A deep reading of the novelty man cave sign that I discovered in a rural Indiana gas station

The allegory of the (man) cave

Once a year, I get together with my two best guy friends for a weekend somewhere in the greater Midwest. I have already made this joke, but it remains true. What if the cure for male loneliness is… building and maintaining actual friendships? Funny nobody’s proposed that solution yet, but that’s why I’m not the Joe Rogan of the left.

This year we met up in Cincinnati, a lovely town filled with nice people, very pretty hills, and also one anodyne, vertical rectangle that says “Kroger” on it, where entire teams of Harvard MBAs are meeting as we speak to plot innovations like “what if we tried no open checkout lanes?”¹

To get to Cincinnati from Milwaukee, you drive for an about six hours, picking up your buddies along the way. At some point, you stop for gas in Indiana. In our case, the gas station in question was somewhere between Lafayette and Lebanon. Was it a BP? A Cenex? Maybe, but if you are ever driving on I-65 and need to purchase aggressively gendered interior decor and/or marijuana themed socks, this is your place.

This was not my first novelty man cave sign. If a cursory Google Image search is to be believed, it’s a surprisingly robust interior design genre, though I’ve never actually seen one displayed in its natural habitat, only gas stations and Cracker Barrel gift shops. Come to think of it, have I ever been in a man cave? Do people still have those? Did they ever? I just assumed every McMansion had at least four, but I never investigated.

That’s the magic of this sign, you see. It is both a time capsule to a potentially imagined near-past, and a very real case study for the morass of contemporary gender discourse. I guess that’s how societal regression works. Everything old is new again, and for sale in an establishment where you can also buy Lunchables and Zyn.

According to this sign at least, there are ten rules of the man cave, just as there are Ten Commandments. Much like that other list-of-ten, these are not just empty platitudes that you hang on your wall (or increasingly teach in all of your public schools). You study it. You analyze it. You go deep.

#1. My cave, my rules

Possession is nine tenths of the laws, or so I hear. But already, we’re off to the internally contradictory races. So much of “let me be a man, damnit” discourse infers the existence of a proprietary spark tamped down by a feminized monoculture. Every man is a unique special snowflake, but not that kind of snowflake. If that’s the case, though, why are everybody’s man cave rules the same? Could one of your man cave rules be “this is a space to honestly reflect on your emotions and responsibiliies for community care?” Sorry bud, ran out of room on the sign. Kind of like how, whenever we talk broadly about the demonization of men, the variety of man we’re demonizing always enjoys the same five things: stoicism, gay jokes, shooting stuff, sports betting and those baseball hats where the text is upside down, so you have to tilt your head to read it and then you’re like “oh, I guess it says Miami.”

#2. Only man decor allowed

Now we’re rolling. Remember that a man cave is a physical space that only exists in the context of cis-hetero home ownership. Ontologically, the man cave presupposes that a fella in a cross-gender relationship is oppressed by his lady’s dominion over the rest of the house. Thank God somebody (the United Nations, presumably) bequeathed the put-upon man a tiny swath of de-feminized territory in the name of human rights. Not unlike how, before 2024, women had seized control of every single lever of power (they even had a hashtag that suggested that perhaps there should be consequence for sexual assault! the nerve!). Feminism had gone too far. Reparations were needed. Like, for example, giving guys even greater hegemonic control of all political and cultural institutions.

But back to the home. This is all he’s got, the man. The right to choose the decorations in his man cave. Like this sign, presumably. Or a VERY COOL picture of Kid Rock and RFK Jr. working out in jeans. Or a 1973 beer poster where a buxomly Nordic woman hoists two-to-three Coors Lights and gives the viewer a look that communicates "I wish to move to rural Utah with you, purchase a $10,000 stove and make Instagram content about bread and fertility.”

#3. Replenish all beer stock

Wait, who are these rules for? Is the woman of the house supposed to enter the man cave on a daily basis, consult these commandments, and then run out to get more beer? Well, if so, she’d better not also try to sneak in a “Live Laugh Love” poster or a picture of the man’s children on the wall. MAN DECOR ONLY! You know, like statues of bighorn sheep giving press conferences at the Pentagon. BAHHHH! WAR FIGHTERS!!!!

#4. Junk food is nutritional

So here’s where the sign starts to show its age. Remember when the fellas used to enjoy junk food? That was before we lost some of our best men in the War On Protein. These days, being a real man means having a bespoke eating disorder. In this man cave, we macromaxxx. We carnivore diet. We bulk and cut. We launch our own line of circa 1987 Weight Watchers shakes, but for cowboys. We slather a rotisserie chicken with cottage cheese and mutter to ourselves, 'Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men… ” until we fall asleep, thumb in mouth, on our man couch.

#5. Farting and belching tolerated

Whichever mid-level employee at the metaphor factory came up with this one deserves a raise. Incredible work. I mean, isn’t all anti-feminist backlash rhetoric, at its core, about how annoying it is to be gently reminded that considering the needs of other people might improve your life as well? Not on my manly watch! You’re saying that I should have authentic relationships with those around me rather than being a boorish sex pest? That I shouldn’t “say slurs” because they make me sound like a butthead? That I shouldn’t lose my life savings on a betting app? Why? Because of WOKE?

What’s next, keeping me from hotboxing my sacred man temple with a firehose of rancid man-flatulence?² Screw you! My compact, hermetically sealed safe space exists for one reason and one reason alone: expelling unpleasant smells and then just sitting in ‘em! Like a man!

#6. Man controls all remotes

All of them? Fine, whatever.

