marketing of masculinity

Yeah, but remember that someone stranded on the side of a busy expressway with a flat tire while running late for something important is certainly not in the most appropriate frame of mind for clear thinking. I mean, I agree with you in that it is an important (and relatively easy) skill to learn, but at the same time I can completely see why people are intimidated by it!

YEEESS, this is why you should maybe KNOW HOW before it happens to you! As I/we were saying. That's why it's good to know how to do things just because, sometimes.

yeah, i guess, and i am being an internet hardman about something pretty trivial, but still. sometimes this attitude ("willed helplessness" we'll say) pushes my dang buttons. i am in no way in favor of heavily gendered skillsets or w/e, but ffs ppl pounding a nail or painting your walls or installing a driver is NOT DIFFICULT. or, rather, learning how to do that thing is not difficult.

xp

this is a skill that should be filed under ADULT CAR USER, not MAN.

Right, and more or less true across the board. Like for most skills apart from what you do with your own genitalia I don't really see much sense or use in filing them under masculine/feminine. Useful things=useful.

whoa buncha xposts, yea w/ya re: willful helplessness. Lotsa things aren't as scary as they seem.

Just out of curiosity, how did you people who know how to change a tire learn?

I learned by getting a flat out in the middle of nowhere at 11:30 PM in the days before a cell phone. It was a sloppy attempt, but I got it done. Since then its just been refining the process.

my friends dad taught us one time when he was driving us somewhere and blew a tire - it really is p simple

and hey lamp y dont U go somewhere and stfu

do u want 2 fite??????

use the iron to loosen the nuts,

See, I don't even know what either of these things are.

I've never had to change a tire but, for example when something would break or go haywire on my guitar, it's like okay lets get an allen wrench and just...you use your small semblance of wits and it gets done.

Well, yeah. I'm OK with that sort of stuff, too. I change lightbulbs, hang picture frames, etc.

my dad showed me how to change a flat a long time ago. but there has always been some weirdness when i've actually gotten flats, like the time (surprise!) it turned out my spare was flat too

BREAKIN DOWN WALLS HERE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDjbz5TrHJA

that was informative! i did not know

I guess I just wonder sometimes if the people who are all "suck it up" about practical stuff like this had parents who emphasized it. Because mine never really did, and it's not like I would've picked it up elsewhere (never even had to take shop class in junior high, since I was in band). I mean, I don't want to make excuses or anything, but I really do feel out of my element sometimes when it comes to certain fix-it skills, just because my experience is so minuscule.

I totally understand the fear of it, but I mean, I tried my damndest in shop class and got a C. I can hardly crack eggs without getting bits of shell in them. If I can do it anyone can.

jaymc-- I learned because I got a flat. I made it home, pulled out the kit that came withu car read the manual and did it.

Fair enough.

putting the male gaze right there in the commercial, i think. MEN OF STATURE (figuratively but also literally in these ads) see you as an ineffectual boy, boy, in your stupid ryan howard hats. put down the xbox, put on a suit or something and get a cadillac like a grownup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prjjokASEqo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoQXao7Zjpg

welcome to the world of gentlemen gentlemen

dude doesn't know this but the other three are hyundai owners--not gentlemen in the slightest

thats ok cause the old guys are driving a stolen cadillac and theyve just massacred everyone in the diner

during the world War II / Cold War era, the stakes were such that people just HAD to have a certain toughness that isn't necessary today

Haven't made my way through the whole thread yet to see if this is expanded upon, but this is something I've given a lot of thought to. The idea of being rough and rugged and manly made sense when there was utility to it, when it could be used in the service of some opposing force. But, c'mon. Most people (in the US, at least) lead pretty damn cush lives. Every time I see some bro striking a hardman pose walking through, say, Lincoln Park, I can't help but feel really sorry for the dude. Overt machismo strikes me as a generally outmoded and obsolete state of being unless you live in some crime-ridden neighborhood or you're in the military or something.

Oh, and another thing while I'm on the subject, and which may go hand-in-hand with the rootless and senseless masochism of today: where once you may have had a patronizing style of misogyny that infantalized women, today you have a burgeoning sadistic misogyny which objectifies women (see: most porn, which seems to be having an increasingly and frighteningly huge effect on sexual mores across the board these days).

Link is NSFW, but they have full lad mags from the 40s - 70s here:

http://www.vintagegirliemags.com

It's amusing to see how many of them resemble the same thing found in comic books years later

never even had to take shop class in junior high, since I was in band

how did this even make sense

like that is the most perplexing school board decision I have ever seen

some schools exempt you from other requirements for doing band!

not that weird imo. kids in accelerated science skipped shop and home ec in my school.

