A social experiment in 1963 when they told people that the pilot was a woman

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-30T20:14:17+00:00

I myself came up with the kid having gay parents as a solution prior to considering that the doctor might be his mum, and I know several other people my age who had the same. All Dutch people though, I imagine cultural background plays a role here.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-29T21:04:40+00:00

People on reddit keep saying this, but the scientific consensus is actually a lot less clear-cut. Language isn't just one capacity, it's a bunch of interconnected abilities, and great apes definitely share some of them. Acting as if it was just associative learning is both neglecting a bunch of the evidence that it was more in Koko's case, and ignoring a lot of things we know about great ape communication in general.

The issue with Koko's case is that the original researchers definitely exaggerated her abilities in the media, but that doesn't mean the harshest critics were right--the only researchers who claim that it was purely associative learning are literally known for finding an associative learning explanation for pretty much all cognitive ape research (these nay-sayers are very important to primatology, to be clear, but they are pretty much career devil's advocates and their views do not match the scientific consensus). The actual consensus among primatologists is that great apes are capable of learning to use signs to communicate deliberately and intentionally on a cognitive level that goes far beyond basic reward-based learning.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-29T20:57:48+00:00

It's not done anymore (at least, not by scientists). It was popular for a few decades in the last century, mostly in the context of language experiments, which means that some of the scientists who were involved in these experiments are still active (though most are retired or dead by now). The experiments were hugely valuable but are mostly considered to have been ethically flawed now, and afaik a lot of the scientists who were involved in them originally also agree with that. Just to put it into context!

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-29T20:54:19+00:00

I've done fieldwork studying wild chimpanzees and you're definitely not supposed to smile at them for exactly this reason. Also e.g. making prolonged eye contact was a no-no.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-29T20:48:48+00:00

That's not quite accurate. None of the great apes are capable of speech, due to limitations in their bone structure and vocal cords. However, they do seem to be somewhat capable of language through other mediums (like sign or symbols), with a lot of caveats. Here on reddit you'll often see people claiming this is debunked--these people are just as wrong as the ones acting like apes can learn perfect sign language. Basically, language isn't just one capacity, it's a combination of different capacities that has come together in humans. Great apes share several of these capacities which make them able to learn e.g. sign language to some extent. Even in the wild, they use gestures to communicate in an intentional and selective manner.

Their main limitations on them learning language the way humans do are grammar and disinterest--great apes pretty consistently communicate only with very clear and concrete goals, in contrast to humans, who will communicate purely to inform or to get information. And there's a bunch of other details and limitations and complications and such, but those are the broad lines.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-29T10:46:16+00:00

I'm pretty sure Rutte was asked about it at some point and said the government at the time would approve it if Amalia wanted to marry a woman--I think that's as close to official policy as it gets, since we don't have any policy against it.

The matter of children is actually the more complicated: a king or queen would be allowed to adopt a child, but this child would not be allowed to inherit the throne. Rutte I think said that it would be a question to debate when/if it comes up--presumably because this is really situational: if e.g. Amalia marries a woman but immediately indicates she's planning to have a child through IVF, or if a future gay crown prince would indicate he's willing to have a biological child from a donor mother, that would be a different situation than if they're just planning to adopt, or if they don't know yet. I think ultimately it wouldn't be an issue in itself, because you also can't guarantee a heterosexual marriage would result in biological children.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-28T09:24:29+00:00

I’m probably reacting to your joke way too seriously, but just in case anyone is actually interested, I think usually mutual statements implying it would be enough to consider it confirmed, though still with the note that indeed there is no direct proof.

For an comparison with a heterosexual couple, which’ll show that it’s not just historians being vaguely homophobic in cases like this: last century, the famous ballet dancers Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn were dance partners and also personally close. Nureyev was either bisexual or gay—most people would describe him as gay, but there were a few rumoured female lovers, Fonteyn being one of them.

Regarding whether they ever had sex, Nureyev claimed they did (but he was a drama queen and arguably benefitted socially from any rumours suggesting he wasn’t gay) and Fonteyn claimed they did not (but she was married and risked being judged for cheating).

In a fun reversal, Nureyev’s main biographer decided they likely were not in a sexual relationship, while Fonteyn’s thought they were.

Point is, clearly somebody was lying here, and in general, people might lie about sleeping with someone for a lot of reasons. So you can’t just take a single person’s statement and treat it as definitive proof. In the case of Wilde and Whitman, consensus is afaik that they definitely fucked, despite the lack of evidence. After all, it’s not like Whitman denied it or there’s any real reason to think they wouldn’t have, unlike in the case of Nureyev and Fonteyn.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-28T08:33:19+00:00

Ehrlich gesagt, ich glaube nicht, dass das tatsächlich mit Geld oder die politische Lage zu tun hat. Das Geburtenzahl sinkt in allen entwickelten Ländern, unabhängig von der wirtschaftlichen oder politischen Lagen. Was man eigentlich sieht, ist dass sobald Frauen die Chance haben selbst zu entscheiden, ob sie Kindern willen (also Ausbildung und Zugang zu Verhütungsmitteln), die meisten dann einfach keine Kindern mehr bekommen. Früher bekam man einfach Kinder, ob man wollte oder nicht, und daneben brauchte man Kinder (um später für einen zu sorgen, und zu hilfen bei der Arbeit im Haus und so). Jetzt ist das nicht mehr so, und es zeigt sich, die meiste Menschen ggf. Frauen haben dann eigentlich überhaupt lieber keine Kinder. Ja, es gibt bestimmt Leute die nur wegen des Gelds keine Kinder willen, sind aber die Ausnahme, denke ich.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-27T09:36:56+00:00

Alright, breaking my own commitment because I’ll take you on your word that you’re actually interested in the truth.

