Peak Feminism? Now Air Conditioning is Sexist
Everything is sexist!
I honestly do not know where to start with this insanity. Penelope Green at The New York Times asked in a recent article if Americans need an air conditioner.
The Atlantic staff writer Taylor Lorenz jumped onto this notion by declaring air conditioning is sexist because, of course, it is.
Green noted in her article a study performed by Nature.com that stated “how building temperatures, once set to the comfort preferences of 1960s-era men in suits, disregard the ‘thermal comfort’ of female staffers.”
However, Green pointed out that building managers control the temperatures, often relying on industry standards set by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers. These standards suggest 67 to 82 degrees Fahrenheit.
I give Green credit because she shows both sides of the story, including one business in Philadelphia that tried to go a summer without air conditioning, which failed because employees complained about the sweltering summer heat.
Here is a significant portion of Green’s article (emphasis mine):
A byproduct of the experiment was the evolution of the survey process, now a cloud-based app called Roast, that revealed something rather illuminating: While there were slightly more survey responses from female staff, the differences in thermal comfort between sexes were insignificant. (Are women just more inclined to participate in surveys?)
It turns out gender is less a predictor of thermal comfort than other factors, like age, activity level or, tellingly, the relative wealth of the society surveyed, according to studies conducted by researchers at the Center for the Built Environment at the University of California, Berkeley.
People in countries with lower G.D.P.s, said David Lehrer, the communications director and a researcher there, are more comfortable with a wider range of temperatures. It appears that first world discomfort is a learned behavior.
Green wrote that at The Times management keeps the temperature between 72 and 74 degrees, which they based off on suggestions from employees. Men preferred 70 degrees while women wanted it 2 degrees higher.
Is that sexist? Lorenz thinks so.
Air-conditioning is unhealthy, bad, miserable, and sexist. I can’t explain how many times I’ve gotten sick over the summer b/c of overzealous AC in offices. #BanAC https://t.co/QPME4lMTVS
— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) July 7, 2019
Let me provide some reality for Lorenz. Yes, most buildings do have temperatures too low. I often bring a cardigan with me when I go anywhere in the summer.
I also believe too cold is better than too hot. You can always warm up, but if the temperature is too hot, you can strip naked and still not cool off enough.
It is not sexist to have a building set to cold. Are some too cold? Yes. But it’s not sexist or to oppress women.
It’s getting old and frustrating seeing women scream SEXISM whenever they encounter criticism or something that makes them uncomfortable. The patriarchy must want to oppress them and force them to stay at home barefoot in the kitchen. Whatever.
[Featured image via YouTube]
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Comments
Air conditioning must be responsible for all the whiney snowflakes that seem to be everywhere.
So take away only their air and let them melt?
I like air conditioning
Thanks, Obama.
Which would the complainer prefer – having to put on a sweater to accommodate her own personal preference, or seeing the overweight salarymen running around shirtless and sweaty?
“I can’t explain how many times I’ve gotten sick over the summer b/c of overzealous AC in offices”
Really? You’re a “journalist” and you can’t state a simple number? Maybe because you’re a lying, gaslighting, agitating Marxist hack, huh?
There’s an old technology called “sweaters” they should look into. I know, it covers up the cleavage but “Hey! What are you looking at you pig!”
You can’t win.
Men keep the AC temp set low as it causes women’s nipples to become erect. Really. Women just need to cover their nipples with a bandaid strip.
If I recall correctly, Jimmy Carter once had something to say about that.
The link between cold weather and colds and flu is that these diseases tend to spread more when people are confined indoors.
How much research must a journalist do to discover that “I was cold and then I caught a cold therefore my being cold caused the cold” is bad logic and lacks scientific support?
Not true. The cold virus thrives in the nose, where it’s slightly cooler than body temperature. Cold weather facilitates the infection. For this same reason, one of the body’ defenses against the common cold is to run a fever.
Reference please.
Free State Paul is 100% wrong and the commenter pointing out the lack of relationship between temperature and disease is 100%right.
I can forgive an ignorant comment from someone with no research credentials. A journalist should not get the same leeway.
The New Green Deal is a plan to return to 18th century living standards and then they will attack wood-burning stoves and fireplaces. Of course, it has been reported that around 60% of the population will starve to death from ending oil productions. No telling how many will die from the resulting petroleum-linked pharmaceuticals shortage either. It’s all one big catastrophic downward spiral into that giant utopian abyss. It’s all for the good.
