itt blogs instruct you how to be a man

now you tell me

well i guess the assumption would be that the chamber pots contents were flung towards the street? idk, my nan was big on manners but not so big on physics xp

Tracer, in medieval cities, the building walls on the ground story had to be set back a certain amount to leave room for traffic, but in the absence of sensible building codes, people would overhang their second stories out over the street to gain more floor-space...sometimes leading to second-story windows that were so close to their across-the-street neighbors that people could pass things from hand to hand. Presumably these structures or types of structures persisted for a while until they burned down in some great fire or other and were rebuilt along saner lines as cities got better at that kind of thing.

So in this explanation, the person walking on the inside is actually UNDER the overhang and therefore sheltered from waste from above.

xxxp Oh DAMN. What I get for being tl;dr

Oh yeah, my father-in-law who is huge on the PROPER ETIQUETTE OF ALL THINGS ALWAYS, constantly chides me on visits if I walk on the non-street side of my wife.

I feel you, Dan, and agree but (oh god I'm sorry to go here) given the ~context~ in which that type of suggestion is presented, I don't feel too compelled to rescue the bits that could, if de-gendered and pulled out of context, serve as helpful hints for being a good person.

I mean, advice on how to be friendly that doesn't require the reader to separate what's solid from what's sexist bullshit exists.

the proper technique is to carve the punklin FIRST

btw Jenny you are one of my favorite posters

i almost can't believe you're a woman, tbh!

(ok sorry)

detailed advice about opening doors for women: http://artofmanliness.com/2011/06/08/opening-door-for-woman/

includes this little tidbit:

There are some women who are offended by it because they think it implies the inferior status of women–that women are too weak to open doors for themselves. Kate thinks that if you’re dating a woman who takes umbrage at having the door opened for her, that’s a red flag, because it signals that she does not understand that a woman can be smart and independent while still being playful about gender roles.

original emphasis btw

i heard that it was so that the person walking on the street side would shield his companion from stuff kicked up by cars and carriages

I feel you, Dan, and agree but (oh god I'm sorry to go here) given the ~context~ in which that type of suggestion is presented, I don't feel too compelled to rescue the bits that could, if de-gendered and pulled out of context, serve as helpful hints for being a good person.

The whole thing is crowdsourced, right? I think the context is all over the place tbh.

I mean, despite appearances I'm not overly interested in defending these things (lol), it's just that the mocking seems to go beyond actual batshit things to stuff that I'm pretty sure most people on this thread do all the time.

^^ oops i forgot blockquotes are all italicized. the word playful was italicized in the original quote

xps

i heard that it was so that the person walking on the street side would shield his companion from stuff kicked up by cars and carriages

The proverbial splash of the puddle, as it were.

With double doors, open the first, but not the second. When there is a door, and then an entryway airlock area, and then another door, open the outside door, allow the woman to step inside the airlock, and then for the second door, do as indicated above and simply help the woman open the door as she .... (continues)

lol gbx.

Also taken to gendered extremes, even casual kindness gets ridic and counterproductive, ie being the lone woman standing in the back of a crowded elevator only to have the men climb on top of each other like lemmings to clear a path so I can exit first. Like, my fragile ladymind can handle the crushing humiliation of getting off an elevator last.

I also think, again in a work context, casting these politenesses as things men must do for women carries an undercurrent of women being delicate needing a certain amount of coddling and gentle treatment that only men can provide. As a woman working in a very manly area of law, that kind of attitude is poisonous and also makes me want to strangle people.

Note: I am not playful about gender roles.

How To Apologize LIKE A MAN

I mean, despite appearances I'm not overly interested in defending these things (lol), it's just that the mocking seems to go beyond actual batshit things to stuff that I'm pretty sure most people on this thread do all the time.

