‘Man skills’ bollocks
Christmas approaches. Already the 'for him' and 'for her' stuff is being wheeled out. Oh look, a golfball-shaped bottle of whisky and some driving gloves; how delightful. A faint sigh will be heard across living rooms up and down the country, but little more than that. Women like sparkling things and glitter and pinkness; men like cars and football and drills. It's slightly dispiriting, I suppose, but, being one of those people who happens to have been born with a dangly triumverate of objects, I don't really get the worst bits of stereotypes, as I'm well aware.
Even so. I end up reading stuff like this and getting slightly cheesed off.
Oh, do go on.
...here's our guide to the 10 practical skills every modern man should have, and how to acquire them if you haven't.
Some will impress women, some will save you money and some will save you face - because getting a skilled craftsman out to put up a picture hook can be just a little bit humiliating.
These skills will impress women? Wow! Exciting. I can't wait. Tell me more on how to express my masculinity through the doing of stuff:
Your dad could put up a shelf and he only owned three books. You've spent more on CDs in your time than your parents spent on food. You need shelves, and it's cheaper to do it yourself. Oh, and secretly women love seeing men being manly with a power drill.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not being po-faced about something that's clearly meant as a joke. I can see it's a joke, that's fine. I just find it all so downright tedious, that's all. Get a fucking power drill and put up some shelves; be a man! To use that rather unpleasant phrase, men should just man up, apparently.
At this point I don't really get so angry as just politely raise my hand and say "Do you mind awfully if I think that's a load of old cockstains?" - because that's how it makes me feel. Oh, must all dads, or men, really wire plugs, weld things and use change tyres? (Have you tried changing a tyre with wheelnuts that have been machined on? You'll be there all afternoon, sweating and heaving into a quivering pulp of frustration, even if you're Popeye.) How about 'dad skills' like nurturing, gentleness, playing, a sense of fairness? What about 'man stuff' like being a decent role model and working hard at a relationship? (Do I sound like a bit of a lemon? Oh, I probably do, but I don't mind.) Do you know what, I don't aspire to be any of the three Top Gear tools, let alone the silly-haired corduroy-clad shambles who likes doing stuff in a shed. Practically, I'm hopeless. I can't make anything. I'm shit at DIY, fixing cars, building things, banging bits of wood and metal together and all of those fine crafts (which I wouldn't want to denigrate in any way whatsoever). In short, I am shit at that kind of thing.
But I don't really think that makes me somehow less manly than anyone else; and I doubt that any potential partner would swoon at the sight of me doing things with a power tool, unless I managed to nick an artery with a jigsaw or something. My better half often has to restrain herself from guffawing out loud at my discomfort in B&Q and the ineptitude with which I wield the things I buy there; well, I try my best, but that's just how it is. Some of us were not meant to stand banging away at an anvil all day, but it doesn't make us any worse, or better, than those who do. That's just life.
Is it too much to hope that things might have, you know, moved on slightly since the 1970s? Just a little bit? No...? Oh well, the Drakkar Noir gift set it is, then.
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November 23rd, 2010 - 17:00
I really, really want to agree, but I bought an axe the other week.
Only it wasn’t any axe, it was a combination axe and sledgehammer! From Aldi! For a tenner!
Then I had a beer, went into the garden and hit wood with it. It was great.
November 23rd, 2010 - 17:46
i’m with you on this one. Hitting things with sharp heavy stuff is not to be scoffed at.
November 23rd, 2010 - 17:31
Yeah, you see, I’m a bit with Andy on this. I’m as wussy as the next – well, given what I’ve just said, not the very next – man, all poetry and watercolours, but recently I made shelf brackets to put up shelves in the shed. I bought a strip of mild steel (20 mil by 6 mil, and yeah, I said “mil” when I asked for it), hacksawed it into 20cm lengths, drilled holes in them with a pillar drill then bent them into right angles by putting them in a vice and hitting them hard with A VERY LARGE HAMMER.
It was … great.
