Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

Lawns are dumb and bad in general, but I have to say that mowing was one of my favorite teenage chores. I'd put on my walkman and know that nobody was going to bother me for the duration. Plus I liked the immediate sense of accomplishment, I could see the progress of my work. It was not gendered work in our household tho — both my parents mowed as did my sister, we had a rotation.

I have done basic stuff like replacing light switches, hanging floating shelves, assembling furniture, very minimal plumbing repairs like replacing a section of pvc pipe under a sink or a washer,

See, I just let this stuff remain undone, thereby striking a blow against suffocating norms of masculinity

🤝

I use a push mower. I like noise in my music but can't stand it in the garden.

Another fan here of battery electric mowers (and snow/leaf blowers) - I bought mine specifically for its quietness so I could mow the lawn at nighttime or early in the morning without bothering neighbors and escape the suffocating heat and humidity in the afternoons. It's no noisier than an electric box fan (which is essentially what it is), and even has bright LED headlamps to help out. Only after I bought it did I learn about the environmental benefits, as gasoline mowers don't have any of the pollution controls that cars have been fitted with for the last half century.

Some folks around here are ditching grass lawns altogether and installing artificial turf; it's not just for football fields anymore. They aren't completely no-maintenance though since crud of various sorts accumulates and needs washing away occasionally.

I love my battery-powered mower and snow blower, but this is an incredibly boring thread derail (which maybe is appropriate?)

I don't know, I was somehow raised to think of this kind of work as "manly." Before we hired a lawn service, I would always object to my wife mowing the lawn. Much as I hated to do it, I hated even more the idea of the neighbors seeing my wife doing it.

there is something very comforting about extremely boring conversations among guys imo.

i bought one of those electric (plug-in) ryobi mowers from a friend who was moving in the spring, with the intent of keeping the tiny back patch of lawn behind our trailer trim. i haven't used it once. said patch is a mess. half-dried weeds up to the fence, 8 ft tall weed tree sprouts, overgrown bushes. i'm a little embarrassed but honestly no one can see it and i just don't gaf lol.

weeds are all in the mind iirc

100% agree!

thanks for the validation lmao

Mowing the lawn was 100% my least favorite chore growing up. We had around half an acre too. The smell of cut grass still bothers me!

Slightly more thread relevant: my older brother and I had to mow, but my younger sister did not. However, my mom sometimes did it too, so idk how my sister pulled that off in retrospect (hats off to her really, no surprise she's a super smart lawyer now)

I don’t mind mowing but it’s the next level that I refuse - edging and weedeating. Also bagging leaves, just run them over with the mower.

I always mowed our lawn while growing up. I guess I hated it at first but got more OK with it after working all summer one year with a friend and his older brother. They had a bunch of customers - well-off types with big yards and high standards. Had we not moved, I would have definitely gone back the next year - it was good money for a 13 year old and the fact that the older brother drove us around in a truck made it fun.

I continued mowing lawns of family friends and acquaintances for extra money through my early high school years, but had to use their mowers and get rides.

Though I am probably an urban renter for life, and am now generally opposed to the concept of lawns, I can’t deny my love of the smell of freshly cut grass.

I have a rider so it's fun to mow. raking up the grass because you waited too long, on the other hand = total dud

Riding mowers remind me of my grandpa and George Jones, not necessarily in that order.

My grandfather had a Craftsman riding mower he got off the curb - the only way to get it to stop was to depress the clutch and coast so it was fun to try and time it right to not run into shit.

This was it ~12 years ago in the back of my mom's yard, now it's completely invisible

https://live.staticflickr.com/3045/2601423981_1a635a80f7_c.jpgElephant Graveyard by Matt, on Flickr

Er Montgomery Ward not Craftsman, his tools were all Crafstman

My grandfather had a very similar riding mower. I'm not 100% sure, but I think it was also from Ward's. He was a regular shopper there.

14 or 15 years old. Living in a rented house — more like a palace — an Edwardian mock-Tudor behemoth with a fountain, ivy, lilac hedges a kilometre long, and acres of lawn. Don’t know how my LMC parents pulled that off, but it’s given me delusions of deserving an estate all my life. Anyway, of course it’s my job to mow the lawn, and since it’s a rider and I’m as yet too young to have my license, I’m thrilled to do it.

One day I’m cruising around the yard at full tilt, Walkman on, just giving ‘er, when I become vaguely aware of stinging pains in my arms and neck. WASPS. I’d run over a ground nest and they were out to make me pay. I panicked and bailed and ran for the house with a cartoon cloud of wasps after me. The mower kept going to the edge of the lawn and over the lip of a hill, coming to rest with the rear wheels still spinning, 3/4 capsized, against the fence. As I’m sponging myself down with cold water I look out the window & can see my dad trying to wrestle the mower back upright while fending off the wasps with his hat.

