Why do some women use their feminine wiles to get men do do their bidding?
I’m not trying to say it’s good or bad or even a part of our social fabric. I just want to know the reason.
Here is a fer instance:
If you’re going to drive a car sooner or later it is going to break down on you and you will have to deal with it. I’ve spent a lot of time teaching my daughter what she needs to know to be independent in this regard. She resisted all efforts at this type of education all the time.
The first item she had to learn was to change a tire in the event of a flat tire. We rotate our tires twice a year between winter and summer tires and ever since she has been old enough she has had to participate until we gave her a car at which point she was supposed to assume responsibility.
We have all kinds of fancy equipment so she was taught to do the job with the easy tool set but she also had to learn to do it with the emergency equipment in her car. She was even taught that all mechanics with their impact wrenches will put the lug nuts on so tight that you can not get them off with your roadside emergency tool set.
Impact wrench, needs compressor
She got it into her head that having someone else do the dirty work for was preferable and at every chance had the mechanics rotate her tires.
Late one night the inevitable happened and she got a flat tire at 2:00 AM just off the highway. To her credit she got out the car’s emergency tools and tried to do the job. Off course the crappy tools could not get the lig nuts off. A cop dropped by to see if everything was alright but left without making sure she had the car fixed. Maybe she told him she could handle it I don’t know, but he should have stayed until it was fixed.
Instead of calling home for help she called one of her buddies (not a “boyfriend”). The guy dragged himself out of bed, by now it was 3:00AM and can over and struggled with the tools until he finally go the job done. As her buddy was working on the tire she called home to let us know what was happening. It’s nice to know that there are boys out there that will happily perform such services but I’m very dissapointed with my daughters performance.
To this day she still insists on getting the mechanics to do the job for her and won’t insist that they use a torque wrench to ensure that the lug nuts can be removed by the emergency tool set in the car.
Fortunately my son is now old enough to drive and the two of them share the car. He insists on doing the job properly and drags my daughter out to help with the changing of the tires. Of course they use a torque wrench to put on the lug nuts properly.
My wife is an unusual women much more independent and capable than most (She is a full blown engineer) but she still has the same attitude toward dirty work as my daughter. What gives?
Short essay on how to change your tires, using the tool set from the car.
Its the nature of women. Nothing to do about that, just accept.
Hi – I am just a random person who stumbled across this post while looking up something about an impact wrench. After reading it though I felt quite compelled to respond. I hope that you will read the following with an open mind and take it in the spirit it is written, which is hopefully to enlighten a bit.
Now – You asked why women seem to want to get men to do their dirty work?
First off, I don’t think its about “dirty work” – I think, yes, believe it or not, it is generally an issue of strength, spacial aptitude, and generic torqueability. I don’t care how much she works out or how scrawny he is, in general, men can do things such as tire changing much easier. Please hear me out before you start screaming – This is so NOT a better than, helpless, etc issue. This is physical make up.
Sure, a woman can change a tire. Of course! As can a man. Now lets use a comparison scale for a moment. I’ll just use a simple 1-10 scale here. 1 = almost no effort at all, 5 = a fair amount of effort and might feel a twinge tomorrow but no big deal, 10 = enormous, almost super-human effort with much strain and pain in-process and will be desperately sore tomorrow.
Now lets look at changing that tire – And bear in mind I am going on major generalities here. There are always exceptions. In general, for that female to change that tire, she is going to hit about a 7 or 8 on that effort scale. I would say that almost invariably, the lowest she will hit will be a 5.
Now for the male to change that tire, in general, for him its going to be about a 3. Maybe even a 1 or 2 for many guys. No matter how scrawny and un-exercised, it would be extremely rare for a male to hit above a 5 or 6 for changing a tire. It is so NOT that she can not do it but the effort involved can be huge and yes, there are tons of females out there that simply would not be able to do it at all.
Now, lets look at another factor here – Changing a tire generally involves being out on some road somewhere, most likely alone or the effort is shared in the first place – and as what happened to your daughter, tires seem to have a penchant for going at nighttime. So now we have two scenarios – The female at 3 am with a flat tire vs the male at 3 am with a flat tire. Each one is out there working to change the tire. First off, being as her effort level will likely be higher, it is likely to take longer so shes going to be out there hunkered down alongside the road for a longer time. Which person here do you think is safer?
I sure would not want a daughter out beside the road at 3 am changing a tire by herself! And most females are acutely aware of the hazardous spot they are in in a circumstance like this. There is going to be a heightened level of fear and anxiety regardless of how strong or tough she is. And this in itself is going to interfere with her ability to “perform” the task at hand.
When a woman calls up a guy at 3 am in this type of situation, when she does know how to do it and all that, whether she or he realizes it at the time, chances are she is calling for reinforcement due to the hazard of being alone in the situation. And when he responds, chances are, to some degree, he is responding to a near hard-wired instinct to “protect the female” whether or not he even realizes that.
Now, I will also mention, in your above tale, you called it a use of feminine wiles to get someone to do something. Maybe there was more to the story than you wrote but if she simply called up her friend and told him what was going on and asked for his help, I don’t see any manipulations going on there. I mean he was certainly free to say “no”! If a guy does not feel okay saying no or has some kind of weird trouble refusing a request made, it is pretty darned unfair to blame the female just for having asked! She has a right to ask, anyone, any thing, at any time. And they have a right to respond positively, negatively or whatever.
It sounds to me like you are considering that she called him in the first place to be a use of her feminine wiles to get someone to do something for her. That is so sad. Friends of any gender call one another when they feel they need or want a hand with something all the time. It doesn’t sound like she was playing helpless here. It sounds like she relied on a friend in a time of need, even if that need was emotional need – and yes, most females in this situation, no matter how able to change a tire they are, are, as I said above, going to be having some level of emotional need in this kind of dangerous circumstance.
I have no idea where you live but even if it is the tiniest, sleepiest town ever, there is still a danger to this situation. I think you should congratulate your daughter’s ability to ask for what she needed here and I think you should be proud of her for NOT feeling like she had to “go it alone”.
Oh and one more thing – Why doesn’t she have something like AAA? Realistically speaking, theres really not that many people around who are going to get down there and change their tire in the middle of the night no matter how capable they are. With an auto club membership she can stay in her car and be safer and she can call them immediately when something happens and they know she is there and has a problem. If she tells them she is in a hazardous spot they will also send police or highway patrol.
I don’t care who you are or how capable you are, if you’re driving a car you should have some kind of road service available easily. And I assure you, it has no bearing on someone’s capabilities, abilities, independence or self sufficiency if they choose to use road service when they get a flat tire. The ability to delegate tasks is a very important one and contributes to independence, self sufficiency and overall capability and competence.
Excellent points raised by Leeta, sounds like the voice of sage experience.
I would like to add though that we should be working to change our society so that females are not subject to those disadvantages both physical and emotional.