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Comment by knighthack | Hacker News Reader

> They go on for several years with several people, usually women, making the sacrifice and doing what needs to be done.

While I agree with most of what's said above, the proposition about "usually women, making the sacrifice" is dubious at best, if not untrue.

In any society or commune few will lead - the rest will be workers or followers. These will be both men and women, and they will both suffer from necessary sacrifices. Women are not a special class of people in those societies, and to claim that they suffer more prejudice is the usual sort of feminist-speak that has nothing to do with the reality of such communes.

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I'm the last person to be charged with "feminist-speak" and I actually agree that it's usually women who end up in these undesired jobs.

Most communes and cults that give up money end up using some other form of control. NXIVM is a recent example, but most of these fringe movements discover women are more useful and less trouble than men.

Especially given that men have taken on tasks far more dangerous and difficult than doing the dishes and have always died sooner.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-men-often-die-earlie...

And the same is still true. Something that I hear no feminist talking about is the gap in occupational injury deaths, which is massive. We should really start working on it for more equal society.

I have seen feminists to push for women to be allowed in combat roles. I have seen them also promoting less gendered toys and occupations in child stories. Meaning also more cars for girls. Meaning driving, being cop as occupation for women too.

More equality here would mean exactly that - women driving and being on the streets more, women working in late money handling shifts, women in combat positions.

Then there are hazards in occupations where physical force is an actual factor - construction and some farming jobs. Hazard here is mostly from overextending people. There, I dont see employers running for someone physically weaker. But then again, there is feminist push to promote technological/construction interests to girls.

Tho in the latter category of jobs, unionization and regulation would do a lot for safety on itself. Then again, same can be said about driving. Driving jobs often push people toward a lot of hours and risk, whether you are tired or not. More regulation about how much you can drive would do a lot.

> More regulation about how much you can drive would do a lot.

Isn’t there already a ton of quite stringent regulation around how long you can drive? Or do you mean outside of the context of activities regulated by the FMCSA in the US?

I know you're joking— but I wish you wouldn't.

Encouraging women to become, say, crab fisherwomen, would just result in more humans being maimed and killed. For the same reason that female soccer players tear their ACL at shockingly higher rates than male ones.

This is kind of complicated, because men die sooner even if they don't do dangerous tasks. And in contemporary communes, there pretty often are not all that many super dangerous tasks to do. These communes dont have soldiers going into wars nor miners spending days in dust and dark.

There used to be difference in terms of men drinking and smoking much more then women, but that is equalizing too.

Basically, even if men dont do anything dangerous, dont drink nor smoke more, they still tend to die sooner.

And if we are talking about past, it gets complicated too due to huge amount of childbirth deaths and poverty affecting women and men differently (in some periods, prostitution being only realistic employment for single women basically which comes with its own risks). Meaning, it was not always the idylic family situation people tend to imagine when making these comparisons.

My source is https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-men-often-die-earlie...

What is yours?

The article you sent literally confirms what I said. It lists multiple reasons, more dangerous jobs being only one. The rest are mix of lifestyle and genetics.

As for smoking and alcohol, those statistics are easy to find too. Both contemporary and past ones.

Also, article starts with premise that author expects to live shorter then his wife - but he has extraordinary safe job.

The smoking and alcohol are copes for stress that they wouldn’t have without the added risk to their health and emotional well being.

"nor miners spending days in dust and dark"

Then how do they get metal?

I’ve never lived in or studied commune living but do you or the GP have nonfiction sources? I’m hesitant to take either of your claims as truth without them given my own lack of knowledge. Thank you!

I wondered about that, also. I'm pretty sure that some societies and communes are democratic, where the people make choices as a group, not having specific leaders that they are obligated to follow. I think that Quakers would be an example of one such society, they govern by what some call consensus based decision making.

I know it's anecdata, but from my experience cooking at a local church it was almost always the women who would come and help clean up after service. Not just women, of course, but they were definitely over-represented on that front.

Have you ever been a dinner party? Perhaps several? Observe who clears away the dishes.

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