I think 60% deaths is too low an estimate.
I would buy 90% or 95%. Not too many people are capable of real self-sustenance. Cutting down firewood, spinning cotton for fabric for clothing, raising hogs, chickens and a cattle….
I just don’t see many surviving without modern power.
The left goes after air conditioning regularly. The excuses change (uses too much energy; chemicals used are bad for the environment; symbol of white oppression because white countries have it and darker skinned ones don’t, etc) but the targeting is nearly continuous.
I think they’ve gotten the idea that AC is a sign of affluence, and that’s what they really hate (in other people).
Just as the left attacks the suburbs, with only the ostensible reasons changing from one decade to the next.
Perhaps Mz Lorenz has discovered that her male companion(s if any) has no interest in sex when the temperature in the house (more likely rent controlled apartment without A/C) is 95 with the Temperature/Humidity (Heat) Index at 105, and that is just fine with her.
They seem to have no problem reproducing in places where it is above 100 all the time. In fact, they seem to do it at a higher rate.
I wonder what she thinks of the little blue pill?
At first I typed “clue pill,” and I am certain it would have worked just as well. 😉
I think it depends on the baseline temperature.
Those people who are used to AC in the summer, then it’s too hot to do anything. But, if you don’t have AC, then your body adapts to the temperature and it’s not a problem.
I suspect that those who do not have AC are not inclined to complain about the heat.
I wonder if there’s a seasonal pattern to births in such places.
It’s Too Darn Hot!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlMWW4R1ZBM
Apart from certain types of rooms where sensitive electronic equipment is, I’ve yet to work in an office that is “too cold.” Usually they are too warm, if anything.
What a whining bozo she is.
Well, I used to joke that the office I worked in saved up by heating less during the winter so they could cool more during the summer. Also called it a meat locker some times. But, you know, there are such things as sweaters or shawls not to mention lap blankets (usually wrapped around my feet). But given all that – here in Florida I prefer working a building over air conditioned than one with no air conditioning at all
Sexism is sexist. And, my saying so is sexist as well. And stuff.
“Sexist men and their… *shuffles deck* Air Conditioning!” – NYTimes
“I also believe too cold is better than too hot. You can always warm up, but if the temperature is too hot, you can strip naked and still not cool off enough.”
I’ve said this too many times, if you’re a bit chilly, you can always put on more clothes.
Okay, the so-called reporter is a useless nag, but in practice, it can be too cold, it is too cold, and I REALLY wish in the summer I could go to work in summer clothes and not freeze, and when I leave work, feel like a melting chunk of ice.
However, the so-called reporter is a useless nag AND fool, and there you go.
I don’t like to dresser warmer in the summer. It’s summer!!!!!!
Yes, I like the thermometer set at 79 degrees, winter and summer.
Wow, see, this is an interesting exercise. To me 79 is crazy for both summer and winter. It’s too warm for both, but that’s just me. I like to be cool, especially when I’m sleeping, but any time is good. I live in Florida, so I don’t even use my heat unless it’s one of the very rare cold snaps we get that threaten my water pipes. In which case, I will grudgingly turn it on to about 65. I love my cute pink flannel jammies and my flannel sheets and my yummy fluffy comforter. I’m a bundle up kind of person.
The difference here is that we can share our preferences and “ooh and ahh” over them but not feel compelled to force our personal preference on the entire nation, in their own homes. This is one of the many many things that separates the left from the right. I’m happy with my personal temp choices, you’re happy with yours. Yay! What’s to quibble? Oh, right, the left wants to enforce their own personal preference on us all. Um, no, thanks.
If you work a little, you can stay warm.
Listen, Firewatch, I’m a lawyer, I do paperwork. And not lifting the reams into the back of the truck kind of paperwork!
79?
Surely you’re joking. Even my 82-year-old mother stops at 75.
Premenopausal women have red blood cell levels lower than men and this results in fee!ing “cold” at higher temps. It isn’t sexism, it’s sex. Some time recently we must have reached the threshold where ignorance has become endemic.
Well that’s not true…women do have fewer red blood cells but it has nothing to do with body temp or even feeling cold.
Healthguyfsu…hum…I guess those that taught me were all wrong. Shall we compare notes on medical education?
Another point is that women are more sensitive to cold. About 40 percent have Raynaud’s phenomena with significant vasospasm of extremities to cold stimuli.
Green and Lorenz should visit New Orleans for a 5 month summer.