November 23rd, 2010 - 19:29
I agree – I do love fixing things myself, and getting a job done without recourse to the yellow pages… I chopped some wood the other day on a big tree stump with an axe! Then I had to change a fuse… and I felt great… and I DON’T have a triumvirate of dangly bits! I think Anton is right in that if you enjoy doing things then do them, but don’t pretend that it makes you any more or any less than the gender that you happen to be…
Keep up the good work…
November 24th, 2010 - 13:51
exactly. the point isn’t that fixing stuff and being self sufficient isn’t a good thing, it’s just this framing it in the way that being able to do so makes you a ‘real man’ and to be a ‘real woman’ you should be able to make cup cakes and dust. shelf fixing, baking, axe wielding, poetry writing – all good things. gender stereotyping = bad thing
November 23rd, 2010 - 20:03
Real men don’t use drills, or screws.
Real men use nails. They headbutt them in to put the shelf up.
Only real men don’t even need a shelf in the first place because books are for pussies.
November 25th, 2010 - 13:40
pfft, headbutting, what a girl.
Real men scare the nails into the wall with nothing more than a stern face.
November 23rd, 2010 - 20:08
I once failed to put up a curtain rail.
Since being emasculated by an inanimate object I have tended to shy away from this sort of thing, though I DO have a massive power drill… That my father-in-law uses when he’s fixing stuff at our house. Mr. Vowl, I will ably vie for the role of most inept MAN man in these fair isles…
November 23rd, 2010 - 20:12
My wife puts up the shelves. With a power drill. I just stand there saying “be careful, honey. Don’t hurt yourself.” My penis has yet to fall off from doing this.
November 23rd, 2010 - 21:09
Stay wussy. I have so many unfinished projects around here I don’t know where to turn next.
For the record, when I was 12 I bought my first 12lb axe and listed “woodcuttin’ ” amongst my hobbies. Lonely days while my mates wore flowery shirts and did middle class stuff. I never really did connect with them.
November 23rd, 2010 - 22:02
I once did a days work with my hands. It was fucking awful. I was fucking awful. If I’d stayed there for two days I’d've killed someone, and probably myself, purely by accident.
“How about ‘dad skills’ like nurturing, gentleness, playing, a sense of fairness? What about ‘man stuff’ like being a decent role model and working hard at a relationship? (Do I sound like a bit of a lemon? Oh, I probably do, but I don’t mind.)” Nor do I… I’ll be Mr Lemon any day of the week over Mr Handless who had an altercation with a power drill.
November 24th, 2010 - 08:46
My two older brothers are ‘Men’s men’, and continually take the piss because I’m useless at DIY.
But who do they ring when something’s wrong with their computer?
Or they want to knwo which telly to buy?
November 24th, 2010 - 09:11
I’d be more embarrassed if I only owned three books.
November 24th, 2010 - 09:30
The best job I had was cutting, bending and welding bits of metal in to various shapes. Using machines that’d take your arm off if you looked at it the wrong way. All manly and butch.
But most/all ‘man skills’ are about knowledge, knowing where to hit something, how far to cut, how to get tight nuts undone with no descernable muscles, not actual real skills.
As far as I was aware, knowledge wasn’t limited to men.
November 24th, 2010 - 09:50
‘Dad skills every man should have’?
If it was my dad those skills would include being a borderline alcoholic for twenty years, doing time in chokey on a (trumped-up, it must be said) charge of GBH and generally pissing every penny he ever earned up a wall.
Having said that, with the exception of the GBH charge I think I’m well on the way to perfecting those skills…
November 24th, 2010 - 14:50
Don’t drive — never learned. Don’t do DIY. Don’t like sports. Am I a man? In the estimation of Christmas advertisers, it seems not. And I don’t care.
November 24th, 2010 - 18:25
Ahh, I remember when I was eight and my dad tried to put a shelf up while my mom was at a conference. We spent the entire week trying to clean up and the second she got back she put it up effortlessly
November 24th, 2010 - 18:48
I’m a woman, but I’m not into pink, sparkly, glittery perfume sets, make up sets, face packs etc. – this is one of the reasons why Christmas really pisses me off, as 90% of my presents are like this. I much prefer the “gifts for him” – gadgets, games, etc., yet year after year I’m shoved into this ludicrous gender stereotype.
Who said both genders were equally treated? In 2010, it certainly doesn’t seem like that to me.
November 25th, 2010 - 16:02
The message of articles like this, however jokey and avuncular, is “you’re inadequate.” You don’t identify the source, but I’m willing to bet that it comes from one of those papers that rather enjoys playing up stories about how hard it is to compete for jobs against all these brown people they tell us are flooding the country. It’s probably just a coincidence that the one message helps to reinforce the other though.