AIBU to feel f****d off with a world built for men?

[DarjeelingDarllng]

I read** this article with increasing horror.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-world-built-for-men-car-crashes?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

Many parts I recognise; the phone for example, I have a better camera but the phone is larger so harder to actually use.

I struggle to sit on most chairs easily as my feet don't touch the floor; this has caused some back issues.

I've known that most medical research has always been done on white men aged around 25.

The 'gender neutral' toilet thing is just obvious.

This quote, below, pissed me off the most, not least that there was once an AIBU where a pregnant woman was querying at what point did everyone stop driving as she was really struggling. 70% of people (roughly) said, just get on with it. The rest agreed it was challenging.

I very sadly know of a woman who was involved in a minor crash a week before her due date; the baby died.

The situation is even worse for pregnant women. Although a pregnant crash-test dummy was created back in 1996, testing with it is still not government-mandated either in the US or in the EU. In fact, even though car crashes are the No 1 cause of foetal death related to maternal trauma, we haven’t yet developed a seatbelt that works for pregnant women. Research from 2004 suggests that pregnant women should use the standard seatbelt; but 62% of third-trimester pregnant women don’t fit that design.

@RandomMess a friend was telling me the other day that when they complained about their desk being the wrong height, it was suggested that the people whose desks were too high and those whose desks were too low could swap It literally didn't occur to them that the desks were a uniform height that didn't suit people who were 5ft or 6'6!

That's hilarious

Bingo well, it's obvious what needs to happen then, shave a few inches off the tall people and graft it onto the shorter people. Everyone can be exactly the same height then....

This thread is surprising to me. I am five foot four and have never felt the wrong size or strength for anything. I am clearly the only one.

But whilst for some things it would be considerably more complicated, for some all it would take is to take account the average between men and women, of course things will still be 'one size fits none', but I'll bet they'll work better for more people.

I also love my Liv bike. Despite being 5 foot 9 so not exactly ‘average’ woman.

To all those saying the world doesn't work for people with disabilities - that is disgraceful, and should absolutely be fixed where possible. However, it is difficult - adaptions for different disabilities can be mutually exclusive (someone who uses a wheelchair will need a ramp rather than steps, but someone with a prosthesis for above knee amputation or a visual impairment would likely prefer the steps, for example), and requires specialist knowledge.

Womanhood is not a disability. It is a condition experienced by (slightly more than half of) the population. The average, able bodied woman should find equipment and products no more difficult or unsafe to use than the average, able bodied man. That is patently not the case. And yes, it gives me the rage.

And it'll probably be good for some of the non standard men as well- I use a kids Xbox controller as it's more comfortable. Funnily enough, 6ft4 DP prefers to the normal clunkier one as well

The average, able bodied woman should find equipment and products no more difficult or unsafe to use than the average, able bodied man

I totally agree with this but what I find hard to understand is how not being able to reach the top shelf in the kitchen or supermarket for example is indicative of a world designed for men? Same with car boots being too tall for some women to close - the height is caused by the length of the tail gate lifting up. Surely to make it lower the boot opening has to be smaller?

I'm sure there are instances of this happening but not being able to reach a high shelf or toilet size???

Surely to make it lower the boot opening has to be smaller?

Or just as standard add a strap?

We have two cars (I rarely drive btw) and in both cars I need the seat way way up front. And still in one car I need to sit at the very front, perch sort of, on the seat.
The bike thing has set off a lightbulb. I get backache from the bikes we have. The older bikes are womens and really heavy (that could be because they are old?) The newer bike is a mens and I can lift it with two fingers. But backache.
And the viagra one if true has made me really angry, as I sit here with my aching stomach, hot water bottle, ibuprofen lined up etc.

I have a double oven with a microwave above it, things in the microwave are level with the top of my head, which can make lifting in and out dangerous.

I have standard height toilets, they would be more comfortable if they were a few inches lower. My feet don't sit comfortably flat on the floor. There are plastic toilet footrests you can get which effectively change the height of the floor, but I don't want to clutter my bathroom with tacky plastic items.

My kitchen top cabinets go all the way up to the ceiling, considerably more than half the items in them are only reachable with the help of a mini-stepladder.

I'm 5 foot 8/9.

I'm not sure what my point is.

Yep, my men's bike was lovely and light, but the frame geometry was all wrong. I thought I only had to think about the length of my legs, but my arms and torso were too short - hence all sorts of pains from having to lean too far forward. Even as a taller woman.

A strap for the boot - or even just a clip point to attach one if needed - would be so simple and cheap to add! These don't necessarily have to be huge changes in every case to make things work for more people. Just abit of thought and recognition that 'average sized western man' shouldn't be the default human, which is what it boils down to.

