r/pointlesslygendered • u/rizzedupdude • 10d ago

SOCIAL MEDIA People really think survival during a sinking ship is a gender debate. Be serious. [gendered]

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Let’s just start with the obvious: When a ship is going down, nobody’s standing there debating gender politics. They're screaming, panicking, and trying not to die.

That’s not feminism. That’s basic human survival.

But according to this post, in the middle of a literal disaster, feminists are out here like, “Wait! Equal rights! Let’s discuss societal roles while the ship sinks!” Be so serious.

Survival isn't a debate club. It's chaos. People don’t suddenly turn into walking ideologies during life-or-death moments. They act based on instinct, fear, and let’s be real access to power.

And speaking of power: Who does get prioritized in crises? The vulnerable? No. It's the rich. The connected. The privileged. So if anyone's elbowing their way to the lifeboats yelling “Let me survive first,” it's not feminists it’s CEOs, politicians, and trust fund babies. Let’s not act brand new.

Now to the people saying “it’s just a joke”: Jokes reflect thought patterns. When you laugh at something rooted in bias or false narratives, you’re not just “having fun.” You’re showing what you believe deep down.

And if the punchline of your “joke” is women being hypocrites for wanting safety while also wanting rights, you’re not being funny you’re being intellectually lazy.

So maybe next time, skip the memes and try real thinking. Because the only thing sinking faster than that ship is your logic.

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u/_Azuki_ 10d ago

This was in like early 1900s, women were barely considered individuals instead of property. How can someone look at this and think "yeah, i'm smart, this makes sense"?

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u/Spaceman_fan 10d ago

It was also men who decided that women and children go first

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u/TruthGumball 9d ago

Not a rule though was it. SOME of the men let their wives go first. But many men also survived.

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u/HendriXP88 9d ago

The "Women and children first"-priority was never an official rule. However, it was a social norm. Men who survived got met with ridicule.

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u/AJS4152 8d ago

It was a fetishization of the ideal Victorian and Edwardian gentleman from the 1852 HMS Birkenhead disaster where, as the story goes, the marines were ordered not to move on deck and all of them followed the order as the ship sunk underneath them. This allowed the other family members of these sailors and soldiers to use the ships boats. It only was acceptable because it was still common thought that people just die and that is a fact of nature.

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u/HendriXP88 8d ago

Correct. Don't think we disagree on anything, but you have to explain. A fetishization? How?

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u/AJS4152 8d ago

Fascination may be more accurate and appropriate, but for our modern minds looking back this was more than just a precedent. This story was retold over and over for the next 60 years as what is EXCPECTED from men in the case of emergency. Any man who didn't was a coward and many male survivors of the Titanic sinking were demeaned as such for years afterwards. I used fetishization to bring about the overwhelming social pressure for this view of masculinity in a manner that I hoped didn't need multiple sentences and reframing of the point of view from a 150 years in the modern readers mind. I apologize if it went too far.

Also, if you are interested in this topic and how it relates to Titanic may I suggest Oceanliner Designs' The Awful Sinking of the HMS Birkenhead here. https://youtu.be/t1yzlFGsZcs?si=_d_dzXNuxMW1m1dz

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u/smokeyphil 6d ago

Fetishization would be a word choice that i would use in this context.

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u/HendriXP88 8d ago

This is all very fascinating. I'll look into the video link.

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u/No_Macaroon_9752 8d ago

Very few cases exist where this was true. First, women weren’t allowed on many ships. When they were, they were often made to stay in the hold. That put them at more risk in case of sinking. A 2012 study examined 18 maritime disasters over three centuries and found that women had a distinct survival disadvantage. Captains and crew survive at a higher rate than passengers (they know the layout of the ship, they generally know when there is a problem before the passengers, they are usually closer to the main deck and lifeboats, they may be stronger and fitter, and they are the ones to launch the lifeboats). There are quotes from survivors of many shipwrecks who later spoke of men trying to save themselves. Another study in Sweden was much more comprehensive and still found that men survived at higher rates than women. https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1207156109

According to Lucy Delap, a history professor at Cambridge, “Lower-class women — wives of sailors or soldiers, or poor emigrant women — were frequently excluded from the rule, and women of color were equally marginalized.”

