You know, I just realized that pretty much all of the crackpots I hear about are male, for a particular definition...
You know, I just realized that pretty much all of the crackpots I hear about are male, for a particular definition of “crackpot.”
Mainstream anti-science stuff seems roughly even across gender; anti-vaxx, young earth creationism, climate change denial. But only men seem to get into truly weird stuff like thinking they’ve solved physics, or believing the government is hiding aliens, etc etc. Anything “fringe” i.e. stuff that a politician wouldn’t openly admit to believing, seems to be male-dominated.
Am I imagining this?
No, that’s definitely a Thing.
(they also seem to be disproportionately white, middle-aged, and electrical engineers, but I digress)
Maybe it’s actually engineering/physics/math/comp sci majors that are overrepresented, rather than men per se? I know I’ve heard people say that that cluster has a tendency towards crackpottery for one reason or another.
STEM fields are overrepresented, particularly engineering.
But I’ve never once heard of a female crackpot.
Could be small-sample-size bad luck, of course.
(I’ve had women aggressively push their uncle’s/husband’s/brother’s theory on me, though.)
Most of the crackpots I hear about are male, but most of the crackpots I run across are female. The gender ratio is probably different for aliens and physics vs. astrology, chemtrails, antivax shit, crystals, and odd diets – and men are probably more inclined toward self-promotion, at least in mostly-male circles.
But – you’ve never once heard of a female crackpot? What about Jenny McCarthy, Jasmuheen, Banana Girl, Savitri Devi, or, you know, Tumblr?
Mary Baker Eddy? Actually there were a lot of a lot of prominent women in 19th century American Spiritualism, does that count?
That kind of fits into the “men do crackpot science, women do crackpot mysticism” thing. On the other hand it’s a little presentist to project the science/mysticism divide back onto Spiritualism, at the time a lot of people would have taken it as a science on par with electricity or magnetism.
“Here are some mysterious immaterial forces we don’t entirely understand and can’t quite explain but will attempt to harness anyway” was kind of the theme of the age.