Rachel,

First, I read your piece carefully several times.

Second, there is no better way to understand what someone is saying than to quote at length (all of my quotes were full sentences, and there were so many of them that ou can hardly say I cherry-picked).

Third, the Really?! stuff was a bit, a gag. The responses come after the Really?!’s, and you didn’t respond to a single one of them except by granting my main point, which is that men and women can all possess “manly” qualities so to talk about the “uniqueness” of manhood and the “inherent” characters of men is nonsense.

Fourth, having granted that point, the ONLY way you can maintain your claim that there is even such a thing as “manliness” is by relying on stereotypes. Thus we get lines like “those are things often attributed to manhood” and “many men do identify with these traits.” Don’t you see that this means that there’s no “inherent good” to manhood? That there’s only a bunch of perceptions, assumptions, and (bum bum bummmm) social constructions?

Let’s put this more formally:
Premise 1: Men often (but not always or uniquely) identify and are identified with qualities like courage and confidence and honor.
Premise 2: These qualities constitute an “inherent good” of manhood.

These two premises are contradictory unless you are willing to say one or both of two things:
1. That men who fail to identify with “manly” qualities are not “real” men — that they have failed to achieve their inherent goods.
and
2. That women who do identify with these qualities are being “manly,” rather than simply being courageous or confident or honorable.

Both of those statements are hateful and harmful, and the second one is sexist. Of course it “discludes” women to identify certain positive character traits with men generally rather than with those who possess those traits.

On another note, I just don’t know where you get the idea that men are under attack and need their self-esteem to be boosted. Where do you see this de-legitimization of courage and honor? I mean, I’m genuinely asking here. One of my biggest problems with your piece was that you never explained what you had a problem with. You just paraphrased Kimmel outrageously, and quoted him saying some reasonable things like “get consent” and “men can and should fight rape.” Where’s the threat, as you see it?

Wow, so much black and white here.

Barr, you’re talking like social constructions are bad no matter what. If we strip all our social constructions, we’re left with anguish. We must imagine Sisyphus happy, etc, etc.

A lot of men are really attached to manhood. And, if we allow ourselves a generalization or two, there really are differences between men and women. Whether they are biological (rather questionable) or conditioned (not at all questionable), the fact is that they exist.

I guess what Wagley’s trying to say — beneath all the provocative brouhaha — is that there’s another way to deal with the harmful overspillings of masculinity: rather than telling young men that being a man is wrong, we should be showing them nobler things that correspond better to their ‘manly’ values. Turning down sex with a drunk girl requires more honor than going ahead; telling your mates that no, homophobia’s not alright, takes more courage than being a bigot.

Of course we don’t exclude women from these ‘man’ values — of course they’re values for anyone, and of course men ought too to aspire to a bit of patience here and there — but what’s important is that these values are influential in the male self-image.

We should be careful that we don’t do to men what we do to the conservatives: make them fight harder by putting them in a corner. Surely guys will listen closer to people that speak their language than they will to people who tell them that most of their values and most of their lifestyle are based on pernicious lies.

fair enough

I do not think it is a misreading of her article to take her as saying that certain qualities are “manly” by nature. She seems, for instance, to disagree with Kimmel’s statement “that there are no good distinctively manly qualities,” and she criticizes him for “rejecting the uniqueness of manhood in a room full of talented men.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I say that something has a “unique” or “distinctive” quality, I mean that nothing else has that same quality. If I said, for instance, that some primate has a “unique” mating ritual, you would understandably take me to be saying that no other primates have that mating ritual.

Again (this was the point of my first comment above), Rachel cannot have it both ways. She cannot say, as she does in the article, that certain qualities are uniquely manly, but then say, as she does in her first response above, that it’s just that certain qualities are prized by some men and are part of their self-image. The first belief would require her to insult the manhood of men who lack any of her allegedly manly qualities, and also to define as “manly” any women who do possess those qualities. I find both of those possibilities abhorrent: men are not less “manly” if they aren’t risk-takers or whatever, they’re just more risk-averse; by the same token, women are not less “womanly” if they aren’t passive, they’re just more self-confident.

If Rachel wants to uphold the second belief, the idea that men just happen to prize certain ideals more than others, though, I say more power to her. Let’s just stop pretending not to understand the plain meaning of her words.

As for the rest of your comment:
1. The idea that the positive reaction of “lots of guys” means that Wagley was right is laughable. Just because they appreciated being defended doesn’t mean the defense was justified. That’s just not logical.
2. Yes, men and women do tend towards different behaviors. And I’m not advocating gender sameness. But how many of these different behaviors are “inherent” or “unique,” two words that Rachel uses to describe them? Can you tell me which ones? I’m very curious to hear. Again, that’s my beef: the idea that certain characteristics are inherently manly, and therefore that any female displaying them is acting manly.

You want to talk about misreading? Here we have a priceless one: because I pointed out that other Harvard conservatives have written really inane articles (see Pat Brennan), I’m supposedly saying that all conservatism is inane.

Anybody who pays attention to campus publications knows what I meant: the same routine happened after the Brennan article a couple of months ago. In a sense it’s inevitable. Conservatism is always going to be controversial on this majority-liberal campus, so its advocates are bound to become insular and isolated. Liberals like myself play an unfortunate role in this cycle, because we always feel obliged to respond and attack. But Harvard conservatives enjoy the fact that we respond, they get off on the controversy they’re capable of generating, and they try to generate it. Maybe that’s not a bad thing, I don’t know. It definitely keeps things lively.

As for the rest, let me try to get this straight. It is “discrimination” to call a conservative argument “inane,” but the belief that a woman acts “manly” when she is ambitious, confident, and risk-taking is just a “conviction held by some people-groups.” You’re right, I took it at face-value that people would see what’s wrong with sending that message to women. Let me clarify a little: What if you told every African-American student at Harvard that they’re “acting white”? People who exhibit good qualities should be defined by that fact alone, and not by the other people, whether male, white, or whatever, who supposedly embody those good qualities.