After almost 40 years of feminist agitation and gender-neutral pronouns, it is still men who are far more likely than women to run for political office, start companies, file for patents, and blow things up. Men continue to tell most of the jokes and write the vast majority of editorials and letters to editors.(And blogs.)
And--fatal to the dreams of feminists who long for social androgyny--men have hardly budged from their unwillingness to do an equal share of housework or childcare. Moreover, women seem to like manly men: "Manliness is still around, and we still find it attractive," says Mansfield.We? Harvey's a guy. And while I'm here, let me say that the arithmetic on the housework sharing question is always screwy. There is no whole from which to figure out what half is. If you think an hour a day is the right total and your partner thinks an hour a week is the right total, how much does he need to do to avoid the charge that he hasn't done his share?
Skipping way ahead in the article (past a long section on philosophy that I won't try to summarize):
What would Mansfield have us do?...A classic feminist question is why must it be women's job to make men good? One answer is that men will be so horribly bad if we don't.
First of all, he thinks we should clearly distinguish between the public realm and private life. In public we should pursue, as best we can, a policy of gender neutrality. He firmly believes that the law should guarantee equal opportunity to men and women. However, "our expectations should be that men will grasp the opportunity more readily and more wholeheartedly than women."
Though he mentions it only in passing, it follows from his position that our schools should be more respectful and accepting of male spiritedness; they must stop trying to feminize boys. A healthy society should not war against human nature. It should, he says, "reemploy masculinity." That means it has to civilize it and give it things to do. No civilization can achieve greatness if it does not allow room for obstreperous males.
In the private sphere, his advice is vivé la difference! A woman should not expect a manly man to be as committed to domesticity as she is; nor should she assume that he is as emotionally adept as her female friends. Manly men are romantic rather than sensitive. They need a lot of help from females to ascend to the higher ethical levels of manhood, and Mansfield urges women to encourage them in ways respectful of their male pride.
ADDED: I hate when I have to get out my sledgehammer, but some hotheads writing about me elsewhere don't get my sarcasm. I heartily resist the notion that it is women's work to make men good.
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My mother made us boys clean the whole upstairs of the house on a regular basis - dusting, mopping,waxing floors, cleaning the bathroom and of course we always made our beds and picked up after ourselves. She taught us how to do laundry and fold clothes, cook, do dishes and how to mend clothes and sew on buttons. She told us she didn't want us living like pigs when we were on our own and said we would have to help out around the house when we were married. She was a large woman and would post herself close to the bottom of the stairs when it was cleaning day for us boys. There there was no way any of us could rush around her and make our way outside. If we could get by her and outside, we could stay there all day if necessary without eating and sacrifice the noon meal knowing she would do the upstairs. We were willing for that trade-off but we never succeeded. We tried to gang rush her one time but she held onto the bannister with one hand and leaned in against us and prevailed. The stairs were narrow and she was large and powerful.
If you think an hour a day is the right total and your partner thinks an hour a week is the right total, how much does he need to do to avoid the charge that he hasn't done his share?
Umm, no one told me there would be algebra.
I hope people are reading the whole article. The answer I present for the "classic question" is taken from Mansfield. It's not the feminists who say women are needed to civilize men. It's the traditionalists!
Great article. Thanks Ann - this is why your blog is my favorite.
I had a lot to say here, until I did as Ann suggested, read the article. It makes a lot of sense to me, a male who has been struggling with gender roles for probably 40 years now. Not having sisters, I have found dealing with more masculine women easier, yet find the women attracted to me to be more feminine.
You can see the problem this attempt to gender neutralize society all over the place. One is in the medical field. The accrediting body for med schools grossly underestimated the need for physicians, partly by extrapolating male tendencies to the now half of med school student bodies that are female. And the specialities that are getting hit the worst are precisely those that thrive on masculinity the most - such as surgery. Far, far, fewer women want to spend the 24 hour shifts for 7 or so years of residency to get certified in these specialties, just to face being on-call for the rest of their careers.
Where is the balance in their lives? There isn't any, unless they have a sympathetic wife. I know one guy who is making in the mid 7 figures a year doing back surgery. He is in surgery from 8 a.m. to midnight two days a week, and sees patients from 8 a.m. until about 9 p.m. the other three. Plus, of course, being on-call, 24 hours a day. He does the surgery that other docs turn down as too risky, and can't turn down these patients because of his compassion for them, knowing that he is their best chance to, for example, ever walk again. How many women would walk in his shoes if given the chance (and money)? Not very many.
I see the difference to a very great extent as revolving around balance. Women seem to need it more, and provide it for their men. Many men seem to not need it as much, but then don't understand its lack in their lives, except as a hole that they can ignore.
