Manliness

304 Pages·2006·1.02 MB·English

by  Mansfield

Manliness

Manliness
Harvey C. Mansfield
Yale University Press
New Haven and London
Copyright © 2006 by Harvey C. Mansfield. All rights reserved. This book
may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any
form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 ofthe U.S.
Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without
written permission from the publishers.
Designed by Nancy Ovedovitz and set in Galliard Oldstyle type by
Integrated Publishing Solutions. Printed in the United States ofAmerica
by Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, New York.
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mansfield, Harvey Claflin, 1932–
Manliness / Harvey C. Mansfield.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-300-10664-0 (alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-300-10664-5
1. Masculinity—Philosophy. 2. Masculinity—Political aspects. 3. Sex role.
4. Assertiveness (Psychology) 5. Nature and nurture. 6. Feminism.
I. Title.
hq1090.m365 2006
305.31—dc22 2005023687
Acatalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
ofthe Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity ofthe
Council on Library Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Delba

Contents Preface ix
One • The Gender-Neutral Society 1
Two • Manliness as Stereotype 22
Three • Manly Assertion 50
Four • Manly Nihilism 82
Five • Womanly Nihilism 122
Six • The Manly Liberal 163
Seven • Manly Virtue 190
Conclusion • Unemployed Manliness 229
Notes 245
Bibliography 270
Index 281

Preface
T
his book is about manliness. What is that? It’s best to start from
examples we know: our sports heroes, too many to name; Mar-
garet Thatcher, the British prime minister who is the mightiest
woman ofour time (What! a woman, manly?); Harry S. Truman, who said
“the buck stops here”; Humphrey Bogart, who as Rick in Casablanca was
confident and cynical—cool before “cool” was invented; and the coura-
geous police and firemen in New York City on September 11, 2001. Manli-
ness seeks and welcomes drama and prefers times of war, conflict, and risk.
Manliness brings change or restores order at moments when routine is not
enough, when the plan fails, when the whole idea of rational control by
modern science develops leaks. Manliness is the next-to-last resort, before
resignation and prayer.
We today inhabit a society with a very new justice, long overdue: the gender-
neutral society. In this new society your sex does not determine your rights,
your duties, or your place. The gender-neutral society regards sex as an irra-
tional hindrance to freedom because it subordinates women to men, and to
eYciency because it misuses their abilities. Manliness, the quality mostly of
one sex, gets in the way of an equal or reasonable distribution of tasks and
rewards; it seems to promote a bias in favor ofmen over women. In this book
I begin from manliness as the irrational obstacle to a rational project that
seeks to remove this bias. By the end I hope to convince skeptical readers—
above all, educated women—of the reverse: that irrational manliness de-
serves to be endorsed by reason.
I was going to call this book “a modest defense ofmanliness,”but manly
men are not modest, and I do not want to sound like a wimp or to begin by
ix