I am dispensable.
10 August 2006Tony Esolen: Over Our Dead Bodies
A first-rate article, which I think I am perfectly justified in jealously wishing myself capable of writing, and which is positively chock-full of such lovely phrases as “wise policemen have looked the other way,” “perduring affection,” “pinchedness of individualists,” “a stick of dynamite is worth _____,” “skittish electrochemical blinks,” and “the humility of risk.”
Go read it. Because it’s long.
Yow! Now that’s what we’re looking for.
And I’d give *a lot* to be able to think or write like that, too.
I agree with him that men should be men and not women, but does he really have to equate women with so much of the wrong kind of weakness?
Isn’t it possible to pursue true manhood without making feminity either a false idol of prettiness or a false evil of mushiness?
I second Emily’s opinion. Esolen does write prettily, but in his desire to emphasize his point, he often misses the truth. And if truth is beauty…
Please, gentlemen, don’t aspire to write like that.
Thanks for the comments… but can we get some actual, precise, and helpful critique? If Esolen’s got something wrong somewhere, point it out explicitly, if you would. Cite the offensive passages and offer some charitable-but-pointed correction, eh? Just to make sure you’re reacting to ideas and not to phraseology? We’re all for correction (particularly from women, who at any rate don’t share all of our silly male blind spots), but if you’re going to say someone’s missed the truth, do please take the time to point us in the right direction. We do value your help; we just would prefer it to be… helpful.
‘Preciate it.
And maybe, just for clarification (or to fire up some interesting debates), we’ll have to get into our definition and general praise of “femininity,” too (as distinct from “feminism”).
One last point: don’t hold us strictly to most of the things that get posted here; at least not yet. This blog is a project, not just our personal soapbox from which we declaim all our well-founded and wholly-congealed opinions. We have a few of those, but not lots. We may or may not be as open-minded as some people would wish, but the blog is predicated on at least some degree of ideological flexibility, and lots of room for growth. If it wasn’t, we’d have called it “Promulgating Manhood,” or “The Real Men’s Bully Pulpit,” or something. You’ll notice we did not.
I wasn’t equating you three with Esolen or with your developing opinions. I’m glad you are working on this project. And I do admire his prose… he just seems to overstate things somewhat. And I think his stand–or at least this piece–raises some questions. For instance, I wonder how much painting phrases on a quarry really stands in for what is needed. There is so much wrong with the world and so much pain–it seems as if legitimate battles are there to be fought, and pointless destructive behavior should be avoided rather than lionized. It would seem that part of manliness is not throwing strength and aggression around without a purpose.I would also question whether losing self in standing for something greater should really mean that you identify with the masses, or have no opinions. (And I have even more questions about making American patriotism a matter of Christian faith, but that is another issue.)
As far as my objections to this particular article go, I think these two paragraphs are a pretty good example:
“It is as if a helmeted and holstered policewoman were to ticket my quarry painter, smiling benignly to herself and shaking her head at his immaturity, agreeing to impose the indignity of a light reprimand and a course on safety.
Or it is as if Mary, plena superba after the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost, were to assume headship of the Church, preaching the ever-safe doctrines of man’s -inherent goodness and the equality of all religions, advising her social workers to go forth unto the ends of the earth, even unto Bangor, and be baptized by whatever name should be popular there on that day; rendering unnecessary her own Son, the indispensable Savior himself, whose life was to be dispensed for his enemies.”
Mary assuming headship of the church is, I assume, a stand-in for the spiritual leadership of women. That is something to be avoided, but not for the reasons Esolen seems to imply. I don’t think women’s leadership would necessarily lead to universalism and doctrinal assertion of man’s goodness. Origen was a man. Women are the weaker vessel, yes. And we do have a more tender, nurturing nature. But that does not mean that women can never take a stand for truth or are completely unable to reason. Less strength then men does not mean no strength whatsoever. I hope saying that does not make me “feminist.” (Although, I do know I have that reputation. And while I think it is somewhat undeserved… hopefully, it will not weight against what I am trying to say here.)
I think Esolen’s attitude should be questioned here, because I am not sure how helpful it is for the ideal of manliness to be set up as the opposite of false feminity.
