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.
Honestly, it often will be malicious, or will quickly become malicious if you don't take it graciously. And why should you? It's not acceptable to make fun of people for being skinny, ginger, shy, black, white, female, or any other things that the in group considers non-standard for whatever weird reasons.
Without wanting to indulge too much in macho tropes: A welding shop is inherently dangerous. If you spend long enough in one, you are going to get seriously injured at some point. You are going to be the first responder when someone else gets seriously injured. Surviving in that environment requires a certain level of toughness. I'm not defending bullying, but some places aren't supposed to be welcoming.
> Women in trades have reported encounters with customers who doubted their competence and who refused to deal with them, seeking a man instead.
There is plenty of low key sexism (and racism) like that among white collars too so it is not restricted to trades (as acknowledged by the article's author), but this goes beyond banter like just teasing someone because they have red hair.
It was interesting for me going from interacting with wealthy, educated developers, to working in a very physical, low-paying blue-collar job. It seemed like living in two different worlds almost.
> working class communities are more accepting of male-female dynamics
I went the other way (grew up working class) and I still, decades later, find middle class folk (in the UK) to be uptight and terribly afraid of causing/receiving offence.
I can't pinpoint exactly "what I mean" but basically traditional values. More willing to accept the fact that men and women are going to find each other attractive, that you probably don't want your wife or husband to have a "platonic" friend of the opposite sex that they meet up with one on one, etc etc.
Whereas the highbrow view is more like - okay but if we accept those things then women can't work on nuclear submarines alongside the blokes. We want women to be able to work on nuclear submarines alongside the blokes, anything else is unacceptable, so we should sanitise all of the interactions and punish everyone for being human and then we might be able to make it work, sort of kind of but not really, everyone will be miserable but we pretend.
I think universal conscription is a good idea for the sole reason that everyone should get a bit of this perspective. The people who’ve never left the nice-people bubble of college and professional employment will go to completely inappropriate lengths to avoid feeling offended. You said the manager’s idea was maybe not as good as the other thing in a meeting? You just made an enemy for life. Meanwhile soldiers have productive and respectful working relationships with people who they physically fight with the day before because that’s a better alternative to however UCMJ allows your commander to screw up your life.
It’s a great exercise in personal growth for coping skills.
I see. I went from interacting constantly online and being surrounded by people in post-secondary and higher-level academics to working alongside immigrants in a tough and (frankly) undignified job. This coincided with some other major changes in life and it definitely changed my view of what's "normal". I had to think about my previous life and where I actually derived happiness and value.
I got the impression that the highly educated types are wrong in a lot of ways, and the blue collar labourers are wrong in completely different ways, so I took the intersection of their worldviews and now ...well I'm probably wrong in every way ;) We can but try.
What is wrong from the view of each? (As someone who interacts both with phds and high school graduates on a daily/weekly basis I find the differences interesting).
Biggest surprise for me was the sense of community that seemed present in the lower earners.
> Biggest surprise for me was the sense of community that seemed present in the lower earners.
I was once in an environment where, depending upon how I was dressed, I would either be addressed in english and called "Sir" or addressed in spanish and called "Paisano".
Why was the community surprising? (I mean, my mental model is that most dyadic social interactions can be approached with either authority or community, so I'm not surprised that groups without much authority tend to play the community card instead)
It's hard to put into words. I think the essence of you questions is "what is your philosophy now, and how does it differ from before?" That's a question I've been struggling to conceptualize myself for a while now, so I can't describe it with any sense of coherence in a public forum.
I will say that, at the root of it all, we are who we orbit.
> find middle class folk ... to be uptight and terribly afraid of causing/receiving offence.
I think it's the betwixt and between dynamic: working class folk know they're living on what they have coming; upper class folk know they're living on what they have; but middle class folk, no matter how they live, are only middle class folk if other middle class folk agree they are — hence the insecurity, and at one reason for the conformity.
Right. In Britain at least at some point this flips and if you're proper old money you go back to not giving a shit again. Classic example is Prince Philip.
> working class communities are more accepting of male-female dynamics
I’ve also seen this. There’s more of an acknowledgment: that people will be attracted to each other (or not),the status/dating games people play will be out and open. It will be acceptable to talk about physical/sexual qualities of your coworkers, etc. That when you are in physically close proximity you might see each others sexual parts and comment on them. It will be understood that after a breakup people will be less amicable.
