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Wow I thought this was going to be a subtle effect but I literally knew all of the male words and zero of the female ones (I’m male). What’s even the context of
by alkonaut 5y ago
Wow I thought this was going to be a subtle effect but I literally knew all of the male words and zero of the female ones (I’m male). What’s even the context of those top words? The male ones are tech/games/science but the female? I think I half recognize jaquard as a fabric or fashion term.
- LinAGKar 5y agoSame here. Even for the few male words I didn't know exactly what they meant, I had a vague ideas about them, while the female ones are complete gibberish to me.
- commandlinefan 5y ago> What’s even the context of those top words? Without trying to google any of them, I think they're colors - I think chambray is a color, but I don't know what color it is.
- HideousKojima 5y agoI know that Jaquard is a kind of loom, but I only know that because of an interest in early industrial manufacturing tech
- vdnkh 5y agoSeems a bunch are around fabric/garments, I have a minor sewing hobby so I recognized some of them (male)
- brimble 5y agoYeah, it's very nearly all fabric or textile-related from what I can tell. Bet you could make the same list by picking any two sex-skewed hobbies and charting words that see little use outside those interests.
- WesternWind 5y agoA bunch but not all, Picking out a few I recognized (though I had to double check freesia). A doula is basically a birthing coach often used for at home pregnancies, a pessary is a vaginal medical device, kohl is eye makeup, verbena is an herb, freesia is a flower, chigon is a type of hair bun.
- wrycoder 5y agoMidwife
- WesternWind 5y agoDoulas may or may not have midwife training, they aren't the same thing https://thewell.northwell.edu/pregnancy/doula-vs-midwife https://thewell.northwell.edu/pregnancy/doula-vs-midwife
- wrycoder 5y agoThank you, that’s an excellent article!
- wruza 5y agoI recognized it because I once destroyed a couch fabric in a rented apartment and had to choose a replacement. It’s as bad as choosing js framework, but you’re not a tech guy on top of that.
- meetups323 5y agoYou probably already know this, but that makes you a seamster. I both sew and practice a particular LISP dialect, making me a seamster schemester (in the words of GJS).
- armadsen 5y agoJacquard is actually an interesting one to me, because it overlaps the two major subject areas (fashion/textiles and science/tech). It's also one I (male) knew, while I didn't know most of the "more female" words. The Jacquard loom was programmable with punch cards, and is a very important early predecessor of computers (especially Babbage's analytical engine). IIRC, there's one (or a replica) in the Computer History Museum. Jacquard also refers to the kind of fabric the loom could produce.
- Lammy 5y agoI learned that one from Boards of Canada https://bocpages.org/wiki/Jacquard_Causeway https://bocpages.org/wiki/Jacquard_Causeway https://vimeo.com/69572175 https://vimeo.com/69572175
- pram 5y agoLearned about that in James Burkes Connections! Amazing series if you haven’t seen it.
- lizknope 5y agoEverything by James Burke is amazing. He's written a lot of other books in the Connections style
- SilasX 5y agoYeah, I (male) recognized jacquard, but only in the context of the Jacquard loom and superficial awareness that they're programmable textile making machines.
- hammock 5y agoNo one cares but I went 12/20 on the female words. Most of the ones I knew are fashion-related or flowers. The ones I didn't know (and looked up) are female reproduction-related.
- allendoerfer 5y agoI think males and females reproduce the same way.
- coutego 5y agoNot really... Not when they are the subject of the sentence instead of the direct object.
- Symmetry 5y agoMen don't generally have a doula guiding them through giving birth.
- rat9988 5y agoWhich has nothing to do with his point.
- pessimizer 5y agoI don't think they do. The second step for a man to reproduce, after going through a male puberty, is to find a woman. The process is different for women, and may never even directly involve a man.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- munk-a 5y agoMales would struggle to make proper use of a pessary.
- User23 5y agoIs this really the state of sex ed?
