Capital Furs

Gallivanting through the interbutts recently brought an interesting blog to my attention entitled:The Art of Manliness. When I first started reading the page, I thought that it was all going to be some kind of joke, poking fun at macho-types and the like. What I found was a wealth of no-nonsense information pertaining to manliness and how to be a man. Not how to be macho (that's NOT manliness) but how to carry yourself and have the skills of a man. Some articles on the site are informational, teaching you how to find a good barber, how to shave with a safety razor, how to tie 7 knots all men should know how to tie and an article or two on "toolsmanship" (how to properly use tools).

Other articles are almost like short essays explaining virtues of manliness. While some come across as older men pining for the good ol' days, others make a lot of sense and get you thinking. One of them talks about the now-antiquated notion of rights of passage into manhood. Some articles are lists of virtues from great men (Benjamin Franklin had a VERY good set of virtues that are easy to follow and lead to better living), others are collections of motivational posters featuring quotes from other great men, like Churchill or Hemingway.

And this brought me to my own pursuit of manliness. For the most part, men our age (particularly furries) tend to live as manchildren. I'm not saying that we should all throw out our video games and stop internetting every day, I'm saying that the pursuit of manly hobbies and/or rituals is something from which a good many of us could benefit.

What would you do to introduce a bit more masculinity into your life?

Personally, I'm thinking of starting with the grooming aspect of things by learning to shave with a straight razor. There's a whole ritual to it. It takes longer to shave with one and the start-up is rather steep, but it's the best damn shave you'll ever have. A single blade won't irritate your face like a vibrating rack of 3-5 blades. This teaches a few things, like how to be patient (the process is a good deal longer than shaving with a disposable razor, for instance), how to be careful (as it's easy to nick yourself with a straight razor), how to hone a blade (since you need to sharpen and strop a straight razor regularly) and apparently the whole process is interestingly zen, once you've gotten used to it. Also, shaving with a straight razor when you have significant growth doesn't hurt like shaving with a cartridge razor.

TL;DR: There's a sweet site called "The Art of Manliness" (link above) that teaches you how to be a man. Men should read it. I did and now I'm taking some of their advice. What would you do to be more manly?

So what about you? Discuss.

Gender is nothing more than a social construct designed to stereotype the sexes. It is a term bound by language, which is entirely unable to be truly universal. Therefore, it stands to reason that manliness is simply an abstract concept, forced on us by our collective culture. Since it is an abstract and poorly defined term, there really is no "manliness" only "traits of manliness." This means that it is open to interpretation, and since no two people will ever have the same interpretation of a word, never mention the language required to express your definition of that word, whenever people talk about manliness they are really just talking past each other, each putting forth to the best of his or her truly limited ability, an attempt to define what manliness is to them.

Therefore, all things considered, the only way to be manly is not to conform to what you interpret from a website or society, but do what you think manliness is. You have already experienced all the social grooming and conditioning required to have a totally valid interpretation- so use your own! The only difference between the average individual and the author of the a fore mentioned is that you may not have spent a long time hashing out your thoughts on what manliness is. Do this now. Take your time, and be honest with yourself. There is no wrong answer!

tl:dr = Gender doesn't actually exist.

edit: Straight razors ROCK.

Though coincidentally, men have been found to be happier now than they were (I believe it was..) 30 years ago. Researchers recently concluded a 30 year long study that saw a steady increase in the overall happiness of men in the current decade, over the 80's. I've been trying to find the actual copy of the study (it was discussed quickly in one of my classes) but I'm not having much luck.

In contrast to the 'lost art of manliness' I find that kinda funny. People complain about manchildren (not you specifically, IK, society in general though.) but it seems the current trend of men playing video games until later ages and goofing off with friends instead of getting married at 25, having kids by 30 and being the sole source of income for a household has led to a sharp incline in the happiness of men.

Obviously there needs to be a balance between goofing off and supporting yourself, but really I'd say if you can find that balance you're better off than simply being a man and following that role's expectations and sacrifices.

I realize you're not saying that men should never have fun, you're not saying that at all. I just thought I'd add this view as well xD

I think this is ludicrous, all of it, I mean c'mon.

If you have a strange and mysterious growth between your legs, you are dude, male, mae, not-a-chick. That's all there is to it.

This doesn't suddenly mean there is this almighty list of things you have to, by inference, do to remain a monkey-with-a-banana.

Oh, look at this, I have to screw a whole ton of girls and boast about it, buy a car and talk about it non stop, rip it apart with my bare manly hands and put it back together again, every weekend, with all my 'buddies', while we talk about tits and sports and drink beer, lots of really bad beer, but swallow all and any feelings of emotion, be able to fix anything and everything that ever has gone wrong in every household in known history, and beat my chest and get a job and a woman and ten kids and work my arse to the bone, dying in a nursing home from an overdose of Viagra and beer nuts.