― low-rent black gangster nicknamed Bootsy (DJP), Thursday, June 9, 2011 1:03 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont walk on the street side when i walk with my gf tho! and (no offense) i would probably roll my eyes at any guy who insisted on doing so

i know a single woman who wears a wedding ring just to eliminate like 80% of this crap

Note: I am not playful about gender roles.

red flag; you have been cited for lack of playfulness

jenny otm

the apology thing seems pretty otm imo

it's not about "insisting"! it's about "offering"

lol my wife would really hate this conversation as it's basically telling her she is a bad woman for being Southern

no one thinks yr wife is bad, just that shes attached to behaviors rooted in anachronistic & outmoded concepts of gender that contribute to discrimination against women

idk tracer i just fail to see what makes an apology "manly"?

well yeah me neither

artofhumanness.com - not taken

With revolving doors, reach out and slow it down so that she can step in. This rule is especially true for older revolving doors that lack the auto-revolving feature that many modern revolving doors have.

iirc debrett's says a man should go in first to push the door, but make a complete revolution so that the lady can exit first. that's pretty stupid, but not as stupid as trying to slow the door down, because if someone is coming the other way - something which is a major feature of revolving doors - they'll get stuck while mr art-of-manliness is dicking around.

With revolving doors, reach out and slow it down so that she can step in. This rule is especially true for older revolving doors that lack the auto-revolving feature that many modern revolving doors have.

what in the hell

"risk breaking your damn fingers and grind the flow of people to a halt, because a woman is around"

yes see, this makes no sense ergo I get mocking it

i don't understand opening a door for a woman after she's already started to open it herself!

xxxxp Actually, chamber pots were usually taken to public privies and dumped.

Jenny so otm

Dan the critiques aren't really about women who are accustomed to courtly behavior!

If I walk through a door and someone (of either gender) is walking behind me, I politely hold the door open. But if I see someone who's way behind me, I won't hold the door for 10 or 15 seconds. But sometimes, there's that in-between walk-behinder who I'd have to hold the door for about 5 seconds, and I'm never sure whether I should hold the door for her, or if it would look odd that I'm holding the door open for so long (of if it will imply I want her to hurry up, etc.)

How many seconds behind you must someone else be before it's acceptable to let the door close behind you?

it depends on how good-looking they are, obviously

if the door would swing fully closed by they time they reached it, then maybe it's ok to not hold the door? leaving the door to swing closed in their face just as they reach it seems like a dick move.

just realizing that Art of Manliness is largely co-authored by a husband & wife team

if i could identify a common theme in much of this "being a gentleman" / "being a man" nonsense, it would be "false nostalgia":

Whenever I’m watching a movie that harkens back to a sepia tinted yesteryear, it isn’t the simpler times I long for so much as a return to the distant days when a man rose alongside the sunrise and was expected to give the daylight his best.

Clothes were sharper, adolescence shorter, and the word man still deserving of the first spot in the word manners. Now it seems as if there is something missing, something stripped from today’s men, besides their buttons and blazers. I peer at photographs of my grandfather in his prime, and ponder the polarity of our worlds. A dozen decades have hurtled by with such speed; it seems they have left our populace with a case of collective amnesia. I look past the creases of my curling photographs, grateful that I can still teach my son what I believe it means to be a man.

The fellows in those old photos look like they had manners, you can practically see them. Even greasy and fatigued, they never went outside without a hat to hold the hair upon their head. It is difficult to believe that they would have left behind their pleases and thank yous. If it were only manners abandoned, things might be easier to explain to my boy, but it isn’t. There is a mindset now missing, an outlook thickened by decades of languor.

i gagged

of course these men had manners. not a drunk, a gambler, a wife-beater, or a degenerate bastard among them! i can tell, you see, because these photographs are old.

Rule #743:

Wear a hat
... to hold the hair
... upon your head

re: "baby"

I call my gf "baby" all the time but in the context of "quit being such a baby" bc babies are the only minority group I am comfortable disparaging

You see, that congressman was RIGHT, babies are the most AT-RISK MINORITY IN AMERICA TODAY.

lol

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm96y1iz7I1qj29d6o1_500.jpg