Only Class 4 Rapids can wash away the taint of ladydom. Via QuiteLucid @ Flickr
From the WSJ, a feature on the latest craze for Mr. Business and his monied bro-hams: the mancation!
I have no problem with straight dudes (presumably who the article is talking about) going on trips or adventures together. I don’t think taking separate vacations is necessarily a sign of a couple’s imminent failure. I do think that time with one’s non-spouse friends is important.
But it’s always in the framing, and here the framing seems to be about serious gender policing. Mancations are about gettin’ manly. XTREEEEEEM!!! sports, manly pastimes (why is darts a “guy game”? Me no understand.) and a chance for dudes to “escape what they regard as an increasingly female-dominated world.”
ONOES THE WIMMENZ ARE TAKING OVER!!! WE MUST WHITEWATER RAFT TO COUNTER THEIR PUSSIFYING HER-GEMONY! FIND ME A SHARK TO PUNCH!
I’ve never gone on an all-female vacation (the Dude came to Harpy House last summer), but I don’t think a lot of feminists would regard the occasion as a opportunity to dig deeper into polarized (and polarizing) gender roles. But
Mancation Nation opened last year in Parker, Ariz., on the Colorado River, offering wake-boarding, golf, fishing, simulated dog-fighting in vintage airplanes, tactical-weapons training and a no-women-allowed residence.
The combination of what sounds like a lot of fun (wake boarding!) and fake war-games and “real” (?) weapons training at He-Mancation Woman-Haters’ Club is really pretty disturbing. To be a man is to reject anything remotely female and play at killing other men? I thought that was to be an 9-year-old boy with a unhealthy Rambo fixation.
Paintball is fun, sure. Hanging with old friends is great, truly. Getting away from the daily grind, whatever it is, is probably very healthy. Man-cations may seem new, but positioning one’s partner and/or children as bonerkillers extraordinaire, and homosocial bloodsport as the only way to put the Iron back in your John is just the same old patriarchial bullshit.
omg Dork you read this crap so we won’t have to… so thank you for that!
Have you heard about the Man Cave? It’s a setup just like Mary Kay or Avon but they sell bbq supplies. Cuz men want to have men’s night out where they can sell stuff to their friends too.
btw YO soy el mas macho
Can I assume there is a “NO GURLS ALLOWED” sign at the park entrance, featuring a backwards-turned ‘R’?
What, no poker? Do they screen porn flicks in the evenings? How about hazing? And they call this a “mancation”. Ha.
Seriously, it’s terribly upsetting to think that men do this to “escape” an
“increasingly female-dominated world”. What does that even mean? How does it play out in the lives of the men who feel this way?
@rodriguez: coño, el mas macho soy yo (y que todo el mundo lo sepa)
SRSLY dudes, don’t let the door smack your oppressed ass on the way to your Mancation of Butchness.
I’m a strong believer that guys should have “guy time”, but the WSJ story made these men seem juvenile and reactionary.
One more thing…that “Mancation Nation” website is almost a parody of itself. Hilarious! These men have got to be closet cases they are so desperate to appear “manly.”
Ladies if your dude wants to sign up for one of these Mancations? That’s a deal breaker.
The new Man Cave aisle at HEB also has body wash, razors, and other male beauty/hygiene items on this secluded aisle because *gasp* the old location for these items was too close to tampons and other boner shrivelling stuff for our mysterious lady bits.
Let’s just have a separate store, we’ll call ours The Red Tent Store and the dudebros can go to the Exxxtreeem Titty Loving Dude Stuff Store. For realz.
There was an episode of Grey’s Anatomy this year in which one of the patients got hurt on a Mancation, and it turned out that all three of the guys involved really just wanted to go to Napa and taste wines. I wonder how often that is actually true. The sort of marketing this article discusses suggests that guys aren’t manly if they’re not interested in running with the bulls/bungee jumping/Manly Things. Mr. ausgezeichnet is entitled to a bachelor party soon, and I happen to know he is grossed out by strip clubs and not interested in paintball. So I guess his BP will be laaaaaaaame, man.