You can also see this in literature: look at Les Miserables. In the factory they talk about sexual fantasies of the foreman. Whereas in the context of the upper classes it’s talked about in context of love/romanticism.
Contrary to popular believe, I find this much healthier. Emotions expressed can be dealt with and moved on. Emotions suppressed grow and fester. If it’s normal to talk about who’s is attracted to who, then everyone is aware of the sexual exploits of the general manager. Therefore people know where to set boundaries. If it’s hush hush kept quiet then the exploits of the Gm can grow.
pretty much all weird gender dynamics happen in upper class and posh environments. You won't find women on a farm afraid to get their hands dirty or men afraid to stitch something. People just do the jobs that are necessary. The entire idea that women are too pristine or fragile to do any work is basically an upper class fantasy because no working class household can afford to operate like this.
Whether its the military, manufacturing or agricultural environments, anywhere that's sort of blue collar or practical people aren't obsessed with their differences that much. I grew up in a rural environment and as kids boys would play with girls, as teenagers we'd go skinny dipping, there'd be none of the weird neurotic and insecure interactions I encountered when I went to university. There's entire categories of stereotypes and boxes highly educated and "high status" people invent to separate themselves in, not just along gender lines.
> Shop talk and banter are fairly universal. Any difference is going to be a target.
Just that it's "universal" doesn't mean it has to be that way. For fucks sake we all exchange 40 hours a week (or more) to our employers, on top of overtime and commute. There's no reason at all anyone should have to put up with unprofessional abusive/discriminatory bullshit from anyone, no matter if customers ("Karens") or coworkers.
At least the young generation got the message, this time they have the numbers advantage to actually demand meaningful change, and we're seeing the first effects of it - particularly in the trades, that fail to attract new trainees despite pretty competitive wages.
(The next thing I'd love to see on the chopping block is corporate politics, it's utterly amazing that everyone knows at least one horror story where endless amounts of money were wasted, sometimes entire companies sank because two middle manager paper pushers thought their fiefdom wars to be more important than the success of the company at large... but apparently investors/shareholders seem to not care even the tiniest bit)
This is like someone telling a fish that there are people who live on land, and the fish saying "it doesn't have to be that way". Someone mentions a cultural difference between your group and another, and you say "the other group is wrong, my culture is right".
Instead, what you could do is think about how this is a completely arbitrary thing that the two cultures just do differently, and that maybe people shouldn't be offended by friendly banter that isn't meant to offend.
For a funny take on this, see the movie "Gran Torino", where two people excoriate each other viciously, until we the audience discover that they are actually two close friends.
Sadly, in our modern world people are not only looking for things to be offended about, but are looking to be offended on behalf of other people.
Yes, if only we could aspire to ideals -- no doubt better modeled in some golden past far far from modernity -- where more "close friends" excoriate each other viciously, obviously that's perfectly healthy and nobody could possibly have any reasonable basis for preferring something else.
> only looking for things to be offended about, but are looking to be offended on behalf of other people.
It's one thing if you or someone else personally enjoys some recreational conversational sadomasochism with the right partner, likely you can even persuade people to accommodate you with talk like that.
But the idea that there can't be genuine offense, only motivated offense attributed to some handwavy goal is clearly more projective pretense than anything like actual insight.
> apparently investors/shareholders seem to not care even the tiniest bit
They rarely know anything about what middle management is doing. After all, if you own any stocks, do you know anything about the middle managers in that corporation?
I think there's some truth to that, but I don't think that's the only factor in everything the article described, and it's not specific to blue collar work.
There's a lot of actual prejudices (not just banter) among, say, "educated" tech industry workers, too.
Including sexism, racism, ageism, and classism.
Most people will at least superficially hide it in modern workplaces, but it's still there, and having effects.
You've probably seen evidence of this places you've worked, and you can also see it often in pseudonymous HN comments.
It's even worse. The educated tech industry workers don't actually make any banter, so any time their prejudices slip through, it's just their actual opinions instead of banter. It's a very bizarre opposite to the supposedly 'uneducated' blue collar way of doing things, which brings levity as a first-class citizen, and communicates boundaries well.
