Things that are perceived as MANLY!!

[Cubist]

Thats what you do when you're a kid I reckon. I got to about 12 or 13 and just thought "this is boring." Things that fascinated me as a kid certainly dont now.

So I expect flying a kite, chucking a frisbee and so on are just "childish" and no longer of interest? What a shame!!

I still love skimming stones. As an adult I can break down what makes a good stone, a good throw, the right water conditions and strive to get more than twenty or so skips.

I expect some modern day philosopher has already told us to look as stuff through children's eyes, but it's never truer than when sharing something as simple as stone-skimming with kids.

 

[funnymummy]

Isn't that a problem when you are 6' tall?

Indeed, even more so when i'm pissed!

 

[Night Train]

I still love skimming stones. As an adult I can break down what makes a good stone, a good throw, the right water conditions and strive to get more than twenty or so skips.

I once found a very well rounded brick on the beach and managed to skim it. It bounced twice before it sank.

 

[Andy_R]

And in answer to your question - No.... I wax

...arrrghhh......self inflicted pain......that's manly!

 

[ianrauk]

So I expect flying a kite, chucking a frisbee and so on are just "childish" and no longer of interest? What a shame!!

I still love skimming stones. As an adult I can break down what makes a good stone, a good throw, the right water conditions and strive to get more than twenty or so skips.

I expect some modern day philosopher has already told us to look as stuff through children's eyes, but it's never truer than when sharing something as simple as stone-skimming with kids.

Agreed. bloody jolly good fun...I showed it to 18mo last friday at the local park.. he was creased up in hysterics for some reason... and I loved throwing them to see how many bounces I could get...(about 8 at the most)

 

[GM]

I've just cleaned our wheelie bin out, does that count?

 

[twobiker]

I've just cleaned our wheelie bin out, does that count?

Just had to put our house name on ours some git stole our clean bin and left a dirty one.
Manly Men always have a can of car paint somewhere. and also never know where it is.

 

[slowmotion]

Unblocking drains.

 

[ColinJ]

When I go on holiday, I only take two pairs of shoes.

You have to leave the other 47 pairs at home because your suitcase is bulging with 23 different outfits?

I can understand why I had to change my ex's light bulbs (I was tall enough to reach and she wasn't) but how come that degunking blocked pipes in her kitchen was definitely considered 'manly', but asking her to take up the hems on my new trousers while I did the degunking was considered extremely sexist? (She always laughed when I queried stuff like that!)

Oh, and my ex both impressed and horrified me when I first met her when she opened a bottle of Guinness with her teeth, so clearly, risking serious dental damage in the pursuit of drunkenness is not a manly activity!

 

[Arch]

I can understand why I had to change my ex's light bulbs (I was tall enough to reach and she wasn't) but how come that degunking blocked pipes in her kitchen was definitely considered 'manly', but asking her to take up the hems on my new trousers while I did the degunking was considered extremely sexist? (She always laughed when I queried stuff like that!)

I would imagine (and this is all just my conjecture), that because for so long it was assumed women were good for nothing but sewing and cooking and cleaning, and because it took active campaigning, and hugely significant events (like the World Wars*) to change that, some women are left with a feeling that if a man asks them to do such a thing, it's because he thinks it's all they can do. And those tasks have perhaps been regarded as second rate by some. Whereas Manly Things, like drains and shelves, require guts and skill and so on.

It's all nonsense of course, if a woman is good at hemming trousers, and a bit squeamish about drains, and a chap is fine with drains, but finding his trousers dragging on the floor, it makes sense to exchange skills. It's just that for a long time, the hemming was seen as the 'weaker' job.

Personally, my hems are lousy, but I work with congealed gunk most days. If a chap needed a drain doing, and was handy with a needle, job done!

*I think a lot of women resented the fact that during the wars they proved themselves capable of 'manly' jobs (ie, anything other than housekeeping), but as soon as the men came home, they were expected to fit back into the home and let the men have their proper jobs back.

 

[Cubist]

Mrs Cube once accused me of sexism in a debate about changing a plug. She insisted on doing one, so I took one off a table lamp and handed over to her to put it back on. It took her forty five minutes to admit defeat and threw the whole lot back at me.

 

[Arch]

Mrs Cube once accused me of sexism in a debate about changing a plug. She insisted on doing one, so I took one off a table lamp and handed over to her to put it back on. It took her forty five minutes to admit defeat and threw the whole lot back at me.

Presumably no one ever showed her how to do one, or so long ago that she'd forgotten? I don't think men are born knowing stuff like that. They may have an affinity that leads them to find out*, but not a natural born skill.

And even if someone can work their way through task without knowledge on logic alone, they may not do it the best or most efficient way - this applies as much to threading a needle as wiring a plug.

*apparently, even chimps, when presented with toy trucks or dolls, will tend to choose along gender lines - of course it would be interesting to do the experiment with a less obvious toy than a doll. Female animals are bound to have a tendency to 'mother' something they see as a baby. Perhaps if it was done with something more cultural, like shoes, or sparkly clothes.

 

[John the Monkey]

Presumably no one ever showed her how to do one, or so long ago that she'd forgotten? I don't think men are born knowing stuff like that. They may have an affinity that leads them to find out*, but not a natural born skill.

/whispers I still have to look at the little piece of card they give you on the plug.

The idea of inborn aptitudes may be true on a population level (and the author I mentioned earlier has some interesting ideas on why that's not so) but within those populations we all lie on the curve at one point or another. And there's nothing to say that the person next to you, regardless of sex, may be further along the curve than I am, and so there's no reason to make an assumption about them based on what may be true on average within a large population.

 

[ColinJ]

It's all nonsense of course, if a woman is good at hemming trousers, and a bit squeamish about drains, and a chap is fine with drains, but finding his trousers dragging on the floor, it makes sense to exchange skills. It's just that for a long time, the hemming was seen as the 'weaker' job.

Personally, my hems are lousy, but I work with congealed gunk most days. If a chap needed a drain doing, and was handy with a needle, job done!

*I think a lot of women resented the fact that during the wars they proved themselves capable of 'manly' jobs (ie, anything other than housekeeping), but as soon as the men came home, they were expected to fit back into the home and let the men have their proper jobs back.

I suppose so but I just thought she could do me a favour while I was doing one for her. I wasn't thinking about gender roles at the time; they were just jobs that needed doing and she hated degunking!

I was down at my sister's house a couple of weeks ago, and had some trousers that needed the hems seeing to. I was trying to establish whether my sister's sewing skills were any better than mine when my brother-in-law leapt to his feet and whipped out some magic tape stuff which he ironed in for me, bonding the hems into their new positions - I was pretty impressed with that!