Crossover podcast ep getting into the Manosphere and social media influencers from Chapo Trap House and Qanon Anonymous.

https://www.soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/678-for-whom-the-balls-tan-feat-julian-feeld-annie-kelly-11822

xp to the yardwork

idk how many people itt are married/tied up/have kids/etc., but god, i'll take any chore that involves some solitude. listen to a not kid-friendly band, call an old friend/family member, get some thoughts straight for a spell.

so, while the DiCaprio dating a 19 year old rumors turned out to be false (in this case), it's brought up a topic I wanted to discuss, namely men dating significantly younger women.

DiCaprio being a powerful celebrity adds another layer to it, and there was the fact that one of the women he dated he had known since age 11, adding a "grooming" factor to it, but I'm curious if it is even ok for a non-celebrity man in his 40s to date someone in their early 20s, especially since frontal lobe is still developing until age 25.

Obviously, I think context also matters, and I don't think any blanket statement could be made, but I've seen fairly compelling arguments for why this might be inherently a creepy and manipulative thing so I was interested in seeing more discussion. please no defensive "not all men" arguments.

I'm curious if it is even ok for a non-celebrity man in his 40s to date someone in their early 20s, especially since frontal lobe is still developing until age 25.

IMO it's "OK" in the "none of your goddamn business" sense, but it's "not OK" in the "yurgh, what's wrong with you" sense.

I don't think of it as "creepy and manipulative" because I don't think that gives enough credit to the young woman in the equation, who can presumably see a dude like this coming from a mile away and has made a conscious choice to go for it nonetheless. I mostly feel bad for the old man, who for whatever reason is emotionally incapable of connecting with a woman his own age, either because of some kind of Peter Pan syndrome — he doesn't want to think of himself as old, and dipping into young pussy helps him maintain his delusions — or because older women see through his bullshit (as do younger women, most likely, see above) and are less willing to put up with it and more likely to call him on it. Also, speaking strictly for myself, I'm always baffled by it, because a huge part of a relationship, for me, is having things to talk about, and I have nothing to talk about with a 22-year-old woman. We are from different planets, and I wouldn't want to live on hers.

FTR, my wife, to whom I will have been married 30 years in a few months, is only eight months younger than me. Sometimes she jokes that the span between my birthday and hers, when I'm older than she is, is when she likes me best, but she too is creeped out by dudes who pursue much younger women, and vaguely put off by the women who enter into those relationships.

what about men dating significantly younger men

a huge part of a relationship, for me, is having things to talk about, and I have nothing to talk about with a 22-year-old woman. We are from different planets, and I wouldn't want to live on hers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU7yl9R9bkY

David Duchovny evidently has a gf half his age right now and frankly good for both of them in that case

Leo still a sleazebag probably

what about men dating significantly younger men

Indeed, what about it? I'd be really interested in your perspective (or anybody else who wants to weigh in from that side of the bed).

I had a serious relationship with a twenty-three-year-old a couple years ago. I felt more self-conscious than he did tbh. His pop culture references, erudition, prose style, and composure belied his age.

While I'd never call him my boyfriend -- he lived in another state and, well, it just wasn't like that regardless -- we had, shall we say, feelings about each other.

from high school on, i've always been in relationships with women who are older than me. come to think of it, i don't think i've ever even dated a younger woman! that wasn't a conscious decision, just happened organically.

i am now officially old enough that most women under the age of 23 don't really code as sexual creatures to me. they tend to look like children.

there are exceptions! but almost any woman in that rough age bracket that i hang out with for a few days - either in the studio, via work, because of shared interests, etc - rapidly ends up feeling more like lil' sis than anything else. But then I'm not looking so maybe the world would feel differently if i weren't in a comfortable and established relationship. I doubt it tho.

Anthony Kiedis to thread

On one hand, yeah, once people are “of age” it really isn’t anyone else’s business. On the other hand, big age differences definitely can seem a bit dubious depending on circumstances. As corny as it is, the “half your age plus 8” metric seems sort of reasonable. It means minimum acceptable-age when you’re 30 is 23, 40 is 28, 50 is 33, 60 is 38, etc.

Tho tbqh, when my wife and I started dating I was 41 and she was 28, so just outside that window. My other prior girlfriends/wives had all been my age or a little older, so I felt a little self-conscious about it because I didn’t want to be perceived as older man/younger woman. But it’s never been an issue for us or anyone else as far as I know.

