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[oursin]

A crocodile is for life, not just for Christmas: tally of dangerous wildlife kept in garden sheds and spare rooms across the country.

Epic journeys:
[F]emale greater horseshoe bat flew more than 100 miles from Gloucestershire to a bat colony in Dorset in under three months. The rare bat is sedentary and rarely flies far from its roost.
A British

Comments

[chickenfeet2003]

tally of dangerous wildlife kept in garden sheds and spare rooms across the country.

There is not the slightest evidence in the article that any of the animals referred to are being kept in "garden sheds and spare rooms". What a load of rubbish. Somebody needs a severe slapping with a suitably wild cod.

[oursin]

But I suspect not all of them are located in safari parks, either, and that some are being kept in spaces sub-optimum both for their own health and safety, and that of the populace at large. But yes, gross exaggeration, especially as regards the herds of bison and ostriches.

[chickenfeet2003]

I suspect some are too though not I would guess the tigers or herds of wild boars. But it's not a conclusion that is actually supported by the evidence provided.

[sam_t]

No, of course I don't keep a herd of bison in the spare room. Well, really, the very idea.

They're in the cupboard under the stairs.

Happy New Year, by the way!

[dickon_edwards]

Masculinity is still a distinct force in our society

The phrase 'No shit Sherlock' springs to mind. What typical Guardianista nonsense. Masculinity is not a problem for boys - as someone who rarely walks past a gathering of London schoolboys without getting a few jeers about my supposed sexual preference. When this happens, I rarely think "poor boys, they're just reacting against gender neutrality in co-educational schools which results in the creation of norms that are more female than male."

[dickon_edwards]

I should add for legal reasons that I do not walk past groups of schoolboys deliberately.

[oursin]

Who would if they could take a simple detour?

[oursin]

Well, I suppose if they didn't point and jeer they're scared that someone will impugn their own macho credentials - sigh

[callunav]

I had not realised that Victorian clubmen were simply reacting to a feminist-inflected, female-friendly, educational experience.

Hee hee hee hee hee.

[oursin]

Or maybe it was the result of being put into dresses until officially 'breeched' at around age 5? (My grandmother had a tale of someone looking at her when she was around 6, in early C20th Lancashire, and saying 'Time that lad were breeched.')

No, I don't think so.

[noveldevice]

Good night. "As the mother of a boy..." Well, perhaps as the mother of a boy, she ought to teach her son that having sex with women without obtaining consent is wrong. Apparently she hasn't thought of that, but I really think it's a better solution than instinctively bristling at the idea that her son won't have the unfettered right to stick his dick in a drunk woman. What would she say if she were the mother of a girl?

Arrrgh.

[oursin]

I think it would be far more beneficial to think of, and emphasise, positive models of masculine behaviour which don't buy into the macho stereotypes. But no, we always seem to get 'the system is toooo gurleee for our boyz!'

[callunav]

Why does it not appear to occur to those writing about men that exaggerated and rigid social gender roles are damaging to both/all genders? That's an argument I only ever see in feminist writing, and rarely there. It's generally "This is too much for them and not enough for us," instead of, "This is bad for all of us. We need something that would be better for all of us."

Gah. Hate dichotomies. Hate, hate, hate. Dichotomies bad! Thick description good! If you don't want dichotomies then--

Ahem. Sorry.

[oursin]

As I have heretofore remarked, feminism is (among other things) about the rather delightful possibility that males might be rational human beings rather than hormone-driven psychopaths.

[jonquil]

I had not realised that Victorian clubmen were simply reacting to a feminist-inflected, female-friendly, educational experience.

Didn't that get argued? That one of the reasons boys had to get sent off to school so young was to remove them from the pernicious influence of the nanny and the mother? I've certainly seen lines in biographies about how spoilt and ruined various men were because they were too sickly to be sent off to Eton and therefore were female-ridden at a formative age.

[chickenfeet2003]

Like Alan Brooke for example?

[oursin]

Because being flogged by sadistic schoolmasters and sodomised by senior boys was character-forming in a good way. (There are, I think, verified accounts of men who considered that Japanese POW camps were a doddle compared to their years at public school.)

[adrian_turtle]

He was coming from a different world, but my great-grandfather was a prisoner of war of the Japanese in 1905, and he said the POW camps were more comfortable and civilized than what the Tsar's army provided for conscripts.