- Kalium 5y agoThey're mostly about style in some manner. A chignon is a hairstyle, a bandeau is a garment, kohl is a type of facial makeup (with its own fascinating history). Jaquard, chambray, chenille, sateen, and damask are all words that apply to fabrics in some fashion. An espadrille is a particular style of shoe. Verbena is a plant. A pessary is a medical device. A doula is a supportive person through a medical experience, often childbirth in an American context.
- ComputerGuru 5y agoA pessary is a medical device inserted into the vagina, for further context.
- madcaptenor 5y agoThe data can be downloaded from https://osf.io/nbu9e/ https://osf.io/nbu9e/ . I tracked it down because I was wondering: - pessary was known by 53% of females, 19% of males - suppository was known by 88% of females, 80% of males
- copperx 5y agoSuppository is one of those words that I would assume 99.9% of the population knows because of it being common over the counter, and in sitcoms and media. I'm assuming they're including children under 12 in the data? That would explain the low percentages.
- brimble 5y agoThat checks out. I'd say at least 80% of my encounters with the word have been jokes in media, or jokes between people (probably inspired by or ripped off from media). Most young kids wouldn't know it, though.
- sbierwagen 5y agoMore people are functionally illiterate than you might expect if you're in a high IQ bubble like the tech industry. In 2017, 19% of American adults scored level 1 or below on the PIAAC literacy test: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=69 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=69 Here's a sample reading test: https://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Literacy%20Sample%20Items.pdf https://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Literacy%20Sample%20Items.... It's a drawing of an ear, and the options are "ear", "egg", "lip" and "jar". You have to pick the correct word.
- liquidify 5y agosame
- mypastself 5y agoSame here, but I’m also surprised only around 30% of women know the word “yakuza”. Although I’m sure those same women would be shocked by my not knowing what a chignon is.
- UnpossibleJim 5y agoI was shocked at how low on the list "katana" was. It's so prevalent in pop culture, from Kill Bill to The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
- Kye 5y agoLeonardo uses ninjatos as of the last time I paid attention to the franchise. Katanas are much longer.
- brimble 5y agoWhatever they look like, they're usually described by TMNT media as katanas. Quite possibly incorrectly, for all I know.
- UnpossibleJim 5y agoThey wrote and spoke of them as katanas, yes. But you're also talking about a series who treated the Sai as a sharp weapon (which is round and a striking and blocking weapon)... though, I don't think they did this in the comic. It's been a while).
- brimble 5y agoI bet if you charted hours spent with media in which the word "katana" occurs, you'd see a male/female ratio very similar to the "knows what 'katana' means" ratio in TFA.
- Delk 5y agoI don't know if this would affect the observed/reported differences between sexes, but there are also different levels of knowing. I would have known that neodymium is some kind of a substance, but I wouldn't have known or remembered that it was an element without checking. I'd probably answer I knew the word "degauss" but if I had to explain what it physically is, I'd struggle. I might not remember what distinguishes howitzers from other artillery pieces. Out of these, I'd probably report not knowing neodymium, knowing howitzer, and be a bit torn on degaussing. Someone might know that a katana is a weapon, or "some kind of a ninja thing", or maybe even a sword, but might not feel comfortable enough about the details to report knowing it. Also, it might be more well-known among younger people who know the pop culture than people who don't. But then, I guess it might also be that people just have rather different areas of familiarity, as the article indicates, and a significant part of the English speaking population might be as clueless about katanas as I am about tulles, or whatever the plural for that is. I only knew one or two of the words from the upper half. I'm not a native English speaker, though, which perhaps not only limits my vocabulary compared to native speakers but might also tilt things even further towards the science/tech words.
- k__ 5y agoMy non-binary friend knew roughly half of both sides. (No joke) They are AFAB, interested in japanese culture and STEM, but also sew rather much.
