Is woo belief more prevalent among women?

Dervel, it's funny how men's clubs go all odd really like the one you suggest! Funny handshakes / passwords / robes. Near as women's groups get I think is Jerusalem at WI.

Jane, genetic links? Presently sceptical. Interested if any works on that though!

I'm surprised the topic of freemasonry hasn't come up re: patriarchy yet.

Really?

There is a genetic link to whether people believe in God and these others things. I don't think it breaks down on gender lines although women may have a bit more time than some men to go to church or go to their "healing" classes.

I definitely had a woo phase in my teens and early twenties and do think it is very much about power. Very often the only strong female characters we have are that way due to magical mystical reasons, like Buffy. It is very hard to find female characters that have that strength within themselves and whilst being impressed by characters like Buffy it also reinforces that I'm weak as I don't have super slayer powers.

Don't know if I am explaining this well but it is like the fear we can feel when walking alone a night. I once had an argument over this as my male friend claimed the fear was illogical as stranger rape is thankfully rare, to me it is not illogical and if I am out alone at night and a man is also walking down the street it brings it home to me how exposed and vulnerable I actually am, I have no power and am dependent on not meeting a rapist. Believing in woo is a twisted way of trying to claim some power for ourselves.

I'm totally non-woo now but I can still see the attraction.

I'd have to agree, although I'm not woo myself and dh isn't conspiracy'ist.

Obvs, I'm totally projecting rage onto those women. Because I don't get how you can possibly live in patriarchy as a woman and not be completely enraged on a day to day basis. When I'm feeling especially generous, that is how I 'read' the popularity of stuff like the DM. It cultivates and validates the rage. Pity it channels it towards the symptoms and not the causes but you've got to have hope in the context of such rage

Oops! should be

I'd agree with everything Almondcakes said and know men and women who fit these descriptions to a tee.

In my personal experience, yes, women are generally more woo than men but we are conditioned to be so (it's the patriarchy init).

Having said that though, I do know a man who is very 'I AM MAN - HEAR ME ROAR' and is in the professions and MENSA but talks about having 6ft tall angels sleeping above his bed at night when he's in 'scary' countries. [sceptical]

The only home cookery show worth watching is Bobby Baker's kitchen show. I love Bobby.

Food technology is now going to be the only version of you know, domestic science, they're paring it all down and giving the elbow to other stuff.

WRT OP, I had a woo ish phase, I think it was escapism. Literally it ended when I read The Whole Woman and I just couldn't escape far enough to leave the raging rage of powerlessness behind. I don't think I'm woo any more but I totally get where people who fundamentally distrust disciplines and institutions like science and medicine which is all so very fucking capitalist patriarchy and hating women.

Mothers were being blamed only this week on R4 for causing anti biotics to become useless. "It's so hard to turn down these mothers who come demanding an AB for viral colds..." Now, why do you think they think they should be being perscribed stuff and under the doctor? That anything to do with decades of paternalistic, you-can't-be-trusted-with-your-own-health-or-your-baby's? Do you think they are too stupid to understand that 'your baby has a viral infection thus can't be treated effectively with ABs'? And what about the whole, perfect motherly love trope? How willing are you to get it wrong when your entire qualification as a human being depends on how much you are deemed to love your children, do you think?

I'm not going to apologise for distrusting medicine and science in general given the way that that body of knowledge is used against women. And I'm not going to blame other women for expressing that resistance with tingly bells and herbal remedies. I think that it's non confrontational resistance and I admire people who can channel their rage into nice josticks etc. Mine is way less high functioning.

really - whoops. I am an apologizer.

Gorden is a total prat.

That's what I mean too. Gordon for example spent much of his early career denigrating delia. Which is probably where his mum got most of her day to day recipes. Only recently (really since his wife started cookery books) has he been nicer.

Because he obvs cooks properly where cooking for a family is not really cooking.

Feminist may be scary but I never see as much apologising on the rest of the internet as I do on fWR

Sorry I wasn't clear LRD. I think the post that got my back up was by cote? Up higher. Yours was good, you mentioned airy fairy.

Have you ever read the comments section on a recpie site?

Jeez, "this recipe is rubbish, all I left out was the yeast/baking powder/baking soda/changed the temperature" and it didn't work at all!"

Well of course it didn't

Ok, sorry, I didn't mean to be insulting.

What I mean is, I do believe society treats women as if being less rational is our natural state.

About baking - there was a female chef, Jacqueline O'Donnell, who commented on Great British Menu that she'd been a pastry chef because 'that's what women get pushed into'. I found that interesting.

Sorry on ohone. Sorry for incoherence!

Especially sahm ones, lrd. As other women are far too clever...(answering a good post just above about airy fairyness)

Grief that post was insulting other post higher up by another was insulting.

Baking is science. It's chemistry. Or in my house witches caldron and magic. I find it interesting that chefs are men and cooks women. I can only think of Angela hartnett as a chef. I think all others are cooks (as don't run restaurants or focus on family cookery). Credence greatly given more to Gordan than Delia for example.

it irritates me that people don't see baking as science. Of course it is.

Yeah, but if you go on about the chemical reactions of raising agents, or fudge going smooth or crystalline because of long- or short-chain molecules forming, people do tend to look at you oddly.

Although that may just be me.

DS dropped it at 14, but before that it was all stuff like write up various stuff about nutritional requirements of the body, make up your own flapjack recipie, make them and then evaluate it for taste vs. nutritional content. At A level it looked very science based from the projects I looked at on school open days.

I would be worried about it not being taken seriously at university admissions, but no more than I'd worry about electronics or resistant materials.

I am so off topic now. It must be a personal record.

I know I know, I was joking, :)

almond is it? It wasn;t when I was in school, and regularly see it get bashed even on FWR when women become famous or do well out of it... which really winds me up.

RFFU, well baking is part of Food Tech now, which is a technology subject, and even when I was at school it was part of domestic science. So it is a STEM subject really, and definitely taught in that way at decent schools.

I didn't mean Christians aren't judgy! I meant, I'm not really in a position to be snippy about other people believing in things not amenable to proof.

I think it is related to the OP.

The whole thing here is that some kinds of perfectly rational thought/practice are devalued because they're associated with women, and other kinds of irrationality are attractive to women partly because it's socially acceptable for women to be airy-fairy.

No, I don't think you've been harsh, I've agreed with everything you've said until that bit about Christians not being judgy