To think it’s a lot of mental effort to keep up with gender these days?

[Oodiks]

My 18 yo daughter recently started work at a pizza place and she’s been telling me how much more she likes this place than the last pizza place she worked at.

She didn’t want to bring food home from the first place, partly because she didn’t trust the industrial pizza dough that came on pallets, but mostly because it was all teenage boys working there and they didn’t wear gloves to prepare the food. The new place is better because they do wear gloves to prepare the food and it’s not all teenage boys.

I was a little confused, because all the names she’s mentioned, pretty much, are boy’s names, Milo is the only one I remember, but it’s all been boy’s names except for one person with a girl’s name, who she calls her work best friend. I comment and she’s, like, OMG, don’t make assumptions, it’s a very gender diverse place. But she does agree that females tend to be more hygiene aware, and we leave it like that.

But it leaves me uncomfortable. She clearly knows that these ‘boys’ are in fact girls, but can’t bring herself to say it, although she acknowledges by saying that these ‘boys’ are clean whereas she didn’t trust the ‘other boys’ to wash their hands.

What kind of mental gymnastics does that take?

It was only n response to your post which I quoted just above the story.
The more you post the less clear it is what sort of an answer you ate expecting and what kind of a point you are trying to make.
Your initial question was about mental gymnastics. You are now talking about something completely different. I am trying to understand what is the purpose of this and coming up empty.

No, there are 2 sexes. Gender is societally dependent so there could be more in some societies.

So, you think my daughter is odd to notice that in her experience females tend to be more hygienic, because you've known quite a lot of clean boys.

Interesting.

Sorry if it’s already been asked, but has your daughter been invited to a sleepover at one of her colleagues’ homes, or did I miss that bit?

No, I think it’s odd you think being born with a vagina instead of a penis makes you automatically cleaner. Seems like stereotype to me.

This is your second night of keeping this thread alive. What is driving you to keep making your point?

You understand that some stereotypes exist because they are true, right?

"Stricter hygiene norms among women than among men are observed almost everywhere, but there are a few exceptions (most notably Nigeria and Saudi Arabia). The size of the sex difference in hygiene norms varies strongly with the level of sex equality, but in a non-linear way. The sex difference is most pronounced in moderately egalitarian countries with the highest recorded difference being in Chile. In more egalitarian parts of the world, more sex equality is associated with a smaller sex difference in hygiene norms. In the less egalitarian parts of the world, the opposite relation holds."

Global sex differences in hygiene norms and their relation to sex equality - PMC (nih.gov)

Sounds like it’s not sex based but societally based then.

I asked an AIBU and the answer is that about 70% of respondents think IANBU.

The rest is commentary.

Except the extract clearly states, "Stricter hygiene norms among women than among men are observed almost everywhere" and goes on to state that, basically, the more equal the society, the less difference between the sexes.

Exactly. When a society is equal it’s usually because it’s stopped believing silly stereotypes that women are better at housework.

The study shows that across all cultures, women have higher hygiene standards.

You understand that there are differences between males and females, the world is largely geared towards males, and we can't understand the differences if we can't name the sexes.

Go ahead and pretend that there are no sex differences and it's all culturally defined, but the fact is that women die from preventable diseases because medicine has traditionally only considered the male symptoms and not the difference in the way diseases can manifest in the different sexes.

It is proven that kitchens with no gl9ves have higher hygine level as peo0le was hands more often.
When they wear gloves there is no chqnce glives will vw replqced between washing, toychung bin, touchung meat, touchung money or hair etc.

Medicine isn’t the same as hand washing. Your own evidence showed the difference in cleanliness decreases the more equal a society becomes.
Physical stuff is sex related. The rest is a social construct. It’s fairly straightforward.

@Oodiks sorry, I'm late to reply.
I like the way you said they weren't called my examples, but one of them was, lol.
Honestly I wouldn't worry about it. Where I worked a lot of time people's names were foreign so you'd never know what sex they were by name alone.
As long as she likes her new job, and maybe makes friends with some of her colleagues that's all that matters? 😄

UPDATE for anyone who's interested.

My daughter now tells me that a straight male has joined the company. It was previously all females, many of whom use male or non-binary pronouns, and no-one knows how to talk to him!

Daughter doesn't think he'll last long at their 'diverse' workplace.

Why don’t they know how to talk to him?

These young women sound quite troubled to me.

It doesn’t diverse to me at all.

Also, these young women presumably aren’t using male pronouns for themselves - they are presumably using “I” and “me” to describe themselves. It is others that they are wanting to refer to them as him. Sounds a bit self centred to me.

How can they not know how to talk to him?

Aren't they able to make conversation with colleagues?