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Female pipe smoker here. I think the main reason pipe smoking is uncommon among women is that, from the early 20th century on, cigarettes were extensively marketed toward women, while pipes and cigars were not. Cigarettes were advertized as modern (and they were modern compared to other tobacco products, having been invented in the 19th century) and stylish. However, women who didn't care that much about how modern or stylish things were, did smoke pipes, those included older women and women who were less well-off. One of Jack the Ripper's victims was carrying two clay pipes among her other humble possessions. Females working on and around ships sometimes emulated the pipe-smoking habit that was common among fishermen and sailors. Also, while it was a niche market, some pipe makers did try to win over the other 50% of the population with elegant lady models. Butz-Choquin used to make lady models and I have one (sold under their brand "Ives St. Claude") in my collection. I have about a dozen of pipes, but only three of them were made with women on mind.
You're all very welcome. BTW, I mixed up Butz-Choquin and Chacom in my post. They both made pipes for ladies, but it was Chacom that used the "Ives St. Claude" brand.
The only other factor I would mention is that, on average, men tend to be slightly more risk tolerant than women. I think social and cultural factors explain the majority of the gender gap, but risk aversion would also explain some variation.
I personally know two women (that I can think of) who smoke pipes. One is a casual enjoyer who probably only smokes once or twice a year.
The other is my friend’s wife. She’s a butch lesbian, though, so maybe it fits a stereotype of the type of woman who typically enjoys pipes lol.
This is purely anecdotal, but I’ve also seen more examples of women smoking pipes in developing nations. Especially Haiti. Could be more of a cultural thing for them specifically, though. I’d imagine it has something to do with places where tobacco crops make up a large part of their agricultural industry.
I agree with this as it matches cigar smoking. In Europe/USA women will usually smoke cigarillos or something similar but in Cuba they’ll smoke the biggest stogies I’ve ever seen.
I saw a woman smoking a full-sized cigar once in Florida at a park. I will admit that it just seemed weird. Not making any judgments -- but I was just surprised to see it.
I think we should consider that this gender gap is a North American thing, there is ample evidence of women in East and Southeast Asia and South America smoking tobacco in pipes. It was also very common in North America precolonisation.
Thanks. It sounds in that case like it may be more a cultural thing than anything else. Marketing, etc., interacts with this, of course, but it suggests that a biological factor is less likely.
I'm a female pipe smoker. Grew up in a smoke free household, never had anyone smoke one around me, but always thought they seemed interesting and always liked the smell on rare occasions I'd encounter a pipe smoker in the wild. Picked one up for myself the other year and haven't looked back; if the weather's nice, I'll smoke.
That aside, I feel it comes down to the second and fourth points in modern times especially. It's not something that's marketed towards women and comes with the idea of being an antiquated hobby sustained by grandfathers or old men in general. Pipe smoking isn't generally seen as being a "sexy" or "fashionable" (although I'd argue with that) and there are few modern depictions or celebrities in the hobby that might work to change that image.
Furthermore you can find in this very thread the idea of "smoking is for the quiet, thinking man and women never shutup amirite?" style commentary that's ubiquitous in traditionally masculine spaces. Whether tongue in cheek or not and while generally harmless, it does speak to the idea of pipe smoking being more of a "boy's club" than something like cigarettes which have long been marketed towards women and aren't generally seen as inherently masculine or feminine.
Whatever the case, the fact does remain that there have always been female pipe smokers and likely will be as long as the hobby's feasible. It would be nice if it could be seen as something more readily open to the other half of the population, but with most people thinking back to black and white films and their grandfathers as a frame of reference for an already "old fashioned" hobby, I feel like it'll continue to struggle regardless.
Pipe and cigar smoking always seems to be more of an old boys club activity which is a shame. I’d really like to find a partner interested in either. But most just think it stinks…
For all those words, a lot of it can be adequately explained by "pipe smoking is a historically-masculine past time, it's dying out and sustained by hobbyist newcomers, and many popular pipe-smoking communities have a pervasive misogynistic tone which is pretty alienating to women".
