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What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

theatlantic.com

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Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#121

Post by jetti »

I find this interesting, especially since I'm not handy at all but am planning on changing that once my wife and I get a house.

One thing that I have noticed that may be a source of this insecurity is the significant other. I can't even count the number of times my wife has said "You're a man, you should be able to do that" before or after asking her dad to fix something or work on something. It doesn't bother me and I retort "You're a woman, why aren't you making my meals and doing laundry as well as cleaning", which are tasks I do myself and have no expectation of my wife doing those solely on her own. My point being is that gender roles are typically ingrained in both genders and while a male may be comfortable not knowing how to do something, there may be an discomfort generated by the response of the significant other.

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#122

Post by pavel_lishin »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #10

I took AP classes in college, and I work in the software industry, but I still know how to work with my hands and I'm very happy to have that knowledge. It's not that hard, if you feel bad about not knowing anything, go learn, go take a class or two, go read a book or two, go ask a friend, or use the internet, there are a million excellent resources out there. Pick a simple project and do it, then do another project.…

Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) recently did a short podcast about this topic, and they wrote up the results here: http://www.tested.com/art/makers/454389-still-untitled-suppl...

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#123

Post by elptacek »

johngalt wrote: post #106

For me the hardest one to give up was car maintenance. I grew up working on cars, and if I wasn't in IT I'd probably be a mechanic. Unfortunately keeping all the tools and supplies necessary was too much of a hassle for a single late model vehicle that requires practically no maintenance. It doesn't bother me to have someone mow my lawn or fix the way my doors hang, but handing the car keys over for an oil change is…

Tom has finally convinced me that it is less expensive to us to have a handyman fix things than for me to do it myself. Which is a bummer, because I do so love excuses to use power tools.

I've often wondered how many people in tech would probably be mechanics or carpenters (or welders/blacksmiths) if there was no more lucrative occupation. It seems to me there's a great number of people in my network who do these things as hobbies. Scratches an itch.

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#124

Post by kaens »

HNaTTY wrote: post #107
kaens wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that to be true of the poorest people I know as well. Which is way-below-the-poverty-line poor.

Unfortunately, spending time with the poorest people I know makes it glaringly obvious why they are poor. One possible reason for the disparity is that being poor sucks and is really hard in many parts of the world (like NYC I would imagine), however where I live, rents and other expenses are low and it's relatively easy to get government handouts.

Maybe that's true where you live.

I left home at 16, spent ten years homeless and hitchhiking, am told I'm quite good at what I do, and have spent the last 3 years or so exerting the herculean effort required to rise through poverty. I currently live half on a couch of some good people I know, and half in the office of the web shop I work in. I have never had government assistance. I wouldn't have known where to find it, nor been in a situation to be given it in most cases.

As far as handouts go, when you are zilch-zero-nada poor, at least in the US, there are a lot of things in life that will be higher on your priority list than either figuring out that they're there, or going through the process of acquiring them, keeping them, and then becoming self-sufficient. In many places in the US, government handouts are a joke.

I'm not going to try to go into detail, but I can tell you that I know a lot of people whose reason for being dirt poor is not so glaringly obvious as the ones you know, and a fair amount of people who aren't poor because they had the luck to be born to the right people in the right place at the right time, regardless of their work ethic.

I've been thinking a lot about socio-economic disparity amongst technically competent people a lot lately, I should probably try to gather my thoughts more cohesively.

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#125

Post by r00fus »

SilasX wrote: post #117
r00fus wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schools were forced to stop teaching anything "arts", effectively, by NCLB (which is basically designed to destroy public schooling and give that to private industry). Many schools would love to get more arts back in their curriculum, but their funding goes away if they don't focus on those damn tests to the exclusion of all else.

You mean, NCLB revealed how most schools were failing to teach the most basic things needed for success in the real world, which they somehow were able to convey to the "carpenter-track" students just decades ago? Seriously, I hear a lot of kvetching about schools burdened by having to "teach to the test". I never very little about which specific parts of the test are unfair or about things students shouldn't be expe…

Do you know any teachers or have you spent time recently in a classroom? Test preparation takes a huge amount of the bandwidth. Student assignment to classes is apportioned so there is a good "balance" to testing averages.

