are there instances of women becoming obsessed with historic events? definitely a male preoccupation with certain phases of history (Civil War, Nazis, Hitler) & reenactments of battles. women may obsess over reading, music & dance, kitties, doggies, clothes, gardening, men. https://t.co/JMuhPdbzhB
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) June 24, 2023
June 25, 2023
"are there instances of women becoming obsessed with historic events?"
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You mean... men and women are different??
Burn her!!
Is this an argument for keeping women out of Congress...or The White House?
(let's not bring up voting)
But yes women are obsessed with certain historic events.
First woman to...
First Black woman to...
Roe V Wade
Agree.
"women may obsess over reading, music & dance, kitties, doggies, clothes, gardening, men."
Did rhardin hack her Twitter account?
Anyway, just to be clear, we are assuming here that 1. we know what women are; 2. that their obsessions tend to differ from those of men; and 3. that their obsessions tend not to include history, technology, war, exploration, and science.
Oates blocked me after I mocked her tweet about carnivores for being supremely unfunny. Made me grin, so she is improving her humor.
Why does she think so many women love Jane Austen's stories?
For a writer, JCO has a surprising lack of imagination.
Women have more local interests. Most are concerned with clothing, shoes and, if not children, failed relationships with men.
Joan of Arc was obsessed with Agincourt. Armstrong Custer's wife was obsessed with the Little Big Horn until her death (his early heroic reputation was due in no small part to her advocacy). Indira Gandhi was an amateur Maratha historian, who frequently referred to it (the Maratha Empire) as a goal for her administration. Feminists are routinely enthralled with Roe V. Wade as some watershed moment in the history of female empowerment (despite abortion being far older).
I've found men tend to interpret history as "what does this tell us". Women tend to interpret history as "how does this affect me, and if it affects me personally so much the better." A man's interpretation of history tells him what to do or even helps predict the future. A woman's interpretation of history provides the motivation for her personal empowerment, and if it does not, it's useless to her.
It was not a parody of a Greek tragedy, it was a classic tragedy on the part of the father who brought about his son's death, and his own, due to his hubris. The only issue here is that the anagnorisis and peripeteia of the father either happened during conversations during the few minutes of dive time before the implosion, as the father realized his son was there only because of filial respect, or not at all in the milliseconds the disaster took to occur. They weren't Greek but the elements of tragedy were fulfilled in their participation in this atrocity.
What I object to is calling this atrocity a tragedy for one and all, specifically, the dive company CEO had so little interest in safety that he ended up killing passengers through his negligence in construction and operation. That is an atrocity. Was it tragic that the CEO died due to his own misbehavior? No, it was a small measure of justice.
Women obsessed with historic events? My wife of 30+ years still asks me every once in a while about a relationship I had with another female that occurred before I ever met her. And don't get me started about that loss in the stock market I took in 2008, her memory of that is perfect, too.
"parody of a Greek tragedy." Instead of the son flying too close to the sun, she's imagining the father descending too near the bottom of the ocean? That's not parody.
It appears Joyce is the one trapped in the labyrinth of her own prejudices.
Addendum:
Hillary Clinton's "what difference does it make!?!" was a prime example of this. The murder of a senior US diplomatic official in a deliberate terrorist assault on a US embassy is absolutely of historic significance requiring an investigation, revelation, and interpretation of the facts of the case. Hillary was being affected by this, personally, but more importantly than anything, negatively. Although this is something she should have been obsessed with, the way the event unfolded was affecting her in a way that did not provide a pathway for "personal empowerment" from a feminine historical perspective.
Not only was she not obsessing over something she should've been (and which was her job to do), she wanted nothing more than to forget the entire thing happened. The history that was happening 'to her' was not fitting the empowerment narrative she and others have helped her live her whole life. That made her very angry...if you couldn't tell.
I heard is said that going down to the Titanic was more dangerous and life-risking than going to the moon. Likely a fair assessment.
Keep in mind, it was hot on the surface and then near freezing as they descended. They were in a tube with token tiny window that one supposes they could have taken turns getting glimpses of something out in the dark illuminated by small lights. An ROV would have provide better visibility of the ship.