The above is, like your blog, a thought-in-progress. I’m just not ready to swallow everything Esolen said in that article. Even if his prose far outshines mine.
Here’s a discussion of the article, which might be of interest:
http://merecomments.typepad.com/treaders/2006/08/over_our_dead_b.html
I request only that, if you post a comment there, you carry it over here as well.
To my Sisters: I will try to put this lovingly; please forgive me in advance if I fail to do this, and let me know if there is anything that does come across as offensive or unclear. I wonder if part of the reason Esolen’s article might seem offensive to women is because it’s not meant for us? I’m not saying this to write off all concerns, but I do think we should consider the audience he’s writing to, which is men.
I guess as far as my experience (and other women I’ve talked to) goes, there are certain things about men I just will never understand. Maybe it sounds cliche and absurd–and even sexist–but I’ve found it to be true. It’s part of their “otherness,” and I don’t want to HAVE to understand all these things to trust that something might be uplifting to a man even if it puzzles or annoys me. Frankly, some of the most uplifting/sharpening things to men bug the living daylights out of me. My initial reaction to reading or witnessing them is usually something like “That’s so…off! What on earth! This is disgusting!” (I hope I’m improving on that reaction.) But then when I talk to a Christian brother or two (okay, usually Corey :p) about it, I usually find out I misunderstood the purpose and meaning of what was said. In some cases, it’s not so much that I absolutely never could understand it, it’s that I’m coming from my very feminine perspective, and certain things may take some translating.
And other things I may never understand, but I try to be happy just letting them have those to themselves. By men, to men, for men. Does everything have to make sense and have significance for us? We’re women; we’ve got our own stuff. It’s pretty fascinating and mysterious and sometimes bizarre and offensive to them, too.
Natalie,
I don’t think Emily was trying to say that men couldn’t be men, or that it was wrong for them to have inclinations or needs which we as women will not understand. My concern, which I think is hers as well, is more that it isn’t helpful to either gender in their efforts to relate well to one another to have men being taught a definition of manhood that sees itself in opposition to an exaggerated view of female weakness. Emily isn’t really talking about the mysterious otherness of men and what uplifts them; she is talking about the handicaps that arise in our ability to relate to each other as human beings when men are taught about masculinity in terms of denigrating the feminine. Male and female are both flawed; we need each other’s influence to correct the imbalances of either gender run rampant.
I didn’t say much earlier… So I shall now explain, in slightly greater detail, what I meant.
To our three writers: I didn’t mean the previous comment to be any sort of insult to your current project. Rather, you may consider it a compliment. They say “a word to the wise is sufficient” – if I thought you were fools, I wouldn’t have said anything. It’s because you don’t have a “Manhood Soapbox” that I commented.
As to your request for specificity, I again second Emily completely. My general complaints with Esolen, more specifically stated, are:
1. In his own effort to reclaim manhood, he gets a bit “greedy” and starts claiming things that never belonged solely to manhood in the first place. Risk-taking, sacrifice, love of truth, and rationality are all things that belong to the entire human race.
2. On the flip side of that coin, he has to paint women in a false light in order to make them the opposite of men. [Though why do we insist on calling the two opposites, anyway? Different, yes, but opposites? Anyway…] The passage about Mary ruling the world sounds like something straight out of Brown’s Da Vinci Code, which is no small bit disturbing.
Natalie makes a good point as well – men do enjoy the weirdest things and, sometimes, we women need to just accept their need for the weirdness. However, there are times when such tendencies need to be checked (consider Ben’s post on gentleness). Pointless acts of destruction or life-endangering stupidity seem like a good place to draw the line. Machismo should never be mistaken for manhood. Esolen may strike a chord with men – good for him. But let him strike that chord with things that are true – otherwise, we’ve jumped from the frying pan to the fire.
Ooh! Ooh! People making good, clear, and valuable points! I love it. Carry on.
(And apologies if my earlier “clarifications” sounded like—or perchance were—defensiveness.)
I endeavor to provide a (limited) defense of Esolen, lest he be hen-pecked to death.