Obviously, levels of clean are averages between the two sexes - I do know couples where the guy is the neat freak. But they stand out because they aren't the norm.
I would suggest that women's fixation on cleanliness is a function of several different factors. First, women (on average) actually do see more dirt than men do. Something to do with better close-in vision, whereas men tend to have slightly better distance vision. Possibly due to different emphasis in type of work over the ages.
Secondly, there is the balance thing. Men are more likely to be directed elsewhere, and see cleaning as a distraction - something that needs to be done, but not of central importance.
Thirdly, there is the whole nesting thing. I, along with a lot of men, just don't have that nesting instinct that every female I have ever known over the age of 13 seems to have.
If you think an hour a day is the right total and your partner thinks an hour a week is the right total, how much does he need to do to avoid the charge that he hasn't done his share?
Summing up my marriage in a few short sentences. Thanks, Ann.
Eh? Civilize men? Sorry, I'm too busy firing my MLRS battery to clear out the gophers in my yard,(my share of the housework) so I can't hear you...
Robert Jensen, the whackadoodle moonbat America-hating UT professor, co-wrote an oped in the Philly Inquirer yesterday on "manliness".
Bottom line according to Jensen is American men and America have too much of it. As if Jensen knows a thing about machismo.
Goesh said... We tried to gang rush her one time but she held onto the bannister with one hand and leaned in against us and prevailed. The stairs were narrow and she was large and powerful.
You made that this up. Maybe you are a writer.....it sounds too much like a 'Malcolm in the Middle' episode.
Anyway it had me howling with laughter.
FWIW, I always hated that Progressive commercial too. It's so, what's the word, ridiculous. It's so inconsiderate and and unflattering to both the man and the woman. That is not a healthy marriage.
Not that it has anything to do with this topic, necessarily.
First, on the subject of he/she in writing. I favor using the traditional "he." It's a simple convention that is needed for elegant writing. It's distracting to call attention to pronouns and to intrude a political debate where it isn't the subject under discussion. I resent the notion that women are so sensitive that they need to be buttered up constantly.
Second, on the subject of feminizing men. This is a separate problem, distinct from Mansfield's point which is that there is a negative aspect of manliness that needs to be whipped into a constructive form -- civilized -- through connection with women. This is a traditionalist argument. The idea isn't to make them feminine, but to use their masculinity to support a family and be productive, rather than to go around making havoc. By the same token, women are supposed to be connected to men, not to "toughen" them, but to bring their feminine strengths into caring for others (rather than simply indulging ourselves).
This traditionalist argument is tied to an argument against homosexuality that is based on the concern that if men only ally with other men, they will miss out on some needed civilizing. (It's also a reason, though you don't hear it much anymore, to be opposed to pornography and masturbation.)
And what is wrong with writing "he or she"? I like my gender to be included in textbooks. If you don't like the constuction, you can use he in one sentence and she in the next.
I am not sure if it is a convention in any area of legal writing, but I know in at least one of my law books, the author clearly used a generic "she." It sent me into giggles every time I read it. It's not nearly as funny if it's actually a formal convention (legal writing often seems full of bizarre conventions) but I don't think it is (leastways, I have not noticed it in any legal material I have read since law school).
But, Balfegor, what does make it so funny when the norm is "she" instead of "he"?
Because it is so transparently remedial. It is funny, because one can imagine some legal writer away in his office, reflecting with pleasure on how he stuck it to the Man! How he struck a Whorfian blow for gender equality! And also because it is such a trivial thing (generic "he" in English, in French, etc.) yet people get awfully hung up on it. Angels on the head of a pin.
This might not be directly on point, but I'd like to refer back to some anecdotal evidence I have about gender roles. Almost all of the single women I know say that they are just looking for a nice guy, who will be as much of a friend as a lover, but they always end up hitting on/flirting with traditionally macho guys. There's more than one way to be macho, and my female friends don't always hit on the same type of man, but still, they're not dating the senstive type they almost always SAY they want to date.
As for men dating women, I think the old adage that "men marry down" might be going away. Almost all of my friends are in securities/business, law, or medicine, or else in professional school in one of those fields. None of them are dating waitresses, secretaries, or anything like that. A few are dating teachers, which is a traditional job for a woman, but very much a demanding, career-oriented profession in its own right. My female friends would probably PREFER to marry a guy with a lot of money, but a couple of my good friends in the law school are engaged to police officers -- macho, tough guys with, realistically, lower earning potential than themselves. This is all just anecdotal, but I would say that the old stereotypes for men are growing less and less true, while women my age are starting to prefer masculine guys over higher-earning guys. Then again, a 26 year old police officer today is probably more sensitive and so forth than they would have been 30 or 40 years ago.
