as I got into this blogging thing. The primary emphasis will always be against the bashing of Real Men (and some of me sneering at mere males like Pajama Boy, who doesn’t come near to being a Man).
However, I’d like this to become a community, so there will be open threads, where any subject can be discussed. Consider this the first of them.
Okay, I know this isn’t this blog’s main emphasis, but if I have any readers at this point, tomorrow night’s snowstorm made me think about my own preparations, and made me hope you’ve made yours, as well, bearing in mind you may lose electricity for a while.
Have at least a few days’ worth of bottled drinking water and food that doesn’t need more than heated, if that.
Fill your tub before the storm arrives. This is very useful for flushing the toilet.
Get all your electronics charged. This will probably only last for a few hours of actual use, so be cautious.
And most definitely, have a source of heat that doesn’t require electricity to run!
Sure, basics you probably already do, but reminders never hurt.
Men, being the most mechanically inclined sex, have done much to make women’s lives easier — and their own, of course.
Let’s start this series with something simple, fabric making. How and where spinning developed isn’t known, but it’s generally believed it started independently in numerous places throughout prehistory. Up until the early 1200s, or possibly a little before, it was done with hand spindles, almost if not exclusively by women.
I’ve done quite a bit of spinning using drop spindles. They are faster than rolling the fibers up your thigh and wrapping the resulting yarn or thread around a stick, which was probably the first method used. But it still takes a lot of time to spin enough to make a single garment, never mind something larger like a blanket. So a woman who wanted to clothe her family pretty much had to spend whatever time she wasn’t using her hands for something else spinning.
Then someone (again, probably a lot of someones in different places) invented the spinning wheel. The first picture of one comes from Baghdad, and was drawn in 1237. It looks like a great wheel, which was turned by hand, but still sped the spinning process considerably — like by ten times.
That began to change in the early 16th century, when someone in Birmingham, England, added a treadle so the wheel could be turned by foot instead of hand, and Leonardo da Vinci drew a flyer to twist the fibers before putting it on the bobbin. I’ve never used a great wheel, but I have and really like my Ashford Traveller wheel, and it’s amazing how much better it is than a drop spindle! I don’t have to stop to wrap the yarn around the spindle, I can just keep drafting the fiber while the wheel does the rest of the work. Cheers for Leonardo da Vinci!
Up until the early 1700s, though, it was still taking five spinners to supply one weaver at a hand loom. Then came the Industrial Revolution, and the beginning of the fully mechanized spinner, with the first one designed in 1738 by Lewis Paul and John Wyatt. The first power loom was invented by Richard Arkwright in 1771.
As these were improved and the technology spread, women were freed from a necessary but time-consuming, and tedious, chore. Spinning as a hobby is fun and relaxing, but I can’t imagine it as anything other than grinding, never-ending drudgery if you have no choice about doing it.
Naturally, this mechanization made clothing more available and less expensive, which was good for the common people. More than two sets of clothing per person became common, till now many if not most people in the developed world have closets and dressers with more clothing than nobles had prior to the Industrial Revolution.
These aren’t in any particular order, just things commenters ought to know. There may be additional items from time to time, as I get my sea legs.
First comments from a new reader automatically go into moderation, so don’t be surprised if it takes anywhere from a couple of hours (most likely, except overnight) to a couple of days (I don’t intend to take that long, but it could happen, especially if I get company). For now, at least, that’s all the moderating I’m doing, except for what the software here thinks is spam. (Such as more than two links in a comment.)
No male-bashing. This should be obvious from the blog title, but I’m making sure. Not all negative comments are bashing, certainly, and I’m sure you know the difference.
Please keep the profanity down. I want to keep this G-rated, or at worst PG-13, to attract the widest male-friendly audience I can.
There will undoubtedly be a lot of generalizations on this blog. When you see something you think is that way, it’s simply to prevent adding “on the whole, X is/are more Y than are Z”.
An example, in case that’s confusing. “Men are more innovative than women” doesn’t mean I think all men are more innovative than all women; I know that isn’t true. It is simply shorthand for, “On the whole, men are more innovative than women”, which long experience has shown is true.
I’m just getting started, obviously, so don’t expect much in the way of content for a few days; I have to learn how WordPress works before I’ll be able to do much!
But the basics of this blog are just what the title and tag say. I’m sick of all the bashing these days of men and boys, and I’m going to do what little I can to balance that out. I’m a woman, and I like the kind of men I grew up around. I’m pre-boomer, so think of combat military, any John Wayne character, or SF heroes like the Gray Lensman or Lije Baley. Modern “heroes” just don’t do a thing for me, and I feel rather sorry for women who think they are wonderful.
In Praise of Men 