must have been invented by a man

[Lottle]

AIBU to hate this phrase?

It wouldn't be acceptable to say "must have been invented by a woman" or "a [choose a different race to your own] person"

I'm sure lots of good stuff has been invented by men.

@CountFosco

Would it be ok for a poor invention to be described as eyeroll "oh must have been invented by a white person!"

Image recognition software often doesn't recognise black or asian or female faces because it is designed by white men. Linky.

This is interesting. My dd’s friend can open dd’s iPhone. Both 12 and white for reference.

@DiscoMoo - yes, yes yes! I so recognise what you're saying about the shoes.

I'm tall and take a size 9 so can spend shopping trips grovelling around people's ankles at floor level. Average height friends can browse away comfortably. My petite friend has to ask for help reaching the top shelves.

(That's if there are any 9's to be had in the first place #bitter).

Is it about aesthetics? Smaller shoes may be more pleasing to look at than my canoe sized versions?

I'm not sure it's an entirely penis based decision to display them like that but it's a bloody nuisance.

diddl
I have read it is still standard for a woman to give birth on her back in the US. This is totally for the (predominately male) doctors, not the woman.

Yes to improving seatbelts for women. I met a lady who had lost the top part of her thumb. She was a passenger in a car and had hooked her thumb around the seatbelt to make it more comfortable. Unfortunately they had an accident and the seatbelt took her thumb. I regularly did the same with seatbelts to make them more comfortable, I stopped that day.

@LampHat

It has its uses! Like my bloody phone was probably invented by a man because the screen is too big for my tiny lady fingers to reach it all

Yes, and the way a few years ago there was a rash of tools "for women" which were identical except they were pink. No thought about smaller hands, different balance, etc

I only use it for objects/devices that are difficult /awkward/painful to use for women, not designed for their bodies, or completely pointless- in a what a man thinks a woman needs or should use kind of sense . Like those stupid fake pockets.

See also those NoNo adverts - with a male voiceover, notice - telling women how they can get rid of the tiniest little peach-fuzz hair from their faces that everybody naturally has (even very small children) and nobody would see unless they had their face right in yours anyway. But no, it's not even mentioned that there's a product if you want or feel that you need it: it's just assumed that ugly, hairy women will realise that they must have unnaturally perfectly smooth faces - otherwise they might just as well have the facial hirsuitness of Brian Blessed and will, of course, be gruesome and hideous to anybody unlucky enough to catch sight of them.

I completely agree with the shoes one - I've frequently thought this; although I think it's the same for men's and women's shoes. Surely, the bigger your feet, the taller you're likely to be, and vice versa? Do record shops (those that still exist) have the same lack of thinking and put the Little Mix CDs in the easiest-to-reach sections right in front of you whilst the Daniel O'Donnell ones are on the bottom shelf that you have to drop right to your knees for and sit there cross-legged as you rummage through?!

I don't see the problem with phones and trolleys, though - when smaller options are available, I don't really see how you can deliberately select one of the larger ones and then complain that it's too big for you. You wouldn't do that with clothes.

That said, I do think it's down to male designers that, generally, the bigger a car is, the nicer and more luxurious it is as standard. Plenty of petite women find a little car more appropriate for them, but it doesn't mean that they don't want the smarter/comfier interior and gadgets as well. Conversely, there are probably 6'6" 19-stone farmers out there who buy a big old car to suit their stature for carting around bags of fertiliser and animal feed through muddy fields, who are baffled by all of the obligatory Star-Trek-type gadgetry it comes with by default that they have no need for whatsoever.

@KatherineJaneway

I use the phrase when in a venue / building with inadequate numbers of female toilets.

Was this in Invisiable Women too or maybe I read it elsewhere.

Male artichetec continue to design places where there is the same amount of floor space allocated to male toilets as female. Then furnish these same size spaces by putting in urinals and (fewer than urinals) cubicles into the male space and just cubicles into the female. (Fair enough women can't easily use urinals.) So you end up with more individual facilities in male toilets than female. This results in women having to wait,

If more floor space is given over to female toilets so it results in there being the same cubical number to the urinal and cubical number in the male would reduce this wait,

Or even better make the number of female cubical s higher as women take longer on average per 'transaction' due to having periods and being the ones who are usually accompanied by children.

@MintyMabel

“Designed by a man” is a fairly common phrase from me. I look at a lot of building designs and am never surprised when the logistics of how a building is going to be used seem never to occur to them. Never enough sockets in the hall of a house, hotel rooms with no usb point or socket next to the bed. My favourite was a well known department store’s new layout had the kids’ disabled changing room at the back of the gents’ changing room. Anecdata it may be, but in my experience there are fewer issues like these when I am dealing with female architects - albeit, I deal with so few of them, it doesn’t happen often. That said, just like everything else, there is never one rule that fits all.

I expect what you are really trying to say here is, berating something that men generally do is as bad as making a racist comment about an entire group. That’s clearly bullshit.

I remember coming home from work and seeing the pipe work the plumber had designed for the shower room. The toilet would have been touching the sink, ie no room for legs or knees. The cement was being poured the following morning. He had to come back and sort it and admitted that he had only thought about a man using it and being able to “stand slightly to one side”.

DH also couldn’t see the problem.

See also most female toilets in pubs etc. Never enough space for the sanitary bin alongside the toilet/doors that have no clearance past the end of the loo etc.

Fucking idiots.

@LouiseTrees

The phrase “ must have been invented by a man” is usually used when something has been designed with no regards for physical differences between woman and men eg something that’s difficult to fold if you don’t have a wide wingspan between your two hands. So a YABU. It simply means it doesn’t appear to have been designed round a woman’s needs.

Yeah was just going to say, this is always the context I've heard it being used, not to say it's crap, just that they really didn't give a shit about women users when inventing this kind of a thing

DH also couldn’t see the problem.

