Mousiness Garry Wills

Mousiness Garry Wills Manliness man and against men in general. Harvey Mansfield by Harvey C. Mansfield. The fact that her man is probably Yale University Press, 289 pp., $27.50 no worse than any other she can I once described in these pages a meet- find may induce her to be resigned to her fate, or it may not. Either ing or the Women's Caucus of the American Bar Association at San Fran- way she cannot be happy in the cisco in 1992. The woman presiding society that was supposed to bring began by asking attendees to stand if the liberation of women. they were the first woman to be an ed- Well, no improvement of society itor of her law school's journal-or the brings perfect bliss in an imperfect first woman to be made senior partner world. But I know few if any women of her firm, to become a law school who would like to go back to the con- dean, to become a judge on her bench, dition of women before they won their and so forth. There were hundreds and recent rights. hundreds of women standing by the Mansfield gives no evidence for time she went through her list. That his certainty that woman "cannot be scene is one of many things that both- happy" in this society. There is one ers Harvey Mansfield-"tbe willing- rough measure of happiness. imperfect ness of women to claim solidarity with too, but better grounded than what other women." He claims that "a man's Mansfield asserts (he calls "assert" "my movement would be more divided favorite word"). Professor Edward Lau- against itself, each individual looking mann of the University of Chicago, out for himself and caring less for the with a team of other respected schol- general cause of his sex." He proves ars, surveyed 27,500 adults in twenty- his point by writing a whole book pro- nine countries on satisfaction with moting "the general cause of his sex." their sexual relations from age forty to Mansfield objects to claims of women's eighty. They found a great gap between victimhood by issuing his own lament "gender-equal regimes" and "male- for men's victimhood. People are try- centered regimes." The happiness in ing to prevent him from using the very the fanner was greater than in the lat- word "manly." It is enough to make a ter, and not only among women.' John man cry. DeLamater, the editor of the Interna- Mansfield, the WiUiam R. Kenan tional Journal of Sex Research, who Professor of Government at Harvard, was not part of the team doing this sur- is a translator of Macchiavelli and vey, says that other factors besides Tocqueville. He is a Straussian guru in gender equality can explain the results neoconservative circles and the men- -for instance, the difference between ing noble ones) and entailed property that was sealed off from them by the tor of Willlam Kristol at Harvard. developed and underdeveloped coun- rights, tbings far less important in a double standard, according to which President Bush gave him the National tries, the former having better educa- democratic society. "Bastardy," if it men feared that a life "in the world" Humanities Medal in 2004. He was the tion, health, information about sex, etc.' occurs now, does not incur the same would make them less certain that only member of Harvard's faculty to But Japan, which had the lowest satis- opprobrium as it did when countries their wives' children were tbeirs. vote against establishing a program of faction rate, is a developed country. had to know that rulers and heirs and S. Also, behind Johnson's explana- women's studies, and he became one The gender-equal variable seems estates were "legitimate." tion for the double standard, there was of the most strenuous defenders of the best one-though Mansfield claims 2. Besides, bastardy is not the great always the male anxiety expressed in Harvard's outgoing President Larry that feminism makes women less sexu- fear now that improved contraceptive classical and medieval concern about Summers when he suggested that ally attractive: "Sex they would do devices and legal abortion are available. "insatiable" women. The biological women may be underrepresented in dutifully for tbe sake of the whole especially for the middle class affected basis for that was stated by Mark Twain science and engineering in the acad- movement, perhaps, but as women by feminism. with his customary clarity. Woman, be emy because of intellectual inferiority. they sbow themselves to be very 3. Smaller families have also re- said, is at every age "as competent as Mansfield's new book can be read as a unerotic." This goes against common duced the bastardy problem, since the candlestick," whereas man's "can- scholarly gloss on the controversy over sense as well as against the Laumann urban life and tbe need for extensive dle is increasingly softened and weak- Summers's remark. survey. Mutual respect is the basis of education for the young has cut down ened by tbe weather of age, as the years rewarding human contact. As the sur- tbe number of children ("legitimate" go by, until at last it can no longer stand, The Double Standard vey puts it: "The ideal of companionate or not) being sought. Many children and is mournfully laid to rest in the relationships tends to value positively The book has a weird remoteness from are no longer required to work the hope of a blessed resurrection which is sexual competencies, interests, and the real world. Like many a professor, family farm. This may not be true of never to come .••2 Viagra, the attempt performance between intimate sex Mansfield sees nothing at work around the poor, but Mansfield himself says to remedy this situation, is a testimony partners. In other words, sex in com- him but theories. He thinks tbat tbe that feminism affects only the middle to the validity of Twain's comment, or panionate relationships serves not double standard in sex is disappearing class. the drug would not be as commercially only reproductive purposes, but also because feminism "wants to create 4. Mansfield partly stumbles on a successful as it is. It needed no femi- equality by lowering women's morality reason for not sequestering women nists to point out the situation. lEd ward Laumann et al., A Cross- to the level of man's." Even if that exclusively for breeding and nurturing National Study of Subjective Sexual were true of "ferninism't-c-a term he purposes. He says that feminism may Are Feminists Unhappy? Well-Being among Older Women and usually equates with a few extreme be simply an expression of boredom: Mansfield indulges a typically "manly" Men: Findings from the Global Study of theorists-it would not have had much "For us, perhaps, an argument for Schadenfreude about feminism-that Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors, avail- effect on real women's lives but for women's equality merely adorns and women got what they want and are able at economics.uchicago.eduJdown- a concatenation of many real-world conceals the fact that modem progress loadlfinaISWB_1SAprOS.pdf. Laumann, suffering for it. It has not made them events. Samuellohnson explained the has not left much for women to do at whose updating and correcting of Kin- happy after all. It has simply deprived logic of the sexual double standard by home." That sentence shows, again, sey's studies was praised by scholars, them of what tbey enjoyed earlier- noting that if a husband cannot count how tittle traffic he has with the real is George Herbert Read Distinguished manly men: on his wife's fidelity, he cannot know world, with the many challenges in Service Professor of Sociology at the that her child is his: "The man imposes what "women do at home." But it is Today it seems generally admitted University of Chicago, former chair of his department, former provost of his no bastards upon his wife. "I However true that women who have fewer chil- that gender neutrality is the only university, and on the board of its true that may have been in his day, it dren, and send them off to college, are legitimate way to live-yet we are much-respected National Opinion Re- has become less important now. left with a great part of their lives not not living that way. This means search Center. His study was funded 1. In a hierarchical society like John- given over to full-time motherhood. that every woman has, or is enti- by Pfizer, the maker of Viagra, but it son 's, beredity involved titles (includ- And the costs of college for all middle- tled to, a grievance against her was carried out under standards as class children increase the need for the strict as his own and his peers' schol- 'Boswell's Life of Johnson, edited by extra income, as well as for the extra "Mark Twain, Leiters from the Earth, arly credentials guarantee. George Birkbeck Hill et al. (Oxford satisfaction, of work outside the home. edited by Bernard DeVoto (Harper "Del.arnater as quoted by the Associ- University Press, 19S0), Vol. 3, p. 406. Women can now claim the equality and Row. 1938), p. 40. ated Press, April 19,2006. .d 14 The t ""York Review expresses the quality of the relation- pect. He thinks that the Greek word it out of political debate, which be recognized and promoted through ship." And greater satisfaction for for manliness is thymos-which more henceforth would be conduced ex- an educational system that does the women increases the satisfaction of properly means "animatedness," of var- clusively among scientific hypothe- manly job of self-assertion for them by men.

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