Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Scout26 on June 02, 2013, 09:09:01 PM
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This came up on my Yahoo feed. "Mansome" They teach some basic life skills along with some useless information for those "guys" who's dads tried to show them how to be men, but were too busy playing video games and worrying about what clothes to wear to school, to learn basic man skills.
Some examples:
http://screen.yahoo.com/mansome-173-knife-skills-kitchen-040000971.html
http://screen.yahoo.com/mansome-187-mansome-guide-making-230000816.html
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I'm sorry, but what is your point? We already totally get the pussification of the metro/hipster male, and their general uselessness at anything worthwhile to society.
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Fail.
Nothing about guns.
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Fail.
Nothing about guns.
But it'll keep them alive long enough to hold up for after you've shot and consumed everything else. Maybe you'll get lucky and stumble across some wild fava beans too.
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Can't those people join the Boy Scouts now? =D
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Can't those people join the Boy Scouts now? =D
No. Considering most homosexuals I've known have been tougher then the average hipster....I hope the boy scouts never lifts the ban on hipsters.
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The point is that these "guys" never learned the basics of being a man either from their fathers or a male mentor (grandfather, uncle, cousin, neighbor, etc.) Some/most were raised by single mothers and were never taught, others just never bothered to learn and some were inculcated with a sense of being a boy/man was somehow wrong.
Now that they are older, the are discovering that there are things that they should "know", but are lacking. Especially the two hosts who are hipster/metrosexual types. Stuff that they should have learned in Boy Scouts, for example, they now have to learn as 20-30somethings, because they discover that what women really want is a true man, not a man that dresses and acts like a woman.
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I was raised by a single mom, but I guess that I got my values from Gene, Roy, and Duke ;)
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(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimgs.xkcd.com%2Fcomics%2Fhipsters.png&hash=c73806353065c6acef52affb61cd7163eb366ca5)
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The point is that these "guys" never learned the basics of being a man either from their fathers or a male mentor (grandfather, uncle, cousin, neighbor, etc.) Some/most were raised by single mothers and were never taught, others just never bothered to learn and some were inculcated with a sense of being a boy/man was somehow wrong.
Now that they are older, the are discovering that there are things that they should "know", but are lacking. Especially the two hosts who are hipster/metrosexual types. Stuff that they should have learned in Boy Scouts, for example, they now have to learn as 20-30somethings, because they discover that what women really want is a true man, not a man that dresses and acts like a woman.
I grew up near some woods a couple miles outside a small town. We burned trash, ran around the woods, killed snakes, fished, shot BB guns, put firecrackers in cow paddies, etc, etc, etc. I reluctantly changed my own oil and tires when I was older because I didn't have the money to let someone else do it and my Dad sure as hell wasn't going to pay for it. <<Insert hunting, camping or other personal story here>> There are city people who never do those things and never really cared about it. Do you call that a lack of man-hood? I don't know. Not all those people are hipsters or metrossexuals though.
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The point is that these "guys" never learned the basics of being a man either from their fathers or a male mentor (grandfather, uncle, cousin, neighbor, etc.) Some/most were raised by single mothers and were never taught, others just never bothered to learn and some were inculcated with a sense of being a boy/man was somehow wrong.
Now that they are older, the are discovering that there are things that they should "know", but are lacking. Especially the two hosts who are hipster/metrosexual types. Stuff that they should have learned in Boy Scouts, for example, they now have to learn as 20-30somethings, because they discover that what women really want is a true man, not a man that dresses and acts like a woman.
Sadly my dad was a Marine, yet taught me very little. I learned way more on my own, and from my FIL. Luckily as a kid I pretty much lived in the woods, and got boy's life, sports afield, and a few other magazines to boot.
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Sadly my dad was a Marine, yet taught me very little. I learned way more on my own, and from my FIL. Luckily as a kid I pretty much lived in the woods, and got boy's life, sports afield, and a few other magazines to boot.
Seems like some of this stuff is just born into you =|
Not the knowledge of course (you have to learn that somehow) but at least the inclination.
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Seems like some of this stuff is just born into you =|
Not the knowledge of course (you have to learn that somehow) but at least the inclination.
Most men and hell most women have it. Survival instinct.
I've tried to be real cognizant to include my son in on projects. Besides teaching him to shoot and fish, I've made sure he can run a drill, and he even has his own little tool kit. My daughter is next.