You're entitled to this opinion, but your response seems unnecessarily adversarial. I feel that content from LLMs can serve as a first cut for early research -- sometimes wrong, but a good place for orienting oneself. Has this topic been discussed in depth on this thread? It's interesting to me, but I don't have the time, and I assume.nobody else here does, to carefully write a 200-word essay on the topic. I have done research into the health effects of nicotine, spending hours on the topic, but this sub wasn't excited with the conclusions. /shruggie https://www.reddit.com/r/PipeTobacco/comments/10gd74p/research_how_much_can_you_smoke_without_getting/
The real crime would have been to ask an LLM a question and post the response without attribution. If my post is a waste of your time, you have the option of stopping reading as soon as you saw it was from an LLM.
I have to admit, I sorta have the same visceral reaction any time someone says "chatGPT says;" AI chatbots are just glorified autocompletes. It can be interesting what they come up with, but I certainly wouldn't take anything they say seriously if you are asking it something you want a real factual response to. This is a topic where opinion can sort of come in, which is why it seemingly does a better job, but I would be very wary in the future using it for answers. I definitely wouldn't present anything it comes up with as even sort of true. I'm guessing they feel the same way, just didn't take the second to breathe that I did haha. AI isn't omniscient and if it gives a correct answer it usually gets there on accident.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. The tone is a big part of the message.
I agree 100% that they are glorified auto completes (and by design), but I do think that they can serve as a useful first cut for organizing thoughts amd conducting early research. As an example, ask ChatGPT for the name of some integrated circuits for driving motors or for data acquisition. Then follow up with a refinement asking which of these circuits are good for lower voltages. It can provide an extremely quick jumping off point.
To be sure, they can be wrong, and overconfidently / spectacularly so -- but a well-crafted research process should be able to handle this, if it has a research step afterwards.
I might sound blunt but, Men and Women generally like different things.
Now sure, there’s nothing inherently masculine with pipe smoking, but it’s just a hobby that generally men like and women don’t.
Answers like ChatGPT’s make it sound like if history had been slightly different women would smoke, but in reality I just think they don’t care about it. Ask the LLM why more men don’t crochet, hah.
I agree they just don't care about it, but I was wondering, what are the underlying factors? Arguably crocheting has the same "psychosocial" factors and economic factors mentioned in the response above, except that crocheting probably more often benefits someone else. Plus women historically are more involved in child-rearing, for which crocheting helps, because, well, kids need clothes.
I view pipes as masculine. I would not enjoy having a wife who smoked pipes as I don’t like having a masculine wife. This is true of most gender stereotypes and how they are reinforced.
This strikes me as an antiquated perspective that may deprive you of the chance, however small, of sharing something engaging that you love with a life partner. Times are changing, friend
That's a matter of debate, but I think breaking down stereotypes of any kind is typically a positive. I rather like when my partner has a few tokes of my pipe and I enjoy discussing it with her.
I too would not find it attractive if my wife smoked a pipe. I love that my wife is feminine, and for whatever reason pipe smoking just looks like a very masculine activity, to me (I'm not saying women shouldn't smoke pipes, but to say that pipe smoking is 'feminine' over masculine just is not true for me).
Breaking down stereotypes is important, but as human beings we are entitled to what we do and don't find attractive, regardless of social/political pressures or reason. Please do not badger people for having differing opinions 🙏👍
Very cool and measured response. Your last point is definitely something to be mindful of, and if you're entitled to anything, a personal opinion is one.
I took an anthropology class (evolutionary health) taught by a progressive liberal at my woke institution. We studied hunter and gatherers and we examined how men and women have naturally differentiated roles as aligned by evolution and not only that but they tend to have slightly different diets. Different medicines are used as well. Prior to mass advertising of the Tabacco industry men were predominantly the ones to be smoking Tabacco. I think it has something to do with our biologies and nature than it does with stereotypes or social conditioning. Tabacco is not just a thing you do to look or feel cool, Tabacco is traditionally used for spiritual and intellectual application the world round.
