The Man Cave: A passive dig at femininity, or something like that…
Over at the Golden Gate Xpress, San Francisco State University’s official student newspaper, student Kalani Ruidas wrote a piece entitled, “Man caves perpetuate patriarchy.”
She’s grossed out by the smells and sights encountered in her boyfriend’s house: stale food, a floor covered with wrappers, clothes that reek, and a brown-stained mattress. But what really gets her goat? “…the gendered language around “man cave” is pretty gross. It takes a passive dig at femininity. It’s as if women are such burden that they’re restricted from that zone, while still expected to readily share all other spaces.”
And her opinion of why men have a man cave? Those dastardly guys need “…an emotional sanctuary for men to escape their responsibilities without the interruption of women or children. It’s as if these men are victimizing themselves and require refuge to revel in their false sense of masculinity.”
Of course Kalani has to also blame capitalism as a culprit, too: “Sports-related paraphernalia and wall hangings that deify cheap beer are not badges of manhood or some sort of homage to a working-class collective consciousness. They’re the makings of a shrine to big business that has man-cavers nostalgic for a time when they were happy, or actually just drunk, in front of a screen cheering on their favorite billion-dollar sports team with their once single and similarly childless friends.”
Men supporting evil capitalism…
And Kalani is an expert as to what really happens in the man cave (and it’s sexist, too): “The sewing room or craft room, to which a woman might retreat, is identified by the action that takes place there. By that token, a man cave is a place where a man devolves into a grunting subhuman that leaves sexist and racist comments on message boards, then furiously masturbates to free porn.”
The student offers the progressive solution for every man who feels the need to escape their responsibilities: “…allowing everyone to have his or her own space. In a household where that isn’t possible, the ever-so encumbered married man could actually leave his house. He could be free of his cave and take a walk, go to the gym, take a fishing trip, relieve his stress through meditation on a misty mountaintop in China. Man-cavers can be better than ruminating within their disgusting patriarchal myth.”
h/t Weasel Zippers
DCG
