What do you think is the cause of reduction of hand size in males? My hands are comically smaller than all the males on all sides of the family. Interestingly enough, my apprentice is a half Hispanic half white. There is a phenomena where large plain white women marry tiny Hispanic males. Several white women I dated in their teens later expanded grotesquely and all married brown males smaller than them.
It's bizarre to me that men are simply not growing hands forearms and presumably other appendages.
-Paul
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No recent email more directly relates to the novel Of The Naked Lands than this missive from Paul. Inspired by a poem by Robert E. Howard, that novel addresses cyclic effeminacy in society.
Paul, my hand size is in line with my father, who did not work with his hands nearly to the degree I did, nor engage in the combat sports partly responsible, marking me as also devolved. I recall at age 16, when I was my strongest in body, having never since had better metrics in any lift, run, etc., arm wrestling with my Grandfather Kern. Grandpa had worked with his hands as a painter and checking and repairing equipment for BG&E, the local power company. He was no lumber jack, carpenter or boxer. He had been retired for years, doing little more than driving and drinking beer. In this contest he easily beat me with a smile. Both my father and grandfather had strong hands for their class, size and generation, which are the three measurements I look at.
Fast forward to 2022, February, Portland, Oregon. Jesse, a young, 33 year old man obsessed with weight lifting and boxing, found out I was a boxing coach. He is 6’ 2” 220 pounds, with a broad chest, wide head, with Slavic features, hits the weights 4 days a week. He was drunk and wanted to box me outside. I declined. He was challenging me in good nature, believing that my “boxing knowledge” would nullify his youth and size. He was getting pushy and then gave me an out with an arm wrestling challenge. My friend Kelly had recently taught me some technique, as he had been a pro arm wrestler. I was less than confident, also, I was seated at the bar and him standing. The bar owner was pissed and smirked, the little Chinese cutie critical of the pale demons. We began, with him jumping the call given by a female barfly, who admonished him for cheating on the spot. I felt his lack of hand strength and nodded for us to continue as he worked hard. He had poor technique to my novice technique. My bicep was partly torn. Then I felt his lack of hand strength. I saw this guy, drunk, do 50 push ups when I can do but 9. I was so shocked by the week hands that I decided to pretend I could not put him down and let him fight for minutes. Otherwise, if he thought I humiliated him, I might have to fight him anyhow. He spilled his beer in this struggle. Finally, slowly, with no effort, I put him down.
I can’t do this with any of my young fighters, and many of them do not work with their hands. So I would like to add activity and childhood activity to this consideration:
-1. Generation, as discussed by Homer, from antiquity until this day our increased reliance on better tools and lower class of labor, makes for men who are shadows compared to their grandfathers.
-2. Size, in any strength consideration, is important. But, it is perhaps the least metric in hand strength, with some smaller men having much bigger and stronger hands than larger men.
-3. Class, having to earn your living with your hands makes them stronger, thicker over time, denser. In our time this is the middle class tradesman, not the lower class, who have become dependents, as consumers, criminals and pets, no longer working with their hands. But among these men, like carpenters, men my age are much stronger in hand than the young men, due to so little hammer work and reliance on the air gun.
-4. Childhood activity, such as wrestling, working, throwing, climbing, have been reduced in recent decades over my childhood when the jungle gym was the chief source of fun.
-5. Physical culture is non existent in children today, and when it gains currency among out casts or egotists in young adulthood, it focuses on gross form, of body shape, waist to chest ratio, on muscle mass, on looks, rather than function. Strong tendons are not as sexy as big biceps.
-6. Combat sports, the use of hands to struggle, by impact or grapple, or with sticks, like the use of farm tools, imparts stress to thicken bone. These activities are almost zero in the current degenerate age.
I have avoided, above, two indirect factors that go into “Generation” that is fetal, childhood, and youth social structure, being born to a feminine society, and, also the chemical landscape of science foods and materials. According to studies referenced in Lionel Tiger’s book on masculinity in 2001, from 1975 to 2000 testosterone levels in 25 year old men had dropped by 25%. We are 25 years out from that disastrous report. Looking at the extreme sissy wilt of urban African American men since 2000, makes me think that society and chemistry are equally corrosive here.
Paul, all we can do is improve ourselves to the extent that God, Time and Nature permits it, three forces that I reckon as distinct. I’m still trying to be the best mud puppet I can be despite the erosion of what qualities were either given or earned. I do trust female intuition, and am mazed by numerous young women fixing on my hands, normal for my father’s pretty decedent generation, but now standing out over the sea of young podmen they swim so lonely in. Women don’t generally fear big hands, like men do, they like them. And I have only been able to experience this female approval thanks to the sissy men who have been sent to replace me.
Yesterday, Matt and I sat on his deck and tried on gloves, neither one of us being able to fit the gloves of our prime years, an indication of arthritis. Women sense this, and like wind and sun damaged skin in men that would cause a thrill of horror in the mirror. Women who are not denatured cat women, or discarded plane Janes, choosing a date between a bowl of mashed potatoes and a lesser man, appreciate the damage we sustain over the course of battling this cold, cruel bitch of a world that they know, in their hearts, will kill us all, but us first.
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Post Script from Paul
Right now, aside from myself, it may only be Joel and Seth in st Louis. Or there may be three or four other men in attendance.
It's hard to say.
Electric Dan confirmed
Mr Barrett is a maybe
And there is a guy from st Louis is also wanting to attend
I feel Sean's contribution will be immense, because in the Midwest the biggest issue would be stopping the tackle, either from an assailant who has wrestled or played football.
I've told Joel this before and I do speak from experience. I usually don't talk about my street encounters because they're all ludicrous, and as you can imagine I survived,
But, from those experiences would say most guys in the Midwest don't have a go to move in altercations. If they strike, their go to move has been to break their hands, a couple of times on my face. I have collected a number of anecdotal cases of fistic assaults, besides the couple that have happened to me, and all the cases involved immediately broken hands.
A lot of experienced crackheads will do anything to avoid using their hands in an assault. Darin’s hands have broken so many times, it's amazing he can still do mechanic work with tools. But he says all things are possible through meth. The heroin addict ex kickboxer has very damaged hands at 47.
I bring all this up to stress that it's important to be able to stop the tackle or bum rush, if you live in the Midwest and are interested in self defense.
I would love to facilitate you and Sean doing regular seminars together all over the country and make this November weekend a practice run for this.
All that being said
If we have four or less is it worth Sean's time to drive out? If it is, great. I will see what he thinks. Money is not an issue. I'm just thinking about his time considering that he's in training.
-Paul
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Here we end, back with hands again. My last year of coaching has been focused on use of the open hand to navigate the combat space, being a nexus where boxing, grappling and weapon use all converge. Having Jim Dee in Towson last month gave us a grappling man to coach Brickmouse and I on hold and throw transitions. Here we are, at the bottom of a feminine well, and it is almost impossible to get more than five men together for shared self improvement, even for free, unless it is part of a sport style cult or a politically adjacent activity. This hard wall of non participating and parochial aversion to direct masculine interaction for and of its own sake, points to the sissy culture of Modernity as the prime wrecker of our amazing hand, which seems to have been the aspect of our design most predictive of our dominance over other, lesser kinds.
