SNP’s word of the day: Dude-topia

You should know it because: Last week we had the “mancession,” and this week, in the venerable T style mag, we have the “man shed.” I am not inclined to argue with what Sally Singer (all hail the thinking girl’s Wintour!) deems worthy of coverage, but... “man shed”? (Required reading here.)

A doghouse by any other name is still a doghouse, for one, and you know the real reason this Long Island dude—implausibly named “Ed Palace”—started hanging out in a garage drinking man-tinis wasn’t that he was seeking Thoreau-level calm, but that his wife was like, if you don’t stop dressing like bloody Pa Ingalls you can stay the hell outside. Plus, I have to take issue with Lionel Tiger, emeritus professor of anthropology at Rutgers University though he may be, who is quoted in the piece as saying that men today lack “the kinds of environments where they can behave the way they would like when they’re alone or socializing with other men.” Hey, Lionel? It’s called a strip club. Or an investment firm.

While I find all this adorable and almost equalizing—men seem so threatened by their vanishing sense of superiority over the erstwhile weaker sex that they must linguistically reclaim their male assertiveness by sticking the “man” prefix on everything from economic woes to where they hang out on Saturdays—it’s also kind of stupid. Please stop.