good is something that’s not normal in a feminine mind, in a female mind. You have to be, like, for me, I know if somebody tries to bow up or make it difficult on me, I would go into like an aggressive kill mode, right? You just want to go after them, and that’s just not a natural feminine thought. I say that because I’ve asked my friends about it, and they’re like, “Yeah, that’s not how I think.” https://www.boundingintosports.com/2023/07/former-nascar-driver-danica-patrick-accused-of-internalized-misogyny-after-calling-racing-a-masculine-sport/
That’s really interesting - car racing is a great example of a sport that’s dominated by men for psychological rather than physical reasons
A lot of differences in psychology can be attributed to this. The male body suffers no internal danger over its lifecycle, so we take absorb the external risks instead. Over thousands of years, this has created a mindset suited for that.
Is it because men - very generally speaking of course - are better at being obsessive, determined to master (literally) one skill? As my wife reminds me, she can multitask a great deal better than I can? Is there something in this culturally or biologically? And does it matter that much if these are complementary skills?
Very possibly, although I think extreme competitiveness and risk tolerance are the biggest factors in racing
also, technical note: drag racing is paradoxically a lot more dangerous than NASCAR, F1 or Indy due to explosions
speaking as a wannabe masculine male, the biggest difference is probably tracking objects in space. You real have to master the 2d space. Women do fine in drag-racing, which is quite different. For you Brits unfamiliar with our distinctly American past-time, check-out this NHRA article: https://www.nhra.com/news/2021/national-women-s-history-month-nhra-records-and-milestones-women#:~:text=1%20Muldowney%20vs.%20Lucille%20Lee%20was%20the%20first,Funny%20Car%2C%20and%20Erica%20Enders%20%282015%20%26%202020%29
Oh my gosh I had a neighbour that actually did have sex with his letterbox in full public view
!!!
Quite! And no one cared - CPS didn’t even do him for indecent exposure due to mental health and I had to walk past his flat every day to enter or leave mine
Classic. Indecent exposure really needs to be taken much much more seriously, not least because it’s a sex crime that’s particularly likely to escalate to more violent offending
Absolutely
I loved this commentary except for one point. Greta Gerwig cowrote the Barbie film with her beloved Noah Baumbach. I think the film is actually pointing out the problems modern men face not derided them for the position they find themselves in. I think conservative Catholic columnist Douthat's take on this is correct: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/09/opinion/barbie-ken-ideology.html
What are your thoughts on his piece? Thanks for your fabulous content Louise! (BTW, why does none of the media pay attention to Baumbach's contribution -- a media bias . . . . ?)
I hope you didn’t need to deliver any post for him.
I had this conversation once with my therapist (a woman). She observed that women want me to share their innermost selves with them, but they aren’t going
....want men to share their innermost selves with them. But they won’t like what they hear. And men, knowing this, decline to divulge.
I think that the idea that modern manual labor is somehow low status and dispensable might be a bubbled up city belief. They keep the entire modern city life running but office confined city people never interact with these men, they're taken for granted. Travel outside of cities and speak to rural women, blue collar men are highly sought after. "Low skilled" manual labor jobs actually pay very well compared to the typical rural non colleged educated woman (usually waitresses or bartenders) and even most college educated women. The trades have seen one of the largest spikes in new workers in recent years precisely for this reason. The city confined jounalists have painted this out to be a depressed generation of boys dropping out of college, the reality is most of these men are getting into the trades and actually outpacing new graduates at least in the unites states. The college educated women just never interact with blue collar men (unless of course they need anything fixed) so they dont understand how finacally better off the blue collar men are than them. I think the journalists who shaped city peoples perception of the rural low status man who's been "devalued" are just out of touch, that's not reality. The same way robots aren't taking nurses jobs, they're not taking manual labor jobs. These men will be just fine. The "boy crisis" is mostly a crisis of fatherlessness not an economic devaluing. Manual labor jobs will only become more valuable as our infrastructure continues to need more and more work
Agreed that it isn't women's responsibility, but I've yet to see anyone claim it is. My only issue is when people are actively hostile to us even acknowledging our situation long enough to find the vocabulary for it.