Can't I just.. be me? A person? A decent person? Can you seriously say that the way in which a male acts as a good person, is somehow different from the way a fae should act to be a good person? Name it, I dare you, name one thing a fae should do to be a upstanding citizen, that a mae should not, or vice versa, c'mon name one fucking thing.

What if we did it this way; every person with black hair should act like an alien. They should make up their own language of clicks, and weird ass written scrawlings, they have to mutilate cows and ubduct people and probe their damn arses, because they have BLACK HAIR so they should follow a set and expected bunch of behaviors. Makes no fucking sense right? But you are thinking in the same reasoning. Dude here has feature A, so to be a good person, he should do B, rather than the USUAL set of behaviors regarded from 'good people'.

Should women go back to the kitchen?
Should black men get back to the cornfield?
Should all Muslim people be blown up in public?

Fuck all of this stereotype shit. The concept of 'being a man' is as outdated and godamn insensitive as slavery. Move on people! This is the twenty first century, we do not need this Ug Ug caveman mentality about the goddamn 'roles of society'.

Fie, this shit pisses me off.

Indref wrote:Should women go back to the kitchen?
Should black men get back to the cornfield?
Should all Muslim people be blown up in public?

Fuck all of this stereotype shit. The concept of 'being a man' is as outdated and godamn insensitive as slavery. Move on people! This is the twenty first century, we do not need this Ug Ug caveman mentality about the goddamn 'roles of society'.

Fie, this shit pisses me off.

laaaaaawl.

Dude, chill out.

IK thought it'd be neat to share that site. I think he's right. It's a cool resource for people that want to read up on how to do things that aren't exactly commonplace anymore.

Nobody's insinuating women need to gb2kitchen, that black people need to go back to picking cotton or that middle-eastern people are all just ticking time bombs.

You're applying a bevy of PC-era logic to a very simple website. If you don't want to read it, don't. If you think the stuff described is outdated and offensive, don't read it. And I know you already replied in the thread but:

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1381

Seriously man. Indy, you know you're my good buddy, but that's a bit of a heavyhanded response to a totally harmless website.

I'm not trying to grind in stereotypes, but I mean, in terms of doing things that traditionally are done by males, I'm pretty deficient. I'm not handy at all, for example. Any resource to help me become handier (since primary sources aren't abundant in my life), helps me. On top of that, I've learned to have a certain pride in the fact that I was born male. I'm not telling women to get back in the kitchen (in fact, being able to cook is very manly), I'm taking pride in an aspect of myself. Also, I'm talking about manliness, not machismo. Being macho is a front for insecurities. A manly man is permitted weakness, is allowed to cry and is perfectly capable of being sensitive.

One of the virtues the site extols is that a man should be independent. Independence includes being able to feed yourself, groom yourself, fix simple things (so you don't need to be constantly paying people to do it), and generally just taking care of your life. In a world where the odds are increasingly stacked against men (in the courts, for example), it's nice to be able to be proud of being a man.

Let's not forget that frankly, you don't need to be a man to be manly. I find that good grooming (maybe not with a straight razor), handiness, good living and many other of the aspects discussed on that site are equally attractive in women. The reactions I got across the board from this post were not at all what I'd anticipated. It was a simple question with some discussion, not a treatise on gender issues or an attack on people's masculinity.

manliness?

like it or not, outdated or not, the idea and characteristics that follow are still around.

i'm far from an expert on the traditional criteria for manliness. i've never felt the need to look it up because i always knew what i thought it involved.

i'm pretty happy about things for a few reasons:
i'm a god damned steel worker. its hard to doubt your manliness when you do that stuff.
i own a decent suit.
i can cook. well.
i know a thing or two about wine.
bunches of people want to fuck me.
i (try to) pay my bills on time.
i have half decent grammar and can read.

i suppose one thing i feel i am missing from my own list is the ability to fight well.

in terms of this shaving business, i appreciate the concept of straight blades, quite a bit, but i think its more important for a man to go into work shaved at all, than by what means he has shaved. just be a little professional.

indy, although you are a little worked up about it, i agree with you that the notion of 'being a man' is just a notion, and too much emphasis is placed on it. how much emphasis one puts on their OWN lives, well, its beyond not being my business. i really don't give a shit.

Ramses wrote:indy, although you are a little worked up about it, i agree with you that the notion of 'being a man' is just a notion, and too much emphasis is placed on it. how much emphasis one puts on their OWN lives, well, its beyond not being my business. i really don't give a shit.

If I take a deep breath and calm it for a moment then this summarises nicely.

Sorry, I had a pretty rough childhood because I refused to 'act like a man' at every turn, and I guess I'm a little bitter about the whole thing.

Having grown up in Australia (a conservative, macho country) I can imagine that your upbringing might have been tough in that regard. I was never terribly manly either, as a boy. It's only now that I've decided that I'd like to be.

I read through a couple of advice on there, and it seems pretty cool. It's like trying to recapture a part of our culture that seems to be fading out right now.

I was particularily taken by the mustache stuff, as well as some of the featured articles right now; like "8 ways of scaring the hell out of kids this halloween!"