Reading Emily’s, Dana’s, and Gabi’s comments, I understand their objections to be threefold:
1. Esolen exaggerates the differences between men and women, and in doing so, denigrates women or femininity;
2. Esolen makes certain virtues (e.g., risk-taking, self-sacrifice) that properly belong to humanity out to be virtues that exclusively belong to men; and
3. Esolen equates machismo with manliness.
I will address them in order, as I have time throughout this day and the next.
1. On gender differences: men and women are both different and the same. That is to say, there are characteristics that men and women share and there are characteristics that, respectively, men or women predominantly (or even exclusively) possess that the other does not. Thus, men and women are both equal in some respects and unequal in other respects. As a corollary men are superior to women, in some sense, and women are superior to men, in another sense. Societies in the past have tended to emphasize the difference, or the essential inequality, of men and women; moreover, societies in the past have tended to do so in a manner that suppressed the sameness of the sexes and unjustly elevated men over women. This is not so today. We live, as Mansfield notes, in a gender neutral society, which emphasizes the sameness of the sexes and suppresses the difference. Society will never be completely gender neutral–nature is only so malleable–but the governing principle is gender neutrality and anything that contradicts that principle is suppressed or derided (but rarely argued with). Witness the Larry Summers debacle at Harvard or all the derogatory, (comically) unserious (but pretentious) reviews of Mansfield’s newest tome, Manliness. This brings me to my first defense of Esolen: he may exaggerate the difference between men and women, but he does so in a context that requires boldness more than it does nuance. It is entirely appropriate that a poet asserting the necessity of manliness in a gender neutral era do so in a manner that is shocking to those holding the prevailing opinion. (And of course, Esolen may not exaggerate nearly as much as we, products of the gender neutral society, think.) Yes, Esolen is writing as a partisan of manliness, but he is doing so at a time when partisanship for manliness is needed.
As for denigrating women and femininity, I don’t think that Esolen is guilty of this. Rather, I think that he is guilty of denigrating women who (he believes) denigrate manliness. Two points to consider: first, Esolen is writing to praise manliness, so he shouldn’t be judged for failing also to praise womanliness; second, Esolen is writing to defend manliness from womanly critiques (which, despite the adverb, are also advanced by men), so it is fitting that he should point out the deficiencies of womanliness. (This is not to deny that manliness is deficient, too, and that womanliness is a corrective to its deficiencies. I believe–as I’m sure most readers of this blog do–that men and women complement each other.)
I’ll quibble minutely with the strength of your corollary and say that “inequality” doesn’t necessarily imply superiority and inferiority—at least as I use the three terms. I think you can have “different” without having “better” and “worse”; in fact some kinds of difference preclude such judgments altogether. But obviously there are certain skills or pursuits that one gender is objectively better at.
And in everything else: well and clearly reasoned. Please continue.
2. Gabi is undoubtedly right that certain virtues belong to all of humanity, i.e., are accessible to men and women equally. But some virtues, I assert, are possessed predominantly by one sex and, indeed, are characteristic of the excellence of one sex. For men, one such virtue is courage. Courage is essential to manliness. This is not to say that women cannot or ought not be courageous, but that courage is not essential to womanliness in the same way it is to manliness, i.e., we say (vulgarly) about a timid or cowardly man that he lacks balls (i.e., is not really a man), but we do not say about a timid or cowardly woman that she lacks ovaries. But what is courage? Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, defines courage as confidence in the face of a noble death and notes that it is most frequently (though not exclusively) revealed in wartime. The courageous man is confident that the cause for which he is risking his life is a noble one. Three salient points that vindicate Esolen against Gabi: (a) risk-taking is distinctively (though not uniquely or exclusively) manly; (b) it is done by a man on someone’s or something’s behalf (i.e., it is self-sacrificing); and (c) that someone or something is noble (e.g., love of truth). (I won’t defend the notion that men are more rational than women, although I fail to see where Esolen makes that claim.) Thus I don’t think that Esolen, in his piece, is being greedy and staking too great a claim for the virtues of manliness.