This was my thought, too. I’m from Florida, and when I moved to Massachusetts for over a decade, I never got over their swooning whining when the temperature hit 90 degrees. It was the end of the world. A heat wave to end all heat waves.
Because not everyone in that part of the U. S. has AC (not even relatively cheap window units), people would literally die from the “heat waves” (apparently three consecutive days over 90 is a “heat wave”; we have four month heat waves in Florida, I guess). It was really kind of tragic. I get them being a bit freaked out by hurricanes (that are tropical storms by the time they get that far north, usually), but come on, normal summer heat. This freakout happened every single summer I was there (again, for over a decade).
It was like the first snow fall’s numerous auto accidents . . . they all acted like they’d never seen snow before. Every single year. No wonder New Englanders talk about the weather so much, they can’t remember what it’s like from one season to the next, let alone from one year to the next. /smh
I moved to Chicago from DC, and I was charmed to see how Chicago handled both heat and cold.
During a heat wave, they would send people around to check on the old folk who lacked air conditioning and might not be drinking enough water. They would open up the libraries as air-conditioning stops. They opened up the swimming pools and hired lifeguards at night because the kids kept hopping the fences.
During dangerous cold spells, they would send out warnings to clear the streets at night, and follow up with trucks to pick up the people that sleep on the grates.
Chicago was and is corrupt as hell, but they do some things extraordinarily well.
They did many of these things in Mass, too. They’d open pools to the public, let people sit in fountains, and the like. People would check on their elderly neighbors, though frankly, I never got that. What are they going to do when they get there and the elderly person is sitting in a sweltering inferno? Hand the old guy or gal a bottle of lukewarm water and smugly conclude they are a good person? Hmph.
You want to help the old, the sick, the frail during a heat wave, then during the heat wave is not the time to do it. This is the same in Florida where we are often threatened by hurricanes. The time to plan for a hurricane is not when it’s barrelling down on you. Instead of “checking on elderly neighbors” who are already overwhelmed by the heat, why not pitch in with your neighbors and get then a window AC unit they can put in their sitting or bedroom? Do this in early spring, and you won’t have to “check on” them in the middle of life-threatening crisis. Window ACs can be had for a couple hundred bucks these days, so why don’t these elderly people’s kids get them one? My mom bought my grandad one (back when they were practically an investment cost-wise), and while he only turned it on when the wax was melting on the table candles, at least we knew they were capable of beating the heat.
The left loves a good crisis and any excuse to pretend to care. This happens every single summer. “Good neighbors” and family should not need to be urged to help one another when the crisis hits.
Sending trucks to gather homeless people during below freezing cold snaps is another thing that drove me nuts in Mass (they do this in Boston, too). Where are those trucks and the mysteriously open–usually not state-run–places for these homeless at any other time? Oh, we saved some homeless people from freezing to death … and then, when the temp soared to a positively balmy 34 degrees, sent them right back out to their fave street grate. What Samaritans.
Eh I checked Lorenz’s twitter feed. She says she does this every year to ‘trigger’ the men and point and laugh at the (her words not mine) ‘morons’. Apparently she think everyone who responds is male, no matter their twitter handle.
As my dear grandmother would say, Bless her heart.
The late Alister Cooke had a snippet on “heat waves” which were doing off many older French citizens at the time. Any prolonged temperatures 20 degrees over expected ambient was the definition.
It was 90 in Wasilla yesterday and 82 inside the apartment I stay at. Right now selling ice to Eskimos would work. A fixed high pressure system and 18 hours of sunshine add up fast. It is also muggy… both temp and humidity way up there and unusual for this area of Alaska… feels like being back in Minnesota. You betcha..
Well, gee, alaskabob, you know the solution: more taxes! That’ll nip these heat waves in the bud. And stuff.
True…. how true. “We haven’t done enough for…. and need more funding.”
By the way, we have a 100,000 acre fire ongoing up here with major smoke. Containment sometime in late August.
https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/6387/
You really think they’re being genuine when they complain about air conditioning?
They’re useful idiots of the left, with the latest stupid idea to cause conflict, misery, chaos and the destruction of our way of life so they can seize power and loot the nation.
May a window air conditioner fall on their heads.
Feminism peaked with human sacrificial rites. It has been on a progressive path ever since.
This reminds me of the Instapundit’s quip about fixing the problems in DC: simply turn off all the AC there. The town will empty and America will do better.