- unwind 5y agoIn case anyone wondered, here "AFAB" means "assigned female at birth" [1] and as far as I can understand simply means that the person was determined to be female at some point, by visual inspection basically. [1] https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sexopedia/a38294924/afab-amab/ https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sexopedia/a38294924/afab-amab/
- klipt 5y agoIt's really to do with gender roles though. Nurse sees a penis on the baby - writes M on the birth certificate - child ends up being told by teachers they're not allowed to cry because they're a boy. Non binary people think those gender roles don't make sense for themselves, and in that respect, I think almost everyone is at least a little non binary. Maybe not enough to feel it's worth declaring, but I've never met anyone who really loves everything about their gender role.
- Wiseacre 5y agoSame for age role, socioeconomic role, or racial role. I wonder why we only talk about gender roles.
- ReactiveJelly 5y agoElaborate?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Wiseacre 5y agoGender roles certainly exist. Why wouldn't age roles, socioeconomic roles, or racial roles exist as well?
- rsynnott 5y agoA sort of early nearly-robot; it's where punched cards were first used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine
- mc32 5y agoI think this is thoroughly expected. Imagine you have a set of legal words (legalese) and then you have a set of scientific words or statistical words (all cants) and you show the sets to those not associated with those sets… we’d see similar results. It’s neat to find these oddities but that’s all it is, linguistically.
- wincy 5y agoI only know because we attempted a home birth and my wife trained to become one, but a doula is an assistant to a midwife. It would make sense most men would have no idea what this is but a lot of women have probably watched YouTube videos thinking about how they want to give birth, so doula would be a well defined word for them.
- glonq 5y agoYeah, this was way more accurate for me than I expected. I figured that I'd be old/wise/literate enough to know many of the "female" words. Nope
- treis 5y agoI feel like this is cheating a bit. Like peplum.... I had no mental construct of peplum as a thing. So it's not like I just don't know the word. I didn't know that there was even a thing that a word could exist for. The underlying mental conception is the thing that's actually missing.
- lhorie 5y agoIt largely follows gender stereotypical interest lines. In this one, my wife describes the list as "fashion related stuff". Here's another older list from a different study[0] Higher recognition rates by males: - codec (88, 48) - solenoid (87, 54) - golem (89, 56) - mach (93, 63) - humvee (88, 58) - claymore (87, 589 - scimitar (86, 58) - kevlar (93, 65) - paladin (93, 66) - bolshevism (85, 60) - biped (86, 61) - dreadnought (90, 66) Higher recognition rates by females: - taffeta (48, 87) - tresses (61, 93) - bottlebrush (58, 89) - flouncy (55, 86) - mascarpone (60, 90) - decoupage (56, 86) - progesterone (63, 92) - wisteria (61, 89) - taupe (66, 93) - flouncing (67, 94) - peony (70, 96) - bodice (71, 96) [0] https://www.insider.com/gender-and-vocabulary-analysis-2014-6 https://www.insider.com/gender-and-vocabulary-analysis-2014-...
- kelnos 5y agoInteresting. I (male) recognize all but one of the "female" words in this list (and can define most of them), but recognized only 6 from the list in the article, and could define only one or two. I wonder why the article's list is so much "harder". (I recognized and could define all of the "male" words in both lists, so I do seem to conform to this stereotype...)
- pedrosorio 5y agoThe recognition rates in the comment you’re replying to are much higher than the ones in the article.
- cryptonector 5y agoI recognize all of them. I could recall the meanings of only some.
- chillingeffect 5y agoI remember from another study that "cybernetic" and "taupe" were highly polarized. which direction is an exercise left for the reader :)
- 5y ago
- rayiner 5y agoI'm a man--I knew all the male words and could define them. I knew seven of the female words and could only define one without guessing. Wow.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- irrational 5y agoSame. I have multiple undergraduate and graduate degrees and consider myself wide read. I knew every single "male" word and none of the "female" words. Though, I did have some recognition of a few of the "female" words, I just have no idea what their definition is.
