Manliness

“Manliness” is the title of a new book by author Harvey C. Mansfield and is reviewed in the WSJ by Janet Daley, a journalist and broadcaster in London. Her digest of the book reads in “Needed: A Menaissance. Enough with the feminized, metrosexual, sensitive male. It’s time for guys to rediscover their instinct for assertive individuality. We’d all benefit.”

I’ll quote a couple of paragraphs from Ms. Daley’s review believing it makes more than just interesting reading. “Mr. Mansfield accuses modern feminism of having, in effect, betrayed legitimate complaint with ideological ambition. Tracing the error back to Simone Beauvior’s “The Second Sex” (1949), he claims that the feminist project was hijacked by form of nihilism. The will to construct one’s own identity was revered as the only worthwhile goal of existence, obliterating all others. To established the freedom for such boundless self-invention, it was necessary to deconstruct whatever previous limit there were. To make it possible to be anything, it was necessary, at first, to be nothing. This nihilism refused to define womanliness and manliness because to define anything is, literally, to set limits. But to be without limits is to be without meaning and to invite despair.”

Ms. Daley sums up “Did the modern feminist movement arise as a consequence of female dissatisfaction with an excess of masculine power-manliness run amok-as it is generally claimed? Or was its appearance preceded by a collapse of manliness? Perhaps a half century of world wars produced a generation of men who were unmanned-who did not behave courageously enough and protectively, as Mr. Mansfield defines manliness-and has created a vacuum into which female will (and bitterness) had to assert itself."

I wouldn’t write this blog if I didn’t believe that there is considerable confusion between and AMONG the sexes portraying itself in all manners of expression from real life, Hollywood, MTV, sitcoms, stage shows, fiction authors, and many columnists. Or have we reached the point of (decay?) that many people (including some of our confused youth) believe that real life is fiction itself?

Read the book, read the book summary by Ms. Daley or just give me your comments.