Sometimes the gender nonsense just gets too silly. Shrugging off hurricanes because they have girly names? Really?
According to a recent study by University of Illinois researchers, hurricanes with women’s names are likely to cause significantly more deaths than those with masculine names — not because the feminine-named storms are stronger, but because they are perceived as less threatening and so people are less prepared.
So all over Florida, people hear news reports that Hurricane Shirley is headed straight for them and they just laugh because how hard can a Shirley hit?
The researchers examined human fatality numbers for 92 storms that made landfall in the U.S. between 1950 and 2012, excluding Katrina from 2005 and Audrey from 1957 because together, Shavitt said, they account for 50 percent of all deaths from hurricanes in the U.S. since 1950.
They found that the more feminine the storm’s name in highly damaging storms, the more people it killed.
Shavitt said their numerous experiments included university students as well as volunteers age 18 to 81 who took part in an online nationwide study.
They reported that when people imagined being in a male-named storm they predicted the storm would be more severe than it was for a female-named storm.
Hey here’s an idea – don’t give hurricanes people names at all. Call them things like Hurrican Shark and Hurricane Grizzly Bear and Hurricane Alligator.
At the Hurricane Center, Feltgen said “Whether the name is Sam or Samantha, the deadly impacts of the hurricane – wind, storm surge and inland flooding – must be taken seriously by everyone in the path of the storm in order to protect lives. This includes heeding evacuation orders.”
So don’t domesticate them with cuddly names at all. Whose idea was that, anyway?
Somebody once proposed that we name them after climate change deniers. Not a bad idea.
Geez, I’m old enough to remember when all hurricanes were given girly names. What happened?
Am I wrong or is it the case that until a relatively few years ago all hurricanes were given female names?
Alternating male and female names is a very recent habit. In those days with less advanced technology and few/no weather satellites then the path and strength of a hurricane could only be guessed. It depended upon entirely random reports from ships at sea and the odd weather plane, again using mainly human observation and more or less informed guesses. Federal weather information networks and planning were, I imagine, not much more advanced
So, without accurate forecasts and with defensive measures even more random than the forecasts and all hurricanes given female names then what would you expect? I see the study goes back to 1950 so of course more people died in hurricanes with girls’ names. This time it looks as though sexism is off the hook.
The very few female-named hurricanes which have hit major urban areas in the last few years do not provide a large enough sample to prove anything at all.
Can I go to bed now? Nearly 2 a.m. here. Also I might be drunk.
As others have noted, once all hurricanes had female names. Alternating male/female names started in 1979.
Many things other than names change from year to year (such as forecasting and disaster preparedness plans), so to be accurate this study should have looked at storms starting in 1979 rather than 1950.
That’s my memory also, Maureen. Unpredictable/capricious forces of nature, dontcha know?
The should automatically name all large hurricanes things like, “Hurricane OH MY GOD GET OUT OF THERE OR YOURE FUCKING DEAD!” Weather people should be required to scream the names.
Maureen @#3:
“Am I wrong or is it the case that until a relatively few years ago all hurricanes were given female names?”
As I recall, until about the 1980s, all ships were routinely given female names by mariners, and referred to as ‘she’. Hence ‘steady as she goes’; ‘bring her alongside’; etc.
These days it is fashionable to give ships male names, though I would be surprised if the personal pronoun used was not still ‘she’. Sailors after all are a superstitious lot, set in their ways and resistant to change.
.
Avast there, ye lubbers, or I’ll keelhaul the whole scurvy lot of you!.
😉
Maureen Brian @ # 3 – Per the linked WaPo article,
The “researchers” don’t seem to have taken into account the reported strength of each storm, the population or economic status of the areas hit, precautions taken by local authorities, etc, etc; it’s not even clear how/whether they adjusted for pre-1979 hurricanes.
They did do make-believe tests in which people said they would take more precautions when given scenarios with male names, so their program apparently reflects more than statistical artifacts.
Maybe from now on storms should get names from role-playing games: “Bloodguzzler”, “Smashskull”, etc.
Naming storms is useful if you want to compare them, talk about them afterwards, or distinguish them when there’s more than one going on at the same time. You don’t want people to hear “the hurricane is still headed for the Texas coast” and assume they’re okay in Florida, when that’s actually a different hurricane.
Still, how about color names? Or just start over every year with radio-spelling alphabet names like “Able, Baker, Charlie” and if it actually gets to Z, go on to Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc. The problem isn’t distinguishing storm Able of 2015 from storm Able of 2018, it’s distinguishing Able from Baker from X-ray,
Here is another writeup, with a comment from the study’s authors replying to criticisms in previous comments (including the “hurricanes all had female names before 1979” objection). It appears that the study ranked names on a ten-point scale of femininity to masculinity, rather than using a binary classification as M or F.
Omar Puhleez @ # 7: As I recall, until about the 1980s, all ships were routinely given female names …
I dunno when the Edmund Fitzgerald was named, but “she” sank in 1975.
