A Manly Man
January 23rd, 2008
Yesterday evening I attended a talk by the Harvard professor Mansfield on the subject of “manliness” at the “Rode Hoed” theater in Amsterdam. I can not do anything else but conclude that he is a bit crazy. No, actually, fully insane.
There didn’t seem to be much coherent reasoning in his talk at all. In his eyes manliness is what we archetypically see as such: strong, emotionless, rational. Because of feminism us men lost some of those “virtues” and so we should try to go back to restore those. After all, he said, a woman is more suitable for things like cooking and caring, and the man is best at providing and protection. In this day and age women are more and more capable of providing for themselves and as such the role of the man is diminished.
The best kind of professions for a man, he says, are in politics or in the army, where they can show of their strength and rationalism. He supported his ideas mostly by quoting the classics such as Plato, Homer, Nietzsche and Mark Twain, but that seemed to be more like a showing off of how “intellectual” he is for having read those books, than to provide any clear arguments to his case.
He really hit rock bottom when he later in the discussion said that terrorism by Islamic people can be explained because the western men had turned soft because of feminism. That, he said, is the reason they look down on us. Funny how he blamed feminism for terrorism, but not the greed and dishonest actions that for many years have been typical for the way the west dealt with those countries.
His talk was critized by the Dutch feminist Stine Jensen as well as the journalist Stephan Sanders. Both gave actually great talks with well constructed arguments. Especially the feminist had some strong, but well supported criticism on his work. Some times when I hear feminists talk I think they are overshooting themselves, but that wasn’t quite the case here. I could much better find myself in her ideas, as well as those put forward by the journalist.
Well, I might not be a “manly man” as he describes it, but I am actually proud that I am not. I do think I am manly anyway, but not because I can be strong, emotionless, rational, but even more because I can also be the opposite at other times. I am not sure what exactly Mansfied is trying to achieve with this debate, but I doubt he gained much support during this talk here in the Netherlands. From the applause, questions and remarks from the audience it was rather obvious there weren’t many, or even any, that thought he made a valid point at all.
January 23rd, 2008 at 23:51
Not insane, just a relic of another time. A dangerous relic though. What amazed me was that there were so many people still laughing at his sexist jokes and that they were not asking for a decent (scientific) argumentation for his thoughts. I wonder if he was really serious when he said “The United States are under attack by terrorists because their manliness is frustrated and the american manliness has disappeared”. Come on, how far out of touch can one be…
January 24th, 2008 at 00:34
I was looking the whole evening to see if he was just provoking a debate, or that he was really serious. It sure seemed to be the latter. If he was just stirring up the debate, it certainly would not have hurt to at least admit to that at some point in the discussion. But he seemed to be completely serious all along.
I am btw pretty sure that most people laughed at his jokes only because they so comically underlined his old fashioned attitudes toward women.
January 27th, 2008 at 13:38
That was my first impression as well, but I’m not convinced..