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Years ago I was involved in the clean up after the conclusion of a construction project. I was one of about 5 wheezers. Balance of the physical labor force was male college students. Right quick there became an evident a way of differentiating the physical work force. The wheezers had no problem getting dirty and doing the nasty jobs. After all were were hired to do the dirty stuff. Not so much with the college males. They wore the requisite casual, dirty-able clothes but their enthusiasm for actually engaging in dirty work was most certainly lacking. It got to be more than just a minor issues. The youngsters would simply not engage in dirty work.
Shift to the conclusion of the clean up. I was able to get friendly with a number of college students and began to pry. Bottom line . . . . every single college student I got close to that was "reluctant" to engage in dirty labor was the product of a household headed by a female. It makes sense. It is the female of the species that exhorts the youngins to not get dirty, be careful, don't get hurt, ad nauseum. There was no male of the species around to tell the kid it is ok to get dirty as long as you clean up later. If you get hurt you will more than likely live. Do your boy thingy but just control it. Being a male is not evil. It is who you are, all you have to do is learn self control.
When I was a kid it was a badge of honor to have a raspberry on your elbow or knee adorned with either Mercurochrome or Merthiolate. Yeah it stung but so what. . . . it was the badge of being a boy. Somehow i don't see these youngster putting up with something that stings.
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The point is that these "guys" never learned the basics of being a man either from their fathers or a male mentor (grandfather, uncle, cousin, neighbor, etc.) Some/most were raised by single mothers and were never taught, others just never bothered to learn and some were inculcated with a sense of being a boy/man was somehow wrong.
Now that they are older, the are discovering that there are things that they should "know", but are lacking. Especially the two hosts who are hipster/metrosexual types. Stuff that they should have learned in Boy Scouts, for example, they now have to learn as 20-30somethings, because they discover that what women really want is a true man, not a man that dresses and acts like a woman.
My daughter seems to be drawn to these types. Her first husband was raised by a single mom and was useless as teats on a duck, couldn't keep a job, didn't even know how to check the oil in an engine, let alone change a tire and didn't care to learn, I tried. After a little over a year she took him home to his momma and gave him back.
2nd husband also was raised in a home with nothing but womens but has "risen above it". He was already a gun guy, has his armed security license and has been employed by the same company since we've known him. I still need to teach him how to fish though.
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When I was a kid it was a badge of honor to have a raspberry on your elbow or knee adorned with either Mercurochrome or Merthiolate. Yeah it stung but so what. . . . it was the badge of being a boy. Somehow i don't see these youngster putting up with something that stings
Chicks dig scars =D
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A wheezer? Is that an old dude?
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Raised in a household of nothing but women here - mother, her identical twin aunt, and my younger sister. Our PETS were all female, I was literally the only male in the house. Definitely a lack of male-oriented training and at least a subtle discouragement of male-oriented practices - Mom forbade me from having GI Joe stuff or toy guns, though Star Wars stuff and military fighter models were grudgingly accepted. I did, of course, use forked sticks as "guns", straight ones as swords, all that kind of jazz. Played outside, rode bikes through the woods, just ran around like kids did in the 70s and early 80s. She did NOT like that Dad, during my visits with him, would take me shooting sometimes. My earliest memories are of Mom and Dad screaming at each other, and Mom got basically full custody; we moved from NYS to central TX when I was 9, and we (sister and I) visited him for 6 weeks in the summers. His temper was frightening, further pushing me to "not be like Dad", though he never harmed or threatened any of his kids, tried hard not to show his temper around us but... he was loud.
Picked up doing my own basic car maintenance in the service - man, I miss that workshop on base! - and got into cars. My midlife-crisis-mobile will be a V8 Mustang of some kind. Better figure out which one I want, I'll be 42 in 4 weeks. I do far less of my car maintenance now, and that's bugging me. I'm not totally incompetent with basic home repairs, though nowhere near my maternal-grandfather's level (he was an awesome woodworker and carpenter, and built a second floor onto his house when I was a small child). Moderately mechanically-inclined, I suppose, is not a bad way to put it. Got back into guns starting almost 15 years ago now. Seeking to up my manliness quotient lately, as I was always trained to be accommodating and yielding and quiet and meek, and I've come to the conclusion that that's really not working out all that great for me. Trying to speak... louder, more forcefully; to be more decisive, to stand up for what I want and what I need. Mom trained me to be self-reliant, to a fault even, but not to advocate for my wants and needs - really, not to be traditionally-male, and I *DON'T* like that. I think it screwed me up in ways I'm just uncovering and trying to undo. Blue-collar job which provides uniforms and where I at least occasionally get dirty; actually, that describes my entire adult working life, all three major jobs I've had. I don't like getting dirty, but once I accept in my head that I have to do whatever I'm doing that's getting me dirty, and that doesn't take too long at all generally, it stops being a concern at all and I've come home from work absolutely filthy, or come inside from yard work in the same sort of condition.