And I guarantee everyone that these same women would be bitching about it being too hot if the thermostats were raised to a higher temperature or the air conditioning was turned off completely. You simply cannot win with these people. And you shouldn’t even try to.
FYI: I worked in an office where the secretaries had window cubes.
In the winter, the wind would whistle through the cracks of the glass, and they would nudge the thermostat up to compensate. In the summer, the sun would shine in on them and they would nudge the thermostat down to keep from cooking.
So in the summer, I had a hooded sweatshirt at my desk, and in the winter, I had to get a fan (because we were not allowed to wear shorts).
I’ll admit it’s better than the basement office we had with one single AC vent that had enough pressure to knock papers off desks at the other end of the room and reduce the whole area to meat lockerhood. (The office engineers unscrewed the grate, stuck in a piece of cardboard, and poked holes in it with a pencil until we reached a fair compromise temp.)
Diffent people prefer different temperatures. There is a biological reason why. Your body constantly produces heat and has to get rid of it by radiating it to the environment. Sweating accelerates the radiation because the heat is taken up by water molecules which then break through the surface tension of the water and take away more heat. The lower the temperature of the air in the surrounding environment the faster you radiate heat. Clothing is an obvious additional way we control our heat radiation, generally reducing it to keep us warm. The key thing is that heat is essentially produced by the volume of your body and radiated through the surface. As any shape, including a body, gets larger its volume increases with the cube of its linear average of growth but the surface area only increases as the square. What this means is that the bigger you are inside (roughly the more you weigh) the more heat you have to radiate but you have relatively less surface area than lighter people so you need a lower air temperature to radiate away the heat. Big people will in general prefer cooler rooms to maintain their body at equilibrium temperature. Physically active people doing physical work (which generates heat) will in general prefer cooler rooms for the same reason. Men are in general 5 inches taller and 40 pounds heavier than women and in some cases are more likely to be doing the physical work and for these reasons in general prefer a cooler temperature. The difference in range needed to maintain equilibrium is relatively small – about 5 degrees – but it is real. In general, it is easier for smaller people to just wear another layer than it is for larger people to strip down in most office, so the natural preference is to orient the temp on the cool side. But if the workforce is overwhelmingly of one gender or another it makes sense to adjust it up or down a couple of degrees to find the optimal median temp – then adjust the dress code accordingly.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why anyone downvoted Alpha!! He was merely describing facts!!!
Thanks for the support! I am a scientist. A big fan of facts and logic. I expect the downvote was from someone who had an ideological reaction. Ideologists in general are not big fans of facts or logic or science – even though they occasionally make false claims of scientific support. My pleasure comes from just laying out the things that thinking people can appreciate . . . . . and in the end I do not care a lot about the ideologists because in the end while they may have temporary victories, the world, the universe is based on facts and knowledge, and the ideologists pseudo-victories always collapse . . . . . economically they end in famine, in policy they end in failure. In the long run the mind wins, always.
C’mon. Leftist morons troll here regularly.
Because he didn’t use paragraphs?
(I didn’t down vote him, but I couldn’t get through the whole thing without paragraphs.)
This woman needs to spend 3 weeks in Central Florida in a house with no air conditioning & no attic fan. She is….uneducated….
Here in San Antonio, I’ve seen the temperature still near 100° two hours after sunset. Tonight, it’s 91° with sunset about ten minutes from now.
Johns Hopkins excels in medical research because they pay for the AC in the summer where options of going outside are to die from the heat or gunfire or both.
“She is….uneducated….”
When did that ever stop a useful idiot? Hooray for Hollywood.
Electricity is a male dominated resource and therefore should be eliminated. Go dry your hair in the sunshine.
I’ve worked in a number of law offices, where the men (including non lawyers) generally wear suits, and the women (mostly but not all, secretaries) wear what they please.
The men never got a pass to wear fewer layers because of the heat. Indeed, I was often treated to the sight of a gaggle of men putting on their jackets to go out in the DC summer heat. It’s true that some places have “casual Fridays,” something that never extended to short sleeved shirts for men.
If a woman shows up to that kind of workplace in a sleeveless summer dress and sandals, she deserves to shiver.
On Any Given Day at Any Given Establishment
Office/Home/Store, Temperature Up or Down Setting is Subject to Two Rules: Damned If You Do – Damned If You Don’t
When I was much, much younger, much, much more active, amd waaaaay more broke than I am today, I had a car with no AC, and a loft apartment with no AC. And the hottest days of summer bothered me very little. Stayed in the shade when I could, drank a Coke from the fridge, and all was fine.