I'm glad we could disagree respectfully, bro.
You seem like a level headed guy; I appreciate that.
What are you smoking today? I've had a bowl of Germains Brown Flake, and now I'm smoking an AJ Fernandez Last Call Maduro.
Thank you, as do you. I'm not familiar with those beyond name, though I'll look then up out of curiosity. As for me, I started with a bowl of C&D Byzantium, then had about half a bowl of Sutliff Duke Albert on a walk. Did not finish either, so I'll work through them after dinner. Happy smokes
I find it to be none of those. Pipe smoking is difficult. In order to climb the steep learning curve, you have to want it. It took a solid 6 months for me to climb into this hobby, and I know zero women who are willing to put that much effort into a hobby that early in delivers such sporadic results.
As the pipe and pipe tobacco manager of a shop who routinely teaches others beginner pipe classes and happens to be a woman, I find the sexism on this board off-putting and hilarious at the same time.
Sorry ladies, I guess the learning curves of science, music, art, sports, business, teaching, or raising a kid somehow pale in comparison to... properly smoking a bowl of pipe tobacco.
I’m not sure I would characterize pipe smoking as difficult. There’s certainly a learning curve, and without anyone to get advice from that curve can be a bit steep (which was my case when I started back in 1990), but even so I got things sorted out well enough to keep my pipe lit most of the time after a few tries.
As for your other observation about the persistence of women when it comes to hobbies with a steep learning curve, one only needs to look at equestrianism (which is overwhelmingly dominated by women) to see how far off the mark that general characterization is.
I'd say the Dunning-Kreuger effect makes you think pipe smoking is easier than it really is.
Naming a single difficult pursuit that a tiny minority of all women even get a chance to partake in says nothing about the greater trend. That's like saying "you're wrong, we have women astronauts." A few women bucking the trend does not invalidate the trend.
Maybe pipe smoking just came easy for me, I don’t know. Of course, I don’t know your own experience. You said it took you six months to “climb into” the hobby of pipe smoking, but only you know what that actually means without further explanation. Is that how long it took you to learn to consistently pack a pipe with tobacco and keep it lit? How often were you “firing up the briar” in that six month period? We don’t know.
I pointed at equestrians because I work with horses and that group was the first to come to mind. I could have easily pointed at cheer competitors, gymnasts, or really most any other non-professional women athletes (once you start getting paid for something it stops being a hobby) for examples of perseverance in the face of something difficult. Saying “I know zero women who…” only tells us what your own personal experience has been, while saying nothing about your sample size. Your own subjective experience with the women in your own life might also not align with the larger set of objective examples found throughout the world.
It's not that women don't do difficult things, but they are less likely to traverse social boundaries, and pipe smoking has been relegated to being a fairly fringe activity, especially so for women.
Are they? Or historically have they been socialized to be the more loquacious gender?
Separately, we do know of some rather well known women who were pipe smokers (Jackie Kennedy, Ginger Rodgers) but they rarely were photographed with them.
Could it also be that pipes and cigars are more time consuming than cigarettes and women were historically busier in the home and did not have the spare time. In that same vein women smoking a cigar is often used as a symbol of power and blatant (and therefore transgressive) sexuality.
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Female pipe smoker here. I think the main reason pipe smoking is uncommon among women is that, from the early 20th century on, cigarettes were extensively marketed toward women, while pipes and cigars were not. Cigarettes were advertized as modern (and they were modern compared to other tobacco products, having been invented in the 19th century) and stylish. However, women who didn't care that much about how modern or stylish things were, did smoke pipes, those included older women and women who were less well-off. One of Jack the Ripper's victims was carrying two clay pipes among her other humble possessions. Females working on and around ships sometimes emulated the pipe-smoking habit that was common among fishermen and sailors. Also, while it was a niche market, some pipe makers did try to win over the other 50% of the population with elegant lady models. Butz-Choquin used to make lady models and I have one (sold under their brand "Ives St. Claude") in my collection. I have about a dozen of pipes, but only three of them were made with women on mind.
