> barns are feminine coded spaces now
That all depends upon the barn*, now doesn't it? Eg, I don't recall there being many female rough stock riders.
> places need social fabrics and a way to connect
Around here we do that with voluntary associations. De Tocqueville mentions them approvingly in Democracy in America (1835), but for some reason this aspect of culture has swapped over the intervening centuries, and I find there are way more here in my corner of the Continent than in the Old Country.
> a constraint where guys need to be capable of anything outside their jobs
What's even the point of living without an avocation beyond your vocation?
* [I'd say over the last several decades I've only had to (mostly teasingly, and each time in a barn chock full of DQs) request that people please not female bond around me 2 or 3 times. And come to think of it, back when I was still single, having a social spot that had the opposite ratio to the one at work was not exactly a bad thing. Has Jilly Cooper ever written any books with a Zumba® setting?]
Anybody remember Malcolm Baldridge, Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration? He died when his horse fell on him during a calf-roping contest.
always seemed like a bit of a stretch to me to call the spectacle of falling off an animal riding per se. we've got ways to back them now, even if they are a bit european, but I admire the grit. :)
it's leisure and guys don't do a lot of that because it raises questions about how serious they are when they could be using that time to get ahead in their jobs. pleasure itself is effete and often only acceptable in these relationships if it's ambitious social climbing. most of these activities and organizations are going the way of other institutions, so this horse thief catcher one just sounded really nice.
