Bingle bongle dingle dangle

Men aged 19-24 were more likely to break lockdown, a majority of people aged 13-24 were found to be not complying with the hygiene rules.

Men and people under 25 were most likely to believe in Covid misinformation.

Not only is this vitriol towards middle aged women sexist and ageist (for want of a better word), but its also actively harmful, because a lot of people are viewing wearing masks as weak and compliant, which is one of the factors believed to be leading men to not wear masks. A lot of campaigns to get people to wear them are starting to look at the gender difference specifically, and flipping the genders like this is doing nothing but damage.

Also I would like to reiterate how honestly sexist it is that people are just automatically blaming women when all studies I’ve ever seen about demographics complying or not all are saying men are more statistically harmful to the covid prevention effort than women are. The age thing is ridiculous as well when young people are far more harmful.

Grandma, as the oldest girl, took on the maternal role when her mother died because that’s what girls and women are for and that’s how these giant families work: with the older girls providing childcare for the younger children until the younger girls become old enough to contribute as well. Then when she had a husband and kids of her own she was drugged out of her mind because being dissatisfied with being a wife and mother and doing nothing else meant you had some kind of mental problem. She was either sedated so she wouldn’t feel the crushing depression, or she was hyped on amphetamines to get her through the long pointless days.

Your mother never caught on that her own mother was unhappy, because the drugs smoothed her out and kept her from talking about her pain. Your mom used her newfound rights to go to college and get a job, because she was told that a liberated woman could have a family and a career and a husband who treated her as an equal. When her husband left it to her to handle the home and the child care, just like generations before him, your mother convinced herself it was her choice. When she was exhausted trying to balance her paid full-time work and her domestic tasks, and still wasn’t happy, she figured she just wasn’t liberated enough. She blamed herself for not being able to ~have it all~ like she was promised.

Pregnancy is long and painful. Childbirth is indescribably excruciating, often lethal (especially two, three generations ago). And if you lose multiple children after going through it multiple times, that isn’t exactly a reason to keep doing it… unless you’re not the one who has to endure it and you have another person who can do it for you.

I’d wager that women who went through childbirth 12+ times didn’t decide to do that of their own accord. They were legally understood to be the property of their husbands. They were socially understood to be incubators and domestic servants. They were barred from the public sphere – jobs, education, politics, etc. –  most had to marry to survive.