Now I am old, and just as pathetic and sexist as all the rest of my privileged, homophobic, Nazi, racist, fascist, old white male peers. Must. Have. AC!
Hilarious and spot-on, MrSatyre Don’t you love how the young want to dictate our use of AC? This is not isolated to crazed “feminists,” the left has been on a years-long anti-AC crusade. The goal really is to eliminate all evidence of first world success and toss us back a couple centuries. Progressive really is regressive. In every arena, not just on AC . . . which they equate, alternately, with climate change, “social justice,” and a panoply of other ludicrous leftist notions only to undermine our culture, our heritage, and our civilization.
And like all regressive totalitarians, they intend to live in their air-conditioned marvelous mansions while the unwashed masses, their goal is at or around 90% of the populace, live in hovels barely fit for livestock. That’s always been the commie/socialist dream, and it still is.
Neither hitler, mao or stalin had air conditioning. No wonder they were genocidal.
Everyone has a constitutional right to their own personal climate control system.
It’s a known fact that civilization finally took complete control of it’s environment with the invention of A/C.
Without it certain industrial processes could not be achieved and commercial ultra fast computers would not be as fast or as powerful as they would burn up.
I wonder all the time; when do we finally go too far with all the insanity and irrationality?
Perfect example of why I, as a woman, much preferred working with men. I really hate girl drama.
It’s common knowledge that sweaty men and women aren’t sexy
Your average AC unit is sized for the hottest weather, so most of the time it’s oversized and therefore it over cools the room. Blames physics, not your mild-mannered engineer. Some of the easier ways to compensate for this fact are banned by the energy codes, all in the name of saving energy, which are being constantly tightened in spite of our ever increasing energy reserves. Our betters in the government know best, at least according to them.
If you have a right to free college, free health care, and housing, then lets add “simultaneous heating and cooling” to the list. Our motto can be: a thermostat in every room. Equal temperature rights for all!!!!
On a very personal level I am in agreement that A/C is Sexist as is the other component of HVAC – Heating.
Being the Sexist Pig that I am – and trying to provide for the family by saving some on energy costs so we can afford food and stuff like that – I hear year round complaints that the temperature is either too hot or too cold.
So my suggestions that we wear more or less clothing when we are uncomfortable in the house normally go unheeded.
One of my fondest memories is of a son who roamed around the house without a shirt on in the Winter claiming that he was cold!
Now his little son does the same thing!
LOL
I’m old enuf to remember when AC was a luxury even for businesses. Cars had those window panels in the front door you could angle to generate a breeze, families would buy wading pools for the kids, people would go to the movie theaters just as much for the AC as for the show. Summers could be miserable and unhealthily hot, and that was in a northern state.
Modern snowflakes who dis AC have no idea what life was like without it at need. I assume if you did a chart showing the overlap between those folks and the folks who think we’d be better off without requiring vaccinations there’d be considerable overlap.
Thank you for your concern, but no. Just nope. I’m fine with not suffering heatstroke if I’m active during the summer and fine with not being crippled or killed by preventable communicable diseases before my time, thank you very much.
The ones who don’t like the vaccinations are probably also the healthy ones who can adjust to temperatures and not need AC. Mankind somehow survived all those years before 1940 or so, when AC became available.
Remember when AC was the big draw for movie theaters? Remember movie theaters?
If air conditioning is sexist? – Oh well.
Life is not fair.
Freeze, you useful idiots.
Try working in an office with a multitude of computers an no AC. The computers don’t work very well in that sort of setting. Watching my computer at work due repeatedly due to stress from a malfunctioning HVAC has not helped my productivity.
Pfffft! I love how we pretend any of this absurd Feminism is even remotely legitimate! Men don’t even WEAR suits to work anymore. And where the men wear suits, the women do too! It’s not the 60s for God’s sake!
It has NOTHING at all to do with air conditioning or the temperature. It’s about control.
LOL. Obviously, SHE’s not hit menopause yet. 🙂
I respect Taylor Lorenz’s point of view, but she loses me at “sexist”. I cannot support someone who pulls that card without a damned good reason, and here there’s no reason.
Someone else should make the case on non sex-based criteria, and I would join them. I don’t like AC much either.
The places that I have been in where it seems too cold from the ac, have employees who are active, hustling , moving stock, lifting, bending, stacking, etc; it probably does not seem too cold to them.