Barbara Kay: How patriarchy ran into its own iceberg

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Titanic sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg. Of the 2,200 people on board, 1,517 died. The Lusitania sank in 1915, victim to a German U-boat torpedo. Of the nearly 2,000 people on board, 1,200 died. In addition to carrying about the same numbers of passengers, the demographic composition of the two ships - adults, children, men, women, old, young - was also similar.
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According to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the altruism of the Titanic and the length of time it took for the ship to sink are causally linked. Benno Torgler, study author and economics professor at Queensland University of Technology in Australia explains that circumstances dictate levels of altruism. According to the study, since the Titanic passengers had a few hours to consider their options, "there was time for socially determined behavioural patterns to re-emerge."
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Yes, women were infantilized in many ways in the patriarchy, which a cynic might say was the driving impulse behind the chivalry of the Titanic's men. But so what? At the moment when it mattered most, the notion that men should above all act as protectors of the vulnerable in times of danger to all committed them to death in the service of others. Was there ever a more noble or selfless act?

The study reminds us that the heroism of the Titanic was a willed phenomenon, and one that feminists do not wish to discuss (I have tried).

Instead of fetishizing the victimhood of women at men's hands and the deviance from our cultural norm that Marc Lepine represented with man-bashing dirges across the land every December 6, would it not make more sense - and would it not be more ethically fitting and socially unifying - to celebrate the more representative manliness of men every April 15, the date of the Titanic's sinking? Still six weeks left to plan it.'