The Titanic provided a location among all the abysmal plain, but it was the bragging rights that were what were sought.
What? Psychological differences between men and women? Must be a biological determinist, and they are virtual Nazis. Stephen Jay Gould told me so.
Who is this royal "we" that is omniscient?
My observation is that men are more likely to become obsessive with stuff. There are probably more men obsessed with well acknowledged female-related activities than there are women obsessed with such stuff.
They become obsessed with imaginary events. The Handmaid’s Tale comes to mind.
we can understand interest in the Titanic for historical reasons but some of us are utterly baffled why anyone, like this wealthy Pakistani businessman, becomes "obsessed" with it through many years; so much so, as in a parody of a Greek tragedy, he brings his son with him to die
And yet, as far as I've heard, Munchausen by proxy is pretty much entirely a female disorder... that causes women to make their own child sick enough to be hospitalized. Repeatedly. That might baffle a few fathers.
I don't think there's a moral high ground to be occupied here.
Bollocks.
Just to take one totally random example, it generally isn’t obsessed men dragging their wives and girlfriends to see the “Step Back in Time: Titanic The Experience” exhibition when it rolls through town…
- Rafe
A woman my age should think she's brilliant but I've always found her seriously annoying.
My wife is a big Titanic afficionado. She's bought the movies, books and games about Titanic. I don't really care about it.
I'm a Civil War, WWI & WWII fan. I have many books about all three wars and have toured the Gettysburg battlefield.
She has obviously never attended a Renaissance Festival or or a Medieval Fair and seen just how many women "obsess" over a certain historic event/era. The ones I have attended the split was close to 50/50. And my wife likes the jousting more than I do. And I have to quibble over the "obsess" part. Dressing up and attending is not obsessing. It is a hobby, and takes no more time for most than other hobbies. Now, a SMALL percentage of people are obsessed, and want only era clothing and tents, etc. But that is a small minority, and I suspect it is present in every hobby.
I've heard that the son did not want to go on the trip but did so because it was father's day.
How dreadfully sad.
Men and women are different!
Viva la difference.
Speaking about obsessions, is she still trying to save the dinosaurs from being hunted and killed?
“What are there instances of women becoming obsessed with historic events?”
Renaissance Fair.
It's a little hard not to read this and hear a slight sneer, but maybe that's just a novelist's attempt at objectivity without realizing she's a misanthrope.
In my experience, men have a much keener interest in human history and its events, because the important eras always seem to be punctuated by lots of men dying. It's a way of framing one's own impending mortality. This was true even in the Titanic tragedy, although there were plenty of women and children killed too.
women CERTAINLY become "obsessed" with historic events,
it's just THEY tend to pick meaningless ones; like
birthdays
anniversaries
Valentines day
Pretty Much, the Only reason gilbar knows HIS birthday; is because it's the same day, as his twin sister Jen's and he Daren't forget That one
Now, the Battle of Pittsburg Landing (Shiloh Church); He knows pretty much when That was.
(he just guessed April 7, '62; which is embarrassing, because That was day 2..
Any Idiot should know it started on the 6th.)
Lots of women, particularly English, on podcasts and twitter that are obsessed with history.
Seems like a blinkered question. Of course women become obsessed with things.
Is it meaningful that the obsession be about history vs. some other thing? I don’t see why. But even if we artificially narrow the question like that, the answer is still yes. Some women focus their obsession on something of historical significance. My wife, for example, will consume any media focussed on Europe in WWII. Not WWI, not the Pacific Theater, just Europe, just WWII.
"women may obsess over reading, music & dance, kitties, doggies, clothes, gardening, men."
Did rhardin hack her Twitter account?
Ha, funny! As funny as Althouse's speculation yesterday about the doomed Titan voyagers singing "My Heart Will Go On".
I also find it funny that only a woman could get away with writing something like this, to suggest that women have a lack of curiosity about historical events, which, of course, is far superior to men and their inexplicable obsessions that just end up getting people killed.
If the Titan had in fact made previous successful descents, and the CEO of the company was onboard, the Dad's wish to make the dive and to have his son come with him was not "hubris" any more than Dad taking his son to go heli-skiing or participating in the Fastnet Yacht Race (or going up in Bezos' "spacecraft" would be. He had reason to think it was "safe," despite the scary language in the release.