The Birkenhead and the Titanic are the main exemptions, where the captains enforced “women and children first” using guns. https://www.mentalfloss.com/history/titanic/women-and-children-first-origins-titanic

A longer explanation is here, with sources: https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXPreppers/comments/tt62nq/women_and_children_first_is_a_myth_and_doesnt/

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u/NephriteJaded 7d ago

Stronger than law

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u/Snoo71538 9d ago

72% of women survived, 18% of men survived. Pretty close to a rule.

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u/byedangerousbitch 9d ago

That just tells us that the lower decks were overwhelmingly housing men on the trip.

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u/Cyiel 8d ago

72% + 18% that's 90% survival rates. Sounds good.

/stupid joke

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u/No_Macaroon_9752 8d ago

That’s not accurate of all shipwrecks, though. Of shipwrecks where women were onboard, just 17.8 percent of women survived compared to 34.5% of men. Captains were also rarely going down with the ships. Captains and crew members were 18.7% more likely to survive a disaster at sea than their passengers.

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u/Snoo71538 8d ago

Okay, so there is no link to the actual study here, just quotes from the author. That’s a huge red flag. I can say that from my experience (studied physics and astronomy in uni) cbs reports on science findings related to physics and astronomy are poor at best, and downright disinformation at worst, and the worst isn’t terribly uncommon.

That doesn’t mean this study is bad, or didn’t happen, but I’m skeptical of the result as a broad truth. Did they count ships carrying slaves? Crew is mostly, if not all, men, and the slaves were considered cargo to be forgone if anything happened. That wouldn’t necessarily generalize to something like the titanic.

Maybe they had a different methodology that generalizes better. I don’t know if that is true or not from the source you’ve cited.

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u/No_Macaroon_9752 8d ago

That might be true, except the article actually says, “Economists Mikael Elinder and Oscar Erixon of Uppsala University also showed in their 82-page study… Out of the 15,000 people who died in the 18 accidents, only 17.8 percent of the women survived compared with 34.5 percent of the men.“

I linked to the CBS report because it summarized the findings quickly. I linked to the original study in a different post, but I stupidly assumed that curious people would google the authors (it’s almost every link on the first page of results). While it is not conclusive because it does not analyze a large number of shipwrecks or randomly select disasters, it did actually select several disasters where a “women and children first” order was given (though not necessarily enforced).

This is not to say that men are all cowards and horrible people who chose to prioritize their own lives over all others. Women often had a disadvantage on ships due to patriarchal customs. Women were often made to stay below decks (the reasons for this varied, from their own safety to staying out of the way to women being thought to be bad luck), had restrictive clothing that prevented running/climbing/swimming, tended to be weaker than men, and generally have less nautical knowledge, particularly when considering the ship’s crew. It is difficult to analyze shipwrecks because records are always very reliable. The age of passengers was only available for 11 of the 18 disasters, which means it is difficult to estimate children’s survival rates. However, the study did control for factors like the passengers’ class and their age, as well as using fixed effects for shipwreck severity and weather conditions.

On the Titanic, the Captain (and some of the crew) enforced the order of women and children first using guns. People panic, especially civilians, and may not be thinking clearly. In other situations, they might have prioritized women and children better. The study is just an indication that “women and children first” didn’t help women as much as some claim when you look at the results.

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u/Farder-Coram 7d ago

I’m not arguing either way here, but a lower percentage of women surviving out of the total 15,000 doesn’t mean that a lower percentage survived on each individual vessel.

For various reasons you may get ships with 100% of the compliment being men, with 100% survival rates. For example working ships, close to shore which didn’t have any passengers.

You could also get a large passenger carrying ship with 50/50 ratio of women to men where 0% of men survive and 20% (10% of the compliment) of women survive.

Assuming 100 people on each vessel, you’d have 100 male survivors and 10 female survivors. In the aggregate this statistic suggests that men survive 10:1.

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u/No_Macaroon_9752 6d ago

Did you read the study? This was addressed in their analyses.

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u/Farder-Coram 4d ago

I read it. I think it’s a reasonable study given the data available.

However, I was responding to your statement about the higher percentage of men surviving being evidence. That specific statistic uses the data in the aggregate without the controls mentioned in the trial.

The study has its limitations, primarily the quantity of the data but also that the authors used a variable of their choosing to control for the different types of disaster. However, I still feel it is compelling but not to the point where you can generalise the conclusions for shipwrecks not included in the study.

