I’m really not! I read somewhere that men have exceptional gripping strength so in my opinion my spouse is contractually obligated to open jars for me. Which he does. And almost always when I fail or my grippy tool fails, he can do it.
I think that’s a pretty emotionally immature response. I think it’s common not just for men but any privileged group to check out of dismantling systemic oppression because they don’t like everything some subset of the group is saying, but to turn away and do nothing is not helpful to anyone.
That said, I’ve seen a lot of women say crazy shit over the years, but I’ve never seen any woman, ever, say men shouldn’t be strong or ambitious. I’ve seen them say they shouldn’t use their strength to bully women which is an entirely different thing. So if that’s the message guys are receiving I think it’s more likely some right-wing narrative reinforcing men’s general discomfort with women’s empowerment rhetoric than it is something women are actually saying. For my part, I want strong men using their strength for good. Define “strong” however you like.
Lol. I think it’s pretty obvious to me that jars are tight to prevent botulism and shelves are high because there’s no other place to put them.
Incidentally there was one jar not even my husband could open, that he gave to a large, burly friend to try, and he couldn’t do it, so we never, ever got the jar open.
It was a huge jar of sauerkraut. Can’t say I’m disappointed.
Lol I absolutely make my husband open jars when he’s around. My grip strength is non-existent. But if he’s not, I do usually find a way, or postpone the activity if it can wait for him. He hates when I do this, but when all else fails, I just grab a bottle opener and bend the lid. It releases the pressure and the lid pops off. I can bend the lid back into shape, or just transfer stuff to a mason jar if necessary. Life’s too short to struggle to get salsa, you know?
There are multiple types of tools available, as well as tricks such as running hot water briefly over the lid of a cool jar.
If there’s a much stronger or taller person handy – whatever their gender – who will give me a hand with something without giving me a hassle about it, sure, I’ll ask them for help. But if it needs doing and such a person isn’t handy, I’ll figure out how to do it myself.
Ayup.
And when tools are designed to fit men’s hands and not women’s – note that they’re still designed to fit men’s hands, even though some theoretical larger-yet hand would be able to get more leverage on them.
– A few years ago, I was taking down my market stand and had reached the point of taking the tent down, when a bystanding male decided that I must need the assistance of male muscle to get it into the truck. (It’s a professional model; it weighs about 75 lbs, though I don’t know whether he knew that, but it may have been obvious that it’s heavy.) I told him that I had this, I do it every week; but he was insistent. So, having gotten the tent into its bag, I stood back and told him he could go ahead and put it into the truck. I’m tired out by the end of market and didn’t have energy to argue.
At which point he said ‘I can’t put it in there by myself, I was offering to help you by lifting it together!’ To which I really should have said ‘well I can get it in there by myself, so get out of my way and let me do it’; but instead I took one end, he took the other – and he moved in a direction I wasn’t expecting, throwing both the weight and me off balance. We got it into the truck and I realized I’d pulled a muscle because of the unexpected weight shift. I was sore for three days.
Offer help if you want to, sure. But if the woman says ‘I’ve got this’ – get out of her way and let her do it.
Yup.
The thing is – you can be strong, and proud of your strength, without having to be stronger than some other category of human. You’re not as strong as a horse, or even a pony; let alone a truck or a forklift. Why do you have to be stronger than women – not some specific woman, but women in general – in order to be glad of your strength and willing to use it?
I know multiple meanings of the word “ambitious”. Some of them are indeed competitive – ambitious to be the one in charge, ambitious to be the one who wins the athletic competition, etc. But the one I find the most useful isn’t competitive at all – it’s a sense I learned many years ago from women working in vineyards. What they meant when they said somebody – women or man – wasn’t ambitious was that the person wouldn’t do anything useful on their own, but always had to be prodded into it. Somebody who was ambitious would see the job and get up off their ass and do the job; and if they didn’t know how would find out how. The job might or might not pay well or pay anything at all. It might be a job that gets respect or it might be one of the things that people only notice if it doesn’t get done. But if it needed doing, the person who was ambitious, in that sense, would get up and do it. And be praised for it – by the people who noticed that sort of thing. And those are the people who matter. Often they don’t matter financially; but they’re the ones who keep society functioning.
