Sea Shanties Maketh The Man

Andrew P. Donovan
Nov 6 · 4 min read

I was captivated by a video I saw on Twitter this week.

It was of a group of young men in a high school washroom singing a sea shanty called “Drunken Sailor”, an unmistakably Celtic song that shares the same rhythm as the Irish folk masterpiece, Óró sé do bheatha abhaile.

The original Tweet featuring unoriginal content belongs to an account that’s since marked itself as private. This might have something to do with the unexpected virality of the post. Maybe not. I haven’t a clue.

Thankfully, the video that inspired this article is also on YouTube.

There’s something about this video that’s deeper than the silly caption that accompanies it.

Young men of all different backgrounds in a high school washroom, in what I presume to be the United States, singing a song from a culture not of their own is…unifying.

While I never sang sea shanties in the washroom of my Catholic high school, I did captain both my baseball and football teams and I distinctly remember the camaraderie that developed inside the four walls of our change rooms in spaces only men were allowed.

Granted, there was bullying and fights did break out but that stuff happens in non-gender-segregated areas as well. It’s not unusual that teenage boys develop pecking orders and fight to prove themselves. That’s biological. And so is our need to be alone with one another. Males with males.

After high school, when I was battling an identity crisis that brought with it intense anxiety attacks, the people who best pulled me out of my rut were men. My friends.

Even though I was in a longterm relationship with a young lady I loved at the time, I couldn’t open up to her as I could to them.

I couldn’t share with her my most uncomfortable “fucked up thoughts.”

My Pack, my Tribe…they needed to guide me through that garbage. And they did.

More recently, during my bachelor party this past summer, my groomsmen — all from different walks of life — met at a cottage in Northern Ontario to spend a few days getting to know one another.

It amazes me how much men open up around other men. It takes almost no time at all.

We sat around a table on a patio for hours. We had drinks, smoked cigars and cigarettes, and talked about everything from politics to love to our lives to our dreams and to our worries.

It was a weekend to be ourselves.

Spaces exclusive to men are a rarity nowadays. They’re actively discouraged and the ones that exist are constantly subverted by the mainstream.

In 2017, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) began accepting girls into their programmes.

The BSA claimed it was because enrolment was down. Maybe. But that’s a marketing problem. Opening membership to girls might solve that problem in the short, but over time, the girls' numbers will drop as well. Why? They failed to fix the problem that led to low enrolment in the first place.

It reminds me of protestant churches that abandoned the true teachings of Christ some 50 years ago in an unending pursuit of being cool and with the times in hopes more people would go to church.

Now look at the state of those churches! They’re filled with blue-haired grandmas and are closing faster than Blockbuster stores in the early aughts.

Perhaps I’m overanalysing a silly video. I doubt it, though.

Suicide is the eighth leading cause of death for men of all ages.

For boys aged 1–19, suicide is the third leading cause of death.

For young men aged 20–44, suicide is the second leading cause of death.

What does that have to do with sea shanties in the boys’ washroom?

Boys and young men have never been so medicated, so desegregated, and so villainised. Full stop.

And for those doing a doubletake at the desegregation bit, the sexes need time apart. It’s healthy.

The Girls Scouts of America, upon hearing the BSA was accepting girls into their programmes, critiqued the move by stating:

“The benefit of the single-gender environment has been well-documented by educators, scholars, other girl- and youth-serving organizations, and Girl Scouts and their families.”

Boyish behaviour is also being classified as a mental disorder (ADHD) and that’s leading to pharmaceutical solutions that aren’t solutions at all.

I could go on.

As much as today’s academic and highly political social planner would have us believe the only differences between the genders are socially constructed, every bit of observable and measurable evidence says otherwise.

It might sound counterintuitive to the modern mind but males feel the safest around other males. Yes, we rip on one another and we get into fights but that’s just apart of the game.

Lastly, I’m a staunch believer (as of a day or two ago when I binge listened to sea shanties) that it’s impossible for boys not to become men when enough sea shanties are sung. They maketh the man and society needs one thing more than any other right now, it’s more men.

Written by

I am a marketer. History and politics is something I do in my spare time because I enjoy it very much.

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