#7. Sports on TV 24/7

And make it man sports, please. Not lady sports, which have never been of interest to us real men. Well, until we receive vague word that a trans high schooler wants to play softball, in which case we remember that women’s sports is the axis upon which our entire identity spins. Who told you we didn’t like women’s sports? It’s all we think about. Women’s athletes. We’re HUGE fans. We’ve got so many favorites. Like Riley Gaines. And, um, Erika Kirk? Also Mary, Jesus’ mother and, we assume, a champion pole vaulter in her time.

#8. Chick flicks are prohibited

At first glance, this one reads like another vintage 90s Home Improvement-level cracks about how women are from Terms of Endearment and men are from Die Hard, but let’s look at the contemporary media landscape. We’re constantly being told that men are oppressed now because of the supposed stranglehold that Big Woman has on all media. Comedy is illegal now. Television shows acknowledge the existence of trauma. You’d turn on the nightly news, and you don’t even see boobs any more.

But nature is healing. In the past few years, we’ve green-lit roughly five million Taylor Sheridan shows about behatted men staring into the middle district. Kill Tony awareness is at an all time high. The Ellisons now own all media, and Bari Weiss³ is in charge of CBS News For Men and Select Other Real Americans. I mean, even Taylor Swift pivoted away from “chick flicks.” She got the memo. I bet she built Travis Kelce a man cave so big that there’s another man cave inside it. One for farts, one for burps. Not like the rest of our wives, who only enjoy nagging and ruining the workplace.

#9. No bitching. No issues.

Want to play a fun game? It’s called “morally constipated Atlantic column or line from the man cave sign.” I mean, isn’t this basically the message of nine million think pieces about how various leftists are personally responsible for Trump 2.0 and the broader death of democracy? Racial justice activists. “Millennial feminists.” Trans people who would like to go to the bathroom without a weirdo yelling that them. You all bitched! And I— David Brooks or Thomas Chatterton Williams or Helen Lewis— are here to warn you about the sudden emergence of… issues. They didn’t exist, those issues, and we were all doing fine, but then you just had to run your mouth, didn’t you? Are you happy now? You personally willed Pete Hegseth into existence, such was the sheer force of your insatiable bitchery.

I know I keep ping ponging between the sign’s hack 90s gender comedy and our current discursive moment, but it’s striking. The old canards that have propped up emotional/physical labor gaps in heterosexual marriages for decades (women are shrill nags; men deserve both to run everything and to lie around doing nothing) ) are now being reheated as brilliant epistles for the second Trump era. “Take my wife… please” is just the molecular level version of “but what about the boys and men?”

But yes, in summary. If there was no bitching, there’d be no issues. Your move, Critical Race Theory.

#10. Whatever Man Says Makes Perfect Sense

See also: Whatever the President and Vice President say (take that, soft on crime, non-theology knowing Pope), whatever a stand-up comic who loves rape jokes says (“oh come on… are you TRIGGERED?) whatever every corporate CEO says (“great news, the world-destroying robots who occasionally tell you to kill yourself are your children’s legal guardians now)) and whatever the New York Times Editorial Board says (“Sure, Zohran is charismatic, but what if he institutes Sharia Law in YOUR man cave.”).

Although, now that I think about it.. I’m a man, and this newsletter is, on some level at least, my man cave. I think I get the appeal. Whatever I say makes perfect sense, you say? Don’t mind if I do.

END NOTES:

1. You all! I’m no longer just talking about helping fifty rad community builders host a relay of fifty gatherings across the country. I really was in Seattle last week (busy travel week, I know), hanging out with many of you at one of the best potlucks I’ve ever attended (shout out to the Columbia City Neighbors Club). Here’s a nice article about the event, and also my thoughts on the night. Oh my god it was the best.

2. Portland, you’re up next. THIS SUNDAY! NOON PACIFIC TIME! AT REEDWOOD FRIENDS (2901 SE Steele). You all, this is going to be such a fun gathering— Reedwood is a faith community, but it’s asking an inspiring questions about how to be the kind of place that is a good neighbor to those for whom faith communities don’t/can’t feel like home. And also, there’s gonna be singing and pizza. You should come

   

3. THIS FRIDAY IS THE DEADLINE FOR OUR NEXT ROUND OF RELAY STATES (Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Idaho), As I’ve mentioned in previous weeks, Applying is not hard! Perhaps you want to toss your name in, if for no other reason than to tell my intrusive thoughts that they are silly (or more likely, because being a part of the relay is very cool and low impact we even provide a hosting stipend).

4. Sarah Wheeler and I made an announcement about our podcast, This Week in Breeders. We’re taking a break,, but there’s o reason to start singing Green Day’s “Time of your life” or Sarah Mclaughlin’s “I will remember you” at your favorite podcast app, because we’ll be back!

5. This essay’s final line notwithstanding, I do not believe that everything I say makes total sense but I do believe that— in a world where so much ink is spilled keeping the world as it is— that the work we’re doing here matters. I wouldn’t ask you to support if it didn’t truly help (I’m lucky to have this job, but it truly wouldn’t be possible if a few folks every week didn’t raise their hand and say “hey Garrett, thanks for this, I can take a shift helping out.”

1. You might say that this is a superfluous detail in an essay that is not about the relative merits of large grocery story chains but my sincere promise to you is that I will never pass up an opportunity to malign the Kroger corporation in print. Love Cincinnati, though. Hell of a town.

2. Man-tulance

3. A lady, and a lesbian at that, but not one of those angry lesbians— she loves fascism and slurs! Cool!