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BeadleBlog's avatar

I'm reminded of a tragic event decades ago when US Navy pilot Kara Hultgreen ended up in the ocean with her plane. The attackers came out of the woodwork demanding for her training records to be released. The investigation did find she made a mistake. During that mess I was sitting in a Navy hospital waiting room and there was a Navy aviation safety magazine. I read through it and lo and behold, every single accident listed was due to (male) pilot error. I was born in 1960 and every job I've had, minus a few waitressing jobs early on, were in male dominated fields. I'm just cut that way, and my spatial and mechanical aptitudes are excellent. Our small farm is on a private, unimproved road, and I've been supervising roadwork, including clearing, bulldozing, creating rolling dips for water runoff, and laying a clay bed down over the sand to get it ready for gravel. I love this stuff but for my husband it would be torture, yet there are still those idiots who are bothered because we're not in the "correct" roles. My experience with men sounds similar to your experience. There are those who try and saboutage and undermine, but I've found the very smart and accomplished men have no trouble working with me. I figure the former men find me to be a threat to their egos, while the very accomplished men are confident and focused on doing good work and have no time for petty sex wars.

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Kevin Hester's avatar

When I heard that the Skipper was a woman I shrugged and thought, que the misognist knee jerk reactions!

There is a high chance that the skipper was off duty at the time of impact, she could have been asleep in her bunk.

I've completed 16 ocean passages on small yachts, it's always the skippers responsibility if a ship founders but that doesn't mean that the skipper put it there!

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