Let’s start in America:

In Salt Lake County, Utah, it’s illegal to walk down the street carrying a violin in a paper bag.

In California it is illegal for a vehicle without a driver to exceed 60 miles per hour.

In Oklahoma, you can be arrested for making ugly faces at a dog.

In Pennsylvania, it’s against the law to tie a dollar bill on a string on the ground and pull it away when someone tries to pick it up.

In Danville, Pennsylvania, all fire hydrants must be checked one hour before all fires.

In California it is illegal to set a mouse trap without a hunting license.

In Wilbur, Washington, it is illegal to ride an ugly horse.

In Massachusetts, it is illegal to go to bed without first having a bath. (However, another law prohibits bathing on Sunday)

In Louisiana, biting someone with your natural teeth is considered “simple assault,” but biting someone with your dentures is “aggravated assault.”

In Alabama, Dominoes may not be played on Sunday and you may not have an ice cream cone in your back pocket at any time.

In Alaska, Kangaroos are not allowed in barber shops at any time.

In Arizona, There is a possible 25 years in prison for cutting down a cactus.

Florida law forbids rats to leave the ships docked in Tampa Bay and if an elephant is left tied to a parking meter, the parking fee has to be paid just as it would for a vehicle.

In Ireland (I have no idea as to whether these laws still exist):

It is illegal to smoke any form of tobacco on Grafton Street.

In Trinity college, students can demand a glass of wine at any time during an exam, provided they are wearing their sword.

In England:

A Chelsea Pensioner may not be impersonated.

A bed may not be hung out of a window.

In Chester, You can only shoot a Welsh person with a bow and arrow inside the city walls and after midnight.

In York, excluding Sundays, it is perfectly legal to shoot a Scotsman with a bow and arrow.

And finally in Switzerland:

It is illegal to flush the toilet after 10 P.M. if you live in an apartment.

19th Century England had a crisis of masculinity. In a very short space of time, mechanisation, the gift of the Industrial Revolution, changed the way people lived and worked. The majority of society was involved in agricultural work, which was undoubtedly made simpler by the advent of more complex machinery and tools – industrial processing soon became the new common labour throughout the country.

This change in labour styles led to an alteration in physique – manning machinery was not half as taxing as the work people had been used to; coupled with poor working conditions in the factories, the working male population, step by step, became weaker and sicker than they had been before.

The ease of labour also made it viable for women to enter work. In most cases women could perform equal to or better than men. Man, in a sense, became redundant. With a tumultuous political situation, and the threat of war looking all the more real, the crisis became apparent – a generation earlier had been chiselled from stone, tough as nails…and man now was flabby, useless and impotent.

The solution to the problem came in a strange shape. An oval. Through public schools there was a huge push on sporting activities, chief amongst them, rugby. Rugby, it was argued was a way to make a boy into a man. Of course, it would alter the player physically, making them rugged and tough, but also it was an important moral tool. It was viewed so, as a rite of initiation, one which would teach young boys good moral and physical breeding, fairness in retaliation, and the importance of the team over the individual. In short, it would prepare them for war.

Muscular perfection became equal to moral perfection. Ancient Greece, where the gymasium was just as valid as the school in terms of educational importance, became a model for Victorian schools to aspire to. An unconscious criticism crept into the mindset of the people – to be fat, slovenly, lazy, meant to be corrupted and morally crippled. If a man could not master his own body, how could he succeed at anything else, let alone succeed on a battlefield.

Today, the picture is very much the same. Technology has brought us further along the road we started on in the 19th Century – working in artificial environments and typing away at screens (that do not even buzz anymore), even the mechanised factory work of 100 years ago seems to be far more rooted in masculinity than we can imagine. God forbid we could fathom what the time before that was like. Our bodies continue to become fat, flabby and impotent – and many complain that we have reached a new low in terms of morality. There is the constant threat of war looming on the horizon.

It could be argued, that while women are now firmly established in the workplace; both sexes could be made feel redundent by youth. When technology is changing so rapidly, experience doesn’t count for much. Skills that once required dedication and training, can now be readily accessed by anybody, and indeed, changes in education mean that children are leaving schools more fully equipped to immediately get by in their profession.

The harshest effects of this ongoing crisis can be seen in the stupendous increase of male suicide in recent years – it is food for thought, whether we are simply on an unstoppable downward roll towards redundancy – or whether in our time we will develop a new rite of initiation…a last desperate attempt to brake something which is beyond our control.