You do understand that what you are doing is also virtue signaling? You are just signaling very different virtues...

 

The title of the thread is “gender in watch collection”.

Someone posts a video of a woman collector and what do two people immediately say, her watches are gifts so she’s a phony.

And when two female members take exception about a double standard you call it “hair splitting” and “oversensitive”.

If the debate is not fair game in a thread titled “gender in watches”, I don’t know what is.

And your dismissal is sexist too, by the way. Was that Fred writing or was it Janice? And what does Janice think about it @janice&fred ?

 

actually my "dismissal" means I don't pay much attention to gender when it comes to posting opinions on watches or collectors. Should make no difference.

This is fred, and why not simply ask her yourself? She's still snoozing as it's sunday but give her a shot in a couple hours. My guess is she couldn't care less either. 203-671-9259.

 

This summarizes my “sexist” and “paternalistic” family’s response to that silly video:

 

Let me present a hypothetical example. Completely hypothetical. Al-Archer is being interviewed while dressed in drag and prancing around the room showing off his fishnet stockings while singing YMCA by The Village People, and he offers up that the fishnets give him a rash on his ass. Person A remarks that some content in the video might be a bit too much information, and then a few other posters pile on and accuse person A's remark as being offensive to the LGBTQ community. Was the remark offensive?

 

That's an awfully big straw man you set on fire right there. Still doesn't address the double standards you and others in this thread have continued to put forward.

 

Damn it @janice&fred I can’t unsee this.

 

Just trying to lighten up the mood here

 

Virtue signaling signifies you're projecting values you don't actually espouse.

 

virtue signaling
[virtue signaling]
NOUN

1. the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue.

 

Damnit everyone, this is why we can't have nice things. Someone starts a thread on trends on female watch collecting and we manage to immediately alienate the women who frequent the forum.

 

I recall a while back I mentioned in a thread started by a female collector that she might also consider larger size watches as my wife and loads of other gals seem to be enjoying that fashion trend, only to be attacked by syrte and accused of all kinds of silly stuff. By the way the female poster I was responding to agreed with me and said I didn't intend my suggestion to be offensive. So...it seems whenever a topic approaches anything related to women in any manner, there will be some here that can only use their histrionic negative template in response. No one on this forum disrespects women. Period.

 

I was responding to a specific video and expressed my opinion of it. Nothing was said about gender as it pertains to watch collecting. Yet some people decide to invoke gender because the interviewee is female and comes off as vapid. My engineer wife collects watches and probably understands and appreciates the mechanics better than most. She felt exactly the same way I did about the video.

 

Oh my, I think there were two of us « attacking » you— as you say. As a matter of fact, the other female debater who is @connieseamaster was the one who first questioned what you were stating— and she didn’t agree with you at all.

However none of that discussion was an «attack ». It was a contradiction, which is quite different.
I never make personal attacks, I debate what people say— which is quite different.

I strongly disagree with ad hominem attacks as a method —and I don’t understand how your hypothetical above relates to the discussion, except that it looks like a thinly veiled attack on @Archer for expressing his belief.

 

It's called humor. Something worth trying rather than taking offense at every imagined slight.

 

Shall you just lock it up? I think it is about time.

 

It would be a bit sad.
Let’s move on the conversation: if there a gender difference, would it mean men are from Mars, women are from Venus? But can there be no gender differences?

I’ll speak for myself. Contrary to many men who say they got interested in watches because their fathers or grand fathers were interested, no one I know has ever been interested in watches.
But I have a keen, almost nerdy interest in history— and when I found out WWII pilot watches still existed, I knew I had to have one and started a long research which got me interested in vintage watches more broadly.
What I did have as a legacy, however, is a long held obsession with architecture and design- definitely a family inherited interest which I honed and in which I schooled myself since my teenage years. I probably took every tour offered at the Chicago architecture foundation, and since I love travel I took a similar interest in places from Vienna to Sudan to Central Asia.

I appreciate watches as wearable objects of design, and also as tokens of history. It doesn’t matter to me if they belonged to some war hero, because to me all watches reflect a certain place in history, they are relevant to the status of the economy and industry in their time.

One of my greatest kicks was to visit La Chaux de Fond and other places in Switzerland and to find out the huge impact of watch making on city planning, on architecture, and even on the ideas of people like Karl Marx and Le Corbusier. Do you know any other city with a street named “Street of the Balance”, or with huge signs on buildings saying “Chronometer”?

Although I can think of several female collectors knowledgeable about mechanical movements, I’m willing to believe many women don’t approach the mechanics of watches in the same way as men.
There’s such a long history of men being taught to like mechanics vs women being taught to have other interests.
Yet I took a horology workshop to learn how movements were made and how they work.
You have to admire the genius and ingenuity of the person who conceived the first movement powered by a spring, with a regulation powered by a counter spring. And I keep learning from my watchmaker every time he services a watch.

And since no post would be complete without picture.... I might edit this and post some later.

 

To give another example of why stereotypes fail and perpetuating them is harmful to the collecting community, my father is a watchmaker and I don't actually remember the first time I put a watch on my wrist. My first watch was a plastic Minnie Mouse souvenir from an early trip to Disney World while he was at a NAWCC convention in Orlando, FL that I don't actually remember putting on, it was just there when I was about 3. His workshop is filled with pictures of me "helping", sometimes more proficiently then others. As I grew older, I eventually rose to the position of Senior VP in charge of logistics (aka, I did the packing and shipping). Many of my watches (and ones my BF has, frankly) are ones that he found interesting for some reason or another, played with, serviced to precision, and handed off when he was done.

If I had been less academically inclined, I probably would have picked watchmaking as a trade and eventually joined him in the business (though remotely, his shop is not big enough for the two of us working side by side ). Those childhood lessons gave me a lot of the technical skills I use today and the way he runs his business is my guide for how I deal with my own profession.

Watches interest me on a technical and aesthetic level, and the focus of my collection reflects my aspirations of equality for the world. Just like everyone else, I won't pick up a watch if I find it ugly to look at. But I'm more inclined to forgive an average design if there's an extraordinary movement under the hood (especially if I can see it ).

 

Sat on a bus (due to train track work) heading to the north of Denmark several years ago and the lady who was sitting next to me was coming back from Omega training, She was a watchmaker who had been doing it for 27 years. Started doing it as her husband was a clockmaker who didn’t like the small stuff. Had a great chat for about a hour and she was just as passionate as any guy I have ever met. She picked the Speedmaster I was wearing.
Mrs STANDY said of all the people you could of met and sat next to......