It was horrible, tragic bad luck. While the company and its engineers may be culpable here, the gleeful condemnation of the "rich" passengers (mainly for being rich) is morally repugnant.
I have a woman friend who is obsessed with the Regency Era of England. She has sunk millions of dollars and pounds into promoting the works and life of Jane Austen. She has restored Miss Austen's home to its original Regency grandeur and sponsors educational and entertainment venues dedicated to the period. My friend is so obsessed with the Regency Era and English history that can dance her way through 500 years of that history and has financed a competitive jousting team.
“What are there instances of women becoming obsessed with historic events?”
Does Ms. Oates go into hibernation around Christmas time?
Well, there's Barbara Tuchman and World War 1.
If you read her bio, you might see how she would be interested.
From IMDB, referring to the 2022 movie The Lost King: "In 2012, after having been lost for over 500 years, the remains of King Richard III were discovered beneath a carpark in Leicester. The search had been orchestrated by an amateur historian, Philippa Langley, whose unrelenting research had been met with incomprehension by her friends and family and with skepticism by experts and academics. THE LOST KING is the life-affirming true story of a woman who refused to be ignored and who took on the country's most eminent historians, forcing them to think again about one of the most controversial kings in England's history."
Is there a difference between ‘obsess’ and ‘interested’? It seems that obsession has a [slight] negative connotation.
I guess you could say that I, a female, became obsessed with tracing my dad's campaigns through Germany during WWII and while he was part of the army of occupation. My brother, not so much. If at all.
Ride Space Mountain said...
"Not only was she not obsessing over something she should've been (and which was her job to do), she wanted nothing more than for us to forget the entire thing happened."
Fixed.
seems like, the consensus is:
Men care about things, that Actually Happened; where the decisions made had REAL consequences..
Women care about fantasy things, that Never happened.. And MOSTLY about the clothes
oh! except for PERSONAL things, like weddings/proms/birthdays..
where Women care MOSTLY about the clothes
Define "women" and "obsessed."
Others have mentioned Renaissance Fairs, and any AWI or ACWABAWS reenactment will feature women folk pretending to live in the past, and there are rescued and recreated historic sites all over the place that feature dead serious Living Historians.
OTOH, I've been obsessed with my own studies and recreations of the past all my conscious life . . . perhaps a streak of obsessiveness is necessary for a historian, like a strong stomach and cruel neutrality (though some would say I'm more neutrally cruel).
My goodness! Acknowledgment that men may be different from women? Sakes alive! There could be a forthcoming acknowledgment that different just means diiferent and not inferior or superior.
Just different.
Something like that could be a serious blow to the Grievance/Envy Media Complex and needs to be stped out@
Maybe it's not an obsession with a specific historical event, but women do seem to be obsessed with the British royal family and its history.
Tuchman Tuchman Tuchman. Geez, give the old lady a break. She didn't only write about WWI, anyway.
C.V. Wedgewood, Longford, Margaret MacMillan, any number of much better and more serious examples of female historical scholarship spring to mind.
Now do the other 74 (and counting) genders.....
Sarcasm, of course. But I suspect CJO and many of her fans would howl like a banshee if one were to speak in a transphobic manner. Yet she feels free to make this a binary world.
For shame. Foooooor SHAME!
Interesting that Oates chooses to see specialized interests as a male thing. Specialization in general is an economic thing. (If women had historically innovated our societies or technologies they would recognize something called “specialization of labor.”)
So women who succeed economically I’m sure don’t see that as a male thing. Mary Beard is a historian specializing in Roman antiquity. Basically any historian needs to do this to be of much use. Does she have no appreciation for historical inquiry? I understand the identity warriors are like this but even in that context her statement is pretty dunderheaded and self-defeating on a feminist basis.
In any event, not everyone obsessed (or just interested) in an historical event is as destructive as that schmuck billionaire piloting The Titan. James Cameron also is and was and made an amazing billion dollar movie about it. He knew that those guys were going about it in an extremely reckless and dangerous way, which is much more so the issue than simply being interested in how thousands of people sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic because they were overconfident about an incredibly new and innovative sailing technology that the wealthiest and poorest of Victorian society took part in while racing at unprecedented speeds between continents.