You don't even need to be inappropriate to have workplace banter. Nobody ever said that a light environment has to be built on jokes that bust chops. In fact, busting chops kind of blows. There's plenty of room for clowning around outside of that, and plenty of ways to build camaraderie, too. You don't have to bring racism or sexism to the table to have a good time, and you don't have to have a good time at someone else's expense.
Man, I'm really sick of the robotic culture of tech. It's such a stuffy bummer. We should be making more skeleton jokes and showing each other macaroni art pictures.
> working class communities are more accepting of male-female dynamics
I agree. Gender differences seem to be exaggerated, while in upper classes women and men converge to androgyny. One contributing factor is that surviving on low incomes requires more differentiated roles (care taker vs manual laborer).
Are there actually any women in this conversation? I find many of the comments at YC to be obnoxiously male dominant and condescending, this comment section included. It's been frustrating me for quite a while now.
Would guess only 5.3% of YC readers are female. And would say, it's posh, not "real world," and it's not comfortable even though I'm a very strong woman - and a welder.
I just bought a gas lens set for my welder and it included cups called the BBW and the FUPA. When I was taking MIG classes, they had a jar of anti-spatter gel called cooter snot tip dip. Can’t imagine why women are so rare in the profession…
I’ve been a tourist in a number of different trades, and welding beats them all for hostility and resistance to safety practices. You get called a pussy for wearing a mask, but of course the manganese fumes from welding steel will give you brain damage. I’ve been advised to run cutoff wheels far above their rated RPM, which risks explosion. It’s sad because welding might as well some combination of knitting and calligraphy but with metal. It’s great.
This was my experience exactly working on a welding crew when I was 19. We worked 12s 6AM-6PM (or 6PM-6AM if on a night shift) and often worked longer. The longest shift I worked was nearly 20hr, which was great because every hour past 8hr was worth 1.5x.
"Safety" was "watch the fuck out and don't get hurt." I didn't have access to a respirator even if I had known enough to want one.
I did have enough sense to listen to the old guys who said your body can't take that kind of work for more than about 15yr without starting to break down, and that I should go to engineering school instead.
There was one (1) female welder that crew of at least 20 and she put up with a ton of overtly horrible stuff. She was also incredibly good at welding, I saw her once burn an entire 7018 rod without looking, no helmet, just by feel, and the slag came off in one piece.
I'm suggesting that the "inuendos from both" is the wrong analysis and that the workplace issue would be the sexualization of the product name being used as a tool to harass women (there would probably also be comments made to men, but harassment would predominantly be towards women).
Context matters. In a 95% male profession, making hostile comments about women is absolutely more of an issue than similar comments about men. And vice versa in a predominantly female profession.
> I just bought a gas lens set for my welder and it included cups called the BBW and the FUPA. When I was taking MIG classes, they had a jar of anti-spatter gel called cooter snot tip dip. Can’t imagine why women are so rare in the profession…
Makes sense. I suppose if women had invented these things, they would have been able to name them something nicer.
> I’m resentful of these silent evaluations, particularly when I’m learning something new and trying to keep all my fingers.
I don't think this is unique to Women at all. There's a tendency in these authors to perceive Men's interactions in the workplace as "easy" or "natural" or even desired for some reason. They typically aren't.
> Stoicism is a workaround to credibility.
It also comes with a high price. Those who pay it typically do not last. Ironically they often refuse to recognize the source of their suffering. If the job is hard, modify the tools to make it easier, your class of use just hasn't been typically considered but it wouldn't be impossible to create.
> The pontificating metal-shop customer should be, too.
It's everywhere. The number of times my credibility has been assumed based upon my appearance is huge. Customers often have to choose between two Men if a Women isn't working, and the same tropes apply there as well.
It all seems like the right idea for the wrong reasons and so the interpretation is heavily compromised by it.
Yeah, my overall reaction was kinda "Welcome to being a dude. You get shit on mercilessly until you prove otherwise. You get told to shut the fuck up and knock it out even if you're tired after 4 hours. You have to look out for yourself because nobody else is going to. God help you if you're a tiny or effeminate guy. etc."
Blue collar work sucks ass. You generally only do it because you don't have any better options.
