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Only 5.3% of US welders are women. After years as a professor, I became one

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291 points Michelangelo11 | 2 comments | 06 Nov 24 00:24 UTC | HN request time: 0.439s | source
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naming_the_user ◴[06 Nov 24 01:47 UTC] No.42056718[source]▶
What comes across from the article to me is the class barrier more than the gender one - basically it's a posh person finding out what the "real world" looks like.

Shop talk and banter are fairly universal. Any difference is going to be a target. Thin bloke who doesn't look strong enough? Ginger hair? Tall guy, short guy? Weird tattoo, etc. Definitely the one black guy or the one white guy is going to get shit. But is it malicious? Almost certainly not.

The other thing, which in my experience is relatively common worldwide, is that working class communities are more accepting of male-female dynamics. In academia and in highbrow society the tendency is to basically sanitise every social interaction. When you're in an environment where that isn't happening then you can't suddenly ignore it any more.

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analog31 ◴[07 Nov 24 00:24 UTC] No.42071751[source]▶
I think, not being able to tell whether someone's being friendly or abusive, is a classic sign that it's probably abusive. Also, abuse is generational, so this may be how people were treated when they were starting out themselves.
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1. z3ncyberpunk ◴[08 Nov 24 06:28 UTC] No.42084667[source]▶
That's nice, except for those who are professionally offended at everything under the sun. Just because you think something might be abuse, doesn't mean it is. Far too many people, including Gen Z, are entrenched in their self-righteousness and lack the ability to take any form of criticism or use critical thinking.
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2. analog31 ◴[08 Nov 24 17:19 UTC] No.42088559[source]▶
To me, the cabal of "offended people" is a fiction of propaganda. I haven't met those people in any substantial number, and I live in a famously woke enclave. It's a meme, not necessarily related to reality.

Another cabal of "offended people" who may have decided the recent presidential election, are those who are offended by any frank description of the economic and social conditions of the working class. For instance, this week David Brooks of the NY Times lamented that the Democrats failed to "respect" the working class. "Abandoning the working class" is also a fiction of propaganda. The head of the Democratic party rightfully called it BS.