Does he never poo?

It is ridiculous, though - for somebody who instals toilets for a living to never once ask himself why a toilet might be shaped the way it is, let alone the fact that it comes with a seat.

My DM and I recently put an ottoman bed together. We were almost done, there was just a cover/sheet thing to line the bottom and stick the adjustable legs on.

They wanted us to lift the fully assembled heavy bed onto it's headboard, and apply the velcro around the frame, and then screw the legs in. I definitely followed the instructions in order!

I still can't work out why it wasn't the first step rather than the last; lay the 'cover' out flat before assembly, and when putting the four sides together, put them straight on top of the velcro, and assemble from the ground up without ever having to lift the bloody thing.

It did cross my mind that the instructions were written by a man, but swiftly gave myself a telling off as MN would call me sexist

We gave up putting the base cover on, it was ridiculously fiddly and I had to hold the bed up while DM fought with crinkled fabric and velcro. Nope.

@BalloonSlayer

The contraceptive pill having the week break for you to have a period was because the pill was invented by men and they thought women would want to have a period.

Is that true?? wtf?? Of course they probably didn't actually ASK women, why would they? ugh

tbf there are a lot of examples here that are just bad designs, for men and women

Re shoes , its probably the most popular sizes that are put at the most convenient height

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

DH also couldn’t see the problem.

Does he never poo?

It is ridiculous, though - for somebody who instals toilets for a living to never once ask himself why a toilet might be shaped the way it is, let alone the fact that it comes with a seat.

I think he was embarrassed not to have spotted it, “on his watch”.

He also knows little about cars/electrics etc. And if you saw how he stacks a dishwasher you’d wonder how he ever passed the geometry part of a maths A level.

When I saw this thread I immediately thought about the scandal of crash test dummies, when it came out that the research into crumple zones etc was based on male size and weight, compromising the safety of anyone smaller/lighter. I went off to look for the article I read but couldn’t find it, and I see there are lots of posts about seatbelts and also medical research which has often failed to account for the difference in female physiology, hormones etc etc.

On a much more trivial level, the last time I found myself thinking that was when I was staying in a hotel and went to dry my hair and discovered yet again there is no plug socket next to a mirror.

The criticism isn’t about male competence but rather on the failure to consider half the population.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-world-built-for-men-car-crashes

Conversely, there are probably 6'6" 19-stone farmers out there who buy a big old car to suit their stature for carting around bags of fertiliser and animal feed through muddy fields, who are baffled by all of the obligatory Star-Trek-type gadgetry it comes with by default that they have no need for whatsoever.

DDad (a farmer) once got very annoyed with some poor person from the insurance company who told him his premiums for his (ancient and battered) Land Rover had gone up because it was a 'luxury car'. He informed them it the interior was covered in sheep shit and that wasn't his idea of luxury.

I’m a 5’ 9” female who loves driving. I cannot be doing with card that want to do it for me. I don’t need parking sensors or reversing cameras, auto braking etc. (I don’t really want to share the roads with people that do either.) I don’t even use auto light or windscreen wipers. But if I want something practical like leather seats or a sunroof I have to have all that shit as well.

@LouiseTrees

The phrase “ must have been invented by a man” is usually used when something has been designed with no regards for physical differences between woman and men eg something that’s difficult to fold if you don’t have a wide wingspan between your two hands. So a YABU. It simply means it doesn’t appear to have been designed round a woman’s needs.

It's this.

There was a female architect on here who had to point out to her male colleague that space of sanitary bins would be needed - didn't occur to a man they would be and I seem to remember she was frustrated she has to argue her point.

There were news articles mid pandemic around PPE - it was being order in default men size despite fact many medical people these days are female and thus often smaller - it wasn't fitting correctly.

Invisible Women - is a good source for many such examples.

I love the phrase.

It's very apt.

And yes, lots of things are invented by a man, or installed by men with sometimes less thought to their final audience.

I was in a public loo last year and couldn't reach the mirror at all. Fine if you are 6'3, but utterly useless to a 5' women or a child. Could only assume it had been put up by a very tall man. Same loo same problem with the driers, the water ran down my arms because I had to reach up to use them. Loo for giants it was!

Overused but probably true, and worth pointing out how some things do not take account of women's and often family needs.

I've never seen this phrase used in any other way than something which was designed to a male specificity but passed off as universal.

I have step ladders in my laundry, kitchen and wardrobe as I can't reach anything.

Having to unscrew the antenna off the top of the car before going through a car wash. Need a bloody step ladder in the car too.

I don't understand why phones are so big but the keypads are so small. I have small hands but I always press the wrong key.

Also for anyone who wasn't aware, you can make your keypad left or right handed if you are typing with one hand on an iPhone. Hold down the smiley face button.

I remember one of those homes through the ages history programs talking about how women lives were improved with kichen triangle - made kicken labour less onerous apparently it had been really hard work before hand down to poor design - just googled it and it was started by a woman.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_work_triangle

Work on optimizing kitchen layouts was begun in the 1920s by Lillian Moller Gilbreth, an industrial psychologist and engineer, in partnership with the Brooklyn Borough Gas Company. Gilbreth's Kitchen Practical was unveiled in 1929 at a Women's Exposition based on Gilbreth's research on motion savings. Gilbreth referred to the L-shaped layout as "circular routing" which later came to be called the kitchen work triangle.

Another one related to cars.

Pedal design is by default based on men. Men can easily press the clutch, etc, while keeping their heels on the floor for stability. Most people with smaller feet, in general women, have to lift their feet off the floor to press down the clutch and brake, and sometimes the accelerator. I can keep a heel on the floor for an accelerator, but have to lift my foot for clutch and brake.

It shold be better designed.