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.

This thread is a bit of a revelation to me. I'm 5ft8 so have never really experienced these issues. I apologise to my fellow women.

One of the reasons medications are not available during pregnancy is because it is considered to be unethical to do drug trials on pregnant women.

women are their worst enemies. There's so much uproar if anything is presented as designed for women that you can see things never improving. Thanks to the "feminists"

Erm what?

Erm yes.

As if that wasn't obvious to anyone!

I'm not following the screw thing, wood doesn't grow with the patriarchy in mind, plus you could use an electric screwdriver.

Now car seats and the likes, that's something more worthy of attention and investigation.

I dont get the comment about the screws - isn't t better to have screws as tight as possible?

im 5'4 have never really noticed any issues apart from being unable to reach some of my windows!

@StinkyCandle Don't you see the difference between what's talked about in this article and things like "biros for women" etc, which are a waste of time?

And the author of the piece is one of those "feminists" too.

I'm on the short side (5'1") so I guess a lot of my issues could just be because I'm small. But I, too, struggle with kitchen cupboards (the top shelves are completely out of reach and, in our current kitchen, a lot of the middle shelves are also no-go areas due to them being in the corners and I can't reach over the worksurface enough). Also supermarket shelves; anything on the top or at the back I just don't bother buying.

I've found seats in coffee shops and on buses too high, so I can just about rest my toes on the floor. Not comfortable for more than about five minutes. Stools in pubs are too high, so I can't perch on them with one foot on the ground, I have to actually climb up and sit on them properly. And the amount of rails on Underground trains that I can reach is small, only the vertical ones, so if I'm jammed in the middle of the carriage I can't hold on and, even worse, I'm stuffed under some blokes armpit as he holds the overhead rail.

At least my smartboard at school is adjustable; at the push of a button I can move it up and down to adjust for the kids and me. Love that IWB!

I agree it's rubbish and totally disgraceful. Women are more likely to die from heart attacks as the symptoms we present with our different but all the awareness information only focuses on men's symptoms.

Top tip for any women DIYers though, build a toolkit with tools that work for you and use leverage to your advantage. Get screwdrivers, adjustable spanners etc. with longer handles, for screwdrivers you want to be able to fit both hands round the handle and push it in firmly before you turn slowly. I keep strips of solid pipe which fit round handles to extend certain tools further. Adding an extension pipe to my wheel brace means I have the strength to undo my tyre nuts and also tighten them sufficiently. The further you are from the nut the less strength it requires to turn plus you can use your bodyweight more effectively.

@stinkycandle

I looked for designed for women tools. They were basic, small and poorly made. Nothing to make them work to our advantage at all. But they were also twice the price and a floral, pink or purple shade. It is just fucking patronising.

My pet hate is Unisex items that are no such thing. It should be against some trade act, want some headphones or ear plugs that fit? There’s only men’s or children’s so you probably have buy 5 sets to try and find one that’s the best of the worst.

Im average but do find driving uncomfortable. Feel like i cant see over and the bonnet as much as i would like. The pedals are too high.

Toilets you get cramp in your legs if you sit too long.
Maybe mens should just be urinals and 1 separate toilet that could be extra unisex. But women definitely need so many more toilets than men. It is so wrong having to q so long.
Even i cannot really reach the 2nd kitchen shelf. But i guess it would all be unused space otherwise.
I agree that phones are getting too large but mainly as they already dont fit in your pockets.
Maybe we should design for 5'7 or so.
I also think we need to allow women the pain relief they want not deny them.
I do worry about dd with school sport. Being little and a girl it's exhausting. And off putting. It's not like the boys are generally that much taller

I really, really, really hate boardrooms with their stupid chairs that are designed for tall men. Sitting is so uncomfortable and it contributes to back problems. However, I'm hardly going to talk myself out of the boardroom when I've had to fight so hard to get in...

I also hate toilets. They're designed so the toilet is in the middle of the cubicle and there isn't enough room for a sanitary disposal unit to the side. So the unit touches the toilet seat and when it gets too full, there's other women's blood right next to you...

Either make the cubicles wider, or move the toilets over to one side, so there's enough room for the bin without it touching the toilet seat. Not rocket science!

Men clearly designed women's toilets...

There's a barrier at work (car park) which has a sensor mounted on a post for you to touch with your pass. Set back unnecessarily far from the entry road, no danger of scraping the cars as they pass.

I pull right up to the kerb-side so the tyres touch the edge and I'm exactly parallel with the post. I roll the window right down. I take off my seat-belt and try to half-lift myself out of my seat to stretch as far as I possibly can without dropping the pass in the tips of my fingers... and if I'm lucky the card will flash and the barrier will lift. If not, I have to open the door and get half out of the car, then jump back in to move the car.

I'm 5ft 6in.

Male colleague just airily waves his longer arm out of the car window without a second thought. Job done.