A few more henpecking observations (not time for a solid argument–besides I’m not any good at making those) before I go away from the internet for the weekend, addressing David’s second post:
First, while the culture at large may be gender neutral to a great extent, this blog (and Esolen himself to a lesser degree) is operating within the framework of conservative, evangelical Christianity. And within the homeschooled subculture after that. Within that context, (context means a (lot in any form of communication) there is not–has not been–gender neutrality. While Christians have the type of faith and basic teachings to make them the most “fair” in their view and treatment of women, this frequently does not happen. The particular problem of making masculinity good because it is the opposite of feminine evil has been part of not just history, but also the recent cultural path. Because of this context, I think it would be wise for bold credos of masculinity to avoid making overstatements in that area. Or if they must be made, to at least show some awareness while doing so.
Partially because of the context issue, but also because I value precision even when making blog statements, I would disagree slightly with David’s last paragraph. Even if the larger culture offers womanly critiques of manhood (and it does), I do not think Esolen notes carefully enough the differences between an improper feminine critique of male qualities, and the simple fact of being feminine.
(I’m not saying that Esolen should have had a side-bar to the article: by the way, women are great, they are for us in glowing white garments of wonder, etc. The pedestal view of women is as annoying–and destructive–as the weak temptress and all the others that exaggerate difference at the expense of humanity.)
As someone who believes in the differences between manhood and womanhood, and the essential value of both, I’ve been following this discussion with great interest
. I personally, as a woman, liked Esolen’s article, though there were a few sentences that cried out for a very charitable interpretation, and it would perhaps have served Esolen better to be more careful and avoid unnecessarily offending those who would otherwise agree with him.
Praising and valuing manliness is excellent and very much needed in today’s society. Of course, part of manliness is respecting, protecting, and understanding the role of women.
Could it be that courage and risk-taking are also essential to women, but in a different way? Qualities reveal themselves in many ways, and perhaps men and women are called to many of the same qualities, but to qualities demonstrated and practiced in different ways. Both are called to creativity, both to gentleness … and women are also called to courage and risk-taking (consider, for instance, the courage of childbirth or the risk-taking of love). To be a woman, which admittedly is not what either Esolen or this blog are talking about, requires perhaps as much courage and risk-taking as manhood does, but in a different way.
Goodness, this is getting to be a lengthy comment chain. I think someone hit a nerve
. Just some brief responses to David’s two arguments:
1. Society, on the whole, is probably more gender-neutral than in previous eras. Being the sort of person I am, I really can’t say I mind this, but I could see how some people would want to highlight the distinctions between the genders. And, I say, more power to them. However, I don’t know that “partisanship” is the way to go. Overstating your case – telling an untruth – in order to move people toward truth generally does not work. The people you’re trying to reach either move toward truth and then past it to the untruth you’ve been telling them or they adamantly refuse to move and fight you tooth and nail. So, by all means, make distinctions. Just make sure they’re true.
2. Thacia makes my point in some ways in her last paragraph. Risk (and courage) can take many forms. Anything which one may be said to possess can be risked and/or sacrificed. That is, I can risk or sacrifice my health, my emotions, my finances, my relationships, my computer, etc. All Christians are equally called to risk and self-sacrifice and courage. How can we call it “distinctively manly” if both genders practice it equally (though perhaps differently)?
Emily — if you’re defining “conservative, evangelical Christianity” to include Anglo-Catholicism, we’re good. Otherwise you may be slightly mistaken in your impressions of which theological frameworks at least certain of the main blog-posters are writing from….
If any Coptic brothers want to write up a guest-post, we’ll happily run it, provided only that it’s good.
For the record, my impression when I first read this particular article was similarly that it was a bit overstated. But I find that Esolen is not unlike Chesterton in this regard: he frequently overstates things, in response to wild foolishnesses that need to be mocked; I’m pretty sure he knows he’s overstating them, at least most of the time; and it’s kind of fun to read.
That being said, if I remember correctly, the link I added (above) to the discussion page provided a few helpful thoughts/corrections/qualifications. (It also had some rabble-rousing overstatements, so be forewarned.)
