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Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

nytimes.com

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Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#21

Post by ableton »

moomin wrote: post #20
ableton wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have thought about this a lot, and yet when you observe little kids, little boys want to play with trucks and cars, and little girls like playing with dolls. Nobody has to tell boys to play with cars or toy guns. They just like them. Obviously everybody's an individual. But by and large I think there are trends at such a young age it's apparent that the gender differences in occupational choices aren't just due to…

Your big assumption here is that kids are ignorant of culture and pay no attention to non-explicit signals. This is demonstrably and wholly false.

I think that boys just plain will prefer the cars over the doll if you give them the choice, regardless of culture. The story of David Reimer is instructive. The boy at 22 months had a botched circumcision. So the doctors just chopped off his balls and made a vagina for him. He had a horrible time becoming a "girl" and as soon as he was told he was a boy as a teen immediately reverted and lived the rest of his life as a boy as much as he could. The reason his parents told him anyways was because he threatened to take his own life, hating to see the therapist who was trying to make him act like a girl.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#22

Post by moomin »

PhilWright wrote: post #16
throwawaycopy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being that we're hairless apes who rely on clothing, fire to break down our food, and a host of other technologies just for basic survival, I'd say our natural biology is pretty damned unimportant when it comes to such high level behavior such as preferred profession in the Western world. Your culture and your language are by far much more responsible for your desires and actions. Just look how easily mankind is sway…

Well the research says you are wrong. This is not exactly exiting bed time reading but shows my point. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...

Actually, you've shown nothing. No-one's denying these differences exist. The question's whether they're mutable. And gender expression is clearly mutable, you just need to visit an old art gallery to see that.

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#23

Post by ddingus »

watwut wrote: post #14
moomin wrote: post #5

Someone with a shallow familiarity with feminism like myself won't find anything surprising here. That patriarchy (which is a set of commonly held attitudes) disadvantages men as well as women is well understood. That many women have patriarchal attitudes is also well understood. However, don't assume that these things are fixed. Highly feminine occupations such as film editor and software engineer have long since "f…

There is way more mockery targeted at men who like my little pony then on women who like boy shows. People tend to look down on men who do feminine anything.

This is because women remain looked down upon.

(Unacceptable, but a disturbing reality today)

A woman presenting up, masculine is seen as tough, bold, generally positive terms.

A man, doing anything feminine, is presenting down.

Of course, all of that is silly, rooted in cultural norms too.

We have a lot of work to do before people get past this sorry state of affairs.

People should do what they can and feel good doing.

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#24

Post by moomin »

puranjay wrote: post #13
tdeck wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you'd expect most managers and CEOs to be women right, because that's a job about working with people? Be careful of statements about human nature whose only evidence is "it's well known that". You can easily ascribe cultural attitudes to something more fundamental without realizing it.

I'd argue that most managerial positions are working with systems and processes. People happen to be a part of those systems and processes. Which is why managers call their underlings "resources" - screws and bolts that can be moved around to make the system more efficient.

Whilst I have sympathy with your cynicism 1) that's not true of _good_ managers and 2) processes are the raison d'etre of HR, which is hardly a male-majority profession.

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#25

Post by flukus »

0xbear wrote: post #19
solatic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put it in more tech-industry terms, doctors are either Level 2 (general practitioners) or Level 3 (specialists) health support. Adding more low-cost Level 1 health support is a great way to reduce the workloads of L2 and L3 and thus both reduce costs throughout the system as well as improve outcomes for most ~customers~ patients.

Except of course no one in this system is interested in reducing costs.

The patients, governments and private insurers are all interested in it I assume. Personally I'm more interested in increasing availability, when I need a medical certificate for a cold it's a huge pain to try and book a doctor. And then 99% of my interactions are watching them fill in paperwork and take my blood pressure, something we already rely on nurses for in hospitals.

I don't know if it will get anywhere though, doctors have a powerful union.

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#26

Post by influx »

moomin wrote: post #20
ableton wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have thought about this a lot, and yet when you observe little kids, little boys want to play with trucks and cars, and little girls like playing with dolls. Nobody has to tell boys to play with cars or toy guns. They just like them. Obviously everybody's an individual. But by and large I think there are trends at such a young age it's apparent that the gender differences in occupational choices aren't just due to…

Your big assumption here is that kids are ignorant of culture and pay no attention to non-explicit signals. This is demonstrably and wholly false.

"In experiments, male adolescent monkeys also prefer to play with wheeled vehicles while the females prefer dolls — and their societies say nothing on the matter."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.livescience.com/22677-girls...

This suggests there may be something deeper than expectation from culture and society.

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#27

Post by 0xbear »

flukus wrote: post #25
0xbear wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except of course no one in this system is interested in reducing costs.

The patients, governments and private insurers are all interested in it I assume. Personally I'm more interested in increasing availability, when I need a medical certificate for a cold it's a huge pain to try and book a doctor. And then 99% of my interactions are watching them fill in paperwork and take my blood pressure, something we already rely on nurses for in hospitals. I don't know if it will get anywhere thou…

Government is interested in whatever their donors tell them to be interested in. That's why ACA is a trillion dollar giveaway to healthcare industry instead of net savings.

ACA also disincentives private insurers from wanting to reduce cost. Their profit is now limited to a certain percentage of the premiums, so naturally their only real way to profit is by raising the living shit out of the premiums.

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#28

Post by boobsbr »

tptacek wrote: post #6

We should rename the profession. "Nurse" is gendered, but also poorly captures the responsibilities of the modern nursing profession. It is batshit crazy that our first line of medical care in the US is medical doctors. For 80% of what ordinary people see doctors for, Nurse Practitioners are superior to doctors: they're more available, can spend more time with patients, and can more easily escalate cases to doctors o…

> We should rename the profession. "Nurse" is gendered

In Brazil, there are TONS of male nurses working in hospitals, and there is not stigma at all to name of the profession (at least from my various experiences with hospitals and ERs).

The fact that Portuguese has declension to indicate gender in this particular word ('enfermeiro' is male, 'enfermeira' is female) might play a role in this.

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#29

Post by nailer »

ddingus wrote: post #23
watwut wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is way more mockery targeted at men who like my little pony then on women who like boy shows. People tend to look down on men who do feminine anything.

This is because women remain looked down upon. (Unacceptable, but a disturbing reality today) A woman presenting up, masculine is seen as tough, bold, generally positive terms. A man, doing anything feminine, is presenting down. Of course, all of that is silly, rooted in cultural norms too. We have a lot of work to do before people get past this sorry state of affairs. People should do what they can and feel good doi…

I think it's because people find certain roles more attractive. Men doing physical work, women doing nurturing roles are found attractive by more of the population.

I think that the women who find males nurses unattractive simply find them unattractive, rather than looking down upon their own gender. It seems a bit of a stretch and a really nasty thing to claim that these women have internalised misogyny.

Re: Men Don’t Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree

#30

Post by majewsky »

mythrwy wrote: post #7
tptacek wrote: post #6

We should rename the profession. "Nurse" is gendered, but also poorly captures the responsibilities of the modern nursing profession. It is batshit crazy that our first line of medical care in the US is medical doctors. For 80% of what ordinary people see doctors for, Nurse Practitioners are superior to doctors: they're more available, can spend more time with patients, and can more easily escalate cases to doctors o…

How about "Flesh Mechanics"? That might get a man or two interested. "Nurse" has mammary overtones.

That phrase is quite demeaning to the nurses' subjects, which is probably why you're being downvoted.
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