Next time anyone goes to Colonial Williamsburg or any other historical living museum I guess we have to tell the female re-enactors that they’re just wasting their time trying to be men.
Sigh.
Women will definitely spend countless hours watching Downton Abbey, Agatha Christie telenovels or any work from any historical period as long as it fixates on a romantic or class-based theme. They seem to love that stuff. If you can make it relevant to how a modern soap opera works then they’re in. Or about personal sexual power over someone a la Fifty Shades of Gray, which seems to have been the ultimate female media interest in modern times, if not ever. Not sure how that comments positively on however women’s interests are defined.
This seems to fit JCO quite well!
obsession
əb-sĕsh′ən, ŏb-
noun
Compulsive preoccupation with a fixed idea or an unwanted feeling or emotion, often accompanied by symptoms of anxiety.A compulsive, often unreasonable idea or emotion.In pathology, a constant brooding upon any subject, such as the thought of death, until the mind becomes dominated by that one idea.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
I wonder sometimes if Oates is a loon or if she just plays one on the internet.
If the latter, she plays it well.
While the company and its engineers may be culpable here, the gleeful condemnation of the "rich" passengers (mainly for being rich) is morally repugnant.
They were rich enough to think that basic safety regulations and precautions shouldn’t apply to them. The reason for that was seeing themselves of a special class of humans called “entrepreneurs” who believe that their means and love and adventure make them impervious to the laws of physics, as if such things could combine to make a vessel rated for only going a third of the depth they desired before imploding somehow not implode. They were stupid and exemplified the hubris of Icarus nautically instead of aeronautically.
Not only should anyone at the company who shortchanged the safety regs be culpable, but anyone who might have survived and misled a passenger into thinking this “vessel” was seaworthy in the fashion used. That includes the asshole billionaire father who coaxed his 19-year old son into going along for the ride he didn’t want to because it would make him happy as a Father’s Day activity. Evolution is not happening fast enough.
Plenty of female historians. I can say with confidence that Mary Beard is interested in Roman history
boatbuilder said...
the Titan had in fact made previous successful descents..
He had reason to think it was "safe," despite the scary language in the release.
It was horrible, tragic bad luck.
Nope, it was (apparently) compression cycles leading to material fatigue.
The fact that is HAD made previous success descents IS WHAT KILLED THEM (apparently).
I have (middle class, blue collar friends); that restore antique (1920 and 30's era) motorcycles;
and Every Year, attempt to cross the United States on their outdated, obsolete machines.
WHEN they have mechanical failures (often leading to some sort of uncontrolled descent into terrain)..
I hope for the best, but pretty much NO ONE is surprised. No One says:
"Oh! how sad, What horrible, tragic bad luck!!"
people say: Jesus Christ! what The Hell did you expect?
in fact, my friends riding say: Jesus Christ! what The Hell did you expect?
Personally, i'd MUCH rather ride a WR-45* over going to the bottom of the ocean to look through a viewport at some algae
WR-45* Some folk point out the COMPLETE lack of brakes on a WR-45.. I say: No One EVER went faster by using Brakes
First person to visit the titanic was robert Ballard in 1985. Since then 250 people have visited it without mishap.
That's more than have flown the space shuttle with 1/3 the deaths.
https://www.grunge.com/1320553/how-many-people-have-been-to-titanic-wreckage/
The Titan had made 3 similar dives to the titanic without mishap. This may be the reason for the implosion.
The people on the tour knew it was risky. But no more reason to expect death than if they'd climbed everest or gone skydiving.
John lgb Henry
You would think that Oates would take more care for the second grade basics of punctuation and sentence structure. Her tweet reads as if she were an Xer txting her bestie.
- Krumhorn
And with “Titanic” the movie, men went to see the movie to see the re-enactment of the Titanic hitting the iceberg and sinking while women went to see it for the love story between Jack and Rose. Thus, fulfilling Joyce Carol Oates hypothesis that Althouse posted about. The winner? James Cameron’s bank account!