I'm 5'5 average size & build woman (with oddly small hands), however, work in a male dominated industry. I have challenges every day, which are quite easily worked around, but add an extra layer to the task which the men don't have to even think about.

Test equipment on work benches is too high, I have to stand on stools & lean over so working at arms length. Clamps get tightened to 'man' hand tight, which hurts my hand to release.

The work pick up trucks, I can't reach in to the boot, so have to climb in on the tail gate, (a broom handle with a hook on the end has been requested.)

Getting respirator masks to fit my smaller face, hard hat adjustment so it's not sliding over my eyes, gloves to fit so the fingers don't fold over the end is an everyday pain.

Things have improved - when I started out 20 yrs ago, ladies steel toe cap boots & high vis were impossible to get, there are now better ranges (& not pink).

Things have improved - when I started out 20 yrs ago, ladies steel toe cap boots were impossible to get

Not so. I had steel toe boots back in the mid 90s. Mind you, they were sold as riding boots.

Same with car boots being too tall for some women to close - the height is caused by the length of the tail gate lifting up. Surely to make it lower the boot opening has to be smaller

No, it can just be made to flip up through a smaller angle. It would make things harder for taller people though, as they might have to stoop. As with many of these examples, there is a trade-off; making it easier for short people will make it harder for tall people. Maybe any design is going to make life hard for the tallest and shortest 10 percent. But if it has to exclude, it should exclude the 10 percent of extremes based off the average car driver (probably 50/50 male/female), not the average man. I mean it makes sense even just in simple terms of the number of people you end up excluding. Things like height have a normal distribution, i.e. the bell curve. If you design something that can be used comfortably by people within say a 20cm height range, because the bell curve is so steep, it makes sense for that range to be centred on the actual average (ok, median) of human heights. If it's skewed, you end up losing one or other "shoulder" of the curve and the number of people excluded is higher.

In my old (rented house) the spy hole was far too high. Surely much better to locate it lower so tall people just bend to see through it, whilst women or shorter makes can use it too.
As for theatre seats. The theatres you mean will be very, very old when men and women were much shorter, so the seats will have been designed accordingly.

If you need extra leg room, ring and ask which seats provide it, but stop manspreading like the idiot who sat next to me on my last flight did.

About the car boot, I really would be thrilled to have the option of buying a clip on strap!!! It's just that the thought of "how could we make this work better" doesn't seem to exist.

We only have one wall kitchen cupboard because there is no point having loads of shelves I can't reach.

We were limited on what car we could buy as DH had to fit in the passenger seat but the trend for bulky curved dashboards meant there was nowhere for his knees to go - just hadn't been thought out! Despite being 6'3 he doesn't have particularly long legs.

Clearly a lot of things are designed with "the average" in mind (in order to maximise the number of people who can use it) - but the point is, it's "the average western adult male", and not "the average person in the area where the item will be used".

I think the most irritating thing is that so many things are designed to operate at a particular size/height etc. If designers recognised that not everyone is the same size as them, and put a bit of thought into who their actual users are, many things could be made to be adjustable.

Eg car boots... yes, the eventual height of an open boot is largely determined by the size and design of the car - but it would be very easy to add a hook and a strap which could be used by shorter people.

So is it not fairer to say that some things just aren't designed very well, rather than they've been designed by men, for men - despite a lot of things also not working very well for men either?

I have kitchen cupboards that go up to the ceiling - none of us can access the top shelf without using a ladder but we need the storage space. Maybe I should be blaming the architect and builder (presumably male) who built the house with standard height ceilings, rather than with ceilings more convenient for 5 foot 5 me?

Eg car boots... yes, the eventual height of an open boot is largely determined by the size and design of the car - but it would be very easy to add a hook and a strap which could be used by shorter people.

But why has this not been done? If it is such a problem why haven't designers addressed it? Women work in these fields now - if it's such a widespread problem they would realise and could have designed the problem out.

I’m left handed. Almost everything is geared towards right handed people. Ticket barrier? Right handed. Cash machine? Right handed. Microwave? Right handed. It’s a right handed world. But you start taking about it and it’s not taken seriously at all!

Probably hasn't been carried out as there's a risk of the strap entangling with the locking mechanism or some other obvious reason why not (that I can't think of)

For those that need one, it can't be that hard to affix your own one.

Or buy a decent Audi and the boot shuts itself

I have had straps attached to some car boots and they made such a difference! I assume that something like this is easy to costcut out.

This was in a service station toilet (ladies) today. Middle of bloody nowhere. Painkillers, fair enough but a vibrater and "Mendurance" pills yet no pads or tampons?!?! Who the fuck thinks that a woman presumably on a long journey is going to buy a cock ring and some pills so her DH can have a raging hard on for the rest of the journey?!?!

Plus in the shop at the service station... One option of sanitary products, standard Always - £5.19. Madness.