Thursday, April 4, 2013


What?  Can’t fix it yourself, you wimp?

In a world of specialization, should men be unduly concerned about their lack of handyman skills, or is being self-sufficient in this regard still important?  What expectations (if any) should be put on sons or husbands?  Should gender have anything to do with it at all?  How does Slovakia compare to America on this issue?

4 comments:

  1. The society is changing rapidly. Old stereotypes and conventions are replaced by new ones. The nature of human personality is changing, or rather say developing. This is all normal, since many "moveable" factors affect society. However, certain pillars, such as values and traditions are still present even in nowadays society. One of such "pillars" is definitely the assumption of men to be handy. The image of man is that he is able to repair things at home; he is able to make water connection or build a family arbour. These skills, as are described in the article, are considered by myself as highly convenient and appropriate for men to have in possession. Let's have a look at few interesting points connected with these skills of men.

    Firstly, I would like to talk about possibilities how to gain such skills. In the article, there is written how the authors helped with building of their family’s vacation home. I, as a young boy, have spent lots of time at my grandparent’s cottage. It was like my summer home, since I spent there many hours, days, and weeks during my summer holidays. My grandmother believed, it is essential for me to know how to do the “man’s work.” That was the reason why I sawed so many trees and made so many splinters. I gained these skills, and I am thankful for them. However, my thanks belong to my grandmother. I think, it is the role of family to provide children with opportunities of gaining such skills. Otherwise, where should they learn to be handy? Therefore, I would advise each parents or relatives to teach young boys work with wood, metals or land.

    Secondly, I would like to talk about hiring a professional to do the work for you. As author stated, he cannot think of any professional doing any work for his parents before being retired. Similarly, I would like to state the example of my dad, who paints all the rooms in our and also in our relatives’ houses. I think his work is excellent, because he is really handy. However, recently, we have hired a professional painter to paint my grandmother’s living room. We did so because we wanted to have a special grained plaster. Therefore, my dad’s skills and technology which he has were simply insufficient. In such cases, I do not see anything bad with hiring a professional. Actually, I do not see anything bad with it at all, but I am still a fighter for handy men.

    I am highly connected to nature and therefore I stand for everything what is natural for people. That is the reason why I do not have any troubles with stereotypes such as the work described to be men’s work and the cooking to be women’s work. I think it is normal, since men usually have more strength, are more masculine and thus more suitable for work around the house. On the other hand, they are also better cooks and though one can ask why do not they cook? Answer is simple; men just cannot do everything in what they are better than women, which means absolutely everything. (Do not take me seriously  ). What I am trying to say is that the “division of labour” is normal and I do not see any gender discrimination in there. However, I am a fan of shared work and therefore if a woman wants to build a sidewalk with his husband, there is nothing bad with that. People just cannot rely only on technology and services. We need to know how to fix thing by our own hands and brains.

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  2. This article immediately caught my attention, since it discusses a very interesting topic about which I have been thinking a lot lately. Nowadays, men are getting more feminine, and it is nothing really special when you see men cooking or women repairing something. Well, men have changed in various ways. Firstly, they have become more emotional and sensitive, and secondly, their whole physical appearance has markedly changed. It is no longer a rule, that an ideal prototype of male has muscles and is generally strong. However, skinny, empathic boys with tight jeans became surprisingly popular. If you compare the male ideal from a few years ago, for example Sean Connery or Carry Grant, with Chris Hemsworth, who is considered to be a very attractive man lately, you can clearly see the difference. In addition, women have become more emancipated and self-reliable.
    By this gender role changing, people are forgetting what their true nature is. I am not saying that we should not enjoy all the possibilities this age brings us, but we should still remember some basic nature-like activities. Of course, working with computer might be a bit more useful for us, since we live in the time we live, but what will happen to the society if everyone would be just “clicking”?
    However, I think that there are certain gender roles which we should stick to I am not saying that men should not help with the household duties, but I think that men should not forget how to perform some natural activities such as chopping wood. . Even though we should also enjoy the technological opportunities this age offers to us.
    It is an issue which is losing its importance, since men nowadays do not even have the chance to learn the basic men-like activities. We got used to the fact that when something is broken, we just call someone who will repair it, or when we need wood for the fireplace, we just call a service that will chop the wood for us and sell it. That will obviously cause us less effort.
    I think that men who are more masculine are more attractive as well. Since I am a scout, I was raised with the idea that men (and even women) who know basic natural-like activities are completely normal, I was pretty disappointed when I found out that m boyfriend who came to see me to the scout camp could not chop wood. I always imagined how something might get broken on the house, and m boyfriend would not know how to fix it. That would probably quite disappoint me. Therefore, I think that these things should be taught in school. A few years ago we had a subject called Design technology, where we learned exactly this stuff.
    However, isn’t it just prejudice? Should men really be the ones who do the masculine activities, and should women know how to use hammer and axe? Well, I think we should find some middle path, and try to perform all the activities we really need to know, not depending on others.

