>This type of thing is a major major source of post educational adult male socialization, and I think it's something that adult males need in a serious way.
Why does DIY have to be male specific?
The water running in your pipes and the electricity running in your wires give precisely zero fucks whether you have balls or breasts or something in-between.
The GP didn’t say women couldn’t be involved in DIY. Men expressing their need to commune with other men in doing practical tasks is obviously not universally excluding women from those tasks, it is a historically common and healthy practice of male to male friendship. Men should be able to express their simple needs without it being turned into a civil rights battle.
My inquiry is why men (or women for that matter) have to be specified at all. Balls and breasts are utterly irrelevant for DIY.
I agree with the notion that the consequent socializing and sense of community that groups of DIYers could nurture is a very good thing, especially these days. Balls and breasts are irrelevant here too.
Don't nitpick. :) We could remove superficial aspects from most texts to make them more sparse. It does not mean we should.
The poster had men on their mind, and that is fine. This isn't a presidential address where every word will have reverberating cultural impact — it's a comment deep in a thread on HN.
And you understood the core message, so it served its purpose.
There are also things to be said about how men used to connect over DIY — there was a time a few generations back where men used to build each others' houses and cars. But my key point is that nitpicking stops conversations and ideas, let's not do that.
Except, your reductionist take on men and women aside for the moment, it does matter in the context of the OP. Men, who exist and have specific needs, have a social need for friendship together that once was met in part by DIY but increasingly that isn’t happening or even possible and that is a loss for men and male mental health. Returning to your “balls and breasts” reductionism which I suspect is the true source of our disagreement, besides all other nuance most people including myself and presumably the OP accept the modest thesis that men and women have distinct needs in terms of mental health. Male mental health has been ignored and neglected for decades and this specific topic is a structural net loss for male mental health.
I think everyone's mental health is being neglected today, men and women alike.
I'm as hard an individualist as they get, but humans are fundamentally still social creatures and it's good to get together at least once in a while to share drinks and just party and have fun.
Specifying men/women takes away from the argument that society and community are taking a hazardous back seat in today's increasingly divided and petty politics. I think we both/all agree here, different as our expressions may be.
> I think everyone's mental health is being neglected today…Specifying men/women takes away from the argument…
A discussion focusing on one group and their specific needs doesn’t take away from any other discussions about other groups and their needs. Attempting to shut down discussion, like you have attempted, about a specific group and their needs is perpetuating the ignoring of male mental health problems and their amelioration. The discussion about male mental health has to occur sometime, don’t get in the way.
You aren't answering why the presence of balls or breasts is in any way relevant.
Consideration for everyones' mental health is shit these days, framing the discussion specifically around men (or women) detracts from the core problem at hand which is that we don't socialize as much as we probably should anymore.
I would suggest looking in the mirror if you aren't grasping the irony.
Why does DIY have to be male specific?
The water running in your pipes and the electricity running in your wires give precisely zero fucks whether you have balls or breasts or something in-between.