I once met a welder who was told upon entering the field, “You’re going to meet a lot of serial killers in this line of work.” He thought his boss was just messing with him, but it turned out to be prophetic. He met something like 5 convicted serial killers in 20 years as a welder. Welding is solitary work that is itinerant. Some of the stories that guy told me would turn your stomach. Anyway— totally off topic, but I thought it was interesting.
I don't know about serial killers, normally they are in prison if known. But felons, yes definitely. A criminal record is not disqualifying in most trades and unions.
If you want to look at hidden GDP women and access to power tools is probably a big one.
Lighter batteries and brushless and mass production allowing for a quick jump in and companies like Ryobi's making tools look good (but not cliched pink) and how-to's on TikTok have changed the landscape.
We have gone from upkeep at home to asset building.
Some of this will go to careers, but it's not that simple.
HN isn't mature enough to discuss this but men die in dirty jobs, no one really cares. For every one who dies many are hurt and for the many injuries there are many many near misses.
A near miss is often about reaction times and strength. These 1% issues are the problem. You are 3 hours from anywhere and stuck in mud by yourself and the tool kit is missing. So you can get the 5.3% up, but it can't be 50%
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.
> But is it malicious? Almost certainly not.
Honestly, it often will be malicious, or will quickly become malicious if you don't take it graciously. And why should you? It's not acceptable to make fun of people for being skinny, ginger, shy, black, white, female, or any other things that the in group considers non-standard for whatever weird reasons.
Without wanting to indulge too much in macho tropes: A welding shop is inherently dangerous. If you spend long enough in one, you are going to get seriously injured at some point. You are going to be the first responder when someone else gets seriously injured. Surviving in that environment requires a certain level of toughness. I'm not defending bullying, but some places aren't supposed to be welcoming.
[delayed]
If you have this attitude, you aren't cut out to work in the trades
Well there is this though:
> Women in trades have reported encounters with customers who doubted their competence and who refused to deal with them, seeking a man instead.
There is plenty of low key sexism (and racism) like that among white collars too so it is not restricted to trades (as acknowledged by the article's author), but this goes beyond banter like just teasing someone because they have red hair.
It was interesting for me going from interacting with wealthy, educated developers, to working in a very physical, low-paying blue-collar job. It seemed like living in two different worlds almost.
> working class communities are more accepting of male-female dynamics
I'm curious to what you mean by this
I went the other way (grew up working class) and I still, decades later, find middle class folk (in the UK) to be uptight and terribly afraid of causing/receiving offence.
I can't pinpoint exactly "what I mean" but basically traditional values. More willing to accept the fact that men and women are going to find each other attractive, that you probably don't want your wife or husband to have a "platonic" friend of the opposite sex that they meet up with one on one, etc etc.
Whereas the highbrow view is more like - okay but if we accept those things then women can't work on nuclear submarines alongside the blokes. We want women to be able to work on nuclear submarines alongside the blokes, anything else is unacceptable, so we should sanitise all of the interactions and punish everyone for being human and then we might be able to make it work, sort of kind of but not really, everyone will be miserable but we pretend.
I think universal conscription is a good idea for the sole reason that everyone should get a bit of this perspective. The people who’ve never left the nice-people bubble of college and professional employment will go to completely inappropriate lengths to avoid feeling offended. You said the manager’s idea was maybe not as good as the other thing in a meeting? You just made an enemy for life. Meanwhile soldiers have productive and respectful working relationships with people who they physically fight with the day before because that’s a better alternative to however UCMJ allows your commander to screw up your life.
It’s a great exercise in personal growth for coping skills.
> universal conscription
No thanks, Ill take anything that isn’t involuntary labor
I see. I went from interacting constantly online and being surrounded by people in post-secondary and higher-level academics to working alongside immigrants in a tough and (frankly) undignified job. This coincided with some other major changes in life and it definitely changed my view of what's "normal". I had to think about my previous life and where I actually derived happiness and value.
I got the impression that the highly educated types are wrong in a lot of ways, and the blue collar labourers are wrong in completely different ways, so I took the intersection of their worldviews and now ...well I'm probably wrong in every way ;) We can but try.
> I got the impression that the highly educated types are wrong in a lot of ways, and the blue collar labourers are wrong in completely different ways
Couldn't agree more!
Where do you derive your happiness now?
