From Sociological Images comes a report that is, apparently, not a joke: Australian IKEA opens a Manland to drop off men who don’t want to participate in shopping.
My reaction is something like this:
- What the fuck? Xbox and football sounds way more fun than furniture shopping. I WANT TO GO TO MANLAND. Can we institute this policy in every store my mom likes, except name it Ozyland and have a pile of crappy Lovecraftian fantasy novels instead of the Jurassic Park video game machine?
- Why the hell wouldn’t you just leave your dude at home if he’s not going to help pick out shit?
- Nice job erasing all the men who actually like furniture shopping.
- Maybe I can sue to have Manland opened to people who are not men? After all, it’s very discriminatory. Lots of people hate shopping! Including me! No, especially me! And sometimes IKEAs don’t have bookstores near them and my mom still wants to go inside them!
- Why doesn’t the man get input into furniture decisions? It’s his home too, you know.
- No, seriously, nice job equating men and toddlers. That’s not insulting at all.
- Maybe if they expand this to the United States and I wear my baggy shirt and don’t talk everyone will think I’m a dude and let me into Manland so I don’t have to go furniture shopping.
- Holy heteronormativity!
- They give the women a buzzer so they remember to pick up their husbands and boyfriends after thirty minutes. Because… men can’t be trusted to find their wives on their own?
- No, seriously, they took the buzzer idea from the children’s room in IKEA. They literally seem to think men are overgrown children.
- “Whinging dudes”? Listen, dude, lots of people hate furniture shopping, but furniture still has to be bought and you have to have some input too.
- Maybe I can pass as a gay man? Fuck, no, gay men like shopping. Goddammit I’m going to be forced to actually shop for shit.
- “Darling, I don’t know how to tell you this, but there’s a Chinese family in our bathroom.”
- “IK-EEEE-AAAA (IKEA!) Selling furniture for college kids and divorced men! Everyone has a home, but if you don’t have a home you can buy one there!”
- Why are things that would be horrifically offensive if directed at women somehow okay if you direct them at men? Equating women to children is not okay; equating men to children is also not okay. Gender egalitarianism fail!
- Maybe if I put a mustache on, scratch my imaginary balls and pretend I know what a “down” is in football…
About ozyfrantz
I remember that “chuck out your chintz” marketing campaign. I never saw it as having anything to do with femininity or masculinity, and everything to do with taste. At the time, most other furniture stores were selling pretty hideous shit it has to be said…
“And I think that sex workers are perfectly nice people doing a needed profession and really do not deserve to be compared with IKEA’s marketing departmet. ”
You know I find I never ever use that word for sex workers. They do honest work and they deserve respect for that. Renting oyu body for a while is one thing but harsh epithets should be reserved for selling your humanity.
“Jim: I think you misunderstood my syntax. In the English dialect of Lolcat, “X, ur doin it rong” means that some unspecified you is doing X incorrectly.”
Syntax? “Punctuation is the colostomy bag of syntax.” It was your punctuation that threw me. you meant me to understand “Feminism; you’re doing it wrong.”
“Feminism, you’re doing it wrong” = Yo feminism, your’e doing it wrong – a coonet addressed ot feminism.
“Feminism; you’re doing it wrong.” = as for feminism, you’re doing it wrong = topic/comment structure.
Peadantry off/ (I only indulged because you’re in school and might have some use for this to use on the competition.)
@AB:
I think we are in agreement. I have little-to-no sympathy for men who behave this way, just as I have little-to-no sympathy for women who behave similarly in other situations.
Although I do think there can, at times, be something more at work in both cases. E.g. men or women pre-supposing that their input will not be taken seriously or considered to be of equal importance/merit even when it is solicited. Often such feelings are due to factors other than their spouse, and are mistakenly attributed to their spouse. Sometimes, though, if they have prior experience with their input being solicited by their spouse and subsequently disregarded then I can see their feelings and future reluctance as valid to an extent.
But of course, I agree that ritualistic complaining about either gender is distasteful, counter-productive, and often hurtful and resentment-causing.
I remember one of my cousins, who isn’t in the habit of examining societal roles very closely, talking scornfully about his friend’s excitement over being given carte blanche to decorate his room. My cousin was very quick to shove the paint chip-wielding boy back into the male gender box. It was kind of heartbreaking in a “let me tell you how I kicked a puppy today” way.