@Jenna While I was away from home my hubby caved into Madison Avenue pressure and bought Dove for Men.
I gave him hassle over that and he protested: “but they were out of the other Dove!” me: “Yeah, and? There was no Jergens? Does Dove for Men have extra testosterone or something?” he: “OK you are right, the advertising got me”
bottom line: He admitted that he fell into that trap.
other bottom line: Dove for Men smells just like RightGuard as a soap.
and… re tampons and feminist mothering: I make my kids keep the bandaids with the tampons so that my son won’t ever get shriveled by gasp! touching a tampon.
DOVE FOR MEN?
What, they didn’t change their name to HAWK BALLZ?
Maybe I’m too naive, but I’m very confused as to how this is legal. A resort that explicitly refuses to cater to half the population? How is this not discriminatory? In short, how are these assholes keeping me from wakeboarding if I want to effin’ wakeboard?
“Mr. ausgezeichnet is entitled to a bachelor party soon, and I happen to know he is grossed out by strip clubs and not interested in paintball. So I guess his BP will be laaaaaaaame, man.”
I’d be interested in an article/discussion on this issue–what women think of Bachelor Parties and what’s cool, not cool.
@charlemagneinsweats: I think that one’s fairly easy.
What’s not cool at Bachelor Parties (according to me):
Any behavior you would not do in front of your intended or which you would not want her to know about.
What’s cool:
Whatever does not fall into above category.
Bonus gross bachelor party anecdote: Last year I was at Stansted airport outside of London, waiting for a cheap 6 AM RyanAir flight. Also there were crowds of British men taking cheap flights to cities like Prague, Riga and Tallinn, where the booze flows freely and prositutes are cheap. In line in front of me was a group of men in their early/mid twenties, already drunk even though the sun was barely up, all wearing shirts that read MICHAEL’S STAG DO: RIGA 2009 on the front. The back of the shirt read: BECAUSE IT’S NOT GOING TO SUCK ITSELF.
SRSLY. It said that. Mrs. Michael is one lucky, lucky lady.
PhDork, you are on a roll today, because both ‘WE MUST WHITEWATER RAFT TO COUNTER THEIR PUSSIFYING HER-GEMONY!’ and ‘What, they didn’t change their name to HAWK BALLZ?’ had me laughing out loud.
I’ve been on a few trips with just female friends before (although they weren’t really styled as ‘girls’ trips’. We just happened to be women who went travelling together.)
And I have actually found that having a female-only trip can be quite enjoyable. For example, I have one group of female friends who I travelled with for a study project, but our work was on a gender-related issue and we ended up spending a lot of time in the evenings discussing women’s issues, and usually ended up chatting about our own experiences and relationships, etc. in a very open way that probably wouldn’t have been possible if boyfriends (or any men, really) had been along as well. I think it brought us all closer together, and I’d have nothing against men doing the same thing – but I don’t see why it has to come pre-packaged or in such a testosterone-laden format.
“Hawk Ballz.”
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
The whole macho-ness of Whitewater Rafting thing always cracks me up, because the most reckless whitewater kayaker I know is a woman.
@Becky: Ugh, British men who go on stag nights abroad are, as a rule, bad news. And a source of national shame.
I’d get rid of the whole bachelor/ette party concept altogether, because the whole ‘Last Night of Freedom’ concept pisses me off. (Much as I like the song ‘I’m getting married in the morning’ from My Fair Lady).
@Endora: The whole “last night of freedom” is so bogus. If you can’t stand the commitment, don’t get married. And it’s not like fidelity only applies after the wedding. If my s.o. thought that being unmarried meant he was cleared to get a blowjob from a prostitute (or anyone else), his shit would be out on the corner by morning.