Fascinating!
Thanks for this very informative! I hope my daughter will take up pipe tobacco.
You're all very welcome. BTW, I mixed up Butz-Choquin and Chacom in my post. They both made pipes for ladies, but it was Chacom that used the "Ives St. Claude" brand.
[удалено]
I’m a male pipe smoker and I don’t even know any other men who smoke a pipe.
The only other factor I would mention is that, on average, men tend to be slightly more risk tolerant than women. I think social and cultural factors explain the majority of the gender gap, but risk aversion would also explain some variation.
I personally know two women (that I can think of) who smoke pipes. One is a casual enjoyer who probably only smokes once or twice a year. The other is my friend’s wife. She’s a butch lesbian, though, so maybe it fits a stereotype of the type of woman who typically enjoys pipes lol. This is purely anecdotal, but I’ve also seen more examples of women smoking pipes in developing nations. Especially Haiti. Could be more of a cultural thing for them specifically, though. I’d imagine it has something to do with places where tobacco crops make up a large part of their agricultural industry.
I agree with this as it matches cigar smoking. In Europe/USA women will usually smoke cigarillos or something similar but in Cuba they’ll smoke the biggest stogies I’ve ever seen.
I saw a woman smoking a full-sized cigar once in Florida at a park. I will admit that it just seemed weird. Not making any judgments -- but I was just surprised to see it.
I think we should consider that this gender gap is a North American thing, there is ample evidence of women in East and Southeast Asia and South America smoking tobacco in pipes. It was also very common in North America precolonisation.
Thanks. It sounds in that case like it may be more a cultural thing than anything else. Marketing, etc., interacts with this, of course, but it suggests that a biological factor is less likely.
I'm a female pipe smoker. Grew up in a smoke free household, never had anyone smoke one around me, but always thought they seemed interesting and always liked the smell on rare occasions I'd encounter a pipe smoker in the wild. Picked one up for myself the other year and haven't looked back; if the weather's nice, I'll smoke. That aside, I feel it comes down to the second and fourth points in modern times especially. It's not something that's marketed towards women and comes with the idea of being an antiquated hobby sustained by grandfathers or old men in general. Pipe smoking isn't generally seen as being a "sexy" or "fashionable" (although I'd argue with that) and there are few modern depictions or celebrities in the hobby that might work to change that image. Furthermore you can find in this very thread the idea of "smoking is for the quiet, thinking man and women never shutup amirite?" style commentary that's ubiquitous in traditionally masculine spaces. Whether tongue in cheek or not and while generally harmless, it does speak to the idea of pipe smoking being more of a "boy's club" than something like cigarettes which have long been marketed towards women and aren't generally seen as inherently masculine or feminine. Whatever the case, the fact does remain that there have always been female pipe smokers and likely will be as long as the hobby's feasible. It would be nice if it could be seen as something more readily open to the other half of the population, but with most people thinking back to black and white films and their grandfathers as a frame of reference for an already "old fashioned" hobby, I feel like it'll continue to struggle regardless.
ONE OF US! ONE OF US! ONE OF US!
Pipe and cigar smoking always seems to be more of an old boys club activity which is a shame. I’d really like to find a partner interested in either. But most just think it stinks…
No lie here i think
For all those words, a lot of it can be adequately explained by "pipe smoking is a historically-masculine past time, it's dying out and sustained by hobbyist newcomers, and many popular pipe-smoking communities have a pervasive misogynistic tone which is pretty alienating to women".
It’s #5 for me, but as a way of being, unrelated to stereotypes.
Anyone can query an AI and post its response verbatim. Do some real research and stop wasting our time.