What is wrong from the view of each? (As someone who interacts both with phds and high school graduates on a daily/weekly basis I find the differences interesting).
Biggest surprise for me was the sense of community that seemed present in the lower earners.
> Biggest surprise for me was the sense of community that seemed present in the lower earners.
I was once in an environment where, depending upon how I was dressed, I would either be addressed in english and called "Sir" or addressed in spanish and called "Paisano".
Why was the community surprising? (I mean, my mental model is that most dyadic social interactions can be approached with either authority or community, so I'm not surprised that groups without much authority tend to play the community card instead)
It's hard to put into words. I think the essence of you questions is "what is your philosophy now, and how does it differ from before?" That's a question I've been struggling to conceptualize myself for a while now, so I can't describe it with any sense of coherence in a public forum.
I will say that, at the root of it all, we are who we orbit.
> find middle class folk ... to be uptight and terribly afraid of causing/receiving offence.
I think it's the betwixt and between dynamic: working class folk know they're living on what they have coming; upper class folk know they're living on what they have; but middle class folk, no matter how they live, are only middle class folk if other middle class folk agree they are — hence the insecurity, and at one reason for the conformity.
(in the UK, I think U vs non-U started as a joke, yet was popularised by exactly the people it had been meant to be taking the piss from? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English )
Well it's not UK specicfic but as there's only really workers and owners, they could be insecure about being a slightly better paid worker?
> find middle class folk (in the UK) to be uptight and terribly afraid of causing/receiving offence
This isn't just a UK thing. Seems fairly universal at least across the western world.
Right. In Britain at least at some point this flips and if you're proper old money you go back to not giving a shit again. Classic example is Prince Philip.
Middle class is always more insecure. A middle-class individual could move either up or down, this causes anxiety.
> working class communities are more accepting of male-female dynamics
I’ve also seen this. There’s more of an acknowledgment: that people will be attracted to each other (or not),the status/dating games people play will be out and open. It will be acceptable to talk about physical/sexual qualities of your coworkers, etc. That when you are in physically close proximity you might see each others sexual parts and comment on them. It will be understood that after a breakup people will be less amicable.
You can also see this in literature: look at Les Miserables. In the factory they talk about sexual fantasies of the foreman. Whereas in the context of the upper classes it’s talked about in context of love/romanticism.
Contrary to popular believe, I find this much healthier. Emotions expressed can be dealt with and moved on. Emotions suppressed grow and fester. If it’s normal to talk about who’s is attracted to who, then everyone is aware of the sexual exploits of the general manager. Therefore people know where to set boundaries. If it’s hush hush kept quiet then the exploits of the Gm can grow.
>I'm curious to what you mean by this
pretty much all weird gender dynamics happen in upper class and posh environments. You won't find women on a farm afraid to get their hands dirty or men afraid to stitch something. People just do the jobs that are necessary. The entire idea that women are too pristine or fragile to do any work is basically an upper class fantasy because no working class household can afford to operate like this.
Whether its the military, manufacturing or agricultural environments, anywhere that's sort of blue collar or practical people aren't obsessed with their differences that much. I grew up in a rural environment and as kids boys would play with girls, as teenagers we'd go skinny dipping, there'd be none of the weird neurotic and insecure interactions I encountered when I went to university. There's entire categories of stereotypes and boxes highly educated and "high status" people invent to separate themselves in, not just along gender lines.
> Shop talk and banter are fairly universal. Any difference is going to be a target.
Just that it's "universal" doesn't mean it has to be that way. For fucks sake we all exchange 40 hours a week (or more) to our employers, on top of overtime and commute. There's no reason at all anyone should have to put up with unprofessional abusive/discriminatory bullshit from anyone, no matter if customers ("Karens") or coworkers.
At least the young generation got the message, this time they have the numbers advantage to actually demand meaningful change, and we're seeing the first effects of it - particularly in the trades, that fail to attract new trainees despite pretty competitive wages.
(The next thing I'd love to see on the chopping block is corporate politics, it's utterly amazing that everyone knows at least one horror story where endless amounts of money were wasted, sometimes entire companies sank because two middle manager paper pushers thought their fiefdom wars to be more important than the success of the company at large... but apparently investors/shareholders seem to not care even the tiniest bit)
This is like someone telling a fish that there are people who live on land, and the fish saying "it doesn't have to be that way". Someone mentions a cultural difference between your group and another, and you say "the other group is wrong, my culture is right".