Every morning I curse the man who installed that post. And it would have been a man.

I dont get the comment about the screws - isn't t better to have screws as tight as possible? Why? All they need is to not move in a lengthways direction. And for the head not to stick out and catch on things.

Our current car is the first one where the seatbelt can be adjusted enough- it's a Japanese one!

Still not necessarily comfortable over my boobs, but I reckon that's mostly biology.

Wow, that article is really interesting. A few of them have affected me, I have definitely been the one shrouded in blankets in an office while men are in shorts.

I’ve also anecdotally noticed the rise in breast cancer and wondered about its cause but I never knew it wasn’t really being paid attention to.

And I’m short, so the shelves yeah.

soul

And bike tyres really depends on the combination of rim and tyre, some are ridiculously easy to remove, some are very difficult. They've not been designed to require x amount of strength where x is more than the average women possesses

Yep, I worked in a bike shop, I’ve changed 100s of not 1000s of tyres. Old Skool MTB tyres are a doddle. The gold standard of road bike puncture resistance, Schwalbe Marathon are utter bAstards.

I used to be pretty accepting that yep, some were easy, some hard... but then I thought it through. In my considerable experience, An averagely strong man can always put them on. I’ve never come across any that an average guy with a bit of knowledge cannot do. So they CLEARLY are designed for a strength of x ... where x is the strength of an average Male cyclist.

It isn’t that they are trying to exclude females. More just that we were never considered.

Katvic. Get a grabber?

www.ageukincontinence.co.uk/long-reach-grabber-75cm.html?utm_source=google_shopping&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIpbPWz_zS4AIVDZztCh1A9QsbEAQYBSABEgIY3fD_BwE

Im average but do find driving uncomfortable. Feel like i cant see over and the bonnet as much as i would like. The pedals are too high.

The assumption (among many men and indeed not a small number of women) that men are innately much better at parking than women, purely because male brains are just better at that, right?

Nothing to do with having an extra 6-8" more height and thus far better vision of the edges of the car, then?!

I would also add my own personal private bug bear, 1960s social housing.

I don’t know if anyone on here has ever visited the Barbican Centre in London, it’s 1960s brutalist, concrete high rises with lots of raised walkways, stairs, lifts and it’s all flats. Very little in the way of public leisure facilities or practical ones like shops, laundrettes, pubs etc. The sort of person who designed those buildings (they were all men) are the sort of people who have always lived in them. Wealthy, metropolitan middle class male singletons or couples with no children who spend a lot of time out socialising.

Of course those people loved their flats in the centre of town. But then all these male architects and male politicians and male town planners all decided that these big concrete high rises were a marvellous idea and were the future of housing so they were built all over the country as social housing. They cleared slum housing (which could have been improved) and built towers.

Most of the families moving into the new social housing blocks however included women and children. And of course none of the men building them paid the blindest bit of attention to what it would be like for women and children to live there. They didn’t consider what a woman with a pram and bags of shopping would do if the lift broke down and she had to get to the 16th floor. They didn’t consider that for women walking down the deserted corridors and riding in the lifts put them in an isolated and dangerous position where there might not be anyone around to help if they were attacked - it was basically like walking down a dark alley. The raised walkways and underpasses were the same, areas out of site of traffic making it isolated and dangerous. Having no shops or cafes nearby. Every time you just wanted to go outside with the children for a bit you had to prepare because going sixteen floors down was quite a major time consuming trip and they’d have to be supervised unlike a safer yard or garden. Nowhere to hang washing privately and balconies dangerous for small cooped up kids.

Of course all these things became obvious straight away, they were extremely unpopular, caused massive social problems, were a disaster from beginning to end and are now being got rid of.

Because it never even occurred to one of the stupid sods to ask an actual woman what they thought of the plans. It would have saved an awful lot of time, money and trouble. All they cared about was designing somewhere men would like and probably getting a bit of a phallic thrill from their great big towers.

Worktop height in Kitchen, too high, as are the cupboards.
Bricks too big to hold. Tried and failed. (I can lift a bag of cement though)
Also have trouble getting the battery out of the drill. (have to clamp it between legs and use both hands).
Cannot hold the large paint rollers for long (dh thinks I should be able to do it ) I am not a girly woman at all and am quite strong, but still struggle.
Sofa, feet don't touch the floor.
Seat belt always uncomfortable, even after adjustment.

I am 5 foot 3, which is the average for the UK. When I buy trousers, the leg is ALWAYS too long. Also don't know what orangutan armed women the tops are designed for.

@BejamNostalgia

Still happening now. I watched the fella from grand designs do a building project of his own a few years ago. He took a potential tenant to look at the one that was finished and she straight away pointed out that there were no cupboards for things like the ironing board, broom, mop and bucket, hoover etc. No room to store any towels or bedding.

He looked amazed. They could have just asked a woman.