Balance all that against the facts that I've never cared for such "traditionally-manly" things as camping and sports and hunting and beer. I don't dress well - my wife has said that I dress like a college kid (polos and khakis, rather than the jeans and solid-color tees I used to wear several years ago). I clean up pretty well, though, when I do play dress-up. I'm a big fan of computers and gadgets, though not to the point of being something like the stereotypical fat basement-dwelling gamer. Speaking of which, I'm seriously overweight, about 100 pounds or so, though I've been told I carry it pretty well; and I hate HATE *HATE* exercising and have little self-control re: eating. Dateless band geek in high school, life-long Star Trek fan (wrote a fanfilm and got my friends to actually do a good bit of practice on it, though nothing was ever filmed) and Star Wars fan, current member of the 501st Legion (pro-grade Star Wars costumers, for those who don't know - this last is how I met my wife). I did the Boy Scout thing for a bit, but we moved away from my first troop, and the one I ended up in next soured me on Scouting for the rest of my childhood and teen years.
My point? Don't know that I have one. Not a metrosexual, not a hipster, but lacking in the training in the manly arts from an early age - Scout's first sentence above fits me to a T. This is definitely a real thing, and dealing with the deficiencies caused by it is... difficult.
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Raised in a household of nothing but women here - mother, her identical twin aunt, and my younger sister. Our PETS were all female, I was literally the only male in the house. Definitely a lack of male-oriented training and at least a subtle discouragement of male-oriented practices...
Similar here, but I guess I rebelled against it.
I didn't even meet or talk to my dad until I was in my forties. My mom didn't re-marry until I was out of the house, so though my stepdad was a great guy, he wasn't around when I was growing up.
For a while I wanted to be a submarine officer ( ;/ ) but then I just wanted to be a mountain man :lol: I got sick of school and let my grades drop from Straight A the last couple years of HS. I did a number of manual jobs eventually becoming a sawmill hand and then moved into logging which became a passion. It wasn't until we went broke, moved into town and got a job that made me very sick that I went back to college at age 37.
I guess it would be interesting if my dad had been around when I was growing up. =| He was a paratrooper in WW2 and a professional boxer for a while. Otherwise, he was an auto mechanic, service manager, and finally owned a very successful small Chevy dealership.
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and finally owned a very successful small Chevy dealership.
He sold small Chevys? ???
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHwlpScj7-A#t=2m25s
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He sold small Chevys? ???
=D
No, it was a dealership in a very small town. Under my half-sister/brother-in-law they were one of the few or only one to survive the 2009 Government Motors pruning of all but the largest dealerships. (you know ... who gives a flying flip about people who have to drive 100 miles one way to buy a vehicle or get warranty service? ;/ )
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Grew up in a "normal" family.
Mom ran the family, Dad did the bread-winning stuff.
However, Mom wasn't the least bit shy about manual labor, and literally built half our home while Dad was at work building moon rockets.
Mom had grown up in a family of mostly guys, her father was an inventor, hunter, outdoorsman, and ballistics expert. She understood what it was to be a boy and what boys had to do in the process of growing up.
She taught me the bachelor arts: how to cook, sew, knit (yes, and even crochet, which I never mastered), mend, wash clothes, and all the stuff that "you need to know how to do when you're living on your own."
Dad introduced me to wood carving, and I have some cool scars from the learning process. Dad did some of his own work on the cars, and I learned a little watching him tune engines and stuff.
But when it came to construction, my mom could seriously keep pace with Dad and set the pace for us kids. We built a cabin in one week during a summer vacation visit to our property in southeast Arizona. Mom cut boards, dug trenches, hammered nails, ran plumb lines and chalk lines, and generally functioned as foreman for the job. Dad was the hands-on architect. Built a salt-box cabin with sleeping for six out of 2x6 T&G, including the floor, roof, and door (massive gate hinges on that door). In a week. Mom could seriously slap lumber around.
The boys (three of us) were allowed to be boys, with all the attendant injuries and go with being boys. It wasn't about being "manly" or macho. Dad spent time with us, but his lessons tended to be more pragmatic and practical things (knots, carving, a little wrenching, how to study, how to set up a tent, how to build a campfire (although Mom did that too), how to trench around a camp to avoid flooding, how to hike in the wilderness and not get lost or dehydrated.
How to drive. Gawd, what phenomenally patient man.
We never went hunting, shooting, or fishing, but Mom & Dad made no objection when I got my own pellet guns or bought my first fishing boat. Mom gave me a Pearson recurved bow for Xmas and showed me how to string and shoot it (lessons from her own father).
