Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by riffraff 73 days ago
IIRC from the book " packing for mars" the American man astronauts begged NASA to provide them with diapers at some point, which is what women astronauts got, because the earlier male-only system was a sort of sucking condom which was incredibly bad.
1 comments

This really tells you how "bad masculinity" pervaded everything. I'm speaking of the designers here, not the astronauts. Why not a diaper also for male astronauts from the beginning? Isn't manly enough? Does it show weakness, like a toddler or an old dying man?
I think the designers just didn't think of it.

Women also started with a feminized version of the uncomfortable device and then switched to diapers, and then men followed.

It's possible there were no women on the design team but I don't think it's a case of bad masculinity.

I don't think that having or not having women in the design team is the key here. IMO it's more about how men perceive how men should be.