(Probably thanks to her maturity and my youthful spirit!)

cradle robber!

I generally don't care that much, to each his/her own... but I do wonder about jeff goldblum having a kid at aged 66

I fully recognize that the age gap I described is unusual.

My now-wife and I started dating when I was 27 and she was 20.

(Actually she was still 19 when we met, but didn't start dating until after her 20th birthday.)

Now we're 51 and 44 and it simply doesn't register as a thing.

I do wonder about jeff goldblum having a kid at aged 66

From my perspective as the 57-year-old father of a 12 year old, the only way this make sense is that he doesn't do a lot of the work.

i guess the one good thing about being on dating apps is that it forces you to consider the age question and make a decision. i'm 39, i put the low end of who i can see at 30, high at 48.

i'm also currently just striking the fuck out on the apps.

also, off-topic but on-topic for the thread, in one of the last couples therapy sessions before my ex and i split, the therapist told me that i was one of the least straight straight people she had met. i take that as a compliment, of course (and she meant it as one), but combined with my perpetually broken nose face and hair that is just straight up immature, maybe it explains my lack of success. also probably that i don't have a job, that's always frowned upon in the 39 year old scene

the therapist told me that i was one of the least straight straight people she had met.

Regarding Neanderthal's revive: I think that the public discourse rushes to apply metrics of morality (and even illegality) toward cases like DiCaprio's. I think it's a bad look and unnecessary. Claiming "grooming" and so forth is so dumb. I wish people would be quicker instead to simply define what they're seeing, in DiCaprio's dating patterns, as what it is: ugliness. It's ugly to see a middle-aged actor dating a string of younger women. It changes my personal desire to engage with DiCaprio's professional work. I don't think he's a predator, but I do think his dating patterns make him look ugly, and that it should be considered a professional liability.

I have friends who are dating younger men. Sometimes it's beautiful and sometimes it's ugly. Sometimes it's clear that the relationship is founded on deep attraction, love, shared interests. Other times it feels as if the relationship is transactional. I feel like the "half your age plus one" rule is somewhat of a basilisk. Like, if you have to do a math to determine whether or not the relationship you're in is viable, you've lost the game already.

I don't think of it as "creepy and manipulative" because I don't think that gives enough credit to the young woman in the equation, who can presumably see a dude like this coming from a mile away and has made a conscious choice to go for it nonetheless.

Great post, gyac.

Dating younger men is common in the gay male world, often a transactional relationship: the older man gets companionship and maaaaybe sex, the younger an inheritance. I've never had a friend date or hit on a teenage boy, but I've seen more than my share of that creepiness in public.

Thank you gyac, that is the perspective I was really looking for

I do remember something I'd long forgotten, that one of my high school friends, who is in fact now married to my oldest friend, dated a 34 year old when she was about 17. It felt gross to us all.

She never really brought her boyfriends around us anyway - she liked to keep friends and boyfriends in separate worlds, though she tried much harder to keep them separate as she knew people disapproved. He showed up after school one day during our rehearsal and it felt really creepy, but fortunately he didn't last long.

The one trend that skeeved me out the most were those websites which were purely countdowns to female celebrities turning 18. That isn't borne out of healthy thinking, even if they thought they were making an innocent joke.

Lindsay Lohan: "Hot, Ready, and Legal!"

Supporting the point of a specific type of men that intentionally seek younger women out to avoid women that know better...one of my ex-friend outright admitted to me his intentions, because really, in his mind he was around another guy, and what was he going to say about it.

I think it was 2008, he was in his early 30s, his girlfriend (now wife) was 19. So nothing illegal, no. But, at least at the time, it wasn't a healthy relationship.

At the time, he was one of my best friends too, but very unhealthy for me - a charming rich kid who nonetheless was controlling and narcissistic, a type of people I wound up with often in my early 20s due to my refusal to willingly see red flags in people.

I hung out with them twice after they started dating, and it was normal, they were cutesy with each other. We were all going to NYC together and told me how he'd started going to therapy as he realized he had anxiety and going through therapy now and how it had opened his eyes. She held his hand.

This felt very out of character, because this was a conservative guy who was one of those "men's men", he had often used the "you need therapy" line on one of his previous girlfriends as a pejorative dog whistle for "you're crazy!". It became clear later he was putting on a show for us.

We get to NYC, and his behavior to her completely changed. Well, he was toxic to EVERYONE, but especially her. At one point, we were at the box office for Mary Poppins, and the two of them were talking about what seats they wanted, when the woman at the counter asked if she could help, and my friend rudely shouted "we're having a private conversation!" at her, which upset his girlfriend.