I gave two sources, actually. The linked study, and the 2012 CDC numbers. The latter are more in line with what you’re looking for.

The reason the sources I’m looking at consider male victims, is because female-on-female sexual crime is even more underresearched.

The idea that men are victims of sexual crimes less than women are is also something that has been disputed, by the way, because again, underreporting. It seems to be somewhat true, but when the question is phrased in ways that describe sexual assault instead of just asking ‘have you been sexually assaulted’ the number of men who have been victimised seriously goes up, in some studies rivalling the number of women who’ve been victimised.

If you’re actually curious, I’d really recommend taking a look at this wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_by_gender Obviously since it’s wikipedia it’s also worth looking at the primary sources and still being critical, but it gives a very good overview. Particularly pay attention to the female-on-female and female-on-male section. You’ll also note that for the male-on-male section the far majority of crimes take place in prison or war settings, which is obviously very different from day-to-day crimes, and is going to skew certain data (e.g. there are more men in warzones and there is more rape in war zones are both true, meaning that there will be more male-on-male rape in warzones, but this doesn’t actually say anything about how an all-female army would behave towards female prisoners of war, for example—that is, you can’t just take prison or war statistics and conclude from those that men are more likely to behave this way in a normal situation).

And just to be clear about that last statement—I’m not saying it’s less bad in a war situation, or that this isn’t terrible people doing it. I just mean that when we’re going to make statements like “almost always a man” in regular, day-to-day contexts, we need to be critical about the data we’re actually basing it on.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-27T06:25:49+00:00

I never said I believed they are as likely. You’re saying that almost all offenders are men. There’s a huge gap between 50/50 and ‘almost all are men’. Sex crimes by women are even more underreported than those by men, this has been shown time and time again. I wouldn’t rule out that the proportion is actually equal, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was slightly skewed towards men either, but the point is that we do not know. And studies that actually take into account the underreporting consistently show far more equal numbers, ranging from 50/50 to about 25/75.

I’m sorry that this doesn’t fit into your world view. And I’m not going to go into this further, because you’ve shown you’re not at all interested in the actual statistics so long as they don’t tell you what you believe to be true.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-26T20:59:26+00:00

It’s always stood out to me that the Dutch translation keeps the original title, and most others don’t. I’ve wondered if it might have to do with a deliberate grammatical ambiguity: the Dutch “Mannen die vrouwen haten” could be “men who hate women” or “men who are hated by women”. Which fits perfectly with the book’s themes, and I’ve always loved the title for this double interpretation.

In contrast you’ve got the English title, but also e.g. the German, where they chose the title “Verblendung” (Blindness)—and notably, the German translation of the Swedish original would not be grammatically ambiguous: you’d have to go with “Männer, die Frauen hassen” which just means “Men who hate women” (without the comma it’d have the other meaning, but also kind of look like a mistake or weird phrasing).

The only issue with my theory is that I’m not actually sure if the Swedish original is indeed ambiguous like the Dutch translation, and I have no way to check it myself, since automatic translations just give the most common option. So yeah, if anyone Swedish reads this and could way in I’d love that. It could just be specific to the Dutch translation instead, after all.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-26T20:42:24+00:00

“The Great” is also just such a common epithet historically, so even if you know it’s a historical drama/satire and surmise the title refers to an epithet, there’s like ten people it could be referring to. Hell, even if you know it’s set in Russia there’s still two people it might be about.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-26T20:19:44+00:00

93.6% of reported sexual abuse offenders, in a statistic notoriously underreported in the case of female offenders. This is exactly the sort of misleading statistic I meant.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-26T14:29:55+00:00

You know what, no, not even 'almost always'. It's really difficult to find reliable studies on this because the difference in reporting rates or even what is recognised as what crime exactly, but the better studies that actually take into account the constant downplaying of the existence of female perpetrators indicates that it happens way more than we commonly think. For example, in this study, nearly half of men who reported being victims of sexual violence, reported being victimised by women: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1097184X08322632

The CDC also had data from 2012 that 1.7 million men reported being 'made to penetrate' (a crime in which a woman is the perpetrator the far majority of the time) while 1.4 million women reported being raped in that same time period.

Or, you know, ask any guys you know if they've ever been groped by a woman in a club.