But it’s fine with you that most women live in a world of shelves and counters and chairs that are too high?
Why is it better for us to live with shelves that are too high than for you to live with shelves that are too low?
Jar lids are tight for a reason. The tools that can be used to remove them need to be made to fit a variety of hand sizes.
Some shelves are high because it’s possible to fit more shelves in the same floor space, and therefore more things on them, if they go up higher. The solution to that is stepstools and ladders and various other things that allow access to high shelves; not ‘all women must have a man around to do things for them’ (even leaving out that some women are taller than most men, and some men are shorter than most women). But some shelves are high because the designers were tall – there aren’t actually more shelves there, they’re just hung higher on the wall.
And again, I note – nobody builds shelves twenty feet high unless they’re also providing access to them: because then the men couldn’t reach them either. They’re not built tall in the abstract. They’re built to heights commonly convenient for men.
Now I want to try it! Did they try the hot water method?
– even more years ago: car had a flat tire. No men around. A couple of female friends and I couldn’t get the lug nuts off; not even by jumping on the lug wrench. We called a repair shop. The guy who came out said something along the lines of ‘girls! of course you can’t get the lug nuts off!’
He couldn’t get them off either. We stood there and laughed. Car had to be towed to the shop. Somebody had gotten too enthusiastic with a power wrench; the only way the nuts were coming off was with another power wrench (this was the 1970’s, that sort of power didn’t come in a battery.)
I worked in a kitchen whose counters were designed to fit the original tall male owner - 3 inches taller than usual. I was 5’2" at the time and had to stand on a plastic crate to roll out pastry dough.
If I’d had the money, I’d have counters designed to fit me. As it is, when the kitchen was pulled apart anyway to repair the walls, I had the upper cabinets hung lower than usual.
I roll out pastry dough on the kitchen table; which is a whole lot lower than the counters. (Though that wouldn’t work in a commercial kitchen, I don’t expect.)
Supposedly the standard kitchen counter height is designed around the assumption of 5’4"-5’8", which would be the range between the average height of women and the average height of men.
In the world, there are tasks that require so little strength/height that a child can do it, tasks that require the strength/height of a typical adult woman, tasks that require the strength/height of a typical adult man, and tasks that require more strength or height than any human. For the last set of tasks, we’ve designed equipment to reduce the required strength (and/or height) down to the range for which a typical man can deal - but why not reduce that further? A jar lid that a typical woman can open is not loose - it’s just easier to open. Someday, I’ll be old (some may think I’m old now), and won’t be able to open jars myself - and the same will likely happen to any man. Why not design things to make life easier for everyone. I’m willing to give up my advantage over smaller women (who I can currently open jars for, when they can’t) in that category. There may be some tasks for which there are good reasons to not make easy enough for all adults to do - but right now it seems like the default is “We’ve made it easy enough for a typical man to do - so we’re done.”
When i visited Japan, i realized i was the height of an average Japanese man. And it was awesome! Everything was at a convenient height. Before that, I’d never really understood the extend to which our built environment is built for men. My son, who is taller than i am, had to duck a lot.
But new jar lids are as tight as a vacuum seal makes them. Hot water can help. In a pinch, tapping the edge of the lid enough to break the vacuum always works. It’ll still be easy to screw on tight enough to keep the contents from spilling out, despite the slightly damaged lid. You just won’t be able to use it to vacuum seal again.
If its hard for an aging pair of eyes to read the print on the products sold on the store shelves, who designed them that way?
Who chose red and green for stop and go when a significant percentage (of men) are Red-Green color-blind? Yet, you will see folks putting an indicator light (LED) on a product that is RED for faults and GREEN to signal proper operation.
I had a discussion about this with a neighbor who is responsible for developing curriculum for the public schools, here. When I mentioned that there is likely one boy in each class who is color-blind, she challenged my assertion (after all, I’m just an engineer while she is trained for her position).
Some weeks later, I bumped into her, again, and she was chagrined to admit that she had asked the question of her on-line colleagues and was surprised to see it confirmed.