Genealogy.
"It was horrible, tragic bad luck."
I might let that pass, if you weren't calling yourself "boatbuilder". It is well-understood, by people who work with them, that unlike, say, steel, carbon fiber composites are weakened by cycles of compression and relaxation. This could be called "bad luck", in the same way that losing at Russian Roulette is bad luck. Your chances may start out pretty good, but they get worse rapidly.
"And yet, as far as I've heard, Munchausen by proxy is pretty much entirely a female disorder... that causes women to make their own child sick enough to be hospitalized. Repeatedly. That might baffle a few fathers."
Yes, indeed. It rather appears that parents who "affirm" their child's "gender identity" with surgical mutilation are mostly female too.
Question; can anyone think of a man who has refused to answer the question, "What is a woman"? I can think of one, but he's pretending to be a woman.
"are there instances of women becoming obsessed with historic events?"
Certainly within relationships, yes.
When we went through our divorce, my wife included offenses from our engagement period (more than 12 years earlier) in her court filings. She didn't care much about history on a grand scale. But on a personal scale, her memories were iron clad. And a few bordered on an obsession.
History is very important to a woman.
Added: In General leaves a lot of room for outliers. And there is room for particular focus. Th English Regency period also includes the Napoleonic Wars. Jane Austen novels are one focus, the Battle of Trafalgar and the Battle of Waterloo are another. Renaissance Fairs provide much scope for cosplay. Men focus more on the armor and weapons. What about that period do women focus on?
Again, in general shouldn't be subsumed by the outliers, nor should it go the other way.
We've been talking about engineering failure and I just ran across this:
Failure is central to engineering,” he said when The Times profiled him in 2006. “Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation. Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.
Seems to apply to Titan.
That is from Henry Petroski's nyt obit the other day which I just now saw. He wrote a number of books on what might be called engineering philosophy. I read most of them. John McPhee can make rocks interesting to the layperson, Petroski does the same for engineering.
I once exchanged some emails with him about an error in one of his books. He doubted that a small amount of salt could cause a pipe failure. I sent him pictures of a section of pipe that I have in my office.
It failed in less than 2 days exposure to the chlorine in drinking water.
RIP Dr petroski
John lgb Henry
if moon landing could be faked why not also Tatan deep dive?
all live to tell!!!
Two words: Downton Abbey
Royalty. Particularly British and
French, though if there are historical ties any royalty tends to at least raise an eyebrow
Royalty. Particularly British and
French, though if there are historical ties any royalty tends to at least raise an eyebrow
" . . . far superior to men and their inexplicable obsessions that just end up getting people killed."
And, along the way, leading to most every scientific and cultural advancement in human history. Men are risk-takers, women are innately hedged.
I am truly baffled why Joyce Carol Oates would stoop -- yes, stoop, there's no other word for it -- to putting obsessed within quotes. She's a major literary figure -- wait one moment -- let's put that within quotation marks just to measure the effect... She's a "major literary figure" and ought to understand the consequences of such punctuational thuggery.
What could she have meant? Was Dawood obsessed or not? Was Ms. Oates quoting someone? Why bother if the source is trustworthy, like an accredited psychiatrist who diagnosed and treated Mr. Dawood for an obsessive/compulsive personality disorder? But there's no evidence such a person exists, or if he does, he's not talking. Or, perhaps, Oates implied the term was inappropriate. But she's a major literary figure; finding the right word is her stock-in-trade. I remain baffled.
However, the worst aspect of her tweet, the part that makes me believe my quote marks around major literary figure are entirely justified is the final clause, "as in a parody of a Greek tragedy, he brings his son with him to die". Really? The death of Suleman Dawood was the intent, a father-son suicide mission with collateral damage? I must conclude a vicious monster lurks within that frail, owlish woman. But she's not alone. The absurdly biased propaganda project called Wikipedia claims Suleman Dawood "was terrified of going on the trip, but did so to please his father". Really. Then how did they get him inside that contraption? With drawn lugers? Reluctant is the accurate term, but, true to form, Wikipedia goes with hysteria over cool objectivity.