After he bought her tickets, we walked outside, and she said "That was really rude to yell at the lady at the coun-" and he erupted in a frightening way, "I JUST PAID $100 FOR YOUR TICKET, AND THIS IS THE WAY YOU'RE GOING TO TALK TO ME?". Both her and I went silent. It only got worse.

She was a positive, bubbly person, but she told me in private that day that it upset her when he would just flip out at people. But she forgot it and we moved on.

The next day, she didn't feel well and we went to a minute clinic type place, and he has berating her, first for being reluctant to want to go, then yelling at her for wasting her time when she started to feel better.

Later that night, we were having a great dinner and it looked like maybe the worst was over, but then he picked a fight with the waiter over something stupid, demanded to see his manager, and I finally lost it at him, telling him that for a guy who claimed to be going to therapy, that he was doing nothing but being toxic to people the whole trip. He didn't really yell back - he lightly mocked my criticisms, but he would instead center his rage on his girlfriend for agreeing with me at the table.

He got up in a huff and demanded that neither I or her leave the waiter a tip (I gave him a huge tip anyway, but she complied).

The two of them resumed fighting outside - she was on her way to Spring Awakening, my friend and I were going to the Fantasticks. My friend abruptly broke from her and I and aggressively power walked down the street, and she looked at me, tears in her eyes, voice breaking, saying "See you later, Rob".

This dude was a huge asshole and I'd be lying if I said there was "no sign" of this previously. He was a rich kid who often got his way, he was a misogynist, a classist asshole that treated everyone he considered "beneath his station" like shit

But...this was still an escalation from what I'd seen. I'd never seen him outright explode at a girlfriend before.

But then I remembered who his last girlfriend was. A woman his age, in her 30s, a very independent woman who would not take shit from him - she was a bit of a shitty person herself in several ways, but she could utterly disarm him when he got toxic, and then dumped him.

And then I remembered something the friend said to me the day before, which seemed gross at the time, but tied it together - he said "You know why I'm going out with her? Because I can do whatever I want. She doesn't tell me what to do.". That's it.

After that trip, I only saw the friend once more, then decided I was done with him. He eventually married this girl, but I didn't go to his wedding. They are still married and have a kid. Maybe he grew up and maybe he's better now, but it doesn't change the creepy fact that he didn't like that a female his age fought to be his equal, so he deliberately sought out someone much younger, who he knew he could keep under his thumb. And he did.

And he was comfortable doing it because who was going to call him out for it? I sure didn't. I stopped being his friend but I never really called him out on the fucked up nature of his relationship. I didn't exactly have healthy views of women myself at that time...but I still knew it was wrong.

Anyway, know that was long-winded, and not wanting to take up this much space so I apologize. But these recent conversations have had me thinking about this harder - that as gyac said, it doesn't mean every significant age-gap relationship is toxic, but that older men pursuing younger women consistently may be doing so for the sake reason my friend did, and using similar methods of lavishing then with gifts in exchange for doing exactly as they say. And that maybe we should take a closer look at some of the powerful people who seem to intentionally seek out women of this age repeatedly (as opposed to a single relationship where the age gap was coincidental).

Anyway... I'm done. But appreciating today's discussion. This was a bit of a blind spot for me.

the only people i've had to hang around, like those described by neanderthal just above, were in the televised sports industry. it's a bummer because i enjoyed the job (audio stuff, down on the field with the baseball reporters) and it was extremely well compensated with lots of free time, off days, and the fringe benefit of getting to watch games at field level, right by the dugout, getting to walk around on the field and see players in the guts of the stadium and stuff.

however, pretty much every single person who worked in the field was a gigantic caricature of a misogynist asshole. i hadn't really encountered "locker room" talk before working that job, but yeah, there are definitely just awful people who are exactly like that. i guess the key for them is to find other people that are like that and then to group up together. the last gig i worked, i was helping to unpack the truck near the beginning of the day and a sports reporter walked by wearing a dress. she didn't look at the crew or interact in any way, she just walked into the stadium. when she was still, like, 20 feet away and could definitely hear it, the lead tv crew guy - the one who hires everyone and kind of manages things - goes "look at the ass on that one!" or something like that, and before i knew what was happening there were like a dozen dudes "wooing" and whistling and stuff like it was the 1930s. i didn't like that at all and i guess i couldn't hide it, and i think i was persona non grata for the rest of the day. but fuck that entire industry. everyone was like that, at every gig, in several different cities, different production crews, different events, everyone was just a horrible person. and to work in that industry, you have to be ok with that