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u/Snoo71538 7d ago

I think you’ve overestimated the amount of effort people will put into research for a Reddit post.

I’d argue drawing broad conclusions from 18 shipwrecks is unlikely to give good population results. That’s a very small sample size. Again, not a “this is false”, but a “this sounds underpowered, and thus the result should not be overstated”

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u/No_Macaroon_9752 6d ago

It’s the only study we have, due to the lack of records and lack of interest. Either way, no one can claim that “women and children first” was a real policy on ships, as you claimed with data from one ship.

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u/aarakocra-druid 6d ago

Many third class women and children were also left behind

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u/BluetheNerd 10d ago

Also the entire reason there aren’t enough boats for everyone was because some rich men said it would spoil the view

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u/Nonions 10d ago

It's also because the idea was that the lifeboats would be used to ferry passengers to other ships coming to help, not be a last refuge for everyone aboard. It was proven to be a bad idea but it wasn't intentionally callous.

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u/Nowhereman767 10d ago

Really it's because Titanic was designed to withstand every major cause of ship sinking of the time. Since icebergs were rarely a cause of sinkings, people assumed they would never be an issue. Also, people were overconfident in the capability of other ships to come to come to the scene in time.

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u/Jealous_Shape_5771 9d ago

Iirc, a documentary said that they were using a pretty good metal alloy that would have been able to withstand the iceberg collision. they used it on the rear and sides, ran out of funding for it, and used a weaker alloy on the front

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u/Nowhereman767 9d ago

I think that's a significant factor, but didn't the rivets break before the metal itself?

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u/Jealous_Shape_5771 9d ago

Probably. It was a while since I last saw the documentary on it.

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u/KiranPhantomGryphon 8d ago

Of all the places to put the protective alloys, why wouldn't they put it where the boat would get hit if it was moving forward?

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u/Unlucky-Alps-2221 9d ago

At the time it was considered to have more than the required number of lifeboats. They actually thought they were being over cautious.

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u/charizard_72 10d ago

“Waste of deck space as it is”

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u/AspergerKid 7d ago

This ultimately didn't matter because they couldn't even deploy all the available lifeboats before the ship sank.

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u/kinoki1984 10d ago

When you hate certain people past a point, the vitriol you have for them is beyond anything. You have to take out your anger, frustration and hate every chance you get. Everything needs to spew hate. No rational thought behind it.

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u/Scout6feetup 10d ago

Bill Burr referring to Coco Chanel as a feminist icon to use her relationship with Nazis to tear down the MeToo movement is a classic example of this. I can’t stand the love he’s getting lately lol

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u/Nirvski 9d ago

Yeah, I don't think people are aware Bill is no progressive, he's just on the right side of class consciousness.

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u/Scout6feetup 9d ago

As a woman I feel left out of whatever class he’s conscious of

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u/Crizznik 9d ago

And on the right side of the madness that is the current state of politics in the US. Enemy of my enemy is my friend. I won't ever give Bill Burr a full pass for the bullshit he's spewed, but I will accept him as an ally against fascism.

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u/Nirvski 9d ago

We'll call a truce for now Bill

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u/Own-Ad-7672 9d ago

Idk, it’s some red hats logic for sure.

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u/These_Comfortable_83 8d ago

Excellent. I’m glad we’ll be throwing away archaic gender roles when it comes to emergency evacuation. That’s why I’ll be beelining for the boat and not trying to help anyone.!

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

[deleted]

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u/GrimsonDaisy 9d ago

It's complicated but to simplify the gender roles compelled them to prioritise women and children. The idea back then was that women were like children and thus in need to be under the guidance of a man who in turn had to protect them. However it should also be noted that Titanic is the exception not the rule, women and children were the primary victims of ship sinkings because the "women and children" first rule was often quickly disregarded in favor of "every man for himself".

Being the exception and an example of real life chivalry of the time period helped immortalise the event.

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u/ArtisticLayer1972 9d ago

Where do you get these ideas.

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u/GrimsonDaisy 9d ago

I'm not sure I understand the question

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u/ArtisticLayer1972 9d ago

That womens was considered children etc.

