Man Overboard

Mood: Work Related Stress
Music: Derrick Carter - Live at OM

There's a lot of fuss today (well, actually yesterday or maybe the day before) about Ruth Marcus's article Man Overboard in the Washington Post today. It is, of course, just a mess of Liberal talking points which aren't worth talking about... especially for me these days. Politics is b-o-r-i-n-g, but social theory is fascinating to me. She posits two theories about manliness neithe rof which really manage to approximate reality. We can forgive a woman of her eternal ignorance of manliness. Howver, her starting point, Harvey C. Mansfield the author of Manliness a supposedly Conservative (with a capital C, yes) book about gender roles in government... is not so easy to let slide. His book is basically quackery about gender roles and as a Harvard government professor he's not particularly qualified to make any scientific claims about men or manliness.

Ms. Marcus and Mr. Mansfield provide us with a series of supposedly "manly" qualities in the article:

"confidence in the face of risk,"

"seeks and welcomes drama and prefers times of war, conflict, and risk."

assertiveness, even stubbornness, and craves power and action

men, naturally inclined to assert that "our policy, our party, our regime is superior," dominate in the political sphere.

"for it is out of manliness that men do not like to ask for directions when lost,"

determined lack of introspection or self-doubt

swaggering dismissal of dissenting views as the carping of those not on the team.

With the full understanding that Ms. Marcus's intention is to undermine the effectiveness of our President's manly appearance (she points out that this is the President's most desirable trait for voters) by calling into question the stereotypes of manhood and coloring them darkly, I feel that a greater injustice to men is being perpetrated here.

Words definitely get in the way when men are talking about being men. They are even more bothersome when women are talking about men. Men are essentially illiterate when it comes to talking about themselves. Saying something like, "confidence in the face of risk," out to really be phrased like, "eager for a challenge." Mr. Mansfield does his topic a huge disservice by being inacurate or hasty with his words. Men like a challenge; the tougher it is, the more satisfying it will be to complete it. We are not drawn to risk... we just need outlets for our biological energies.

Men never welcome drama... I don't know any who do... not one. as for times of war, conflict and risk, as I said men need outlets for their biological energy. War provides plenty, as does conflict... Ms. Marcus's insinuation that this desire for challenges is directly responsible for wars is irresponsible at best. It is a part of the Feminist view that men are inherently evil and must have their spirits broken in order to be a beneficial part of society. Sadly, it is the men who have had their spirits broken that are most likely to lash out violently.

We definitely crave power and action. She confuses the more physical nature of men with other traits however. These cravings do not equate assertiveness or stubborness. This is a woman's perception of behavior that she does not know how to understand and which men are unable to express in words. The deadlock leaves a man frustrated and a woman content in her assessment.

I don't see that men are more likely to assert blind faith in a belief. People are likely to do this in general. I've seen some ladies who so doggedly defend a point of view that they become downright nasty to people holding opposing opinions. If anything, I think men, by virtue of their need to establish a hierarchy are more likely to be flexible in such beliefs. It is probably that moral flexibility and ability to make deals that give men whatever dominance in politics Ms. Marcus alludes to.

Men don't like to ask directions for several reasons. One is that men crave spatial comprehension of their surroundings. Asking directions only gets you where your going... it doesn't help you understand where you are. Women tend to be far too impatient with this quality of a man's inner world. Though, if time is of the essence I think you'll find that a man is just as willing to ask directions as a woman. There are different priorities at work. The other reason is insecurity. This is especially true with a woman in the car... one that is openly challenging a man's control of the situation. Insisting that a man ask directions implies a lack of confidence in his abilities. He may have asked directions on his own, but will never do so at the insistence of someone who isn't driving the car. Driving a car is a one person job, telling a man how to drive is as frustrating as grabbing the wheel.

As Dan Kindlon PhD and Michael Thompson PhD have abundantly illustrated in their book Raising Caine, men do have a profound capacity for introspection and self-doubt. The vast majority of male activity is driven by these two things. Assuming that because there is no discussion of something is indicative of its lack, is a particularly female quality which Ms. Marcus exemplifies perfectly in her piece. Studies have shown that men may, in fact, have a greater capacity for introspection and self-doubt as well as emotion than women do. It is systematically buried deep in men's subconscious during their lives, and it is not surprising that there is usually a series of women in a man's past who are responsible for the disapearance of his outward emotions. Feminists have long history of misunderstanding and misrepresenting men. The idea that men do not feel or think is possibly the biggest lie in the Feminist arsenal.

The problem with the last of those statements about masculinity is that the type of dissenting views being referred to here are not the type of dissenting views that are typically offered by teammates. (Since Ms. Marcus began teh sports mataphor, I'll use it as well, for clarity.) Men, or teams of men, typically do their dissenting in private, among the team members. When a team goes on the field their game plan has been decided upon and the team works together to achieve a victory. A player who refuses to follow the game plan that has been agreed upon jeapordizes the game for all his team mates. He is a loose cannon. The plan may not have been the best plan, but it is the one they've decided to follow and if it is to succeed at all, everyone must do the part they have been assigned. The time for dissent is past once the game has begun. For a man, there is a difference between private constructive dissent within the team and a public challenge to the captain's authority. In the latter, it is quite certainly "carping." If a player is not following the game plan, he will likely be taken off the field and replaced with someone who will follow the plan. A "dissenter" only endangers the rest of the team.

I mentioned Dan Kindlon PhD and Michael Thompson PhD and their book Raising Caine, which I have just finished. It's an important book for men to read, and especially for men raising sons. I'm sure it has benefitted me personally more than it will improve my fathering skills for Owen. Men are horrifically misunderstood, by women, by each other, by themselves. It begins early in our lives when little boys and little girls develop different mental traits at different times. For little boys, their lives are filled with women who have no clue what goes on in a little boy's head (or worse lives under the horrific assumption that little boys and little girls are the same.) The emotional, introspective lives of little boys are crushed by our society, our schools, our culture. We don't talk about our feelings, and therefor have no words for them. This is often interpretted or played-off as meaning that men do not have these feelings... that they are something only women have -- a point that Feminists, having no idea that it's a self depricating joke, have latched onto with glee and pounded into pop-social theory.

Men don't need to sit around and cry together, or share their most embarassing moments, or gossip about each other (or whatever else passes for emotional sharing with women.) However, we do need to be able to say what we feel and gain some emotional literacy. Men are angry. Angrier all the time because they have feelings inside with no outlet for expression, and a society that pretends we don't have any feelings anyway. Frankly I wouldn't have cared much a few years ago. Guys generally don't let their feelings out unless it's righteous fury. But I realized a great deal about my childhood, about the teachers I had in school, the schools I went to, and generally the way boys and men interact on a day to day basis. I also realized that I needed to protect Owen... or more precisely to teach him to protect himself... Not just the time-honored father/son afternoon at the punching bag teaching him to throw a punch... but, emotional protection. To deal with the emotional violence that just about all of society throws at little boys... and ultimately at men. Ms. Marcus's article and Harvey C. Mansfield's versions of Manliness definitely stir up that need in me. Call it what you will, the feminization of America, the new castration... it's bad news for everyone. You do not crush the boy out of boys... you only compress it. The anger stays and builds and ultimately manifests itself in one of many violent ways... rape, murder, suicide, war, bar fights, drug abuse, school shootings... American society needs a wake-up call fast. Ms. Marcus and others with the same point of view are unknowingly working against themselves, or deliberately setting men up to fall.