Why apartment living emasculates men

I had an epiphane today: I do not feel manly living in an apartment. In fact, I feel the very opposite of manly; I feel like a metro-man. Apartment living is perhaps the greatest force for emasculation in the modern world. Ponder with me the following consequences of apartment living, the five emasculations of today's apartment dwelling man.

Emasculation #1. You have no back yard. No yard means no mowing, raking, weed abatement, avoidance of indoor chores, bbqing, playing catch, picking up dog poop, etc.

Emasculation #2. You have no garage. No tools, no workbench, no powertools, no projects to work on, no access to creative outlets, no place to work on the car, get dirty, turn up your music really loud. No second fridge in which to keep provisions deemed "uncouth" for the inside fridge. No room for weights, treadmill, hockey net, ping pong table, etc.

Emasculation #3. You have no front yard. This is the big one. You can't impress your neighbors with your christmas lights, your frequent hand car washes, your magnificent lawn or shrubs, your immaculate landscaping, or your weed-free concrete cracks. You also can't be "that" neighbor, commanding respect by your loud music, loud talking, frequent visitors, huge parties that dominate the shared parking space, or intensely gaudy christmas light displays, hung so ornately by professional christmas decorators hired the day after thanksgiving. (That's how it's done at my neighborhood in CA. But I guess it's better than leaving your lights up year round like they do in Tx.)

Emasculation #4. You have no driveway. You can't show your car, your car repair prowess, or your lack of car knowledge. You can't play basketball with your kid or your friends with the backboard above the garage.

Emasculation #5. You have to be quiet. When you have a house, the one thing you can be is loud. Whether your doors are closed or open is your call and is usually determined by the degree to which you will go to make your neighbors like you, but you can be as obnoxiously noisy as you want. Not so in an apartment. Whether you're yelling at the TV during a sports game, playing your instrument way louder than necessary, turning up a movie loud enough to make your ears bleed, yelling on the phone, or just singing to yourself, the constancy of being surrounded by others, usually others you don't know well, forces the confident, assertive man to curb his natural, healthy expressive voice box and resort to the more subdued "polite" voice. This is suicide for a man. Being quiet at home can make you quiet at work, which could translate into being quiet after work. And if, as a man, you start becoming quiet, that can be one way to kiss away any chance of being seen as an assertive force with which to be reckoned.

This is not to say that men have to be loud to be manly, taken seriously, or to be judged competent or worthy, or to say that all men should be loud; but to live in an apartment imposes definitive limitations on the traditional man, chief among them being the prohibition against expressing himself loudly.

Fortunately, the remedy for such a situation is often easily attainable: just move. I look forward to moving out of an apartment and into my house someday, where I will have a backyard, a front yard, a garage, a driveway, and the freedom to be as loud as i want to be.