What are stereotypically male domestic spaces like? Two terms get at this – “bachelor pads” and “man caves” – and they both emerged in the decades after World War Two:

In 1959, the Chicago Tribune first coined the word “bachelor pad,” marking the emergence of a newly modern male homemaker. Where once family heirlooms and mounted animal heads had reigned supreme, a new visual language for masculine status had emerged. The bachelor pad was sophisticated, seductive. It was, in the words of Hugh Hefner, a place for drinking cocktails, “putting a little mood music on the phonograph and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.”…

From the very beginning, man caves have been defined in terms of their resistance to femininity. The phrase was first used in the Toronto Star in 1992, when Joanne Lovering conjured up a “cave of solitude secured against wife intrusion,” marked by “musty smells and a few strategic cobwebs.”

That year, John Gray’s Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus popularized the man cave as a metaphor for the privacy and solitude that all men crave. “Men have had an identity problem since the women’s movement,” Sam Martin, author of Manspace: A Primal Guide to Marking Your Territory told the Denver Post in 2007. “Our premise is that women have control of the look and the feel of the house and that left guys wanting more.”

Interesting look at how these terms emerge and then are part of Reddit conversations today about male spaces.

Three additional thoughts:

1. Does the rise of the smartphone and electronic devices change the scale and feel of male spaces? If all one needs is a phone or a gaming console or an internet connection to access all sorts of things, does this change the need for other items?
2. These named spaces seem to go along with consumerism: buying stuff to fill a space and show off. Might there be a shift back to minimalism and away from owning more if people prefer to spend on experiences? (Of course, owning less could mean paying more for higher-cost items.)
3. Particularly as marketers and companies looked for ways to appeal to male consumers, what terms for male spaces did not catch on?

What terms will emerge next to define male spaces?