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  3. My classmates have already commented on the division of gender roles, but what strikes me about this article is not the problem of this dividion but the inability of our generation to take care of itself. As the author states, it would be unreasonable to expect people posses skills such as cooking and repair. Different backgrounds of man and woman no longer stimulate the development of these skill and this is something I can relate to.

    My life goal right now is to start living on my own. However, I would not knnow how to cook anything more complicated than tea or scrambled eggs. I do not blame my parents that they did not teach me this skill. I know that I will have a harder time on my own because of it, but I do not think that everything is lost yet. Many of the people who hired the author to do their jobs could afford it and therefore they have no need to learn these skills. However, I think that for people like me who would not be able to easily spend money on repairs or take-out, learning the skills might be a viable option. There is never too late to learn, if people would be more willing to admit that they are lacking in some aspects, they could better themselves.

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  4. This comment is from Rasto:

    The times are changing and while a few decades ago, nearly every man could fix anything he owned, today it seem it’s a thing of the past. While the decades ago, a man’s only past time could have been crafting things, in current computerized society, the variety of hobbies is considerably wider. Maybe not every man can fix a faucet in his house; however more and more men develop applications, design web interfaces or write on their blogs. It would be nonsense not to adjust for the new age, and thus practical knowledge is slowly being replaced by theoretical.
    Handiwork might be on a retreat, but men still tinker with things they are surrounded by. In past, you could build fence, repair stove, or even carve something from wood, but today you can create a little device that could manage lightning in your house, or build a media center for your living room. Not a long ago, an interesting open source project called Arduino was born. Arduino is basically a collection of schematics for variety of low cost electronics, which you can build and personalize by yourself. You can build just about anything, just like in the past, but this time a more precise and finer handiwork, as well as some knowledge of electronics and software, is required. Similar project is called Raspberry Pi, which is basically a very simple and low cost computer used for tinkering and home and hobby projects.
    I have always been a technical type, which can be credited to my father, which can fix just about anything. He built the house we currently live in, electrified it and maintains it, plus he’s got one room reserved for tools, which is crammed with hundreds of tools and stores the rest in the garage. The last time we had hired somebody to do something on the house was approximately ten years ago and it was isolation, which required lot of time, so that it was much easier to hire somebody. Otherwise we deal with every problem by ourselves. As a son of a handyman, I’ve learned a thing or two and am able to do most of simple repairs needed in an average household. However, it seems that the value of theoretical knowledge in the society is valued more than practical knowledge, and so young people have less incentive to master such handiwork, unless they’re influenced by their environment. Nevertheless, the true handiwork as mentioned in the article is still going to be popular in the years to come, but to a lesser extent.
    I believe craftsmanship isn’t going to die anytime soon, but the traditional form got a new coat and adjusted to the arrival of computers. Also today’s electronics, machines or even furniture became impossible to fix due to use of different materials, smaller and more complex parts, or generally repair-unfriendly design, which might be seen in modern cars, where even something as trivial as replacement of headlight’s light bulb requires disassembly of half of car and dismounting of the wheel. Sadly, this is only going to get worse, so who wouldn’t feel intimidated by such development?

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