I'm Danish and I drive a manual transmission car every day. Most cars here are manual transmission and you legally can't take driving lessons in an automatic transmission car here so everybody who knows how to drive knows how to drive manual.
I don't get why so many Americans try to make it seem like some amazing feat of traditional blue-collar masculine excellence to able to do it. It's not that hard, anybody can learn it in an afternoon.
Learning is easy, but actually getting it into your subconscious when to switch gears and not be distracted is not that easy. It comes with the experience of driving a lot.