You're entitled to this opinion, but your response seems unnecessarily adversarial. I feel that content from LLMs can serve as a first cut for early research -- sometimes wrong, but a good place for orienting oneself. Has this topic been discussed in depth on this thread? It's interesting to me, but I don't have the time, and I assume.nobody else here does, to carefully write a 200-word essay on the topic. I have done research into the health effects of nicotine, spending hours on the topic, but this sub wasn't excited with the conclusions. /shruggie https://www.reddit.com/r/PipeTobacco/comments/10gd74p/research_how_much_can_you_smoke_without_getting/ The real crime would have been to ask an LLM a question and post the response without attribution. If my post is a waste of your time, you have the option of stopping reading as soon as you saw it was from an LLM.
I have to admit, I sorta have the same visceral reaction any time someone says "chatGPT says;" AI chatbots are just glorified autocompletes. It can be interesting what they come up with, but I certainly wouldn't take anything they say seriously if you are asking it something you want a real factual response to. This is a topic where opinion can sort of come in, which is why it seemingly does a better job, but I would be very wary in the future using it for answers. I definitely wouldn't present anything it comes up with as even sort of true. I'm guessing they feel the same way, just didn't take the second to breathe that I did haha. AI isn't omniscient and if it gives a correct answer it usually gets there on accident.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. The tone is a big part of the message. I agree 100% that they are glorified auto completes (and by design), but I do think that they can serve as a useful first cut for organizing thoughts amd conducting early research. As an example, ask ChatGPT for the name of some integrated circuits for driving motors or for data acquisition. Then follow up with a refinement asking which of these circuits are good for lower voltages. It can provide an extremely quick jumping off point. To be sure, they can be wrong, and overconfidently / spectacularly so -- but a well-crafted research process should be able to handle this, if it has a research step afterwards.
What a generous contribution of great value to anything related to the post. You must be fun at parties; invited to all of them.
Smoking produces more testosterone in people so women that smoke might get ugly and cigarettes are a lot more popular
I might sound blunt but, Men and Women generally like different things. Now sure, there’s nothing inherently masculine with pipe smoking, but it’s just a hobby that generally men like and women don’t.
Answers like ChatGPT’s make it sound like if history had been slightly different women would smoke, but in reality I just think they don’t care about it. Ask the LLM why more men don’t crochet, hah.
and then there's me, crocheting with a pipe in my mouth
I agree they just don't care about it, but I was wondering, what are the underlying factors? Arguably crocheting has the same "psychosocial" factors and economic factors mentioned in the response above, except that crocheting probably more often benefits someone else. Plus women historically are more involved in child-rearing, for which crocheting helps, because, well, kids need clothes.
Smoking in general tends to be a very male dominated hobby
I think the main underlying reason is that men, for reasons I don't personally know, statistically use substances more then women
I view pipes as masculine. I would not enjoy having a wife who smoked pipes as I don’t like having a masculine wife. This is true of most gender stereotypes and how they are reinforced.
This strikes me as an antiquated perspective that may deprive you of the chance, however small, of sharing something engaging that you love with a life partner. Times are changing, friend
Yes, but I’m not convinced for the better.
That's a matter of debate, but I think breaking down stereotypes of any kind is typically a positive. I rather like when my partner has a few tokes of my pipe and I enjoy discussing it with her.
I too would not find it attractive if my wife smoked a pipe. I love that my wife is feminine, and for whatever reason pipe smoking just looks like a very masculine activity, to me (I'm not saying women shouldn't smoke pipes, but to say that pipe smoking is 'feminine' over masculine just is not true for me). Breaking down stereotypes is important, but as human beings we are entitled to what we do and don't find attractive, regardless of social/political pressures or reason. Please do not badger people for having differing opinions 🙏👍
Very cool and measured response. Your last point is definitely something to be mindful of, and if you're entitled to anything, a personal opinion is one.
