Acquisitionses my precious

One admittedly dodgy hypothesis that floats around my head has to do with affluence.

I reckon men have fared worse than women under the influence of affluence.

This is because men have gone from projects to purchases.  Way back when, even hunting was a project. It just isn’t the same thing when you instantly get something for seemingly no effort.

Women have gone from collecting and  organizing to collecting and organizing. Much less of a jump.

I hate massive generalizations like this because I know of dozens of exceptions without even thinking hard.

But I can’t help thinking that building a shed is actually pleasurable whereas buying one and getting it installed is rather  emasculating. But only for men. And only some men at that…

Is there even a female equivalent to ’emasculate?

Google says “William Safire in The San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 16,1986, discusses the possible opposites for emasculate. He concludes that defeminate is best, after also considering effeminate, spay, hysterectate, demulierize, gyneclate, degynify, and exogynate.” He forgot menopause.

But better still…”associating an abstract noun like ‘power’ with gender is what forms the nonsensical basis of the misogynist word ’emasculate’ “. There you see, I knew it along, this idea is rubbish even if it makes sense.