Real men don't eat quiche!

They might be men, but they wouldn’t be Human.

I agree with humunculus. Where have all the great(full) people gone?

But, there is a bigger issue here, prompting me to do some research which quickly expanded into recognising there is a journey for men in attaining manhood. So this is becoming tricky. Does “the fear of the feminine help define what is masculine?” Are there certain female behaviours that might trigger this psychology, i.e. women who are independent could be perceived as threatening. According to various sources, the male fear of the feminine is connected to how men must behave in order to feel accepted as men, like an internal device used for observing to ensure that men stay within the boundaries of what is regarded as masculine.

Camille Paglia declares: A woman simply is, but a man must become. Masculinity is risky and elusive. It is achieved by a revolt from woman, and it is confirmed only by other men. Manhood coerced into sensitivity is no manhood at all.

youtu.be/qIB2m735vK4

There is no absolute or ultimate definition of masculinity.
Some men are content to be themselves; secure in their bodies; confident in their abilities.
Many men are forever falling short on self-image.
Every culture wrestles with and agonizes over this question and none ever come to a satisfactory conclusion. Men are so self-involved, so much of the time, because they are forever finding fault with one another and with their sons. You can never be an adequate man in the eyes of some men. No test of pain-tolerance, no amount football fanaticism, no amount of tattooing and fighting or bragging or blood-letting is enough. And when men can’t get to grips on a difficult question [that they never really needed to pose in the first place] they tend to take their insecurity out on women, children and dogs.
No amount of misogyny will satisfy some cultures or some historical periods. (Unfortunately, the world has just recently embarked on one of those dark periods.)

Do you believe this?
I don’t know any women who are serene in simply being. All the women I know have had to deal with identity, self-image, self-presentation; self-doubt, self-hate. The becoming part - adolescence - doesn’t look to be any less stressful for girls than for boys.
A very large number of women in North America - where the living is supposedly so easy for them - seem to be suicidal, substance-addicted, prone to eating disorders, depressed, anxious, frustrated, unfulfilled, lonely, angry, or just quietly miserable.
In a screwed-up culture (which most are), in a screwed-up times (like most of the time) it’s not easy to be woman or a man…
but one may fondly imagine that being either is easier than being neither.

Yes, I believe I do.

It is better to be in this world, but not part of it.

HA! There is some truth in that.

In my country it’s just one big boys’ club, hence the reason I did not take too seriously the comment 'real men don’t eat quiche. One has to take into account a country where a male prime minister (Tony Abbott) referred to the female electorate as “housewives doing the ironing.”

Nevertheless, I am comfortable in my own skin and this is primarily I think, because I am not dependent upon a man, or anyone else for my survival. I have found that men are much needier than women and will have a harder time remaining single.

I think it may be true for men who have not yet attained their manhood (independent sense of self), or who are currently insecure in the one they have, in that they might be in danger (or afraid) of being tainted by the feminine. I believe it is more so true for young boys, but may be also so for grown men who are still on shaky ground in their development (and most men don’t mature until they’re 40 anyway). The most feminine men (not gay) I’ve known have been raised and surrounded by almost exclusively by women. Though in my experience, a man’s fear of emasculation is usually more pronounced when interacting with other men; with a woman he would be more flexible (to a point, of course). 8-[

I think we’re missing the point here on this little gender diversion…

Meat eating is evil.

Exploring transexuals gender psychologies is fine and dandy, but there are more important issues.

Saving animals.

Other animals don’t seem to have gender identity problems, dilemmas or politics. They grow up, fight if they must, screw if the opportunity presents, bear young if impregnated, care for them if they’re inescapable. The rest of the time, animals forage, feed, run from predators and fires, sleep, play and clean themselves. No angst; no culinary snobbery.

Alas, they can’t be saved.
We are too numerous, toxic, greedy and vicious.

Hitler helped animal rights, we need a second hitler, but a nicer hitler that wont murder anybody.

You got something against good food?

How does that question relate to the observation that other animals don’t make a pretense of liking things that are in vogue?

It so happens, I’m a passable vegetarian cook and used to have a discerning palate. I can still both produce and appreciate a good quiche.

If it doesn’t relate, then why did you say it?

My statement concerning animals relates to the post regarding animals, to which I was responding.

Your question relates to neither, afaics, which is why I asked how it relates.
However, I’m not interested enough to pursue this line of inquiry.

You seemed to be saying that animals were in some sense above humans due to the list of characteristics that you made. The lack of culinary snobbiness being one of them. I was just asking why you thought that was a bad thing.

If you don’t want to answer that’s ok. Just don’t act like you didn’t say it.

I didn’t see a value judgment, nor recall classifying any of these things about other animals as good or bad, superior or inferior.
Listed what they do, as an illustration of uncomplicated lives, in comparison to humans’.
Earlier, there had been mention of both gender typing and food preference, which are problematic for many humans, but do not seem to trouble other animals.

At no time did I equate lack of ‘culinary snobbery’ on the part of other species, with rejection of ‘good food’ by myself ---- which is what your question seemed to imply.
I wondered how those concepts fitted together. As far as I’m concerned, they do not.

Well, less complexity, whatever you want to call it. I think it’s a little shameful how you’re not standing behind what you said.

Why not just say, “I was wrong”, or, “I’m right because…”?

I’m right, because what I said is both factually correct, however limited in scope, and appropriate to the context in which the observation was offered.
I’m not standing behind your deliberate misinterpretation.
If this is important to you, tfb.

Oh so you’re one of those…

Perhaps is not so much a matter of snobbery as of qualitative discernment. This, of course, depends on the goal in mind, such as nutritive value of food vs pleasure/aesthetic value of food. Ideally, a balance of both would be good, but I see a lot of emphasis on pleasure value of food, at the expense of nutrition. And why do we have to eat? (another can of worms) You can see this heavily pronounced in Western societies: we are surrounded by foods, all kinds of foods, but we are still suffering from malnutrition. So, now, we have the supplement industry taking over, and I think this is just stupid, especially for 1st world countries. Even our foods are nutritionally poor and have to be enriched; we have to add vitamin D to our milk, calcium to our orange juice, niacin to our flour (because we prefer finer texture of flour over nutrition), and iodine to our table salt. And now, with our addiction to supplements, we are adding random nutrients to random foods…why not? Can we not get adequate nutrition through our food? Would that not be ideal? Do I need my yogurt to be fortified with 20g of protein and fiber and lab produced super bacteria? I’m not even touching on additives, flavor enhancers, and potential chemical fertilizers on which these foods were produced. I just came across a loaf of bread last week. One of the ingredients is calcium sulfate. That’s gypsum. FDA seems okay with it, but do I need gypsum in my bread? I mean, I could just chew on my wall if I wanted some. But of course, the bread won’t loose it’s texture that way, and will last much longer. At times, I am thinking there are people in Africa who subsist on drinking buffalo blood and milk that get better nutrition than people in the West that are constantly spending (a lot of) money on nutritionally empty food. Food has become art, even though it has to serve a primary purpose of fueling human body, but that is now being taken over by 37 billion dollar supplement and bullshit marketing industry. Food is now for mainly for pleasure, physical and psychological. Open any tourist brochure for things to do in a any given city and you’ll notice that the biggest section (in some places the only one) is a list of places to eat (and shop) since apparently this is how we prefer to spend our leisure time.