To dismiss NCLB as anything but an attempt to sabotage the entire public school system is nieve.

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#126

Post by SilasX »

r00fus wrote: post #125
SilasX wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean, NCLB revealed how most schools were failing to teach the most basic things needed for success in the real world, which they somehow were able to convey to the "carpenter-track" students just decades ago? Seriously, I hear a lot of kvetching about schools burdened by having to "teach to the test". I never very little about which specific parts of the test are unfair or about things students shouldn't be expe…

Do you know any teachers or have you spent time recently in a classroom? Test preparation takes a huge amount of the bandwidth. Student assignment to classes is apportioned so there is a good "balance" to testing averages. To dismiss NCLB as anything but an attempt to sabotage the entire public school system is nieve.

>Do you know any teachers or have you spent time recently in a classroom?

Actually, yes. I volunteered weekly in a 4th grade class at a public school for five years. But even if I didn't, and even if I were just now finding out the managementspeak::bandwidth allocated to passing the tests, it wouldn't matter. The fact that it's so hard to get the students to pass simply means the teaching is inefficient and using ineffective methods to teach students the most important, core skills that they need in the real world.

Again, don't tell me the tests take up a lot of resources. Tell me why the tests are unjustifiably hard and why it's acceptable to graduate kids that aren't passing them. Show me, say, a test problem that you don't think an 8th grader or whatnot should be unable to answer and yet be tossed on to high school.

(You'd be the first to try.)

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#127

Post by Dylan16807 »

bluedino wrote: post #55
saraid216 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know nothing about plumbing. So when my kitchen sink went haywire, I called a plumber. He installed a new waste disposal for me and, according to the Internet price listings for the exact model he put in, overcharged me by about $250. When I implied I knew what was going on, he explained it was for warranties, which... seemed implausible unless he was getting stiffed himself. I decided not to take him to task for i…

Does the computer repair guy charge you NewEgg prices to replace a part in your desktop?

I would certainly hope that he charges the NewEgg/Amazon price for the part in addition to a healthy hourly wage, and transport costs if there are any.

If he's keeping a stock of a lot of parts it can be worth a markup. But in general the cost of having someone buy a part and install it vs. buying the part yourself and paying someone to install it should be pretty close.

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#128

Post by Dylan16807 »

SilasX wrote: post #126
r00fus wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know any teachers or have you spent time recently in a classroom? Test preparation takes a huge amount of the bandwidth. Student assignment to classes is apportioned so there is a good "balance" to testing averages. To dismiss NCLB as anything but an attempt to sabotage the entire public school system is nieve.

>Do you know any teachers or have you spent time recently in a classroom? Actually, yes. I volunteered weekly in a 4th grade class at a public school for five years. But even if I didn't, and even if I were just now finding out the managementspeak::bandwidth allocated to passing the tests, it wouldn't matter. The fact that it's so hard to get the students to pass simply means the teaching is inefficient and using ine…

'bandwidth' is a management term now?

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#129

Post by booruguru »

simonsarris wrote: post #6

Is it me or are there an extremely large number of front-page stories from The Atlantic today? There are three on the frontpage right now, with 2 more in the next three pages (all of which frontpaged at least for a moment).

Maybe its because The Atlantic consistently produces high quality content that deserves to be on the HN front page.

Re: What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity

#130

Post by SilasX »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #128
SilasX wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do you know any teachers or have you spent time recently in a classroom? Actually, yes. I volunteered weekly in a 4th grade class at a public school for five years. But even if I didn't, and even if I were just now finding out the managementspeak::bandwidth allocated to passing the tests, it wouldn't matter. The fact that it's so hard to get the students to pass simply means the teaching is inefficient and using ine…

'bandwidth' is a management term now?

It is used in different ways, in different contexts. I was namespacing it to clarify the context. You know namespaces, right?
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