+ 0 - 1 | § ¶Manliness Vindicated

Yesterday I attended the official presentation of the Dutch translation of Professor Harvey Mansfield’s Manliness (2007). Though I have not read his book, I do not intend to do so. Here was a senior professor from the most prestigious university in the world making assertions that one would expect to be a made at a barber shop or garage, or over whiskey and cigars when playing poker with the boys. However, I found the discussion thought-provoking and lively.

Mansfield’s lecture was for the most part a summation of multi-tiered differences between men and women. Men have a different nature, behave differently, think differently, etc. It was fascinating to see an elderly, frail academic eulogize aggressive manliness. His speech amounted to a rehash of popular stereotype in an academic vocabulary. What remained unclear was how this inequality would justify unequal treatment of women or their subordination to men.

For a New England professor his views rather brought to mind old England’s upper-class mixture of entre nous misogyny and public gentlemanship, which was epitomized in his offhand compliment to Stine Jensen: “I am a bit at a loss for words, having to respond to such a beautiful woman... for a feminist.” There were more such remarks that typified Mansfield’s condescending courtesy toward Jensen. Mansfield felt nostalgic for a time that women were the object of romantic love and care displayed by the man that wooed them. By politely killing his argument as a worthy opponent, Jensen proved him wrong on the passive role for women.

What was the grist of his argument? It might be caught in the slogan ‘the public sphere is a man’s field’ (pun intended). From Mansfield’s answer to Stephan Sanders it could be inferred that gay men were excluded as well, as in any case they were deemed abnormal (Mansfield preferred the more correct word ‘unconventional’, which is true in its connotation but hazy in its implication). One could imagine how a sign would be placed on the universities and town halls, saying ‘no women, gays, or dogs allowed’. Mansfield’s argument was rather too elusive to be offensive in such a manner.  The way it should be done remained unanswered, but the message was that we have to herd our women back to the oikos.

As the old Tory saying goes: ‘Never send a woman to do a man’s job’. Of course Margaret Thatcher proved this saying wrong, as have so many other women. I wonder if his book answers the question what is so fundamentally wrong about women that should exclude them from public office. It’s not like the women I know who are actively engaged in politics menstruate all over the place or go maternal on hardcore criminality. It seems the other way around, one gets the feeling that Condoleezza Rice and Hilary Clinton are more manly than the lot of American men.

Is Mansfield’s book perhaps a gender-specific reading of Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition? In the break I browsed through the index of his book and found her name unmentioned. The separation between the public and the private sphere, first heralded by Benjamin Constant in his speech about the liberty of the ancients and the moderns, marked the advent of liberal democracy (and the end of the vita activa in a classical sense). However, representative government of this kind is from a classical vantage point rather unmanly. If manliness is a situational virtue that comes to fruit in the context of the active life of politics and the military, then it is rather an act of outsourcing manliness to (civil and army) professionals who actively engage in such manly action for us. They are representatives of our manliness.

Was it a coincidence that an American conservative such as Mansfield remained silent on Christ’s unmanly plea for meekness? Nietzsche denounced Christianity as a slave morality, but most not forget this equals a woman’s morality, a morality of the weak. Many such questions were left unanswered. Some of Mansfield’s claims were far-fetched, such as a direct link between ‘unemployed manliness’ and crime and Islamic terror, other claims were downright contradictory. Mansfield seemed to believe that women can be as vicious as men (as he noted the increase of the percentage of women in state prisons) but was doubtful whether women could be as virtuous as men.

Most importantly, discussing manliness seems doomed from the start. Manliness is an essentialist and foundationalist concept. Of course men display more manliness, just like elephants are more elephantly than other animals. To make this point you do not need to lecture for half an hour, it suffices to drop your pants. It would have been more interesting when Mansfield would have said less about manliness and more about how his findings need to be instrumentalized to create a better society.

+ 0 - 1 | § ¶Volksgeest

De wereld waarin we leven, maar niet bevatten.

Die kluwen van

en geloof en cultuur en ideologie

ongeloof - vrees – haat

als in een zwarte mis

waar geloof geen liefde is

waar hoop een zwakte heet

waar liefde zich hergroepeert

Die complexiteit

wordt gemoedelijk teruggebracht

tot de keuze voor

Wilde of Makke Geert.

Zelfs ons einde der tijden is kleinburgerlijk.