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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   18418 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025

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The gender framing is catnip hereabouts, but I don't think it's the correct one in this case, because girls don't like this shit any more than boys do (though they may be conscientious enough to tolerate it for longer). In fact, several girls of my acquaintance quit Girl Scouts for approximately the same reasons: the old-skool exciting activities with real-world skills, actual exertion, exploration, challenge and risk were almost wholly replaced by boring social-studies modules with posters, web research, scrapbooking and worksheets. Girl Scouts were never that big on spearing things with straight pins (!), but they used to do lots of wilderness survival stuff, practical making, etc. that's now gone.

I'd argue all that dull safetyism is more about the general totalitarian vibes/ expansion of bureaucratic culture (you can't deny that those poster and worksheet skills are better training for a sweet nonprofit or middle-management job than spearfishing would be). Plus, frankly, most of the adults also being indolent deskilled couch-dwellers whose idea of exploration is a good long gaming session, some Twitter or Insta, and a pornhub chaser. If a bunch of men were out joyfully hunting squirrels and building racers from scrap parts, then we could rant about the feminization of scouting all you want, but from what I can see the guys are mostly just as boring, limp and abstracted as the women.

There are rednecks who would happily take the youths hunting, there's even special seasons for this. If you, as a middle or high school boy, go to a deep mechanic shop and ask if you can help so you can learn a thing or too they'll let you. Etc, etc.

Scouting used to be good at facilitating this stuff- it decided to pivot away from it.

Maybe that was the case a generation ago, but in case you haven't noticed, there's been a massive drop in interest/ skill in physical handicraft of any kind, including outdoorsmanship, among the middle classes. Even on the Motte, where a lot of folks are in theory very big on masculinity, I've never seen a single person mention any physical project in the Tinker Tuesday thread, or anywhere else on the site, for that matter.

I know a lot of those grizzled old-timer hunters, mechanics, etc. that you mention, and they are mostly entering the frail part of old age, some still holding gatherings and events that would welcome interest from younger men and teens, but with zero attendance from anyone Gen X or younger. Your average Millennial fortysomething PMC dad could go hunting or visit the classic cars meetup or whatever, but he mostly doesn't. (For that matter, do you?)

Some working-class folks do seem to keep up interest in fishing/working on cars/etc., particularly in the Hispanic community, but working-class families in general have less opportunity to encourage their kids to do organized activities, so I doubt there's much intersection with the Boy Scout clientele. You can trace pretty clear lines from Charles Murray Coming Apart- type trends.

I post deer processing on the tinker tuesday thread most years. We've had several bike modification projects posted and woodworking features occasionally too. Obviously the motte is not 'average'.

This has got to be related to increasing urbanism, right? If I wanted to go and ‘play in the outdoors’ I could travel five minutes to a park packed with people where I’m not allowed to do anything, or more than an hour to the countryside.

If I wanted to do woodworking, the first step would be to get a new job so I could afford to move to a new house with the room to do it.

WhiningCoil's had multiple woodworking projects, dr_analog's project was focused on hardware but to support biking, and we've had a couple DIY car repairs (or people like me complaining about car repairs: I'm actually fighting with door power window repairs again myself). My rant about FIRST and STEM outreach is the geekier side of physical handicraft, but it's still more about assembling and greasing gearboxes or running CNC machines than it is about the comparatively entry-level code side of things. As, more prosaically, was the war on dandelions.

There's some genuine drop in interest and development along those lines, especially post-COVID, but it's also hard to talk at length about it, especially here.

I had missed WhiningCoil's woodworking posts, will have to check those out. Thanks!

Absolutely no shade on dr_analog, whose work sounds very cool - but on some level, I wonder how hydroacetylene's redneck hunters and mechanics would rate the manliness of a hardware-focused tech project to support leisure biking.

That's fair, but I'd caution about stereotypes. I work with a different sort of mechanic than, say, hydroacetylene, but there's a lot more overlap between the techie side of things and the automotive maintenance bro these days, just because tech stuff is much harder to avoid these days. I've helped hunters make a psuedo-shot-spotter tool for their range, traded some car advice for tips on hooking neopixels up to an offroad atv, and maybe half of the mechanics have or have access to a 3d printer.

((That said, they'd probably have at-best-mixed feelings about helmets on adults for leisure biking.))

Even on the Motte, where a lot of folks are in theory very big on masculinity, I've never seen a single person mention any physical project in the Tinker Tuesday thread, or anywhere else on the site, for that matter.

I fly model helicopters. Like real helicopters, they require more time spent repairing than flying. And it's a ridiculously male hobby. I also do my own bicycle maintenance and general fixing of stuff (e.g. I restrung my blinds and fixed my humidifier recently), though that's instrumental rather than for its own sake.

There's no real shortage of hunters, at least once you get out of New Jersey (Pennsylvania: America Starts Here).

Anyone who stepped up to offer those things would get nothing but criticism for only being willing to volunteer for the fun things but not the hard things.

Probably, yes.

And I think someone elsewhere mentioned the child abuse stuff. Anyone who attempts to step up is going to be told "Well, you'll need to take this online course about child abuse, then you'll need to get fingerprinted at the police station, and sign this form to allow a criminal background check." At which point said redneck is going to say "You want me to WHAT now?"

...Rednecks do that shit all the time.

Get fingerprinted at the police station? Maybe, but not VOLUNTARILY.

Well, freedom of association was never in the Constitution to begin with.

(Not that it helps nations that have it in theirs; their problem is more that they put a "we're not obeying this fuck you lolol" in the header instead.)

Then "society" has made its choice. You can make people jump through flaming hoops to be considered moral enough to associate with children (Padme: Other than your own, right? Anakin: ... Padme: Other than your own, right?), or you can have an ample supply of volunteers. You can have neither but you can't have both, and counterarguments involving the word "should" (as in men "should" be willing to go through these simple and vital procedures) are not really arguments but just social pressure to avoid this point being made.

You can have neither but you can't have both

Sure you can- clearly, all you need to do is to become a public schoolteacher. After that, you may sexually interfere with kids all you like (generally with the regime's blessing; so all you have to do is align yourself with the regime).

Sure, you will still generally get arrested if you actually get physical with them- but for molesters, that interference is the end goal (they're getting off on it), so that doesn't actually hinder them any.

are not really arguments but just social pressure to avoid this point being made

Internalized misandry hurts men and lying flat under these conditions is the correct "negotiating tactic". What is sabotage (including inaction) if not bargaining -> negotiating -> politics -> warfare by other means?

You're right that lying flat is the correct tactic, but it's not bargaining, it's just coping; no change for the better is possible. The rules and procedures are not going to be repealed -- parents will not accept any case of child molestation that could have been stopped by a rule or procedure they have experience with or can think of. And such rules and procedures will tend to select for the wrong people even from a "Scouting virtues" point of view. After all, what is the point of being honorable if you are assumed to be dishonorable until proven otherwise.

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Life getting safer makes men and women believe that delegation and training is riskier and may be delayed, preferably (and observably) indefinitely.

So it becomes less important, thus the need to accommodate for it is less, thus the concept that it should even occur passes away.

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