Men had it rougher. Sorry
Movie tries to to make you feel sorry for the poor women who have to get married to a guy she might not like, and glosses over how men have to stay behind on the ship and die
shareIf you could pull your head out of your ass for one moment, you'd realize that the people who had it really rough were the poor who were locked below deck to drown!
They all faced horrible deaths, whether they were men, women, or children, knowing that their deaths were deliberate, and that the ship's officers thought it was perfectly okay to kill the poor to save the rich.
Far more men died on the Titanic Than women
shareThere were a lot more men than women on the Titannic, because the crew was all or almost all male. Ten seconds of googling tells me that there were 2200-odd people on the Titannic, 900-odd of whom were crew, and about 700 out of the 900 crew members died... presumably because they were like the steerage passengers and not rich enough to be granted a place in the lifeboats.
Now among the men who were considered worthy of a seat in the lifeboats, yes, there was a bit of social pressure to stay behind and let the women and children have the lifeboat seats, but what would happen to a man who flouted that explanation and took a seat? Diddly-squat, that's what! The odd dirty look or talk behind his back, that's all. And if he claimed to be in one of those boats that left the ship without every seat taken, not even that.
All true, but social convention of that time (and probably still today) would be women and children first, so as long as there were women and children not yet seated, no man would get a lifeboat seat.
I've heard that male passengers blithely took seats, that the legend that all the men honored convention and stayed behind so the women and children could have the lifeboat seats was a myth. If you would care to do some real research, or look up the statistics re the first-class and second-class passengers, you might have some real answers. How many of the 1st/2nd class passengers were adult men, how many were adult women? What percentage of adult 1st/2nd-class male passengers died, as opposed to adult women in the same cohort? If you look up those numbers, you'd know whether male passengers rich enough to be saved really had it worse than the women in the same group.
But I cant be arsed, and I'd bet my 401K that you can't either. Because you're the kind of person who'd rather complain than do any research, because doing research might take away one of your favorite complaints!
So to end my interaction with you, I'm again going to point out that about 75% of the nearly-all-male crew died, and about 100% of the steerage/3rd class passengers died, regardless of age or sex. They died because they weren't rich enough to be considered worth saving.
Wow, having a bad day? I stated a simple fact, and you go off on some tangent about things I didn't even say or believe for that matter.
Okay, so web searching (I assume it's correct - I'm not going to England to check the passenger manifest and compare it to death certificates issued) says that by percentage - 80% of the male passengers who boarded Titanic died while 25% of female passengers died that night. That stat excludes the crew which, like you say, is probably almost exclusively male and would skew the total numbers.
The percentage of men to women were probably the same in first and second class and probably skewed somewhat towards men in third, it still shows a significantly higher proportion of men (less crew) died than women.
It might have been even higher if they didn't manage to screw up the whole lifeboat loading procedure.
Since you came up with statistics that supported your troll hypothesis in a few minutes and didn't provide a link, I'm calling bullshit.
And bugger off troll as well.
Good challenge Otter. I'll endeavour to do the research and come back to you.
But before I do that, please bear in mind that one can highlight TWO things at the same time:
Socioeconomic privilege *and* gender privilege (in this case 'ironically' in favour of women...)
Highlighting that 'women and children' first is innately sexist *against* men, doesn't mitigate one's class anger, Otter.
Unfortunately, today, there's this fucked-up idea that one can't be a socialist/a class justice warrior *without* simping for RICH WHITE women...But NOTHING could be FURTHER from the truth...
So, how many rich men survived in relation to rich women/children, Otter?
And, assuming I'm *right* and hardly any men survived in relation to women, that means one of two things: that there *was* pressure on those men to stay behind in favour of their privileged wives and spoiled daughters, OR, *you're* right, and, thus, those men were *heroic* and did the honourable 'feminist' thing (admittedly, not *my* *egalitarian* feminism, but the *supremacist* 'women first' feminism that is the order of the day), by putting their precious princesses on a pedestal whilst *they* went down with the ship. Either way, surely feminists should be *celebrating* these men... 🤷♂️ Or does the 'problematic narrative' supersede any fair-minded praise for their actual heroism?
"Now among the men who were considered worthy of a seat in the lifeboats, yes, there was a bit of social pressure to stay behind and let the women and children have the lifeboat seats, but what would happen to a man who flouted that explanation and took a seat? Diddly-squat, that's what!"
I suggest you educate yourself before you form opinions out of thin air and assumptions.
There was a lot of social pressure and these rules were also enforced by the officers.
One officer, Lightoller, even went so far as to go for women and children ONLY, which he even stated during the inquiries.
We also know there have been gun shots fired as warning shots to keep the crowd under control during a moment where things escalated a little before people came to their senses again. So go tell me more about "diddly-squat" consequences when so many men deliberately refused a seat as long as women and children are on board.
The most famous example of these consequences is Ismay himself, who faced life-long repressions for taking a literally empty, unused seat not even taking that from anyone else, so go figure what people would think or perhaps even do when caught to men taking seats from women and children.
Long story short, the social pressure was immense, and so was the code of honor hundreds of men decided to follow that night, knowing it will mean their death.
In order of who had it worse:
The Poor [women and men] >>> Rich men >>> Rich Women
To the film's credit, and contrary to the OP, the film does address the privileges of the wealthy white women who survived during the scene where Molly Brown chides them for not returning to their drowning husbands (even if I could have done without the implicit pro-Aryan subtext, where dark and red-haired women, i.e. those more likely to be Jewish/ethnic, were portrayed as the 'bad' rich women, and the blonde women were portrayed as the good/innocent 'poor' women, but James Cameron, as brilliant a filmmaker as he is, is a blond white man of Celtic heritage, so it probably stands to reason that he's going to imply that his fellow *Aryans*, including blond, blue-eyed Leo, are the 'victims', whilst *dark* Greek-American Billy Zane is the 'villain' *sigh*... 🙄🤦♂️).
Still, like I say, credit to the film for exposing the REAL privilege in the world: RICH WHITE WOMAN privilege. I just wish he'd gone that one step further, and emphasised that it's blond, blue-eyed RICH WHITE WOMEN, who are the MOST privileged of the lot (but, like I say, I can only imagine that Celtic/Scottish-American James Cameron didn't want to offend his blond(e) blue-eyed forebearers... 🙄)
You realize this is pure fiction and none of that happened, right?
No one was locked below decks, that's one of many misconceptions and myths about the sinking but has been debunked a long time ago.
Also, not even in the movie any officer was "perfectly okay to kill poor to save the rich", none of that happened, neither in the real event, nor the movie. The steward(!) shown who refused to unlock the gate was not an officer and aside from that whole thing being made up anyways, his actions hardly speak for the officers and considering the real events that unfolded it is clear that the officers did not differentiate between poor and rich at all during the sinking and the list of survivors proves this further. They did all they could to save as many people as possible, class did not matter one bit during the sinking.
The fact that most people who died were from third class stems solely from the fact that the absolute majority of passengers were third class.
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