“How many red apples are there in this picture, Johnny?”
And, lets not get started about how little effort is expended to make things usable for The Blind, Deaf, Mute, Immobile, Aged, etc. All the results of conscious (but ignorant) design choices…
That counter’s the wrong height for the illustrated woman to do that work on.
The right height, for kneading dough or chopping things: you should be able to stand upright with the palms of your hands flat on the work surface and your arms straight.
Part of the issue is that the bottom of the sink should be at around that height; but the counters next to the sink need, obviously, to be higher, so they’ll be just above the level of the sink top, so any water that goes sideways, or from a dish drainer, drains into the sink. But most kitchens have all the counters at that height, even if it’s a large kitchen with lots of counter space; and that height is too high for many people, but most of them are so used to it that they don’t realize it. Or else they’re only making an occasional sandwich and using appliances, in which case it doesn’t much matter – the height may even be right for the appliances, depending on what they are.
But the upper cabinets are another matter. They’re generally hung a standard distance above the counters – which places the upper shelves out of reach of shorter people.
I’m able to open 90% of jars with these methods (although I don’t “tap” the edge, I bang it). When necessary, I use one of these, which I inherited from my mother. Never fails!
What I have trouble with is extra wide-mouth canisters with 5" lids. Too large to get a good grip on, and the doodad above didn’t work on that lid. When I worked for a wholesaler who sold them, we had a commercial customer come in imploring someone to please open one for her. It was a struggle even for the guy who managed it.
You can try a “belt/strap wrench” – but it is usually more hassle than it is worth. You can also opt for jars with wider mouths as small “caps” can be problematic to grip – especially as your hands age.
I tend to split bulk items into two or more (glass) jars, for storage. The larger quantity goes in a jar that I seal really tight. The balance goes into a jar (possibly the same size) that is only “gently” sealed. The thinking being that it will be consumed before the less effective seal has any real consequences.
In my childhood home, we had custom cabinetry built “on site”. They extended all the way to the ceiling (8+ ft). The extra height made for increased storage space. But, that increase was only accessible to tall folk.
My short, italian mother had a habit of keeping the dry pasta on the TOP shelf. Really? You think that’s a wise decision, given that we’re going to eat it pretty often?? (why don’t you just leave it on the counter, given the frequency that you access it!)
We’ve complained to the local public library about putting items on the BOTTOM shelf (which is essentially The Floor!). Older folks don’t bend quite as easily!
If you have kitchen stuff that’s only used a few times a year, that can actually be useful. But not everybody does; and I agree that it’s a terrible place to keep the pasta, at least unless nobody in the house likes pasta, in which case it’s still a terrible place to keep the pasta because you won’t realize it’s infested with something until the infestation spreads into everything eles.
They have to either put something on the bottom shelf, or else they have to throw out that many books. I’d rather they put some of them on the bottom shelf. Also, it makes the shelves less tippy; though I suppose that these days they’re screwed into the wall or into each other.
They could put the children’s books down there; except that in every library I’ve ever been in, the young children’s books are in a separate area.
How often do you (she) make cannoli? Or, stuffed artichokes? Or, drag out the holiday glassware? Why not keep the artichoke stands and cannoli tubes up, out of the way, to make room for other, more frequently accessed, items in more accessible places?! Does the glassware HAVE to be kept with the everyday glassware?? Surely you’ll remember that you put it “someplace special” when that time of year rolls around…
They replaced the taller bookshelves with shorter ones (to make the space look larger!) and therefore lost a couple of adult-height shelves in each unit.
Then, folks started complaining that more material was moving onto the bottom shelves (that had previously been accommodated higher up).
Now, the shelving units remain shortened – and the lower ~15 inches is left empty.
The material on these shelves is intended for adult audiences – or, at least young adults. Children materials are kept on shelving units that are only 3 ft tall so that even tiny tots can access their contents. (just like putting children’s breakfast cereal low where the kiddies can pester their folks to buy it!)
The people making the INITIAL decisions are obviously not thinking about how the space is used. Would you rather have a clear view across the entire library from “average adult height” – or, would you rather have more available materials occupying that space?? If you’re interested in a view, step outside…
