4 ms·

> If danger determines masculinity/femininity, then that would also explain why grilling is considered masculine. I think this is motivated reasoning. From wha

by bccdee 5y ago

> If danger determines masculinity/femininity, then that would also explain why grilling is considered masculine. I think this is motivated reasoning. From what I can tell, the "grilling is manly" thing started in the '50s (well after cooking stopped being dangerous) and is mostly limited to the United States (instead of being universal, as we would expect with something biologically-motivated). And what's the difference between frying, roasting, and grilling? All involve using a gas-operated cooking device to cook meat (assuming you own a gas stove); they're all equally safe. Not only does this strike me as being cultural, this strikes me as obviously cultural. And yet you dismiss that out of hand and go looking for a biological explanation ("grilling is extra dangerous") that doesn't really line up with the facts of the example. So it seems to me that you're engaging in motivated reasoning — assuming that masculinity can't be a product of culture, reaching for biological explanations even when they don't really make sense.

quocanh 5y ago
The discussion here is: what parts of culture are motivated by biology? It's obviously cultural. But what is motivating the culture? Also interesting to me that grilling is manly started in the 50's. That seems to be about the time that household appliances like microwave were getting popular, no? Maybe men who liked to cook needed to find a manly outlet.
aerostable_slug 5y ago
FWIW, as an amateur historian I did a high-level talk on the history of barbecue, especially as it relates to the grilling styles found in California (popularized as "Santa Maria BBQ"). Long story short, men were running the pits not only in the 1950s, but also the 1850s, 1750s, 1650s, etc. Why? It might have been because meat was the product of the hunt. It might have been because running a barbecue could mean many hours of hot, smoky, dirty work that often involved physically strenuous activity. For quite a lot of American history, barbecues were often conducted for large numbers of guests and may have started the day before with transporting fuel, digging a trench, pre-heating the trench overnight, processing one's pigs, mutton, poultry, beef, or what have you, making your coals and keeping the supply up throughout the cook, etc. Also, the cuts of meat used were often far larger/heavier than we're used to — the original Santa Maria Barbecue cooks used top blocks of beef and similarly large cuts, not itty bitty tri-tips. Famed barbecue "masters" were universally men, though if everyone is being honest much of the hard work at many large barbecues (with hundreds of guests) was actually performed by black men (or Californios, or what have you depending upon the location). Large barbecues were generally tied to political efforts or organizations, festivals, and the like. During the Depression there were large government-subsidized barbecues so everyone could get some meat in their bellies and enjoy one another's company during those tough times, and there again we see men and women typically taking on disparate roles in the cooking process. Contemporary accounts of the barbecues of years past generally have women inside doing not easier work, but different work. Making pies, side dishes, baking, etc. Even the pre-Columbian/Spanish Chumash tended to split their work pretty strictly, with women doing things like grinding acorn flour in bedrock mortars with the kids, while the men fished, hunted, gathered shellfish, etc. Contemporary drawings of various indigenous peoples show them smoking/grilling fish and iguana, but again everyone in the images are male. I confess I don't firmly know what kind of sex differences existed in the roles played in the cooking American slaves did for one another, something I really should remedy, but when it came to big gatherings the differences were apparent and as I wrote above. I can't really speak to causality, but in terms of time scale the M-F patterns seem to substantially pre-date the 1950s. Oh, and fun fact: the offset smoker was invented in Texas in the 1970s. That little factoid seems to blow people's minds...
- quocanh 5y ago
  Holy crap thanks for the bbq facts!

by bccdee 5y ago

quocanh 5y ago

The discussion here is: what parts of culture are motivated by biology? It's obviously cultural. But what is motivating the culture? Also interesting to me that grilling is manly started in the 50's. That seems to be about the time that household appliances like microwave were getting popular, no? Maybe men who liked to cook needed to find a manly outlet.

aerostable_slug 5y ago

FWIW, as an amateur historian I did a high-level talk on the history of barbecue, especially as it relates to the grilling styles found in California (popularized as "Santa Maria BBQ"). Long story short, men were running the pits not only in the 1950s, but also the 1850s, 1750s, 1650s, etc. Why? It might have been because meat was the product of the hunt. It might have been because running a barbecue could mean many hours of hot, smoky, dirty work that often involved physically strenuous activity. For quite a lot of American history, barbecues were often conducted for large numbers of guests and may have started the day before with transporting fuel, digging a trench, pre-heating the trench overnight, processing one's pigs, mutton, poultry, beef, or what have you, making your coals and keeping the supply up throughout the cook, etc. Also, the cuts of meat used were often far larger/heavier than we're used to — the original Santa Maria Barbecue cooks used top blocks of beef and similarly large cuts, not itty bitty tri-tips. Famed barbecue "masters" were universally men, though if everyone is being honest much of the hard work at many large barbecues (with hundreds of guests) was actually performed by black men (or Californios, or what have you depending upon the location). Large barbecues were generally tied to political efforts or organizations, festivals, and the like. During the Depression there were large government-subsidized barbecues so everyone could get some meat in their bellies and enjoy one another's company during those tough times, and there again we see men and women typically taking on disparate roles in the cooking process. Contemporary accounts of the barbecues of years past generally have women inside doing not easier work, but different work. Making pies, side dishes, baking, etc. Even the pre-Columbian/Spanish Chumash tended to split their work pretty strictly, with women doing things like grinding acorn flour in bedrock mortars with the kids, while the men fished, hunted, gathered shellfish, etc. Contemporary drawings of various indigenous peoples show them smoking/grilling fish and iguana, but again everyone in the images are male. I confess I don't firmly know what kind of sex differences existed in the roles played in the cooking American slaves did for one another, something I really should remedy, but when it came to big gatherings the differences were apparent and as I wrote above. I can't really speak to causality, but in terms of time scale the M-F patterns seem to substantially pre-date the 1950s. Oh, and fun fact: the offset smoker was invented in Texas in the 1970s. That little factoid seems to blow people's minds...

quocanh 5y ago
Holy crap thanks for the bbq facts!