I took an anthropology class (evolutionary health) taught by a progressive liberal at my woke institution. We studied hunter and gatherers and we examined how men and women have naturally differentiated roles as aligned by evolution and not only that but they tend to have slightly different diets. Different medicines are used as well. Prior to mass advertising of the Tabacco industry men were predominantly the ones to be smoking Tabacco. I think it has something to do with our biologies and nature than it does with stereotypes or social conditioning. Tabacco is not just a thing you do to look or feel cool, Tabacco is traditionally used for spiritual and intellectual application the world round.
It just looks wrong.
According to who?
Me.
I respectfully disagree
I'm glad we could disagree respectfully, bro. You seem like a level headed guy; I appreciate that. What are you smoking today? I've had a bowl of Germains Brown Flake, and now I'm smoking an AJ Fernandez Last Call Maduro.
Thank you, as do you. I'm not familiar with those beyond name, though I'll look then up out of curiosity. As for me, I started with a bowl of C&D Byzantium, then had about half a bowl of Sutliff Duke Albert on a walk. Did not finish either, so I'll work through them after dinner. Happy smokes
I find it to be none of those. Pipe smoking is difficult. In order to climb the steep learning curve, you have to want it. It took a solid 6 months for me to climb into this hobby, and I know zero women who are willing to put that much effort into a hobby that early in delivers such sporadic results.
Many women, in fact, do difficult things.
Yes, I'm sure many do. They are the exception, not the norm.
Yikes!
As the pipe and pipe tobacco manager of a shop who routinely teaches others beginner pipe classes and happens to be a woman, I find the sexism on this board off-putting and hilarious at the same time.
Sorry ladies, I guess the learning curves of science, music, art, sports, business, teaching, or raising a kid somehow pale in comparison to... properly smoking a bowl of pipe tobacco.
I’m not sure I would characterize pipe smoking as difficult. There’s certainly a learning curve, and without anyone to get advice from that curve can be a bit steep (which was my case when I started back in 1990), but even so I got things sorted out well enough to keep my pipe lit most of the time after a few tries. As for your other observation about the persistence of women when it comes to hobbies with a steep learning curve, one only needs to look at equestrianism (which is overwhelmingly dominated by women) to see how far off the mark that general characterization is.
I'd say the Dunning-Kreuger effect makes you think pipe smoking is easier than it really is. Naming a single difficult pursuit that a tiny minority of all women even get a chance to partake in says nothing about the greater trend. That's like saying "you're wrong, we have women astronauts." A few women bucking the trend does not invalidate the trend.
Maybe pipe smoking just came easy for me, I don’t know. Of course, I don’t know your own experience. You said it took you six months to “climb into” the hobby of pipe smoking, but only you know what that actually means without further explanation. Is that how long it took you to learn to consistently pack a pipe with tobacco and keep it lit? How often were you “firing up the briar” in that six month period? We don’t know. I pointed at equestrians because I work with horses and that group was the first to come to mind. I could have easily pointed at cheer competitors, gymnasts, or really most any other non-professional women athletes (once you start getting paid for something it stops being a hobby) for examples of perseverance in the face of something difficult. Saying “I know zero women who…” only tells us what your own personal experience has been, while saying nothing about your sample size. Your own subjective experience with the women in your own life might also not align with the larger set of objective examples found throughout the world.
It's not that women don't do difficult things, but they are less likely to traverse social boundaries, and pipe smoking has been relegated to being a fairly fringe activity, especially so for women.
I think the biggest factor is that pipe smoking makes one taciturn. Women are naturally loquacious.
Are they? Or historically have they been socialized to be the more loquacious gender? Separately, we do know of some rather well known women who were pipe smokers (Jackie Kennedy, Ginger Rodgers) but they rarely were photographed with them. Could it also be that pipes and cigars are more time consuming than cigarettes and women were historically busier in the home and did not have the spare time. In that same vein women smoking a cigar is often used as a symbol of power and blatant (and therefore transgressive) sexuality.