Posted on 09/03/2008 10:19:57 AM PDT by forkinsocket
It's "booze o'clock" on a recent Thursday night on New York's Fire Island—a rolling, inexact hour when 10 vacationing guys decide to kick off their nightly binge. Between tequila shots and pulls of beer, the sun-baked twentysomethings roar on the deck of their rented beach house, sounding the depths of maledom: sexual conquests, mastery of fire ("I'll grill that potato salad") and escape from the monotony of girlfriends and work. "I like starting things," says one guy, as if to sum up his generation. "Then it gets boring."
The banter may seem like an open dish-session between friends, but masculine law chokes out the sissy stuff. There's scorn when water is used to dilute a whisky, and disbelief when one of the crew suggests dinner that night to celebrate his birthday. "This isn't a friendship trip," chides one of the guys. "We're here to get women." During the week, most of the guys say they've reached their goal—a few more than once.
Once the preserve of whacked-out teens and college slackers, this testosterone-filled landscape is the new normal for American males until what used to be considered creeping middle age, according to the sociologist Michael Kimmel. In his new book, "Guyland," the State University of New York at Stony Brook professor notes that the traditional markers of manhood—leaving home, getting an education, finding a partner, starting work and becoming a father—have moved downfield as the passage from adolescence to adulthood has evolved from "a transitional moment to a whole new stage of life." In 1960, almost 70 percent of men had reached these milestones by the age of 30. Today, less than a third of males that age can say the same.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
On Fire Island??!!
Isn't that a haven for...um...men with very different sexual tastes than those Neanderthals described in the article?
Fire Island has a number of different towns.
Many are “straight”... a few are decidedly not.
“We’re here to get women.”.....On Fire Island?.............My how things have changed.................or did he say: “We’re here to get DRESSED LIKE women.”.....?.....
>>”We’re here to get women.”
On Fire Island??!!
Isn’t that a haven for...um...men with very different sexual tastes than those Neanderthals described in the article? <<
Ummm yeah...
Granted I’ve never been there but judging from the Village People song “Fire Island” I’m not sure this is the right place for men to look for women... unless they like lesbians (and who doesn’t?”
And apparently it didn’t start with the Village People
>>The Great Hurricane of 1938 devastated much of the island and made it appear undesirable to many. However, Duffy’s Hotel remained relatively undamaged. According to legend, the gay population began to concentrate in Cherry Grove at Duffy’s Hotel with Christopher Isherwood and W. H. Auden dressed as Dionysus and Ganymede and carried aloft on a gilded litter by a group of singing followers.[7] The gay influence was continued in the 1960s when male model John B. Whyte developed Fire Island Pines. The Pines currently has some of the most expensive property on the island and accounts for two-thirds of the island’s swimming pools.[8]<<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Island,_New_York
I was thinking the same thing.....maybe there was a coup on the island and the hetero’s overthrew the homo’s.......
I wish he would’ve followed up the article with “How to get your man OUT of the Peter Pan Syndrome” ...I guess I’ll have to wait till next month’s Cosmo for that one. :(
This is news? Perhaps it’s time to change the name of this rag to something else.
Then again, “Cosmopolitan” is already taken...
Not to worry. The next Ice Age should sort out the losers from the winners — and it could be here much sooner than we think...
Meanwhile, the angst associated with adulthood may not be warranted. A raft of recent studies suggest that married men are happier, more sexually satisfied and less likely to end up in the emergency room than their unmarried counterparts. They also earn more, are promoted ahead of their single counterparts and are more likely to own a home.
"Men benefit from just being married, regardless of the quality of the relationship. It makes them healthier, wealthier and more generous with their relatives," says Scott Coltrane, author of "Gender and Families" and dean of the University of Oregon College of Arts and Science. It accelerates men's journey toward stability and security. "In general, those are the things that lead to happiness," he adds.
The truth that most men do not want to hear.
If they spent the money on a college education and didn't get a marketable skill, that's their own fault.
Being single was nice.
Being married, to the right person, is much nicer.
Out of all the places in the US, the author picks Fire Island to write a book called “Guyland”. Coincidence I’m sure.
>> Being married, to the right person, is much nicer.
An enthusiastic +1.
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