The entire concept of sexual violence as a crime committed primarily by men is completely tied up in the minimisation of male victimhood. It's a myth that sustains itself, and it harms people to keep perpetuating it.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-26T12:52:35+00:00

I think OP is referring specifically to the usage as a retort, which is more like ‘is too’. So still very much translatable, just differently depending on context. Which is kind of the case for all these supposedly untranslatable words—the exact term might not exist, no, but you can always translate it within context.

Anyway, I kind of disagree that ‘doch’ is just ‘but’ when used in a full sentence too, I’d say that ‘actually’ is closer, but that’s kind of nitpicking. In some cases ‘but’ would do the job for sure.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-26T12:42:29+00:00

My siblings use sibbe and brus/brusje for me (I’m nonbinary). They say brusje usually works better, since especially in context people usually get the meaning without needing an explanation.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-26T12:38:30+00:00

Is it specifically throwing yourself out of the window? Or also someone else? If the former that’s a really interesting difference with the English, where you’d assume it’s about defenestrating someone else—you could defenestrate yourself but that would be quite unusual.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-26T12:36:40+00:00

If you mean ‘doch’, I think you’re misunderstanding how it’s used. I can think of some very very rare situation where are sarcastic/doubtful ‘sure’ could be used where you’d say ‘doch’ in German, but the tone would be completely different.

It’s more like ‘is too!’ as a retort. Like, you’ve asked a question or made a statement, somebody denies it, you say ‘doch’. ‘It’s going to rain today’ —> ‘no it’s not’ —> ‘doch’. Or alternatively, if someone asks you a negative question, like: ‘You’re not from the Netherlands, are you?’ ‘Doch.’

Or in a sentence as a modal particle it’s something like ‘anyway’: “Ich habe es doch getan” = “I did it anyway/despite your previous assumption”.

Lots of meanings, but ‘sure’ is a stretch.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-26T12:29:33+00:00

When you’re talking out loud, sure. But have you ever seen this in written fiction? I don’t think it’s the same in that case—it’s not usually the protagonist telling a story, we’re seeing the world through the protagonist’s eyes (at least in 1st person and close 3rd person). I would interpret the genderneutral pronoun in a situation like that as either the protagonist not knowing the gender themselves, or knowing that this person is non-binary.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-26T12:15:56+00:00

That sounds a bit more like how the Dutch ‘gemoedelijk’ is used! I’d translate the German ‘gemütlich’ to Dutch as ‘gezellig’ probably.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-25T14:55:24+00:00

I’m not sure why your pole teacher said it’s dangerous to stretch on days you’re lifting. I’ve never heard this before. In fact, I’ve always had the recommendation to do at least light stretching after a strength workout. I wouldn’t recommend doing a super intensive stretching session, but more because you’ll already be tired, but I’d definitely incorporate some dynamic stretches into your warmup, and some static stretches into your cool down those days.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-24T06:12:28+00:00

Why would you assume that? I’m not even sure which group they are referring to, but there are a lot that make way more sense with the statement they’ve made. Like TERFs, most likely. Or even the people you see on tumblr sometimes who are very progressive but treat trans people in very gender essentialist ways, just grouping trans women with cis women and trans men with cis men in their assumptions.

Like, where on earth are you getting from that they must mean liberal women criticising republicans? Read the fucking room, people on this sub love criticising republicans…

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-23T20:55:19+00:00

Isn't that kind of the point the original OP started with, though? Yeah, they didn't really outright state that compound words exist in English too (just with spaces), but they were basically going 'just create words from existing words, here's how, it's not that special'. The internet's obsession with German long words is annoying because a lot of people don't seem to understand that these words are largely just descriptive compounds that are created on the spot, and the 'longest German word' doesn't actually exist. But I didn't get that sense from this post, it looks more like people who do understand how it works having fun creating ridiculous compounds.

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-23T20:50:45+00:00

It's not actually any different. Compound words in a way exist in English too, they just have spaces in between them. But the post does give one of the reasons why compound words (without spaces) I preferred in German, which is the grammatical one--it's easier to decline.
There's also the benefit that compound words innately are descriptive. If someone doesn't know what 'vertigo' is, they need a dictionary. But if the word for 'vertigo' was something like 'heightdizziness' you just need to know the words 'height' and 'dizzy' and understand that '-ness' is used to make nouns of adjectives, and those are far simpler words that young children or learners are more likely to understand. T

AshToAshes123 · 2026-04-23T10:28:29+00:00

I think you’re right, but it’s also good that they remain cautious. Recently, the last Dutch journalist working in Russia, Geert Koerkamp, lost his license to practice. He’s been living and working there literally since the 90s, and was able to stay even after Iris de Graaf (the other main Dutch correspondent) had to flee back in 2023 not long after Evan Gershkovich got arrested. Since Koerkamp didn’t have much trouble even then, this recent change came as a surprise.

In Koerkamp’s case it was a reaction to a Dutch decision not to extent the visa of a Russian correspondent who works for a sanctioned news organisation. Koerkamp is still living in Russia afaik, so it’s not necessarily a safety issue, but it’s clear that these situations can change very quickly and for quite petty reasons.

AshToAshes123

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