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Jimmy Nicholls's avatar

We need a word for something that is distinctly masculine but not macho. Dork and nerd roughly fill the space, but are too pejorative.

Also steak is overrated, probably because too many manly men feel obliged to like it.

AEIOU's avatar

The problem with steak is that most cuts are too dry, and the ones with a bit of fat are mostly chewy with big veins. There’s a reason properly marbled cuts are so expensive. Most steaks with a fringe would be better as a slow roast with root veg in the jus and most steaks without it would be better in a burger with some tallow mixed in.

Jimmy Nicholls's avatar

This is the kind of meat advice I needed before I became a pescatarian

AEIOU's avatar

Try a tender cut but eat it with butter. Garlic/herb butter is the usual but just eating a bit of salted butter with the meat really brings out the flavour. Maybe it brings you back onto land!

Unless it’s for ethical reasons in which case I guess the butter just compounds the issue.

Jimmy Nicholls's avatar

I dropped meat for the ethics, though eggs and dairy are arguably just as bad. Kept skipping it for the health benefits, plus my other half is a disapproving vegan. I will consider your suggestion when I’ve next drunk too many pints

AEIOU's avatar

> Women are way more anxious than they used to be, to the point that medication for anxiety is through the roof.

It’s a data point but I’d be hesitant to confidently attribute more anxiolytic prescription to more anxiety.

For one a lot of the more modern active ingredients and also carrier formulations are rather new. “Medieval peasants didn’t suffer from depression, look how few SSRIs they took”

Additionally, a lot of medicine is driven by diagnostic hypes and pharma marketing. Medicine in general is the self-confident high-energy midwit profession par excellence as the recent AI ultrasound imaging brouhaha illustrated.

I’d bet cluster B(abe) patients are also very good at demanding things based on self-diagnosis.

> why do we never hear about a crisis of femininity?

They vote correctly; all there is to it.

Conor Fitzgerald's avatar

In fairness on the medication thing- I was just trying to show that you have various datapoints you could use to construct the argument of a femininity crisis, per the article I don’t actually think it’s true

AEIOU's avatar

True, shame on me, I just recently mocked people who in the domain of fiction can’t separate a character from the author and now I’m arguing with indirect speech.

I myself actually do think that there’s a crisis of femininity though. The way women are given status is by functionally being more pliable men in the workplace; sterilised and chemically evened out for merchantability. The real psychopharmacological torpedo that hit women under the keel is the pill, increasing use of the other stuff is (despite my caveats from above) I think partly downstream from this.

Naturally, women are very much thrown around by their biology as every husband who observes the phases of the moon knows, too many have replaced a natural cycle with a locally straighter line that is slowly diverging out of bounds.

Victory's avatar

What an epitome of manliness, I mean, what a deft display of pre-masculine traits! Terrific article.