It's a crisis of meaning all the way down
“. . .happiness is about the present moment, independent of other moments, whereas meaning links events across time, thus integrating past, present, and future.”
Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things
It's beyond gender, imhop.
Hold on there guys. There's a lot of openly expressed misogyny in some of the comments. I'll agree that men and women's brains sometimes appear to be wired differently. I can put on a pair of ugly argyle socks and have one of my wife's friends ask, "Why did you let him out of the house that way?" And the guys won't notice or if they do, they'll say "Cool socks".
But there's a lot of variation among individuals of both sexes. I've been happily married for a very long time to a very intelligent woman--but I find that there are significant differences in how the two of us think, and what we are interested in. Together, the pieces are complementary and we're better--and smarter--as a team than as just two individuals.
Koff Downton Abbey Koff
There are so many movies about Henry VIII and his wives. I assumed that they were popular with women. I am quite surprised to find out that men were the target audience.
I have a friend who is active in DAR - which implies to me an interest in history - although I guess an interest isn't the same as being "obsessed". I enjoy reading and music and I love my cats, but I don't think I'm obsessed with any of those things.
I'm less interested in what specific thing someone is obsessed with than I am curious about the difference between people who have a passion about something/obsession and those who tend not to.
Women tend to be more obsessive about historical periods, especially those featuring distinct opulence and fashions they enjoy, such as Victorian and Edwardian periods.
Women tend to care about periods of history that featured notable opulence and fashions they find attractive, such as Victorian or Edwardian England.
I was going to ask if JCO was being transphobic... but If i mean to take the subject seriously enough to say #LeaveTheKidsAlone and no judgement about trans is a tenable, uncontradictory position, then I shouldn't throw the transphobic label around just for laughs.
Does that mean I'm not standing with Dave Chappell anymore?
I don't know yet.
I'm trying to make sense of this “we’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children” part.
Maybe trans and drags are not the same? I don't know.
" ... why anyone ... becomes "obsessed" ... "
One out of the eight billion or so humans that live on this earth ... how likely is it that no human on this earth becomes this obsessed with the Titanic? This guy wasn't the first to take this ride. He was just one of the first to die in the act.
I turned my wife into a Gettysburg enthusiast.
We just got back from our second visit 10 days ago.
I have quite a few books on Civil War battles, but she would rather watch the movies like "Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals".
It's good to have detractions from everyday life.
A lot of women are obsessed about the history of their past failed relationships.
It’s like a lot, lot.
Handmaid’s Tale? Lol
Royal Weddings?
I knew a lady that was obsessed with Hitler. Totally obsessed. And WWII. Obsessed. And transgender issues. Her name was Gary.
Sally small block said,
"I also find it funny that only a woman could get away with writing something like this, to suggest that women have a lack of curiosity about historical events, which, of course, is far superior to men and their inexplicable obsessions that just end up getting people killed."
No. Women become obsessed with men then vote for them and they get other men killed. Quit voting Democrat.
Tudorcon. Lots of women get really into certain historical events and periods. I can't picture many of them choosing to get into that submarine as tourists though.
I'm glad that there are all kinds of history-obsessed people. They make incredible events and exhibits. Kudos to them all.
Two points or questions:
1. There is a long standing cartoon "meme" (we didn't call it "meme" back then) of a man visiting a psychiatrist with the mistaken belief that he (the patient) is Napoleon. Is there any similar meme for women obsessing about being (say) Emmeline Pankhurst or Rosa Parks?
2. Men identify with historical figures (even anonymous figures like civil war soldiers) because the historical figures were men. There are a small number of women reenactors, but then were a very small number of women involved in the civil war in any capacity.
Men (rather women) obsess about the Titanic because men played the big roles in the original drama: Men designed and built the ship; men bragged about the historical nature of the ship; men sailed the ship and failed to sail it safely; men stood aside to let women and children first on the lifeboats. Men were the biggest idiots; men were the biggest heroes. There is almost nothing in the Titanic saga on which a woman can find a story of pride or embarrassment.
Women are far more likely to get involved with the latest fad. Wicca, for example, is almost totally female. IMHO- and having known a few males involved- male involvement is for easy access to sexual, for males not to discriminating about their sexual partners looks or sanity.
