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Gender-Neutral Society? * Por Patrícia Lança Manliness Harvey C. Mansfield, 2006, Professor Mansfield seems a very
agreeable man: understanding of women’s problems, erudite and persuasive. Above all, perhaps,
patient: excessively so with the academic feminists he aims to convert to
some appreciation of manly virtues. This
he tries to do by proposing to allocate manliness between the sexes, not
quite equally but in part. He concedes
that some men are not notable for manliness and that some women are. He believes that manliness has come into
disrepute, that society, or at least that part of it which sets fashions, now
prefers males to aspire to something called “sensitivity” rather than
manliness. He thinks we are now living in what he calls a gender-neutral
society, a state brought about by the campaigns of the radical feminists,
especially in academia. They managed
this, he says, by peaceful means; by “consciousness-raising”, by words rather
than violent action. And they were
astonishingly successful. Their
adversaries caved in all around them and they managed to change practices by
changing the language, making any kind of verbal “sexism”—a word they
themselves popularized—unacceptable among decent people. And the new
dispensation was achieved with extraordinary rapidity, which Professor Harvey
confesses causes him surprise and some puzzlement. He says he is still unable
to explain feminists’ easy victory. So easy indeed, that manliness is now
deprecated and men feminized Not that the author calls the
process of sensitization by that name.
But many others have and there may be some truth in it. In measured and often witty
argument he examines the concept of manliness in all its manifestations,
practical and literary, historical and philosophical. No reader will be surprised at his citing Achilles
or John Wayne; most will find the
mention of Nietzche less consensual, unless uber-menschism can be construed
as manliness. But Professor Harvey
readily admits that not all manliness is commendable. However, its core characteristics certainly
are and the feminists are mistaken to decry it. If only they were to accept society’s (and
women’s) need of manliness in men they would lose nothing and strengthen
their case. —«»— Professor Mansfield’s ideas in this regard are generally
unexceptionable. The trouble lies with the feminist framework he appears to
accept. There are a number of points he might have questioned. First, while
academia may be a gender-neutral space, it is doubtful that this is true of
society as a whole. Or even desirable. Secondly, the accession of women to
full citizenship (something feminists call “women’s liberation”) cannot
really be ascribed to the last three or four decades of radical feminist activism. The realization of sexual equality, still
uncompleted in many
areas and especially on the domestic front,
owed itself to other causes and would have come about regardless of
the activities or arguments of people like Greer, Friedan, It is likely that the appearance of these figures in the first place was
because new spaces had for a long time been opening up to women and those
self-appointed spokeswomen for the
female sex simply took advantage of their opportunities. Like the Bolsheviks
in 1917 Professor Mansfield, however,
leaves the premises of radical feminism untouched. Refuting feminism is not
his objective. He does not even talk about the ravages it has caused in terms
of sexual harassment legislation, quarrels over quotas and affirmative
action, the bitterness of the so-called culture wars, fatherless homes,
mounting domestic violence, intellectual and moral obscurantism, the breaking
down of civility and the coarsening of manners. What he wants is to put in a
plea for men. He does so eloquently and with some elegance. But it is
doubtful that he will get a hearing from either side. Instead of looking to biology,
anthropology, history and economics for the sources of women’s subordination,
without which it is impossible to find the right solutions, radical feminism
has been largely based on the Marxist theory of class war, discredited
notions about primitive communism and what Engels called “the overthrow of
mother-right” in those halcyon days when savages were noble and there was no
class exploitation. One of the curious things about
this book is that its author, who is a Professor of Government at Harvard, in over 280 pages
scarcely mentions economics. What he is concerned with are philosophical
ideas. It is as though he had been dazzled by radical feminism’s forays into
the dismal labyrinths of post-modernism and had decided that philosophy would
be the area in which he was most likely to impress his word-drunk feminist
readers. What follows is not intended to
diminish the significance of ideas or their influence in human affairs. Of
course, these are immensely important.