I guess I just wonder sometimes if the people who are all "suck it up" about practical stuff like this had parents who emphasized it.

My dad never did, but when i had to do work around the house for him, it was done the right way or i would hear about it, and i think this helped a lot?

my dad didn't emphasize it that much but he knows how to do a lot of stuff & is curious about things so it rubbed off. not on my brother though, he has no clue how to change a tire, i'm sure.

i had to *beg* my dad to teach me how to change oil though ^_^

got my first f in metal shop

yeah my dad is totally like that too--except he hates working with others so

I made a box wrong

i got a B probably in shop

i got a C in home ec, mostly because i fucked up this sewing project (a stuffed animal) pretty bad

i loved shop, i wish we had it every year. but i could NOT sew. my teacher made fun of me. who cares though, her class was useless and dumb

some schools exempt you from other requirements for doing band!

But usually those requirements are somewhat analogous to the skill set band would satisfy (like, for example, choir or a basic music class, or an art class).

In 8th grade, my school district made you take a full year of phy ed for a full year, split semesters of industrial arts and home ec, and a music/arts class that could include be band and/or choir. You didn't get the option to start skipping any of these classes until high school, and even there you had to take phy ed freshman year and at least one class out of the other general areas.

she was this round lady with a perm. my stitches were too huge so i had little pockets and she said "what is this? a hidey-hole?" i will never forget. xpost

oh she totally made fun of me. i don't care, though. if i need to learn how to sew i will get a book

i can knit now

yeah i mean my capacity for concentration on tiny skilled tasks has increased a lot since those days

my dad was way handy and super into fixing up cars and stuff like that, and so were my two older brothers, but i never had the least bit of interest in anything like that as a kid. (also, weirdly, my dad and brothers were never into sports, but i was).

nowadays i have more of an appreciation for that stuff, both for sheer practical value as well as thinking that it might be fun to tinker around with stuff or fuck around with home improvement projects...but when it comes down to it, i still don't have the requisite desire to take up those sorts of activities in any substantive manner

I made a gigantic leather keychain in 8th grade shop that I used through college and still have in a drawer. I also wore the sweatpants I made in 8th grade shop up into college because I had run out of fabric on them so three panels were navy blue and the back left panel was white and I thought they were awesome.

My school district made no bones about putting vocational classes in the poorest schools - there wasn't even the option of taking shop (or home ec or metal shop or anything else) in my high school.

Now a friend is teaching in one of those schools and can't get $500 from the district to start a lit mag for her creative writing and English students.

Dan, in HS:

http://image.orientaltrading.com/otcimg/31_126.jpg

Just out of curiosity, how did you people who know how to change a tire learn?

my dad showed me once or twice when the family car had a flat. i've never changed a tire on my own though.

My uncle showed me how to change a car tire when I got a flat. I've done it once since then. The satisfaction of being like "daaaamn I changed that tire good a ding-dang-doo" was outweighed by how much of a pain in the ass it is to do. Changing a bike tire OTOH is highly satisfying (and an irritatingly frequent necessity in this land of goatheads).

Yeah, if you did band in junior high, then you just did band all year. If not, then you had a quarter each of art, music, home ec, and shop.

but when i had to do work around the house for him

What does this mean? I had basic chores like cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming, etc.

Btw, I was thinking about this thread this morning because my car died over the weekend and so this morning I called to get it towed to the shop. On the phone, the mechanic said, "Do me a favor, open the hood on your car so the tow-truck driver knows which car is yours." I said sure, went out to the car, pulled the ring below the emergency brake that's supposed to pop the hood, heard a pop, and then went around to lift it up ... except I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to lift. Nothing seemed to be budging. Was it frozen shut? Was there some latch I had to unfasten? I didn't know. So I just didn't do anything about it, and I stood outside the car and waved to the tow truck when it approached. For a while, I still feared that the tow-truck guy was going to ask me to lift the hood and I'd be all embarrassed, but it didn't happen.

it's interesting, my mom is old-fashioned and needs dad to do all the stereotypically manly-man stuff, but my parents didn't raise me with a "men do THIS, women do THIS, women don't do THIS" attitude. i learned all that gender expectation stuff from television and well-meaning educators.

ha yeah there's a little lever under the hood you have to find!

What does this mean? I had basic chores like cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming, etc.

i had to clean bathrooms and stuff but that was for my Mom. i mean like yard work, mowing the lawn, picking up brush, clipping hedges, weeding.

did you try running your hand under the hood?