19 October 2005 - 5:06pm
Harvey Mansfield: Ph.D. in Government, Master's Degree in putzdom
Harvard University continues its collective work to set the standard for misogynistic attitudes and chauvinistic theorizing. It seems that Professor Harvey Mansfield is another eminent thinker in the Lawrence Summers school of gender studies. Reports The Harvard Crimson:
Professor Harvey C. Mansfield ’53 drew dozens of students to Sever Hall last night to discuss the role of women and gender in society.
“We need a new feminism,� said Mansfield, the Kenan professor of government, “because we have a new way of life.�
According to Mansfield, this change in traditional society has grown out of women’s desire to achieve success in the workplace and at home. In his lecture, entitled, “Feminism and The Autonomy of Women�, the professor identified this problem as one arising from “radical feminism� which sought to “lower women to the level of men� in terms of sexual behavior.
Ah, he must be referring to the promiscuity feminists. You know, those damn women who dare to have sex.
“By the age of 30, you see men,� he cautioned, “who are used to getting free samples� and will not enter into loyal, reliable relationships. Citing evolutionary biology research, Mansfield said that “men are interested in quantity, and women are interested in quality.�
“Women play the men’s game, which they are bound to lose. Without modesty, there is no romance—it isn’t so attractive or so erotic,� said the professor.
Maybe Professor Mansfield just needs to try a dating service instead of slumming in pubs. (I assume he's theorizing from actual experience, and isn't trying to extrapolate psychology and motives from ogling the 18-year-old women on campus.)
Mansfield appeared most comfortable when answering questions from the audience. He emphasized the role that nature plays in gender behavior and the necessity of the traditional family structure. Audience members questioned the professor on the validity of both contentions.
Why am I reminded of the August Strindberg play, "The Father"? Male anxiety over actual paternity of offspring may have a biological basis, but that hardly seems to be the basis for sweeping statements about social engineering. Families happen because we want them. Monogamy is hardly an endangered psycho-social mindset. Yet this patriarchal tendency to enforce (rather than encourage) social institutions that help to alleviate male anxieties over paternity is seeming to build in intensity of late.
And calling it a new kind of feminism is really a laugh.
Multiple students challenged Mansfield’s opinions concerning gender and family in respect to gay and transgender people. Mansfield responded that he thought gay and transgender people are on “society’s margin� and should remain there.
“Substitutes for the traditional family are dysfunctional,� he said, “You wouldn’t want children to grow up in them.�
James Dobson couldn't have said it better himself.
And lest you think Professor Mansfield;s expressions of male anxieties over paternity and sexuality have been limited to the classroom, rest assured: He's written a book called, "Manliness." Published by Yale University Press, no less.
And here we thought feminism wasn't popular! Thank goodness the smart men of Harvard are here to save us from ourselves.
[Via Jessica at feministing]
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Comments
This guy is right that traditional society has changed and that "this change in traditional society has grown out of women’s desire to achieve success in the workplace and at home". However he seems to miss the point entirely. It's not because women play the mans game on a sexual level, infact thats another side effect of the same problem that he seems to have overlooked. The real problem is the abandonment of the feminine mindset in exchange for the tools required to make it in a world created by men and for men, and conversely the slip away from masculinity aswell, but this article isn't about that. :p
For decades in America the line has been blurred between masculine and feminine, it was more plain to see 20 years ago than now, but it's still here. Men and Women think about things differently, and it just so happens that in many ways these opposites do indeed attract, and form an amazing harmony. When the very order through which a society is built begins to be twisted and deformed there will no doubt be a drastic change in "traditional society", for better or for worse. Women becoming more sexually liberated is an effect, not a cause. When women abandon their post as the guardians of the feminine mind they will naturally become more like men, and vice versa. I just hope we don't drift too far towards the middle.
D. Mason writes: "Men and Women think about things differently, and it just so happens that in many ways these opposites do indeed attract, and form an amazing harmony."
No. People think differently, and unless society erects extreme barriers between the experiences of men and women (e.g. by educating, employing, and enfranchising the sexes differently) the variation within the sexes will likely be greater than between the sexes. Good thing too, because it would be a shame to split people down the middle and tell them they can't express a side of their personality because its masculine/feminine.
This amazing harmony you mention certainly wasn't common in earlier times with stricter gender roles (what with the scolding from wives and the beating from husbands), and the modern belief that spouses were entitled to amazing harmony unsurprisingly helped fuel rising divorce rates throughout the nineteenth century and beyond (see Glenda Riley , Divorce: An American Tradition (1999) ).
Finally, the assumption that women will lose if they "play the man's game" rather depends on what their objectives are and how society makes up the rules. In many South American societies, children are seen as having multiple biological fathers. Children with secondary fathers do better, as their secondary fathers bring them food (apparently the best work on this is Stephen Beckerman et al., Cultures of Fathers (1999) ). Arguably, modern Western sexual availability is only problematic if society renders mothers dependent on the father of their child for support — but then this was also a problem in the age of modesty.