But Professor Mansfield’s mistake is to forget that ideas only gain
influence in an
appropriate environment. Ideas which don’t catch on because they are ahead of
their time or out of context are quickly forgotten. Plato. in the IVth
century BC, had a great deal to say about the role of women in the communist
society described in The Republic. And Professor Mansfield gives Plato
frequent mention. Before the scientific revolution of the XVIIth century and
the Enlightenment of the XVIIIth century, Plato’s social projects could not
but remain a dead letter. And although what came
to be known as “the woman question” began to come into the foreground in the nineteenth century it was not until
the twentieth that matters really came to a head. It was the industrial revolution and
accelerating technological advance that set the scene for women’s
emancipation which could not have taken place without them. The radical feminists are quite
mistaken in their theories about the patriarchy being the source of women’s
subordinate status. The unwelcome
truth of the matter is that until modern technology could produce efficient
means of contraception on the one hand and on the other multiple labour-saving devices,
women and children—the human race, in fact—could not survive at all without
the protection of the male sex. Radical feminists forget that young humans
need their mothers because they have a very long childhood, required for learning
language and other exclusively human skills. Men, as the necessary protectors of women,
had manliness thrust upon them by Nature and this was reinforced by culture;
their reward was honour and the status of leadership in the
home and outside it. Some exercised their power magnanimously, others were
tyrants. But women could not avoid dependence until technology freed
females from annual childbirth and both sexes
from back-breaking labour. It is an extraordinary commentary
on the obtuseness (not to say scientific illiteracy) of some female academics
that they continue to mythologize patriarchy as an evil imposed from outside of nature, and
insist that “gender” is a social construction. Schools may no longer provide
adequate teaching of biology or zoology but our television screens and
newspaper columns are filled daily with studies of animal behaviour, the
courting rituals of alpha males, programmes about genetics and the role of
mitrochondrial DNA in heredity, X and Y chromosomes, testosterone and the
rest. Everything indicates that the males of mammalian species are hard-wired
for masculinity (manliness). During 99.99 per cent of the human and pre-human
past men had to go hunting and kill
animals for food, and some of the attributes of manliness are associated with
this activity—boldness, aggressiveness, stoicism, etc., while associated
cultural traditions account for most of the rest. But feminists have
preferred to learn from a crackpot male philosopher, Michel Foucault who
thought heterosexuality had been imposed on society by the bourgeoisie. They
have made him one of their most significant intellectual icons. But this is not really surprising if they
are misguided enough to dismiss science
as a male enterprise: part of phallogocentrism condemned by Foucault.. —«»— However, rather than persist in
beating that dead horse, it is more to the point to mention once again just a
few of the many factors that brought about women’s emancipation and in which
the radical feminists had no hand at all. It should also be borne in mind
that those phenomena which helped to liberate women had the inevitable tendency of
making many masculine attributes redundant. These phenomena are to be found
in the history of transport, production, technology and education. Take transport. The advent of the motor car at the end of
the nineteenth century had far-reaching social repercussions. When the first members of the upper classes
bought motor cars and reserved their horses for the hunt, it really was the
beginning of the end of chivalry in every sense. It ushered in the possibility of freedom of
movement for women as well as men, and with no muscular exertion. Not only could people get from place to place
rapidly, safely and dry: chaperones could be dispensed with. In southern More or less simultaneous with the
appearance on the market of motor-cars was that of the condom. Whether or not the latter was first thought
of as a prophylactic its use as a contraceptive soon became widespread and from that time
onwards the size of families among the educated classes dropped
dramatically. The path was opened for
separating sex from reproduction and women were set for biological
freedom. Long before the First World War
sent droves of women into the factories to replace men who had departed for
the armed forces, growing mechanization during the previous century had
already lured working women into industry. The sewing machine needed female
operatives at home and in the workplace. As capitalism developed so did its
concomitant service industries. In offices
everywhere the typewriter became ubiquitous
and with it the female typist. Employers
had been quick to see the advantages of lower-paid female labour and there
were simply not enough men to fulfil the growing need for clerical workers. Of
course, women had never been absent from economic life. Throughout history
peasant women had worked long and hard in the fields and villages, even
though some of their tasks might have been lighter than those of men. But with the advent of machinery,
agriculture needed less and less manpower and the exodus of whole families to
the towns provided expanding industry and commerce with the human
beings needed as producers and consumers. In truth the long, slow movement
towards female emancipation ran parallel with the growth of capitalism. As did education to fill the need for a
more educated workforce. None of these
needs or their satisfaction grew at an even pace. As usual it was the political sphere that
lagged behind and this was the arena where conflicting interests met and
policies were hammered out. Hence
there were women physicians before there were women members of parliament,
women writers before there were women cabinet ministers. Family law was one of the last bastions to
give way but now, for good or ill, an entire generation of women has
grown up into a world of easy divorce, contraception and abortion. The Why then the remarkable
rancorousness of feminist discourse? Why
does even a man as urbane as Professor Mansfield make so much rueful mention
of the domestic battle to get husbands to share the housework so that their
wives might have careers. Why did Betty Freidan’s unremarkable book
The Feminine Mystique
have such success that it is now regarded among feminists much
as The Communist Manifesto among
socialists? The answer is simple: the educated woman’s boredom with
housework. A glance at the pace of female emancipation in places like
southern Against this backdrop we need to
take a further look at Professor Mansfield’s book and his concern with
manliness. There can
be little doubt that modern life does indeed threaten
traditional ideas of manliness. The
multiple social and economic factors which were crucial to the emancipation
of women have also been significant in creating a deficit of manliness in
men. This is observably so where muscular aspects of manliness are
concerned. Who needs muscle when
you’ve got machines? Even the
horny-handed sons of toil have mostly disappeared to be replaced by clean,
neatly overalled technicians. There
are, of course, still enclaves where brawn and endurance are needed, and the
fork-lift truck and bull-dozer are not always the complete answer. But even extractive industries, abattoirs,
or fishing vessels are easier places to work in than they once were. As for the legions of office-workers, where
is there scope here for old-style manliness?
What scope does exist is on the streets and playing fields where much
male aggression stubbornly persists to everybody’s inconvenience. Much as all normal women
appreciate manly men, and normal men prefer womanly women, it really does
seem time to get rid of these words, certainly of their use as
nouns. What we want today is
character in both sexes and this is something that western education systems
have been remiss in developing. If
educators, professors, school-teachers and those who run their institutions,
can pull themselves together and set about this task a good many of our
troubles would be over. —«»— (Salisbury Review, Londres, Setembro de 2006) |