Touch Typing = Coffee with Sugar and Creamer

The unemployment rate is low right now, but there are problems with the numbers-- they don't accurately represent all the people-- and it's a lot of people-- who have dropped out of the job market entirely: these people aren't retired, they aren't employed, and they aren't seeking employment . . . and they are mainly men; a recent episode of Hidden Brain attempts to explain one factor of this phenomenon . . . some of the sectors of the economy that are booming are regarded as "women's work," and men are having a hard time moving into these jobs; the episode-- entitled "Man Up"-- focuses on nursing, and how the men who have made the transition often need to compensate with extra-manliness because (unlike femininity) manhood is "hard to earn and easy to lose"; I never thought about this all that much until I listened to this episode, but I certainly work in a field that could be considered "women's work"-- I teach Creative Writing class!-- and I'm used to working side-by-side with women, and-- more often than not-- I've had a woman as my boss; I always thought of this as a perk of my job-- we have lots of smart, charming, attractive women in my department, but I also might compensate about certain things to accentuate my manliness: whenever my buddy Bob types anything-- he's a fantastic and flamboyant touch typist-- I give him a hard time for excelling at something so feminine, and whenever my friend Terry puts sugar and creamer in his coffee, I tell him that a man drinks his coffee black . . .on the whole though, it's fun to work with a bunch of women and it's easy to be the funniest person in the room (because women aren't all that funny) and if there's ever a heavy object that needs lifting or a tight jar lid that needs unscrewing, I'm at the ready.