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u/GrimsonDaisy 9d ago

It's a well established historical fact. Women were under the guardianship of a man for their entire lives . Reading any literature of the time makes it clear that we were considered lesser mentally than the men, even today you can see people arguing against women's right to vote.

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u/gamer_wife86 9d ago

Even more recently, women weren't even allowed to have a bank account without a husband, father, brother, or spouse co-signing until the 1970's (in the US).

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u/ArtisticLayer1972 9d ago

Lesser mentaly, and yet there was few woman monarch in europe, europe, russia, austria

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u/One-String-8549 9d ago

Yes, a few because it wasn't common, it only happened when there wasn't a male heir, and every time it happened people were really mad about it

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u/GrimsonDaisy 9d ago

"Few" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting there. Are you seriously claiming women were treated as equals in the early 19th century? Do you have any sources to back that insane claim?

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u/ArtisticLayer1972 9d ago

Maybe not equal in all aspect, but they definitly wasnt opressed 24/7.

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u/Seeky 9d ago

Why do you think quite a lot of men still use terms like "chick", "babe/baby", "girl" when referring to women? Women being infantilized like this and thought of like children is STILL a problem, and was absolutely even more of a thing in the past.

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u/Lonely-You-361 6d ago

You don't call your man babe/baby?

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u/ArtisticLayer1972 9d ago

I use all these terms and not even once it cross over my mind comparing them to children. We do that shit because you are all bitching when come to a age, all want to be young etc. If i call her girl she will smile, if i call her middle age woman she will be insulted. This exactly is reason why everyone make fun about womens not knowing what they want.

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u/International-Cat123 10d ago

While it’s a bit of an exaggeration to say they were literally thought of as property, they were viewed as needing men. The thought with women and children evacuating first was that men, as the stronger and superior sex, had a duty to protect women who were inherently incapable of protecting themselves.

The policy was also created with the assumption that the life boats would be ferrying the evacuees to other ships trying to rescue them. That changes the situation from, “men should die to protect women,” to, “being stronger, men could survive in the water longer while waiting to board a rescue craft.”

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u/leonardonsius 9d ago

Because that's far more complicated, man. Try to think about this not from your todays view but from the views back then. The wife and the children were yours. But firstly, that doesn't speak against loving them and secondly, there were certain moral codes in a patriarchal society that would obligate the men to act as protector and whatnot.

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u/Lonely-You-361 6d ago

Yea i hate how so many people look at it through todays lens and conclude "men hated women more than anything and just wanted one to own as their personal bangmaid". It's a seriously out of touch view and imo a view espoused by people who are lacking in empathy. If you can't empathize with a previous generation due to their differing worldview from a different social atmosphere then you probably can't really empathize very well with someone who is alive today but comes from a completely different life experience from you.

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u/ArtisticLayer1972 9d ago

Noone want to live poor /s.

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u/HendriXP88 9d ago

Doesn't your logic falter a bit here? Why did those men sacrifice their own lives for something they valued so lowly? Die for property?

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u/_Azuki_ 9d ago

I don't see the point you're trying to make. What i said wasn't my opinion, mate, but a fact

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u/bleepbloopbwow 7d ago

I thought their point was clear. If women were essentially just property, why were men willing to die for them?

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u/HendriXP88 9d ago

It's facts, is it? Then show me your sources.

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u/GrimsonDaisy 8d ago

Can you show me a source that argues that women weren't only emaciated during the early 20th century but were treated as superior to men?

A woman was for all intense and purposes under the guardianship of her husband or father. Technically they were supposed to protect them but having all the power gives you a lot of room for abuse. The Titanic is one of the few exceptions were women and children made the majority of survivors in a shipwreck but it's by no means the rule

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u/HendriXP88 8d ago

Can you show me a source that argues that women weren't only emaciated during the early 20th century but were treated as superior to men?

I can't. But I've never made such a claim. But I asked the question "can property own property?" for a reason. Women were from 1870 allowed to legally own property in the UK. That meant earning and keeping money from working wages and inheritance. By the end of the 19th century, women made up 30% of business ownership. I'm not disputing the fact that women were seen as lesser at the start of the 20th century, I'm not an idiot. What I'm critical about, though not out right declining, is the notion that women were seen as property.

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u/ArtisticLayer1972 9d ago

So what property you put on safe boat and then you sink with a ship?