Divine Angel said:

Michael V said:

dv said:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bB5EDwcYH3GwoRWZf/women-should-be-able-to-open-things
KatjaGrace
21st May 2026

I’m pretty annoyed today, for nominal reasons ranging between ‘petty’ and ‘doesn’t even make sense’. I’m not entirely sure how or if to take oneself seriously when one has such absurd grievances. But that’s a question for another time—I’m here now to tell you about my one potentially valid peeve.

I understand that gender is complicated and difficult, for the whole species (and honestly probably more so for some other species). And it can be hard to tell exactly if anyone is behaving badly regarding it, at least in my modern bubble. Maybe women just aren’t that into designing programming languages? Maybe the thing I’m saying is just boring and a man is saying a more interesting thing?

But a thing that is undeniable is that women want to open jars, dammit! What’s your nuanced explanation there, Bonne Maman? Does the proper amount of friction for maintaining spread safety fall just between the male and female human grip strength distributions?

This study suggests that would be about 400N Fmax (though this would not avert most elite female athletes acquiring jam, see second figure, and the pictured participants are young adults):

(more at link)

I recommend a Brix Jarkey. A wonderful kitchen tool that works for both women and men.

I gots one of them. Only works when the jar lid is unpopped. Subsequent openings require muscles.

Smearing oil on the rim of the jar helps, but for some reason the garlic jar is always hard to open 🤷🏻‍♀️

I’ve got a couple of pieces of that high-friction drawer liner polymer to help. And if things get very bad, well there’s always the oil filter removal tool. I have one like this: