Feminists: Leave My Boys Alone

Townhall.com ^ | March 3, 2013 | Kevin McCullough

[latina4dubya]

In some states the bill for each chid per year is well over $10,000, citizens should care. You, and the rest of us, are paying for all that waste.

i understand what you are saying... and there was a time when i did care... however, i only have so much fight in me, and i have to choose my battles... that so many conservatives continue to send their children to the cesspool knowing what goes on there, yet claiming their local school is "not bad," has taken it's toll on my caring about it... my energies, angst and outrage go elsewhere at this time... there may come a day when i care again...

[Darren McCarty]

I have always hated Sesame Street, right from it’s beginnings in the late 60s, early 70s

I didn't like it because it was on the same time as the Price is Right. "A new car!"

[manc]

oh how did those girlie boys ever get through child hood , I mean how did all the men in the world get through riding our bicyles with no helmets, oh the horror of not wearing one,

ARF

or in some girlie guys head a guy can wear spandex, tight tight tops, and a helmet makes a guy!!!

[MaxMax]

I had Army men and a GI joe from a Cherios box. And I remember playing
David and Goliath. Lots of Davids.
Those wars were extreme and many little green men died for a good cause.

[manc]

spandex on men is plain wrong, just so wrong wrong wrong, my wife woudl leave me if I wore them and I have a decent athletic body and rightly so for her too.

This wearing a helmet, well I; not sure if it is in my state as 99% of men do not wear helmets nor do the kids in my neighborhood but those men which do begs me to ask , how did they ever get through childhood with out all their padding, helmets etc?.

Next we’ll have mothers raising their boys and watch them play Barbie and tell others that it;s OK to do.
No wonder real men are disapearing.

[jeffc]

Apparently being a man means splattering your brains on the road.

Sorry, JC, but that statement would make a nanny-stater proud. I and all, and I mean ALL, of my friends rode our bikes everywhere, all the time, and we never once wore a helmet. Guess what? Not one of us ever got hurt, even when we crashed.

And please don't respond with something liberal like, "If it saves only one child....."

[ansel12]

I grew up before PBS and don’t recall dolls for boys, or action figures, or stuffed animals etc, my toys were largely WWII objects, knives, guns, bayonets, cigarette lighters, rope and books and rocks, and snapping turtles, I had a water filled pit that we kids dug to keep the turtles and the one alligator in.

I could carry a lighter and a pocket knife to school and carry my twine. I remember using a 15 to 18 inch German bayonet for show and tell.

There was almost no adult interference in my life, outside of the house and the school, we seemed to be able to do anything as long as we stayed away from the adults, which was easy to do back then, boys seemed to be allowed to live in their own private world of whatever boys do outdoors from sunrise until dark.

[manc]

exactly.
We did jumps, cross country, skids, tricks etc , fell off many times, even went head first off the front but to say brains being spattered on the road and we shoudl wear helmets is a little drama.

Boys are being treated like little girls today, get them pads and helmets for sports all the time, bandaids for their little boo boos , ice pack for a scratch ARF.

The way some mothers raise their boys today only adds to my opinion why many boys today have become little sissies.

and spandex should be outlawed on men LOL.

[Hulka]

I think he meant this:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_v_-zbrQbNac/SMfJClyMJdI/AAAAAAAAADY/mOiPG-UHmEE/s400/Kerry+on+bike.jpg

Rather than this:
http://cycling.lohudblogs.com/files/2009/01/distinctly-bush_wolf2.jpg

Hence the “girly” moniker. . .

[Will88]

I guess the dilemma for feminists continues in the home computer age, beyond dolls and such. We constantly hear of the affect of war games and assorted violent computer games on boys. Maybe girls also play computer games, but if so, it gets very little news mention.

The young of each sex still seem to pick the type games they prefer for the most part.

[SamAdams76]

Helmets on motorcycles are understandable (and actually look cool) but there is something emasculating about wearing a helmet on a bicycle. When I was a boy, I rode my Huffy all over town and had more than a couple of crashes. Usually when trying to launch off a ramp or jump off a high curbing. When I crashed, I'd dust myself off and get right back on the bike and when I got home, my mother would put on a band-aid if needed. I don't remember girls wearing bicycle helmets either. It just wasn't done back in the 1960s and 1970s and I don't remember a rash of bicycle fatalities - though pretty much every kid in that era had a bicycle. Then again, in that era, we'd ride around in the back of open pickup trucks and seatbelts were never worn. Hell, I remember my father cutting the seatbelts out of a new car he bought because they "just got in the way."

As for all the controversy in this thread over boys playing with "girl" things, it never was an issue for me growing up. When I was a boy, we always played with boys and girls and never really thought too much about it. I'd play "house" with my sister and her friends but just as often, she'd be joining me and my friends for stickball and touch football (we always played on concrete so tackle wasn't a good option). I say let kids be kids. Back in those days, we were always out of the house playing outside. For if we ventured indoors, our parents would tend to put a broom in our hands and put us to work - and none of us wanted that!