Instead, what you could do is think about how this is a completely arbitrary thing that the two cultures just do differently, and that maybe people shouldn't be offended by friendly banter that isn't meant to offend.
For a funny take on this, see the movie "Gran Torino", where two people excoriate each other viciously, until we the audience discover that they are actually two close friends.
Sadly, in our modern world people are not only looking for things to be offended about, but are looking to be offended on behalf of other people.
Yes, if only we could aspire to ideals -- no doubt better modeled in some golden past far far from modernity -- where more "close friends" excoriate each other viciously, obviously that's perfectly healthy and nobody could possibly have any reasonable basis for preferring something else.
> only looking for things to be offended about, but are looking to be offended on behalf of other people.
It's one thing if you or someone else personally enjoys some recreational conversational sadomasochism with the right partner, likely you can even persuade people to accommodate you with talk like that.
But the idea that there can't be genuine offense, only motivated offense attributed to some handwavy goal is clearly more projective pretense than anything like actual insight.
> apparently investors/shareholders seem to not care even the tiniest bit
They rarely know anything about what middle management is doing. After all, if you own any stocks, do you know anything about the middle managers in that corporation?
Wishful thinking is not a strategy
I think there's some truth to that, but I don't think that's the only factor in everything the article described, and it's not specific to blue collar work.
There's a lot of actual prejudices (not just banter) among, say, "educated" tech industry workers, too.
Including sexism, racism, ageism, and classism.
Most people will at least superficially hide it in modern workplaces, but it's still there, and having effects.
You've probably seen evidence of this places you've worked, and you can also see it often in pseudonymous HN comments.
It's even worse. The educated tech industry workers don't actually make any banter, so any time their prejudices slip through, it's just their actual opinions instead of banter. It's a very bizarre opposite to the supposedly 'uneducated' blue collar way of doing things, which brings levity as a first-class citizen, and communicates boundaries well.
You don't even need to be inappropriate to have workplace banter. Nobody ever said that a light environment has to be built on jokes that bust chops. In fact, busting chops kind of blows. There's plenty of room for clowning around outside of that, and plenty of ways to build camaraderie, too. You don't have to bring racism or sexism to the table to have a good time, and you don't have to have a good time at someone else's expense.
Man, I'm really sick of the robotic culture of tech. It's such a stuffy bummer. We should be making more skeleton jokes and showing each other macaroni art pictures.
> working class communities are more accepting of male-female dynamics
I agree. Gender differences seem to be exaggerated, while in upper classes women and men converge to androgyny. One contributing factor is that surviving on low incomes requires more differentiated roles (care taker vs manual laborer).
Are there actually any women in this conversation? I find many of the comments at YC to be obnoxiously male dominant and condescending, this comment section included. It's been frustrating me for quite a while now.
Would guess only 5.3% of YC readers are female. And would say, it's posh, not "real world," and it's not comfortable even though I'm a very strong woman - and a welder.
Lol no there aren’t.
I just bought a gas lens set for my welder and it included cups called the BBW and the FUPA. When I was taking MIG classes, they had a jar of anti-spatter gel called cooter snot tip dip. Can’t imagine why women are so rare in the profession…
I’ve been a tourist in a number of different trades, and welding beats them all for hostility and resistance to safety practices. You get called a pussy for wearing a mask, but of course the manganese fumes from welding steel will give you brain damage. I’ve been advised to run cutoff wheels far above their rated RPM, which risks explosion. It’s sad because welding might as well some combination of knitting and calligraphy but with metal. It’s great.
This was my experience exactly working on a welding crew when I was 19. We worked 12s 6AM-6PM (or 6PM-6AM if on a night shift) and often worked longer. The longest shift I worked was nearly 20hr, which was great because every hour past 8hr was worth 1.5x.
"Safety" was "watch the fuck out and don't get hurt." I didn't have access to a respirator even if I had known enough to want one.
I did have enough sense to listen to the old guys who said your body can't take that kind of work for more than about 15yr without starting to break down, and that I should go to engineering school instead.