Emily is correct that Christianity has the best theory for proper treatment and relationships between the sexes, however there are many problems with the practice especially seen in modern evangelicals manifested in the womanly men or the mama’s boys (I echo David’s suggestion of reading, or rereading as the case may be, Professor Erik Root’s article on manliness: http://atsociety.blogspot.com/2005/05/be-man-not-mamas-boy.html ). Esolen is indeed a Christian has a certain perspective; this does not mean, however, that Esolen is not addressing a wider audience than Christians or evangelicals (non-Christians can access Touchstone as well).
If manliness is a virtue, then there is an excess and a deficiency. Evangelicals especially embrace the deficiency, and, as Aristotle notes, to achieve the virtue of Manliness, one must aim at the excess. Esolen argues for manliness, and it looks like machismo, because we live in a gender-neutral society and are used to womanly men.
Mansfield argues that the manly man respects and listens to one woman alone, the woman he loves. (Side note: Harvey Mansfield’s wife, Delba Winthrop, recently passed away from cancer. nolfetturns notes that Delba Winthrop was the only woman who could offer correction to Harvey, demonstrating that a manly man respects one woman, and that is his the woman he loves). For the Christian manly man, there ought to be a higher threshold, for the Christian manly man has Christian love for the Christian woman. This is the “ought” and it certainly is not reflected in the “is” of Christians today. I would suggest it is because evangelicals do not understand manliness, that they certainly do not understand womanliness.
Moreover, Gabi’s and Thaica’s comments about risk and courage misunderstand the nature of courage. All risk is not equal. The term courage is not to be given to just any activity. Recall in Aristotle’s Ethics wherein Aristotle describes Courage. Courage receives the most discussion of any of the moral virtues, because many things look like courage, but are not actually courage. Courage concerns death, particularly one’s behavior in the face of a noble death. Even fighting a disease, such as cancer, is not courageousness; it’s fortitude. A woman deciding to love a man (or anyone at all) is not courage. Unless your name is Dido, you are probably not going to die from love or lovesickness. Childbearing is also not the same as courage. Women in the modern era seem to make child-birthing to be an act of courage simply because there are more factors a woman can control: she use contraceptives to determine when to have a child; she can constantly monitor the pregnancy and terminate it, if she decides not to go through with it (for what ever reason); she can have drugs administered to lessen the pain of delivery. Childbearing has become more of an act of will than routine, biological occurrence, but this does not mean that it falls into the realm of courage.
I skimmed over some of the comments, but Julia’s was arresting. I’m not making any conclusions at this point, but a very interesting idea of courage. This may be an insight that we have been missing in this discussion heretofore, i.e., that some feel it necessary to aim at the upper extreme, machismo, to correct our strong cultural tendency toward cowardice. Seems like an accurate perception to me.
Sorry, I was unclear in my statements about context. I do realize, Jonathan, that you are not currently affiliated with typical American homeschooled evangelicalism. What I was meaning to say is that this blog, due to audience and background, exists (however unfortunately) in that context. Dana and Gabi and I were reacting to Esolen’s article in that context. Maybe I am being too reader response-ish or Greenblatt-ish, but I think that context is an unavoidable part of communication. This is a growing though, but I think it is possible for a sub-culture to both villify the feminine and to produce womanly men. I am hoping to find that the masculine can be properly explored and encouraged without degrading the feminine. I am still not convinced of the necessity of the overstatement I found offensive, but apparently am under-informed as to its virtues.
As far as Esolen addressing only a conservative Christian audience–I did not think that was his intent. In fact, I realize that he intended to speak to the culture as a whole. But large segments of secular and Christian culture are not going to be directly influenced by that article, because while Touchstone is open access, its readership is of a particular kind. Just like someone publishing an cultural essay in Esquire is not going to speak directly to the ATI crowd.
Julia, that is an interesting distinction about courage vs. things commonly thought of as courage. It seems to me that courage does belong more to masculine realm–although not exclusively–and, of course, making it concern only life and death issues would make that even more so. Would fortitude then be the feminine form of the virture? Or would that be in the realm of both sexes? Women behaving virturously need to endure many things–for one, “allowing” their men (husbands/lovers, sons) to behave as men and expose themselves to risk.