And the aircraft “supercarrier” James Forrestal was commissioned in 1955.
Yeah, the ships thing is wrong.
Naming traditions have varied throughout time and across cultures. In the US and Britain, it’s been quite common to name ships after famous men. Though I don’t specifically know about Canada, NZ, Aus & South Africa, I’d be really surprised if those countries also don’t have a tradition of naming warships after dead admirals, politicians, etc. (Though I doubt we’ll ever see an aircraft carrier or fleet flagship named the HMS Mohandas Ghandi.)
It is true that brit and US navies used feminine pronouns for ships in the past…and I think generally still do (though you’d be better off getting your info from someone who served in the navy than from me). However, in the Soviet navy, ships were generally referred to using masculine pronouns and in other countries/languages non-gendered pronouns are the norm.
Omar Puhleez @7
While ships are referred to as “she” by English speaking sailors, Russian speaking sailors refer to their ships as “he” (only in Russian).
I’m retired from the Navy. Two of the ships I served in were USS James K. Polk (SSBN 645) and USS Ulysses S. Grant (SSBN 631), both built in the 1960s. Ships have been named for men for centuries. One ship which Horatio Nelson commanded in the 1790s was HMS Agamemnon, named for a mythical Greek king and commander of the Greek forces during the Trojan War. For that matter, Nelson had several ships named after him, the earliest was launched in 1814.
Whoever told you that ships were mainly given feminine names was mistaken.
Equally unsurprising, the far right and anti-woman types don’t notice that the number of female-named hurricanes per year used to be enough to name a basketball team. Now it’s enough to name a baseball team, thanks to climate change.
Here is the ideal hurricane convention: Alphabetically according to the Greek alphabet + the year. So “Alpha2014”, “Beta2014”, etc. Clear, no confusion. And if there are more than 26 hurricanes (unlikely), add a “prime”: AlphaPrime2014.
As far as the misogyny of naming destructive weather events for women, notice also that the adjectives describing a particularly beautiful woman are likewise destructive:
She’s a “knockout”, a “bombshell”, a “mankiller” or “maneater”, a “stunner”, “drop-dead gorgeous”, “ravishing”, “stunning”. She’s “dressed to kill”, men are “blown away” by her appearance. The “femme fatale.” That girl is poison O_O
Men clearly fear the power a woman can have and thus react with hostility to make sure she remains in her place.
Their hypothesis is plausible, but after reading the actual paper, I think this study is incredibly flawed. Their statistical model is terrible, it doesn’t even control for anything (it ‘controls’ in the experimental phase, but not in the observational one, which is the important part supporting their conclusion). The fact that masculine names were absent before 1979 really is problematic for the sample, especially since there are no controls. The paper is sloppy, whether the conclusion is correct or not.
Might be my own bias, but ‘department of business administration’ was the nail in the coffin to me. I guess it’s a notch above other sloppy business department studies that the media loves so much: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/08/08/university_of_minnesota_study_says_women_use_luxury_items_to_keep_your_hands.html
I live in Florida. When it comes to Hurricanes, I don’t care what the name is, they’re storms with the potential to cause tremendous death and destruction. I take them seriously.
PZed the poopyhead:
You know hurricane honey badger is going to be a bad one…..
Simple solution: Stop using Western names.
Henceforth only Arabic names to be used. These are guaranteed to make people feel threatened. (If only in those areas discussed. Perhaps all those years of press paranoia will finally pay off.)
@ 18 Crimson Clupeidae
Wrong blog!
#20,
True, but it does suggest another alternative: since the hurricanes in question mostly hit heavily Christian areas, name them after famous atheists! If the inhabitants of Texas heard that Hurricane Dawkins was on the way, they’d be down in the storm shelters before you could say “Four Horsemen” :-p
Alphabetically according to the actual Greek alphabet, or alphabetically according to the English alphabet, but using Greek letters? I can image either causing some confusion… In fact, since there are only 24 letters in the Greek alphabet, it seems to have confused you already, and it’s your idea.
Why Greek? If you want an alphabetic naming convention, what’s wrong with the English alphabet, or the International Radiotelephony Spelling alphabet?
Al Dente @#13: Point taken.
But I would still like to know: were the USS James K. Polk (SSBN 645) and USS Ulysses S. Grant (SSBN 631) referred to as ‘he’ by the crew? Or as ‘she’? Or as ‘it’ perhaps?
@23 … The USS John F Kennedy is still “she” when being referred to by a pronoun. As are ships named for geographical features, animals, and cities or states.
Why? because it’s English and it doesn’t have to make sense.
@12, Canada names her warships after cities or native tribes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_of_the_Royal_Canadian_Navy
Ed Yong takes the study apart here. However, he criticizes the psych part for not using people who live in hurricane-prone areas, which I think is actually just removing a confounding variable, and says
Um, yes? And it is a big deal?
I think some of the critics are looking at it as a bad way to give out hurricane naming advice.
But that’s not the point of it – the point is that sexism is so ingrained that we respond differently even to freaking weather once you slap a bow on its head.
