In a time and place when our generation has come to terms with the fact that the society we live in is not working for huge swathes of the population, and is in fact actively working against them in many cases, how to we move closer to a more equal society? In the case of gender equality, should you bridge the gap between men and women by asking women to be more masculine, or by asking men to be more feminine and society as a whole to value feminine-coded behaviors and professions more.
Like with so many questions on this show, the answer is obviously both, but we talk about some major reasons why we need to address masculinity, ranging from the serious (men are dying more during this pandemic because mask usage is seen as unmanly, the AI revolution is increasingly going to be automating traditionally male jobs like doctors before the traditionally female jobs like home health aides and nurses) to the hilarious (the internet has discovered that some men don't wipe their ass when they poop because they think it's gay, apparently "seafood is for women," and you become the brunt of ridiculous marketing campaigns, like that of "Liquid Death," canned mountain water that promises to "MURDER YOUR THIRST").
Note:
In this episode, Isabel cited the statistic that 80% of high school valedictorians are female. Actually the number is 70%. Citation: https://www.applerouth.com/blog/2017/08/15/troubling-gender-gaps-in-education/
Links:
Pew Research on how women read books more than men: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2016/09/01/book-reading-2016/
Data visualization on best-selling authors by gender: https://pudding.cool/2017/06/best-sellers/
Article about men who don't wipe because they think it's gay, as discovered by the wives of reddit: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/what-its-like-to-be-a-guy-who-doesnt-clean-his-ass
Eater article on Liquid Death: https://www.eater.com/2019/5/8/18537259/liquid-death-canned-water-punk-rock-startup-fanfic
Liquid Death website: https://liquiddeath.com/
Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.