So I pretty much spent my entire childhood out of doors (winter and summer) and remember mothers passing peanut butter sandwiches and Kool-Aid out the windows to us for lunch so we didn't have to go indoors and "mess up" their houses. We'd hang out on picnic benches listening to Top 40 music on "transistor" radios and playing board games like Monopoly and Risk for hours on end, when we weren't tearing up the neighborhood on our bikes and gorging on penny candy from the local mom-and-pop variety store.

It's definitely different today. I go out in my neighborhood on a nice day and there are no kids to be seen. They are all indoors playing video games, watching television or texting each other. If they do go outdoors, they have "helicopter parents" watching their every move.

[Westbrook]

> I didn’t like it because it was on the same time as the Price is Right. “A new car!”

LOL!!! Sounds like as good a reason to any.

To the collectivists that inflicted Sesame Street on the world, you must be one of those materialistic capitalists.

To me, you’re somebody who has his values correctly oriented.
:)

[Morgana]

“But would you ever buy a doll for your young son?” I followed up.”

GI Joe, He-Man, Superman, Captain America, Green Lantern, Batman, Robin, the list goes on......

[Gandalf_The_Gray]

I remember one Christmas when I was little back in the 60s...

I remember back in the early 50s, I was about seven when mom bought a set of Encyclopedia Britannica. I sat down on the floor next to the bookcase and started reading. I have never stopped reading.

I never played with "dolls", however I did have a teddy bear with buttons for eyes, a bit of yarn for a mouth, and patches on his legs where his fur was worn away from the attentions of my three older siblings. His name was "Slow Poke" and there were many nights when we talked each other to sleep. I gave him back to my eldest brother when he got married and adopted two boys.

Regards,
Gandalf

PS I bought a Barnes & Noble "Nook" e-reader. I don't use it all that much, there is just something about a real book...it's comfort food for the brain.

[Morgana]

“a doll is barbie and though GI Joe can be called a doll it certainly is not a girlie thing.”

manc kinda has a point here. Say 1000 years from now archaeologists dig up a Barbie or a GI Joe what would they call it? They would more than likely call it a “doll” from an extinct era just like Native American Indian dolls that are often found. Think about it.

[xrmusn]

spandex on men is plain wrong, just so wrong wrong wrong, my wife woudl leave me if I wore them and I have a decent athletic body and rightly so for her too.
= = = = = = = = = = = =
I, for 73, also am in good shape.

OF COURSE, one must concede ROUND is a shape.

I played football BEFORE the mandatory ‘face mask’ and when they got around to it, it was just a plain single bar AND it seemed to interfere with my vision (sure that was just my mind saying ‘how stupid it was’)

Also in baseball the ‘batting helmet’ was 2 pieces of plastic held together with a couple strips of elastic type material...

In going along to get along I will say that I was saved from at least a good shiner when batting with the helmet in place, I was squared around to bunt and turned my head on an inside pitch, the force of the ball hitting the ‘helmet’ sent it flying — although I recall ‘we’ did sort of wear it as high as possible so it could be easily thrown off after hitting the ball.... Naturally the ‘helmet’ impeded ones ability to run.
I think it was mandatory in Little League but not in HS or Babe Ruth League.

I have 3 standing rules.
If you EVER see me with a back pack or book bag ON, shoot me on the spot. (I have considered ‘changing’ my mind on a fanny pack as that is (or could be) an excellent place to carry concealed).
If you EVER see me put luggage on top of my SUV or use one of those ‘bumper extenders’, shoot me on the spot.
If you EVER see me in Spandex, AFTER you stop laughing, shoot me on the spot and as a favor to all, SHOOT the SOB that either sold it to me or gave it to me.

THANKS...

[JCBreckenridge]

“Sorry, JC, but that statement would make a nanny-stater proud. I and all, and I mean ALL, of my friends rode our bikes everywhere, all the time, and we never once wore a helmet. Guess what? Not one of us ever got hurt, even when we crashed.”

Great. I’ve seen plenty of accidents and some of them pretty gruesome. I’ve seen a friend crippled for life who’s in a wheelchair now and his folks look after them.

[JCBreckenridge]

No, I think he means being a man means you have to go without protection because it’s ‘cool’.

I bet he thinks hardhats are girly too since real men don’t prepare themselves appropriately.

[JCBreckenridge]

What’s wrong with a backpack?

[verga]

How many cases of splattering brains have you heard of.

1) 10 years ago my wife and I were at a friends of ours house late in the evening. We heard a loud crash. A teenager had managed to run into the back of a parked car that was under a burnt out street lamp. He was thrown through the back window. When we got to him he was unconscious and suffering severe head trauma. From the top of his head to his chin it looked like hamburger. A helmet would not have prevented the accident but it would have reduced the severity of the injuries.

2) My wife was riding her bike in a local park on a paved road. A branch lodged in her spoke and she flew over the handlebars. Broke her nose, right elbow, left wrist. I believe the helmet saved her life at worst or a concussion at best.

3) Three years ago at a triathlon I was in a deer ran out of the woods across the road and collided with a cyclist. The cyclist was thrown over 15 feet. he suffered road rash on the side of his face and a broken collar bone, but no other head trauma thanks to the mandated helmet.

I won't get on my cycle with out a helmet. BTW I am 52 weigh in at 200 lbs and wear spandex when training or racing.