The trans fad among children is driven almost exclusively by white women engaged in extreme Munchausen by Proxy, willing to destroy their children’s lives for social approval.
Are there women obsessed with bits of history? One of my multi-day visits to the Gettysburg battlefield with the local Scout troop was especially educational as we had a local (to our area, not Gettysburg) female historian along who provided a lot of context to what transpired over those few days. She’s published articles in scholarly journals on the subject. I’d say that counts as an obsession.
I had one distant relative KIA on day 1, and 2 others with the same surname die during the battle or from their wounds in the following days. Didn’t know that at the time. All for the losing side. Related Union troops involved in the battle survived.
Oates is wrong on this. There are MANY women both (within and outside academia) who are "obsessed" with various historical eras, events, personalities, etc. I lead tours of Anglo-Saxon sites in England and Viking / saga sites in Iceland, and the attendance is pretty close to 50/50, and for every wife smiling and going along with her husband's history obsession, there's a husband smiling and going along with his wife's history obsession. (If I can figure out how to get the "going along" person interested in some aspect of the tour, that tour is a success).
This doesn't mean that the more abstract mini-heresy she seems to accept: that men and women, on average, might like different things, or approach them differently. She's absolutely correct there, and it's so weird that this even stands out: for the entire previous history of the human race before 1960, zero people would have been surprised by the idea that men and women, on average, had different interests.
It is well-understood, by people who work with them, that unlike, say, steel, carbon fiber composites are weakened by cycles of compression and relaxation.
Is this not also true of steel, just with more cycles? I am NOT an engineer, but we've all heard of metal fatigue - does it not apply to steel, only more brittle / less malleable metals? Aluminum, as in plane fuselage? This is absolutely a real question that I'll take up with Wikipedia if the engineers herein don't respond.
Also: Mary Renault? Would she agree, as a female novelist who wrote compellingly about past times? (I got a little obsessed with Alexander the Great in high school thanks to her... Didn't even care that she presented him as pretty unequivocally gay.)
And: John McPhee! As a long-ago geologist who loves good writing, I still remember the thrill I felt when I first read Basin and Range. Wow, I loved that guy. I should reread...
Women tend to care more about people than about things. Men tend to care more about things than about people. Lots of exceptions, though, but still women talk about relationships, and men talk about engines.
Before it was an event, the Titanic was just a thing. An old, famous thing on the bottom of the ocean. Those men wanted to see the famous thing first hand, and it cost them their lives.
hmmm... guess she hasn't read any historical fiction lately (much of it written by women).
Three saddest words
https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/06-11-2015/books-book-of-the-week-the-three-saddest-words-in-the-english-language-said-gore-vidal-are-joyce-carol-oates
While their historicity is dubious, young women (and some young men) regularly leave letters addressed to Juliet Montague, nee Capulet, which, at 5OO years removed, seems fairly obsessive to me.
"Is there any similar meme for women obsessing about being (say) Emmeline Pankhurst or Rosa Parks?"
No, but there are tons of examples of them obsessing about being Kim Kardashian, Marilyn Monroe, or Taylor Swift. You do hear about some of them obsessing about Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Evita, but once again that's less about history and more about glamour and politics that benefits them directly.
More seldomly you will run into women who are psychologically invested in re-enacting characters like Joan of Arc or Marie Antoinette, but this usually takes the form of method acting rather than genuine psychopathy.
It seems to me that history is one of the rare things that men and women have a similar interest in.
Jamie,
Steel fatigues. Take a coat hanger or paper clip and bend it back and forth a dozen times or so. First it will get hot at the point of bending, eventually it will break.
Different alloys are better at resisting this but all do it.
All materials fatigue to the point of weakness and eventual failure. There may be some exceptions but I cant think of any offhand.
Even flexible materials like rubber or cloth will fatigue eventually. Because they are flexible, it can take a long time and they will probably fail in other ways before they fatigue.
As I mentioned before, the problem with composites is that they are generally stronger in tension (pulling) than in compression. That makes them good for airplanes where the inside pressure is greater than outside.