Dad was a generally taciturn fellow, a voracious reader, and a very serviceable tenor to Mom's alto and soprano. There were all kinds of conversations I never had with Dad. Among them was the "normal" discussion of guns. I didn't discover until he was ninety that he actually had a preference in rifles, liking the Johnson 1941 Carbine over the M1 Garand and M1 Carbine. It was one of those "but you never asked" things. It was only after his death that I was to learn that he had been a personal aide for Count Alfred Korzybski. So many things I could have learned, had I only bothered to ask.
Mom's take on "keeping kids safe" can probably best be expressed in this little story:
When I was 18 and working for a local motor hotel in Tucson, I had worked three consecutive shifts and decided that instead of driving home I would go to the county fair instead. I pulled up at a red light, signaling for a left turn and, when the light turned green started the turn and promptly dozed off. And smacked head-on into a shiny Mustang. [Insert two hours of Keystone Cops hilarity] My car was actually drivable, so I drove it home. As I walked into the house with my head tied up in a makeshift bandage with lots of colorful splotches on it, Mom looked up from whatever she was doing and quoth:
"Don't bleed on the rug."
That was Mom. She knew boys, having had a crop of brothers. She knew they were messy and random. She was okay with that.
And, as it happened, we pretty much all turned out to be self sufficient.
I'm generally mechanically inept (where cars are concerned), but that's more my own fault, not theirs. Both of my brothers are quite handy in the auto maintenance department.
But I can handle household stuff, I can cook, and I have no trouble "batching it" when I must.
Guns? Well, that's a different story, but the short version is that I just woke up one day and realized family defense was my job. I'd have gotten there sooner, but . . . oh, well.
In summary: yeah, Mom pretty much ran the home and raised the kids, but she appreciated the nature of boys and just let us do it. Of course, it didn't hurt that the culture of the day was "suck it up; rub some dirt on it, kid."
My own kids are a different story. We'll do that another time.
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When the twins were born, I joked that I was going to teach my son to cook and clean and my daughter to shoot and work on cars. While I still think it's essential to "cross-train" if you will, it didn't work out quite like I'd planned. The daughter was the quintessential girly girl and the boy was all boy and both fiercely resisted anything that even remotely seemed to be typical of the other gender. Now that they're older it's sorted itself out. The daughter loves to shoot and no longer has any qualms about getting her hands dirty and the son made an amazing garlic mayonnaise, from scratch, the last time he was here.
I don't think, if you met my boys on the street, you'd think either of them was raised by a single mom. They're both as rough and tumble as they come, capable, fiercely independent, opinionated, not afraid to get dirty, and with good work ethics. Not that they're perfect - far from it. The oldest boy has a temper that he can't seem to get under control and neither of them can seem to find any direction in life, but they're good young men.
My daughter, of course, is perfect. >:D
I grew up without a father and the impact that had on my life is another story. But it did teach me how to be both parents when necessary, I suppose.
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MrsSmith, you are the exception that proves the rule.
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My dad is a great guy, but only moderately handy. That and a short temper that taught us to stay scarce when he was working on stuff left me with a dearth of handiness. I've taught myself to shoot, and with the help of friends and the Internet I've muddled through quite a few home projects. I've also learned when to stop and get out my wallet for stuff beyond my ability. ;)
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I was lucky to grow up at a time when guns (real and toy) were 100% normal for young men and boys to have and shoot, when not knowing how to work on a car was considered weird, when (as Waitone mentioned) having a scar was something to be proud of, and getting dirty or even smelly was just part of the job.
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...and getting dirty or even smelly was just part of the job.
I really doubt that's changed at any time in the recent past. There's always a certain set of people that ends up doing the (literal) dirty work, and a set of people that are insulated from it.
Of course, if you go back far enough, very few people got to stay clean. Back when the kings fought with their troops, and tossed table scraps to their dogs, when entertaining the other fancy people.
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I really doubt that's changed at any time in the recent past. There's always a certain set of people that ends up doing the (literal) dirty work, and a set of people that are insulated from it.
Of course, if you go back far enough, very few people got to stay clean. Back when the kings fought with their troops, and tossed table scraps to their dogs, when entertaining the other fancy people.
We few, we happy few . . .
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I really doubt that's changed at any time in the recent past. There's always a certain set of people that ends up doing the (literal) dirty work, and a set of people that are insulated from it.
Of course, if you go back far enough, very few people got to stay clean. Back when the kings fought with their troops, and tossed table scraps to their dogs, when entertaining the other fancy people.
