What does the expression push and pull mean in the following article from The New York Times?
Learn English – What does “push and pull” mean
meaning-in-context
Related Solutions
It is a pun on the name of the Dutch artist M. C. Escher (the initials stand for Maurits Cornelis, but the full names are almost never used), who is famous for mathematically precise prints of surreal spaces that seem to fold into themselves or "go around" where nothing ought to go around.
For example, look at Waterfall or Möbius Strip II.
An esker is particular kind of elongated gravelly hill formed by material deposited in meltwater tunnels at the bottom of glaciers during the Ice Ages. Since it follows the path of a meltwater stream, it always goes from somewhere to somewhere. A circular one makes no geological sense and would need to have been made by a meltwater stream that went round and round without any source or outlet -- like the water in the channel of Waterfall.
To "pull something" usually means to pull it and cause it to move in the direction pulled. To "pull on something" means to exert pressure on it in that direction, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the object actually moves.
For example if someone says "I pulled the lever down," one would assume that they pulled the lever and caused it to move down. If they said "I pulled down on the lever," it could mean that they pulled the lever in a downward direction, but the lever failed to move.
Generally speaking, the "on" is usually not necessary, as pulling something can also mean exerting pressure without causing something to move, as in:
I pulled the handle but the door didn't open.
or
I pulled on the handle but the door didn't open.
However, when you want to indicate that the object was moved, it's best not to use "on."
I pulled the box across the room
One would interpret this as saying that the box was moved across the room by pulling.
I pulled on the box across the room.
This sentence sounds unnatural, because it could mean that the person exerted pressure on the box in different locations across the room, but it doesn't imply that the pulling caused the box to move across the room.
In your example, the announcement is instructing passengers to pull the red tabs in a downward direction in order to cause the vest to inflate, even if the red tabs don't seem to actually move down permanently.
Best Answer
This is not a phrase which bears a clear meaning on its face. 'Push' and 'pull' are often employed to express repulsion and attraction, and 'gender' seems to be exerting such repulsion and attraction; but beyond that you have to read the article to find out exactly what is meant. That in fact is the purpose of a headline: to intrigue you, to make you want to read more.
Eventually you will find the phrase fairly explicitly explained:
There's a lesson in this for learners (and indeed for students of any topic): don't be in too big a hurry to achieve complete understanding on your first reading. Often you learn more by running quickly through an article or story, to get a rough sense of the overall content, and then re-reading to fill in the fine details. If you practise reading inferentially—if you fill in the gaps of your understanding as much as possible by figuring out what a given word or expression has to mean for the passage to make sense, without immediately rushing to a dictionary or to ELU—you will eventually find reading English much easier and more natural, and a lot more pleasurable.