I don't think that it is quite correct to say that it is women's role to domesticate men, but rather, that they are the only ones who have historically been able to do so.
Without pair bonding, males tend to end up running in juvenile packs, terrorizing all around them. This is true in many African-American communities today, as it is with mice and rats.
My ConLaw professor talked about "she" every time we talked about the powers of the President. It became a little jarring, because he'd use "he" once, and then for the rest of the class period, use "she." Not that a woman can't be President, or won't be, very soon, but up to this point there hasn't been a woman president. In connection with some of his other statements, it seemed very much that he was trying to strike a blow, so to speak. Then again, he also said "the Comress Clause."
"First, on the subject of he/she in writing. I favor using the traditional "he." It's a simple convention that is needed for elegant writing."
Actually, the _real_ traditional generic pronoun in English is 'they', "generic he" was a latter conscious attempt to impose 'logic' on the language (dead tree sources I don't have access to at the moment). Language Log addresses this from time to time.
On women 'taming' men. If it's all up to the women, the parents haven't done their job. Not all pair-bonded young men run in packs, mainly ones who are neglected (or over-indulged by their mothers) do. Also, young men who see little chance for success no matter what they do tend toward a gang mentality.
I do think many practices curtailing young womens' freedom has the ultimate goal of using them as a bargaining chip with young men. (Preventing them from having access to sex unless they tow the line).
Theorizing (and about to offend everybody) I'd say a society can be permissive in questions of overall conduct of children and teenagers or be permissive in matters of sexual conduct (starting in the mid to late teens) but not both. (Being permissive in neither area is also a feasible option).
Michael Farris
I am not sure if you got my previous post backwards or I did, but my suggestion was that it was pair bonding that kept many young men from running in juvenile packs, and not the other way around. I also don't think that it is necessarily neglect that sends boys in this direction absent the bonding, but that that may be of some importance.
There comes a time when most mothers lose control of their sons. For me, it was in my early teens. I realized this one day when my mother lost her temper with me and was beating on my chest ineffectually. Luckily for all concerned, my father could still intimidate me into my 20s, and by then, I was over the hump.
That is where the pair bonding and the sex comes in. For many guys, it is only through conditioning sex and paternity on pair bonding that they civilize.
Note that pair bonding comes into play here at two levels. First, adult men can control juvenile males far better than the boys' mothers can. The guys (like me) who had fathers (or othe male superiors) strongly in their lives are kept out of the juvenile male packs, and, this happens most often if the parents' pair bond is intact. And, secondly, mates can do this by conditioning sex and paternity on pair bonding.
As noted earlier, this is all missing in a large part of the African-American community today, as well as in parts of lower (economic) white communities. Mothers raise boys without fathers in the house, and then the boys consider it masculine to father children by multiple women out of wedlock, resulting in further cycles of this. It is considered weak and unmasculine to let women tell them what to do.
Yes, not all guys are like this - these are only IMHO trends, based on averages. But there is enough of this happening that it has a destructive affect on civilized society when it becomes commonplace.
It was a typo, I intended "not all unpair-bonded", that is, "not all who aren't pair-bonded".
I'd say there are lots of ways besides early matrimony of keeping young men from socially harmful behavior:
Locking them up with books for hours on end every day (the east asian way),
Formal rites of initiation (the content of which is 'life isn't about you - get over yourself already'),
Putting them work,
Channeling them into military service,
Some kinds of religious observance, etc etc etc
Often these overlap, military service can serve as an initiation, rites of passage usually have religious overtones and sometimes societies have more than one way (for those who slip through the cracks of the preferred way).
It's when a culture/society can't utilize any of those that things go badly.
Actually, the _real_ traditional generic pronoun in English is 'they', "generic he" was a latter conscious attempt to impose 'logic' on the language (dead tree sources I don't have access to at the moment). Language Log addresses this from time to time.
Well, okay, and you can make the case (as linguists occasionally do) that the traditional form of "ask" is "axen." Or "aksen" or "acsian." That doesn't actually make it the traditional form -- the tradition is normative and consciously structured, in the Strunk and White sense, and is not merely a rote matter of "this form is older!" Nor does that reflect all idiolects of English. Many of us were raised speaking "he" generically. Many others were raised speaking generic "they."
Singular 'they' is pretty universal, I can't imagine that many speakers never use it. It's not traditionally been _cultivated_ but I think it's far preferable to any of the alternatives, ymmv.