I seem to recall that hurricanes started being named for the exact problem being stated here with feminine names. “The hurricane is fast approaching, take shelter now” was seen as a minor inconvenience by many. “Hurricane Shirley is fast approaching, take shelter now” sunk in that things were about to get dangerous to more people. I can’t back this up with a source, though, so ready your salt grains.
I noticed that when they changed the naming from female-only to both the reporting got less silly, with fewer “flirty” puns.
But you can’t use Hurricane Tinky-Winky cause after it was over everyone would shout AGAIN!!!
Well I know I would evacuate if Hurricane Limbaugh or Hurricane Hannity was approaching. You know they would sustain a lot of wind, and they are unlikely to follow a logical path.
“Somebody once proposed that we name them after climate change deniers. Not a bad idea.”
I used to have a small collection of coprolites I named after creationists.
* Spell checked wanted to change coprolites to profiteroles.
“So all over Florida, people hear news reports that Hurricane Shirley is headed straight for them and they just laugh because how hard can a Shirley hit?” Not likely.
Northern Australia is also subject to powerful cyclones (hurricanes) it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to those people in the path of a Category 5 storm whether it was called, ‘Jane’, ‘Thomas’ or ‘Cuddly Bunny’. One of Northern Australia’s most destructive storms was called “Tracy”, so I doubt in the 40 years since that people would underestimate the power of a cyclone with a feminine name. BTW, a 19th century Australian meteorologist was the first to (unofficially) assign names to tropical storms, he sometimes used the names of politicians that he didn’t like.
@12
Much the same for Australian naval vessels–state capitals, major cities, naval heroes and names are often recycled.
@24
“Why? because it’s English and it doesn’t have to make sense.”
Give English a break, it’s practically genderless, compare it with other Indo-European languages.
Why? because it’s English and it doesn’t have to make sense.
It may not be universal to refer to sailing vessels as feminine, whatever their proper names, but it’s close. The convention long precedes ol’ illogical English, as it can be observed in Cuneiform tablets from the Mesopotamian Bronze Age.
English speaking sailors usually refer to ships as “she” and “her”, regardless of the name of the ship.
One interesting thing that sailors do is give ships nicknames. Some of these nicknames are innocuous, like the James K. Polk was called the Jimmy K. Other nicknames aren’t so nice. The Ulysses S. Grant was the Useless S. Grunt and the Dallas was the Dull Ass.
My favorite story about ship nicknames is British. King George V had an elder brother and so wasn’t expected to become king. George joined the Royal Navy and served for about 20 years, making the rank of Captain and was commanding officer of a cruiser when his brother died. George left the Navy and, when his father died, became king. In 1920 Winston Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty (cabinet minister in charge of the Navy) and wanted to name a battleship Pitt after two men, father and son, both named William Pitt and both prime ministers of the UK (Pittsburgh, PA is named after William Pitt the Elder).
The king had to approve ship’s names and George vetoed Pitt. Churchill talked to George, giving him a lecture about why either Pitt was worthy of having a ship named after him and considering the two of them there should be no question about naming a ship after them. George answered that he didn’t object to the Pitts but rather to the name. As an ex-sailor he knew what sailors would nickname a ship named Pitt.
Since USS Pittsburgh is universally known in the US Navy as the Shitsburgh, George knew what he was talking about.
In my post @34 I made a mistake. Churchill and George had their conversation in 1910. Incidentally the ship became one of the more famous battleships of both World Wars, HMS Warspite.
#24
Actually there is a historical reason for it; launching a ship was metaphorically marrying the ship to the sea, which was commonly anthropomorphized as Neptune/Poseidon. Thus, by (heteronormative) extension, the ships are female, as they’re marrying a male sea-god.
@36
Another explanation for the use of the feminine gender for ships is that it’s a relic of Old English grammar.
He did do an update that clarifies that he didn’t mean “no big deal”.
I wonder if there would be a similar result in a country where the primary language has gendered nouns?
@1. facepalm : “Somebody once proposed that we name them after climate change deniers. Not a bad idea.”
Yes indeed – I second this suggestion and there’s a whole campaign to do it – see :
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/08/28/video_satirical_ad_suggests_naming_hurricanes_after_climate_change_deniers.html
complete with a great youtube clip on it.
There’s a petition too.
As for not worrying about hurricanes with “girly”names – sounds like potential for a few Darwin Awards happening to those who that stupid.
“Horatio Nelson commanded in the 1790s was HMS Agamemnon, named for a mythical Greek king and commander of the Greek forces during the Trojan War.”
My father served on the MV Agamemnon and the MV Menelaus, keeping it in the family. Yes ships were and are always referred to as ‘she’, whatever they are called. It used to be thought unlucky to have women aboard them though. I think at has probably changed.
I’d’ve thought that after Camille and Katrina, folks would be over their ridiculous habit of downplaying hurricanes with lady names. But maybe not. In any case, hoping for another quiet season this year!