- wrycoder 5y agoYou were never exposed to Victorian novels.
- NoboruWataya 5y ago> The male ones are tech/games/science Science, war and... the last one.
- astrange 5y ago“Shemale”?
- Talanes 5y ago>The male ones are tech/games/science A lot of the left half was words I only vaguely knew, and that's because I've seen most of them used in games before. A good chunk just in Final Fantasy XIV alone, but the fabrics and clothing items tend to pop up a fair bit in the sort of item-intensive games that need to reach for words to make this particular shoe sound better.
- astrange 5y agoI know espadrille from… the clothing shop in an anime golf game.
- yongjik 5y agoInteresting, I thought a lot of male words are related to games as well. aileron/azimuth/strafe: flight games bushido/yakuza/katana: martial arts or Japanese games howitzer: strategy games checksum: downloading games degauss/teraflop: stuff for playing games shemale: ...okay maybe not this one...
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
- pbhjpbhj 5y agoAileron, strafe (different meaning), howitzer - would all have come to me from reading WW2 stories or watching black and white movies in the 80s. Azimuth, space. Degauss, TVs Checksum I think probably from Linux installs (around the millennium). Teraflop, supercomputers. Shemale ... hmmm, never saw it, but The Crying Game (TV show) I think would be the source for me. Conclusion, they're not gaming words you're just a gamer?
- Talanes 5y ago> Conclusion, they're not gaming words you're just a gamer? The claim wasn't "originated from video-games" it was "related to games." More broadly, aside from the direct technology terms, most of those are the sort of words that you only encounter in media. Videogames are a medium that tends to stretch for more words to describe things (as do novels, compared to snappier media like film/music/tv), so it's a very likely point of first exposure for those of us young enough to have grown up with them.
- bsder 5y agoIt's funny, because those words sort of mark "cheesy romance/cheesy sci-fi" stories. One of the things I was pointed to when learning a foreign language was: "Want to learn more adjectives? Read cheesy romance novels in the language."
- Ansil849 5y ago> I literally knew all of the male words and zero of the female ones (I’m male)/ I find it kind of astounding that someone can know what aileron or azimuth is, but not what a doula is. The former I have never, ever encountered, whereas I feel like doulas come up as a routine topic in culture.
- unmole 5y agoFrom the Wikipedia article, it seems like doula is of fairly recent American coinage. And the fact that it's comes up as a routine topic probably says more about your social circle than anything else.
- Ansil849 5y ago> And the fact that it's comes up as a routine topic probably says more about your social circle than anything else. Not really. Unless my 'social circle' also has a monopoly on metrics like Google Trends, doula is a more popular term than either aileron or azimuth in the majority of countries for which metrics are available. [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&q=doula,azimuth,aileron https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&q=do...
- unmole 5y agoThe fact the there are more searches for a commercial service compared to technical terms is not indicative of anything. I googled doula because I don't know what it meant. I don't think I ever googled azimuth or aileron.
- wrycoder 5y agoI've known what a dually is for six decades, but I never heard of a doula.
- ncmncm 5y agoI had never heard them called duallies (duallys?) before this millennium. First encountered the word at a drive-thru (-through?) car wash, where they were not allowed, and was left to figure out from context what it must mean.
- bawolff 5y ago> I think I half recognize jaquard as a fabric or fashion term. Also one of the forerunners to the modern computer (its a type of automated loom that can be "programmed" using punch cards)
- epx 5y agoI knew some of them but my whole family works/has worked in textiles industry, so biased sample.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoYeah, male here, I knew only "damask" from the women's list, nearly all from the men's.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mcv 5y agoI'm a bit more in the middle. I don't know all of the "male" words, and I do know some of the "female" ones, though I still strongly lean "male". I'll ask my wife what she thinks. No clue what "peplum" is, I'm afraid.