Singular 'they' is pretty universal, I can't imagine that many speakers never use it.
I was raised speaking generic "he." I use generic "they" on occasion, too, but it's usually a conscious choice brought on by the awkwardness of "he or she." On the other hand, my formative linguistic influences were all non-native English speakers speaking English, so maybe it's just me.
But again, this has no direct bearing on the "tradition" in English -- it's a linguist's attempt to project his own normative views on language and language change onto a markedly different prescriptivist framework. There are many other elements of English -- e.g. "ain't" or "gotten" -- that are widespread, and possibly used by a majority of English speakers, at least when they speak in the casual register, that are nevertheless excluded from what we understand as the tradition of formal, rectified, standardised English.
1. Say anything that offends anybody;
Should keep the company human resources department busy. Who arbitrates what offends? And make sure to make no enemies.
2. Fail to report anything I overhear that could offend anybody for any reason even if I don't find it personally offensive;
A company policy in the best Stalinist-Maoist tradition.
So in order to best protect oneself fingers are pointed and everything is reported regardless of the significance.
I cannot believe any company legal department would sanction such a thing....ugh!!!!
3. Never, ever, close the door when having a meeting with a female even if there are windows.
I hope you are not a doctor, lawyer or that you work for the CIA. It could prove difficult to do your job.
our expectations should be that men will grasp the opportunity more readily and more wholeheartedly than women.
I just think that's because all the motivations line up for men. If a man is ambitious and successful, he's also going to get laid, and have children. For a woman the ambition (which I regard as "spiritual" in the broad - no pun, no pun! -- sense and therefore genderless) is just as genuine but does not line up so well with the other motivations, which pull in another direction. "Vector analysis" thus makes men's motivation more single and stronger, since all motives point in the same direction.
This is already beginning to change to the extent that at least some accomplished men seek to mate with accomplished women. The consuming pull of motherhood is a vector that is not so easily accomodated with ambition. I wish I'd weighed in earlier on this thread because I'd like to hear what Ann, who has two sons, thinks about that -- about how it was to reconcile, or compromise, or combine those two vectors of motivation.
criticalobserver:
I once helped Bert Stern, the pioneering advertising photographer who took some of the best-known pictures of Marilyn Monroe, put together a narrative text for his book of those pictures, "The Last Sitting."
I'll never forget one thing Bert said to me:
"Women were more fun before they were people."
One more word for criticalobserver:
When I was a child there were so few as to be effectively no female senators, judges, pilots, etc. It still thrills me to my core when I hear some old gent on TV who is now obliged to say "The senator . . . he or she, the astronaut . . . he or she." I'm talking about something much deeper than political correctness -- I'm talking about inclusion in the whole human adventure, not just providing and servicing the bodies.
If you think that makes me a hag feminist please read this first. And if you're going to say I'm putting down "providing and servicing the bodies," which is so very noble and necessary -- without it nothing else happens -- I'd simply say, "Necessary but not sufficient."
I should note that "he or she's" and "s/hes" annoy me in writing too. So dutiful and cumbersome. When writing myself, I'll resolve it in different ways -- including using generic "he" -- depending on the context.
BTW there's some good smart stuff here by Bruce Hayden and Michael Farris. It's really interesting to say that restrictions on young women's (sexual) conduct are ultimately aimed at young men! Of course, they were also designed to prevent out of wedlock births back when a) there was no effective birth control, no legal abortion and b) such a child would have had no economic means of support because i.) many jobs weren't open to women and ii.) the state didn't step in with either welfare or child care.
No, Critical, consensus and courtesy are not oppression. The gent on TV is free to say "He." And if anyone noticed and minded, the worst they could do, if he was a politician, was not vote for him, which is not oppression. (Unless oppression is people using their freedom to vote a way YOU don't like.) I think most people in that situation speak as they do out of a combination of political calculation and acceptance of a fait accompli: senators and astronauts now ARE "he or she."
I would agree with you that speech codes on campus ARE oppression. Firing a commentator for making an obnoxious comment about some protected group bothers me, too. It's like kowtowing over the Muslim cartoons. Everybody's sensitivites should be equally fair game. That's not what I'm talking about. I am free to be thrilled when someone in that context is either calculating or gracious enough to include my gender in the world of adventure and accomplishment. You are free to hate it and be disgusted by it. But "oppression" it's not.
A much less difficult answer to this is to inquire exactly why ladies feel their conceiving with the excellent is better than any male's conceiving from the great as well as exactly why any man ought to essentially must amuse virtually any woman's pregnancy with the great that it really is automatically better than his or her own.
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http://rsgold1990.wikispaces.com/message/view/RS+News/48844841
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