To be honest, it’s a serious medical condition, but I can’t help but feel a smidgeon of envy:
A woman in China is making headlines for a rare type of temporary hearing condition that makes her unable to hear men. According to the Daily Mail, the patient, only identified as Ms. Chen, woke up one morning and couldn’t hear her boyfriend speak.
Unfortunately, the condition seems to be brought on by a lot of stress and fatigue:
The night before, Chen felt nausea and suffered from a ringing in her ears. She was also under a lot of stress, working late and not getting enough sleep. Chen thought little of it and went to sleep as usual before waking up with the condition.
Doctors were initially puzzled by her symptoms, but she was eventually diagnosed with “reverse-slope hearing loss, in which she could only hear high frequencies.”
[…]
Dr. Xiaoqing believes fatigue and too much stress may have contributed to Chen’s hearing loss and expects her to make a full recovery.
I’m glad to hear, but perhaps in the meantime, someone can invent a certain type of earphones that produces the same effect? I’d buy a pair and wear them at work. It won’t stop the mansplaining, but it might buffer enough sound to reduce my annoyance.
*opens mouth repeatedly*
I’ve found out that ear plugs are almost always male chauvinistic and anti-string instrument. They cut mostly treble sounds, make it harder to decipher for example what soprano/mezzosoprano singers sing and cut much of the harmonics in violin music.
I’d love a device that filters out the doof doof sounds of loud parties that penetrates solid wood and concrete.
@Ice Swimmer, that is unfortunately just physics. Longer wavelenghts (and therefore lower frequencies) need thicker padding to dampen effectively. That is why ear-plugs filter only higher frequencies, earmuffs filter medium frequencies and only a wall filters low frequencies. And essentialy nothing filters out the very, very low frequencies, because to filter out those you would need a wall several meters thick.