There was one (1) female welder that crew of at least 20 and she put up with a ton of overtly horrible stuff. She was also incredibly good at welding, I saw her once burn an entire 7018 rod without looking, no helmet, just by feel, and the slag came off in one piece.
Cooter is a Black dialectal term for a turtle originating from the Mandinka language, and you can see a turtle on the logo of that product.
https://crittergoo.com/collections/goo
Hahaha, wow. The other products on that page do a wonderful job of disagreeing with parent’s explanation.
There's a "one eyed snake" product too, why are we not complaining about how men will be driven from the profession with such sexist talk?
Sexualizing the product name at all is more hostile to women than the reference is hostile to men.
Are you suggesting women are less able to take hostilities than men ? Since now we have inuendos from both.
I'm suggesting that the "inuendos from both" is the wrong analysis and that the workplace issue would be the sexualization of the product name being used as a tool to harass women (there would probably also be comments made to men, but harassment would predominantly be towards women).
Context matters. In a 95% male profession, making hostile comments about women is absolutely more of an issue than similar comments about men. And vice versa in a predominantly female profession.
What is the Mandinka people’s relation the Camel Toe and One-Eyed Snake products advertised on the website?
I’m glad someone is here to argue on behalf of the cooter snot company.
that's called "plausible deniability"
Deniability for accurate and true reasons is just a subset of plausible deniability
Are turtles also known for their snot, in which tips are frequently dipped?
No, but the substance looks like blue snot and you dip the hot tip in it.
Then there's One-Eyed Snake something penetrating oil spray from the same company.
The idea that sexual innuendos somehow differently affect men and women is rather strange.
> I just bought a gas lens set for my welder and it included cups called the BBW and the FUPA. When I was taking MIG classes, they had a jar of anti-spatter gel called cooter snot tip dip. Can’t imagine why women are so rare in the profession…
Makes sense. I suppose if women had invented these things, they would have been able to name them something nicer.
Men from a profession that doesn't have these issues would probably name them something nicer too.
> I’m resentful of these silent evaluations, particularly when I’m learning something new and trying to keep all my fingers.
I don't think this is unique to Women at all. There's a tendency in these authors to perceive Men's interactions in the workplace as "easy" or "natural" or even desired for some reason. They typically aren't.
> Stoicism is a workaround to credibility.
It also comes with a high price. Those who pay it typically do not last. Ironically they often refuse to recognize the source of their suffering. If the job is hard, modify the tools to make it easier, your class of use just hasn't been typically considered but it wouldn't be impossible to create.
> The pontificating metal-shop customer should be, too.
It's everywhere. The number of times my credibility has been assumed based upon my appearance is huge. Customers often have to choose between two Men if a Women isn't working, and the same tropes apply there as well.
It all seems like the right idea for the wrong reasons and so the interpretation is heavily compromised by it.
Yeah, my overall reaction was kinda "Welcome to being a dude. You get shit on mercilessly until you prove otherwise. You get told to shut the fuck up and knock it out even if you're tired after 4 hours. You have to look out for yourself because nobody else is going to. God help you if you're a tiny or effeminate guy. etc."
Blue collar work sucks ass. You generally only do it because you don't have any better options.
I once met a welder who was told upon entering the field, “You’re going to meet a lot of serial killers in this line of work.” He thought his boss was just messing with him, but it turned out to be prophetic. He met something like 5 convicted serial killers in 20 years as a welder. Welding is solitary work that is itinerant. Some of the stories that guy told me would turn your stomach. Anyway— totally off topic, but I thought it was interesting.
I don't know about serial killers, normally they are in prison if known. But felons, yes definitely. A criminal record is not disqualifying in most trades and unions.
If you want to look at hidden GDP women and access to power tools is probably a big one.
Lighter batteries and brushless and mass production allowing for a quick jump in and companies like Ryobi's making tools look good (but not cliched pink) and how-to's on TikTok have changed the landscape.
We have gone from upkeep at home to asset building.
Some of this will go to careers, but it's not that simple.
HN isn't mature enough to discuss this but men die in dirty jobs, no one really cares. For every one who dies many are hurt and for the many injuries there are many many near misses.
A near miss is often about reaction times and strength. These 1% issues are the problem. You are 3 hours from anywhere and stuck in mud by yourself and the tool kit is missing. So you can get the 5.3% up, but it can't be 50%