« Global Warming Threat to Manliness | Main | Those Iraqis Don't Know What's Good for Them »

March 19, 2007

Real Manliness

It seems everyone is talking about manliness all of a sudden. Maybe it's because Matt Drudge linked to an editorial claiming the global warming movement was being hijacked by radical man-hating feminists hell-bent on destroying manliness, or maybe it’s because of the stunning popularity of "300," a film that features brave Spartans with washboard abs as the epitome of manliness. Having weighed in on the subject here over the weekend, I will admit to having experienced a bit of trepidation that I may have stepped in a big pile of political incorrectness, for which I would be duly chastised by Carla and Kevin. Nonetheless, I am compelled to take another step and either dig myself out, or sink in it up to my neck.

If Marta Cook is to be believed, I have absorbed perhaps a faulty view of the feminist movement. It has seemed to me that feminists have eschewed femininity and, while attempting to be more masculine themselves, have tried to shame men for being so. Whether that ever was true I cannot say, but I will grant that it seems the movement has matured a good deal. Women have finally learned that they can't have it all. They can't compete in a man's world and then come home and be a good mother and keep a clean house and have hot sex with their husband at the end of the day. The good news is they can choose which parts of that scenario matter most to them, and society is pretty comfortable with letting them make that choice. Cook characterizes feminism in a way that I can wholeheartedly embrace: "In layman's terms, every person should have equal opportunity to pursue his or her own dreams, whether it is becoming a CEO or a parent." Note the word "or."

I disagree with Cook's criticism of raising men to be manly. I think parents need to be tuned into their kids, of course, but boys are not always inclined to develop their own manliness. If you don't teach them to be manly in this age of video games and computers, you might well end up with a timid, flabby, insecure, non-aggressive boy who won't ever reach his potential. That is as criminal as forcing an assertive, intelligent girl to dress in frilly dresses and focus on finding a good man instead of developing her own interests and talents. Cook can criticize throwing footballs, hunting, etc. as "archaic" forms of manliness all she wants, but doing so only reinforces the perception that feminism is about destroying manliness.

Further, it reveals how little she understands manly men. Sports and the myriad of other outdoor activities that men enjoy together are male bonding events and absolutely crucial for building the self-confidence a man needs to succeed and be respected among his peers. Men should teach their sons to be good at those activities so they are able to bond with other men (and, by the way, women need to butt out and leave the men alone to do it). Without physical, emotional and mental strength, most men will lack confidence and likely not reach their full potential. It simply is not enough that a man be "honorable, trustworthy, caring and responsible."

However, I do not believe one can be "manly" without possessing those traits. I think often of my grandfather – a real man's man. He truly was the very definition honorable, trustworthy, caring and responsible. But he was also a rugged outdoorsman who spent a good deal of time with his manly friends out braving the elements.

I tend to agree with what Harvey C. Mansfield (of Harvard University) has to say about manliness – and feminism. "Feminism has no understanding of womanhood; it leaves women without a guide and even tries to convince them they need no guide," he writes. It gets back to that mistaken notion that we women can have it all, but it also speaks to the unfortunate disdain that some feminists have for those of us who like to be feminine and thoroughly enjoy being women. Thankfully, as I said, the movement seems to have matured and begun to accept girlie girls who want to grow up to be mommies as being okay after all.

As for men, he says, they must be manly, because "a free society cannot survive if we are so free that nothing is expected of us."

Luke Sheahan explores Mansfield's views of manliness further in his editorial on the film "300." Personally, I think he's dead on accurate about it.

Despite its aesthetic faults, the movie’s prime redeeming quality, and primary offense to the cultural elite, is its glorification of the first virtue: manliness. Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield describes the quality thusly, “Manliness seeks and welcomes drama and prefers times of war, conflict, and risk.” The gender neutral society would agree—300 depicted manliness in its true form and it is indisputably bad. Leonidas and his Spartan band praised death, which they called “glory” in a grotesque display of savagery, as they boisterously bragged about their own soldierly skills and acts of butchery. On display was the male predilection for violence, a machismo that is often more smoke than fire but dangerous in its recklessness. The gender neutral society understands this and condemns it.

Proponents of the gender neutral society prefer a genderless assertiveness that, to all eyes but their own, is really quite ridiculous. Compare the effeminate assertiveness of the Persians—that believed it was strong—to the manly assertiveness of the Spartans—that knew it was strong. Compare the androgynous glamour and feminine hubris of Xerxes with the ascetic athleticism and manly confidence of Leonidas. The Persians acted in an extravagant but ultimately vain attempt to prove the glory and superiority of their civilization. The Spartans’ cool confidence in their civilization’s values made them incapable of cowardice; they asserted with ease the glory of their civilization.

A reasonable critic would express the concern that Spartan courage was only nihilistic manliness. Sparta was an ancient, backward society that had no firm sense of transcendent meaning and thus sought to assert its own. The result, the critic would say, was the Spartan affinity for war born out of a prehistoric, beastly predisposition for violence. It was only a desperate and savage attempt to make meaning out of meaninglessness.

But the manliness of Leonidas was no lone ship of baseless hope, tossed to and fro in a sea of nihilism. Sparta was a culture dependent upon deeply held beliefs and principles. The manliness of the Spartans portrayed an abiding trust in the wisdom of their ancestors over the fancies of the cultural and even religious elite, who had sold them out. Chivalrous codes of honor, ancient traditions and old prescriptions passed down through countless generations, guided their conduct. Such customs are symptomatic of a faith in principles that transcend the self and to which a civilization is anchored; they indicate a dependence on precepts worthy of the ultimate sacrifice.

The Spartan sense of honor was not a Nietzschean attempt to find meaning in the self-assertion of aggression and violence born of a nihilistic determination that there was nothing meaningful above their lives. Rather, their manliness appeared in its proper form as sacrificial idealism, seeking to assert the importance of a transcendent cause and willingly relinquishing its own existence for the perpetuation of that cause. Sparta’s three hundred were willing to die that their civilization might survive. They did not see themselves as individuals isolated in a particular time and space, but as a vital link between a glorious past and a future made certain by their sacrifice.

Finally, today we have learned that manliness is even good for men's health. According to a new study:

The man-of-steel mentality, often associated with military men and those in other high-risk occupations, can boost and speed up a guy’s recovery from a serious and/or traumatic injury possibly.

Please note, however, that the sort of manliness that the study found to be good for the health is not obnoxious, womanizing, fight-picking, and egotistical. Men who repress their emotions and want to lord it over women are not only not going to recover as quickly as they should, they are also notably less satisfied with their lives. But the real manly men - those who "focused on their careers, success, power and competition" - enjoyed greater recovery in their health and better relations in their community. And who wouldn't want that for their son?

To conclude, I would note that feminism has given women the ability to avoid the trap of being lorded over by disgusting men who think they are manly when they are not, and for that I am exceedingly grateful. Now it's time for feminism to recognize that life as a woman is a whole lot better when the world is populated with truly manly men and to stop criticizing the throwing of footballs, hunting of game, and driving of Harleys.

Posted by Becky at March 19, 2007 12:32 PM