am i a man?

right, clearly i’m not, the question is asked tongue-in-cheek.

but here’s the ‘affirmative’ case…

1. i hate shopping.  if i need something i’ll steal, buy or borrow it.  (not so much on the stealing side these days.) but i can’t abide wasting time wandering thru malls and shops and “just looking,” waiting for an impulse buy to strike me.  (unless it’s window shopping for or inspecting houses and buildings.  that i have a probably, just-a-little, mostly-harmless, obsession with- and could do all day long, for most days of the week!)

2. i hate cooking.  it seems very pointless to me to spend an hour or more chopping and slicing and cutting and mixing and cooking and whatever else goes into it, to have it eaten in 10 minutes to then spend another hour cleaning and tidying and washing and putting away etc.  i’m all for eating, i’d rather just see it on the plate and not have to do the kitchen part, before or after.  i know this point suggests that cooking is a womans domain and many chefs/cooks are men; my point is closer to the family home, where, given society’s gender imbalances, most of the home/family cooking is done by women.  i find cooking a lot like alchemy- mucking around with stuff you don’t know much about to get a result nothing like you might expect.

3. i like activities that use my hands.  and no i don’t count scrap-booking or giving hand-jobs in this category.  i mean things like woodworking, painting (the house, not water colours) gardening, building things…  that sort of stuff.  i like tools.  the wooden or metal kind.  and machinery.  i like trains, steam ones in particular, i think the bicycle might well be the greatest invention ever.  (seeing that an invention to get your kid to sleep exactly when and for how long you want, hasn’t been invented yet.)  i like hot air balloons and the awesome abilities of a wing.  or two, very much so when attached to a plane i’m flying in.

4. i’m incredibly spatially aware.  i ADORE maps.  if maps were still drawn by hand and i could learn the skills to make them my ideal job would be cartographer.  i’m not so keen on computer generated maps.  on the flip side i dislike gps’s.  pointless, silly, bound-get-you-lost, or -mad, or both devices.  i have an innate sense of space and location and how things fit together.  there’d be no hiding secret rooms or passage ways in a house from me.  once i have a look at the outside and get a feel for the inside walls i’d be able to say “hey, there’s 2 metres missing from somewhere in here.”  i’m not sure that’s a modern-day useful skill but it’s one i certainly would love to practise.  i never get lost.  one look at a map and i can place myself in the real world and travel thru it very competently.  i love byways and highways and laneways and short cuts.  it just seems there’s more to the adventure if you can anticipate what might be next.

5. i’m never fashionably-dressed.  i might occasionally be well dressed and i’m often interestingly or quirkily dressed but i’m never fashionable.  i can’t afford it and i’m definately not interested.  fashion clothes seem to largely be made from plastic and wear out in less than a year.  if fashion is a womans domain, i’m definately male.

6.  i prefer balls games and outdoor playing with my children, to dress-ups and role playing.  tho when i was a kid myself it was the reverse.

a couple of ambigious matters:

1. i admire the sleek lines and beauty of a sail boat, cars leave me cold.

2. i love building houses (if only i could!) but i also love decorating the insides.

i feel sure there’s many more things i could list but that’s what comes to mind just now.  to be sensible i think there’s a great many characteristics that are shared across genders and preferences and likes and dislikes are not wholly specific to one type of gender.  this was just a little giggle on a rainy afternoon.

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