This week, The Washington Post spent two days, three articles and over 1,500 words (some of which manages to quote itself) explaining that air conditioning is sexist because sometimes, in the summer, women think offices are too cold while men do not.
“Air conditioning is another big, sexist plot,” revealed WaPo local writer Petula Dvorak in a Thursday column.
Then, on Friday, Dvorak claimed one man wants to hold menopausal women responsible for cold offices but he is wrong, see, because the real problem is men who dress in suits.
“Every single woman I talked to in downtown Washington on a hot, humid July afternoon was thawing out,” Dvorak initially explained after her investigation into sexist air conditioning which involved speaking randomly to some people at lunch.
For example, 64-year-old Ruth Marshall’s hand “felt like a cold steak” as she sat on a park bench outside her office recuperating from a hyperborean office climate. Marshall blamed “testosterone-toting people” for the frosty office air.
However, a “guy in a navy suit eating a taco” said he felt his office temperature was reasonable.
Dvorak then did what any columnist for the Post would do, she contacted Emily’s List — a group dedicated to expanding abortion rights.
The abortion advocates at Emily’s List told Dvorak their office is too cold and they are unable to control the thermostat in their offices.
Then, on Friday, Dvorak doubled down, calling air conditioning “the Manspreading of Summer ’15.”
She wrote that she had received plenty of correspondence from readers on the subject. One male reader, for example, blamed “fat, menopausal women” for cold offices (and hospitals).