Becky– I’ve been to a few bachelor parties and never have I seen the groom get or even want a BJ from a prostitute. What is common, however, are lap dances from strippers. That’s pretty much de rigueur, at least from my own personal experience.
I guess under your criteria as long as the soon to be wife is cool with it then it’s ok. I personally would be fine with my fiance getting a lapper from some guy on her bachelorette party–to me that’s harmless fun. Kissing or any kind of penetration? No way.
@charlemagne: I think every couple has their own threshhold for acceptable behavior, and the onus is on the bachelor/bachelorette not to cross it. What I find repugnant is when men—and it’s almost exclusively men—act like their bachelor party gives them carte blanche to do things they wouldn’t do under any other circumstances.
@Becky, @c.i.s. — I completely agree that it’s a case-by-case basis. I don’t oppose them generally, and I trust Mr. a. to make me proud. My friends all have extremely healthy marriages, and they all had bach/bach’ette parties, but it wasn’t a “last night of freedom” so much as a “hanging out with friends” night. I think that’s what he’s looking for.
Humorous anecdote: When my friend Ashley got married, we took her to a drag club. Such fun! The main queen paid $1 to suck candy off Ashley’s t-shirt and then sang to her. Anyway, we needed to use the ladies’ room, and we were stunned to learn that (a) the “ladies’ room” was “the last row of stalls in the men’s room” and (b) we had to walk through a gay strip club to get to it. Ha! We were shocked!!! Hahaha, funny naive suburban girls.
Horrifying anecdote: My friend Dave planned a BP for his brother. They booked two strippers, and one of them just started going around giving out BJs on the cheap, without the guys asking about it or anything. Anyway, the second stripper was just standing around, and one of the guys approached her and asked for some service. She sneered at him and said, “I ain’t no blow pig!” Lesson learned: everyone draws the line somewhere.
Simulated dog fighting and tactical weapons training? Really? Creepy.
@Becky: EXACTLY. I don’t want to marry anyone who doesn’t enter the commitment freely or who feels he’s missing out by being married to me.
“ONOES THE WIMMENZ ARE TAKING OVER!!! WE MUST WHITEWATER RAFT TO COUNTER THEIR PUSSIFYING HER-GEMONY! FIND ME A SHARK TO PUNCH!”
*laughs til she cries*
Awesome article. What a bunch of bullshit (the whole mancation thing, I mean, not what you’ve written).
I see what y’all mean about bachelor parties, too. I’m bothered by that whole ‘last night of freedom’ thing, too.
All of the ones I’ve been to have been “Jack & Jill” parties where the bride, groom and wedding party all just go out together to drink and dance and celebrate.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by D Drapeau, Pursuit of Harpyness. Pursuit of Harpyness said: Quién Es Más Macho? @ http://bit.ly/asPJ7o [...]
Wow, Dove for Men is on a roll. My husband was suckered into buying the Very! Special! Dove for Men scrubber, which is basically a lot of gray plastic/rubber casing with one of those pouffe things on one side, and a more organic scrubby pad whatchamajig on the other side (so you can clean AND exfoliate with one tool!!!) I actually showed it to him because I thought it was funny (we joke about how the beauty industrial complex is comin’ for the menz all the time) and I couldn’t believe that he actually wanted it! Oh well. This is a dude who doesn’t bat an eye at running out and getting me tampons if I need them so Dove for Men gets a pass.
@isa: “All of the ones I’ve been to have been “Jack & Jill” parties where the bride, groom and wedding party all just go out together to drink and dance and celebrate.” This is a kickass idea!
Mr. ausgezeichnet uses the Dove for Men because he has sensitive skin. Those Old Spice body washes (with extra testosterone baked right in!) are extremely harsh and drying. Perhaps TPTB think that men want to toughen up on the outside?
[...] skip out on all that emotive, European stuff and head down to the Charlotte, NC metro area for a mancation. [...]