Think of an aluminum soda can. That thin aluminum shell will hold 100PSI or more of internal pressure. The internal pressure prevents it collapsing. Try crushing one before it is open.
Once it is open, it has no compression strength and a 4 year old can push the sides in.
That is the composite submarine with 1,000 or so atmospheres trying to crush it.
John LGB Henry
If women were consumers of history they wouldn't be committed to the fall of Rome repeating itself in America.
I was once in conversation about a gig in Patagonia. It never happened but if it had, there were expeditions from there to antarctica. Had I gone, I was fully intending to go to antarctica.
Not so much because I care about seeing it, though it would be cool. I mainly wanted to be able to say "Well, when I was in Antarctica a few years ago..."
Don't we all have a desire to do something few other people have done? For bragging rights if nothing else.
I suspect this urge is stronger in men than in women. Just a suspicion though. What say the women here?
John LGB Henry
It’s a stereotype with a lot of basis in fact that men are more interested in history, and more likely to become obsessively focused on some historical subject. It’s also true that we’ve all met some women who have a genuine interest in professional sports, and we all met some women who have a genuine interest in some historical topic. I can think of a female relative who is very interested in genealogy and that spills over into interest in the history related to the countries of origin of the ancestors she studies. Stereotypes about male or female behavior or something like statistical averages of male height or upper body strength versus female. We all know that men on average or taller and stronger than women, on the other hand we all know very tall women and we know women who are very athletic and strong, more so than an average man. The average is still the average, and the general truth is still generally true.
"Blogger JaimeRoberto said...
Maybe it's not an obsession with a specific historical event, but women do seem to be obsessed with the British royal family and its history.
My mother is indeed obsessed with the history of whoever was reigning over all or parts of the Isles from when the Romans left to present day. And all their friends and enemies in the nobility and clergy, foreign and domestic. All the politics, and the details of life in the 8th or 14th or whateverth century, and the salacious gossipy stuff, she loves all of it.
(Eaglebeak)
Yes. When I was in 7th grade (so 11-12 years old) I became obsessed with World War II and began reading everything I could get my hands on--which I continued to do for the next 30 years, to the point that I could (and did) write and publish all sorts of articles about the war, Nazi Germany in particular.
So, yes.
(Eaglebeak)
Yes. When I was in 7th grade (so 11-12 years old) I became obsessed with World War II and began reading everything I could get my hands on--which I continued to do for the next 30 years, to the point that I could (and did) write and publish all sorts of articles about the war, Nazi Germany in particular.
So, yes.
Oates is implying that men's interest in history is a bad thing. Why?
There are many female historians and historical fiction authors, so the answer is yes there are instances of female obsession with history.
First you have to assume that Joyce Carol Oates isn't nuts. She's famously nuts.
Several commenters have taken me to task for purportedly letting the Titan people off the hook for the disaster, and not understanding material fatigue cycles. I did not do that. My point was that the Dad relying on the facts that the thing had made previous trips and that the CEO was making the trip with them was not "hubris," and that it was his and his son's horrible bad luck to have been led to believe it was (relatively) safe.
Like the bad luck of the passengers on the Hindenburg, for those of you who have read your McPhee. Or, as John Henry points out, the bad luck of the Titanic passengers. The "experts" screwed up.
Of course, hp still thinks they deserved it because they were rich.
Wait, I thought all good-thinking people knew there were no differences between men and women.
To understand the actions of the people on the submersible, one has to understand the actions of people with enormous wealth. I admit to myself that's something I will not get, and accept that I'll never really know.
My wife is certainly interested in historic eras. Particularly the Vikings.
I base this on the numerous hours she spends watching dirty, sweaty half naked men swinging long swords on TV,
Prof. M. Drout said...
I'm a fan of your lectures. I'm hoping to be one of those people who goes on the tour you lead (one day!).
My wife is obsessive with the Outlander books and shows (Heughan! Gesundheit) and their spinoffs into Scottish history (Heughan! Bless you) and distilled peat liquors (Heughan! You should see about that, dear).
She would tape posters to the walls if I let her.
Linda Colley, Catherine Merridale, Joan DeJean--fine lady historians all. And that's just ones I've praised here.
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