"Must be the king ..."
"How do you know?"
"He hasn't got *expletive deleted*it all over 'im."
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My dad is a great guy, but only moderately handy. That and a short temper that taught us to stay scarce when he was working on stuff left me with a dearth of handiness. I've taught myself to shoot, and with the help of friends and the Internet I've muddled through quite a few home projects. I've also learned when to stop and get out my wallet for stuff beyond my ability. ;)
If you strip it all away, it's not the individual skills you were taught, or absorbed.
It was a lack of learned helplessness. "People do this. I am a people.. =D So I can probably do this, and I should try. At least I'll find out."
People growing up without that is the root problem.
That's what is at the root of all of this, and what this thread is really about.
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If you strip it all away, it's not the individual skills you were taught, or absorbed.
It was a lack of learned helplessness. "People do this. I am a people.. =D So I can probably do this, and I should try. At least I'll find out."
People growing up without that is the root problem.
That's what is at the root of all of this, and what this thread is really about.
Yep and add the "Im too lazy to take personal responsibility, its always someone else's fault for my failings/actions" factor and you have a recipe for a useless idiot.
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Hasidics + Hipsters = Hilarity
http://takimag.com/article/10_weird_and_wonderful_things_about_living_among_hasidic_jews_gavin_mcinnes/print#axzz2VZhU2r1U
Unite the Beards is a new and remarkably naïve organization that wants to bring hipsters and Hasidic Jews together. They’re based here in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where the Hasidic community has made it very clear they hate hipsters way more than everybody else does. Before moving to this area 13 years ago, I lived in Montreal, which is also lousy with Hasidim. I have a place upstate, too, which is probably #3 as far as densest Hasidic populations go.
After a good 25 years of being surrounded by them, I still don’t know the first thing about them. This is primarily because they’ve decided isolationism is the key to cultural preservation.
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I wonder if we can somehow turn the M's and H's against each other? The resulting pathetic slapfest might be hilarious.
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I wonder if we can somehow turn the M's and H's against each other? The resulting pathetic slapfest might be hilarious.
"(Is that a boy or) Girl Fight!"
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"(Is that a boy or) Girl Fight!"
Exactly!
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I don't see anything at all Mansome or metrosexual (Jamis) in being able to handle a knife in the kitchen.
If you want to somehow "prove" you're a real man by chopping your finger off, that's fine.
As far as I'm concerned, though, a real man knows how to feed himself and eat with all 10 digits.
That said, WHAT you make for dinner with your mad knife skills is another matter entirely, isn't it Mr. Jamis "Rare Ahi Tuna and Sensible Steamed Vegetables" Jockey? :laugh:
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Mike,
While I completely agree about Jamis"Manscaping"Jockey, my point was that these are (basic) skills that my father (or uncles) taught me. Dad taught me to cook. (Mom only knew how to burn stuff, Dad wasn't a French chef, but he could take some pretty basic ingredients and make a filling, tasty meal.) Uncles helped with outdoor skills and mechanical/handyman stuff. (Dad wasn't too handy around the house.) Having one Uncle that worked at handcrafted cabinetry shop and another that ran printing presses (for newspapers and magazines, not your resume') were helpful. They all hunted and fished and camped. Most times the instruction seemed to run along the "Hey, Dumbass, you'll set yourself on fire/hurt yourself doing it that way. Do it this way instead." It also helped toughen you up. Nothing like having your Uncle look at you and then shake his head. You could almost read their minds. "I'm surprised he's lived this long, he sure as hell won't make it to his 18th/21st birthday."
The only time I ever remember my Uncle Tip smiling at me was when we stopped at his house on our way back from Ft. Leonard Wood after I graduated from Basic Training. He had been a Marine in the Pacific all through WWII. I knew I wasn't one of his many Dumbasses anymore.
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I pretty much had to learn everything on my own.
I did finally discover that if you take a big rock and chip it off into a sorta circle shape that you can use it to move stuff around =D
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Yeah, I've heard of those.
And did you know, if you rub some sticks together, you get this hot, bright dancing spot, and if you hang meat over it, the meat tastes better.
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Yeah, I've heard of those.
And did you know, if you rub some sticks together, you get this hot, bright dancing spot, and if you hang meat over it, the meat tastes better.
Look at Mister Fancy-hide here, honest-to-Gruk raw meat isn't good enough for you?
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Look at Mister Fancy-hide here, honest-to-Gruk raw meat isn't good enough for you?
It's all the rage. I reckon that soon every one will be doing it. We tried it with some of those lizard eggs last moon. They were right tasty.