I don’t believe I’ve ever witnessed pure terror more so than when my boyfriend thinks I’m mad at him. It’s not that I’m a crazy, manic bitch or anything — I think guys are just really terrified of pissing their ladies off. Maybe it’s because they’re afraid we’ll withhold sex, or because they’ve gotten too comfortable and the thought of being single and starting from square one panics them. I don’t know, and I don’t really care, as long as that residual fear keeps the toilet seat down.
You know who doesn’t take an angry lady seriously? America.
A team of researchers conducted experiments on how people react to hypothetical hurricanes with both male and female names, and found that people are more likely to perceive a “female” hurricane to have a lower risk. This in turn causes people to be less prepared because they don’t take the threat of a tropical storm as seriously when there’s a girl’s name tagged to it.
In contrast, “male” hurricanes cause significantly fewer deaths because people take the protective action they need. It seems arbitrary, but apparently changing a hurricane’s name from, say, Chad to Carly, would triple its death toll.
We answer this call by highlighting the influence of an unexplored social factor, gender-based expectations, on the human toll of hurricanes that are assigned gendered names. Feminine-named hurricanes (vs. masculine-named hurricanes) cause significantly more deaths, apparently because they lead to lower perceived risk and consequently less preparedness.
This is some seriously crazy shit, and it’s all backed up by death rates from U.S. hurricanes from 1950-2012. That means that people have spent 62 years disregarding storm risks, all because those storms have female names. Because apparently women aren’t threatening enough to warrant legitimate fear, even when you’re talking about a fucking hurricane.
I’d be willing to venture a guess that every married man in the area is actually more safe in the event of a female hurricane because they understand the wrath of an angry woman so well. Every wifed-up guy in a given tropical region probably says “NOPE” and packs his bags every time a Hurricane Betsy comes through.
You heard it here first, folks: sexism kills. Literally..
[via CNN]
Image via Shutterstock
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Lucky Jo
Lucky Jo is a former and current TSM writer who likes her men how she likes her coffee: way too hot and unforgivably bitter. She graduated from the University of Missouri in 2016, proving that C's do in fact get degrees. She now spends her days working for a social media marketing agency, hiking with her dachshund, and trying to bring back the scrunchie. Hate mail and goat memes can be sent to lucyjmulvihill@gmail.com.
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