Stout-Hearted Men?

Glenn Greenwald has a post up on the right-wing cult of contrived masculinity. He writes that at the heart of movement conservatism

… is a cult of contrived masculinity whereby people dress up as male archetypes like cowboys, ranchers, and tough guys even though they are nothing of the kind — or prance around as Churchillian warriors because they write from a safe and protected distance about how great war is — and in the process become triumphant heroes and masculine powerful icons and strong leaders. They and their followers triumph over the weak, effete, humiliated Enemy, and thereby become powerful and exceptional and safe.

I’d say that at the heart of the cult of masculinity is something even more primordial, which is fear. As I wrote here, the pseudo-conservative movement that is the foundation of “movement conservatism” —

… started out as an intellectually incoherent reaction to the New Deal and the ideals and values that were mainstream 50 and more years ago. It was based on a complex of fears — fear of foreigners, fear of Communists, fear of the powerful forces in the world that they didn’t understand. Most of all, they were besieged by doubts that they fit into a world that was rapidly changing but which they didn’t understand. They feared they were being pushed out of what they saw as their rightful place in American life. Exactly what that place was, and who was pushing them, cannot be clearly defined. Often they lashed out not at real enemies but at the very institutions that protected them and enabled social and economic stability. Theirs was an irrational attempt to erase the previous several years of world history and go back to an earlier time — before the Depression, before World War II — when they had felt more secure. It didn’t sink in that that old feeling of security had been delusional.

I go on at more length in the old post. The point is that inside every wingnut lives a frightened little child looking for a daddy.

The Right’s masculinity problem is something I’ve written about before also, such as here, from 2003:

The faux masculinity celebrated by our culture equates violence with strength and power with potency. It is a rogue thing that does not honor the principles of civilization or the processes of governance. Like most John Wayne characters, or Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, following the rules is for girls and sissies. Why bother with a justice system when you’ve got a gun? …

… George W. Bush is an adolescent’s fantasy of what a president should be, just as John Wayne was an adolescent’s fantasy cowboy/lawman, and Dirty Harry an adolescent’s fantasy detective — easily bored with rules and talk, but quick on the trigger. Who needs diplomacy when you’ve got the biggest, baddest military in the world?

If you understand that this is where their heads are, one begins to understand why righties are not bothered by Abu Ghraib or that some of the people detained at Bagram, Kandahar, and Gitmo without due process of law turn out to be innocent. They think as children think. Children generally are unable to think rationally about what frightens them; if they are afraid there’s a monster in the closet, no amount of explaining there isn’t a monster in the closet will settle them. All they want is someone strong to protect them.

Thus, rghties want to smash everyone that frightens them without sorting out whether the thing they fear is a real danger or not, or whether the smashing is smart policy or not. And in Rightie World, applying rational judgments to fearful things is a sign of weakness. For example: The Iraq War is growing the threat of terrorism in the world. Yet you cannot explain to a rightie that a smart war on terror would require disengagement from Iraq. All they know is that there are Islamic extremists over there, and we must kill them. And (they think) if you don’t want to kill them, you are weak. Smash first; think later. If ever.

Of course, a Faux Man rarely volunteers to do the dirty work himself. As Glenn points out, righties on the whole think highly of military glory but are not so keen on gettng shot at themselves.

Another common trait of faux masculinity is misogyny; deep down inside faux men hate and resent women. As Robert Bly artfully explained awhile back in Iron John (I failed to find a good link explaining this point, sorry), faux men have unresolved issues about their mothers, and that lack of resolution leaves them in a state of perpetual adolescence — resentful, confused, fearful, simultaneously seeking yet rebelling against authority. They want a daddy who protects them from the monster in the closet; not a mommy who tells them to eat their vegetables, pay their taxes, and reduce their carbon emissions.

Glenn’s post is about Ann Coulter and why the Right won’t let go of her. He writes,

Coulter insisted last night that she did not intend the remark as an anti-gay slur — that she did not intend to suggest that John Edwards, husband and father, was gay — but instead only used the word as a “schoolyard taunt,” to call him a sissy. And that is true. Her aim was not to suggest that Edwards is actually gay, but simply to feminize him like they do with all male Democratic or liberal political leaders.

This is from Stephen J. Ducat’s book, The Wimp Factor:

I saw the Republican National Convention as essentially a hyper-masculine strut-fest. The real point of the convention was to make John Kerry their woman…. They had already done that with John Edwards by dubbing him the “Breck girl.” And Arnold Schwarzenegger went on to proclaim that any men who were anxious about the loss of jobs under the reign of George W. Bush were, as he put it, “economic girlie-men.” The inference was that Democratic candidates who were always whining about pink slips may as well be wearing pink slips.

Two years ago in a Buzzflash interview, Stephen Ducat said,

In a culture based on male domination and in which most things feminine tend to be devalued, even if they are secretly envied, the most important thing about being a man is not being a woman. This powerful adult male imperative to be unlike females and to repudiate anything that smacks of maternal caretaking is played out just as powerfully in politics as it is in personal life. In fact, political contests among men are in many ways the ultimate battles for masculine supremacy. This makes disavowing the feminine in oneself and projecting it onto one’s opponent especially important. This femiphobia–this male fear of being feminine–operates unconsciously in many men as a very powerful determinant of their political behavior. It also constitutes a very significant motive for fundamentalist terrorism. …

… In fact, the kind of hyper-masculine strutting that we see on display by right wing males is a defense. It’s a defense against this anxious masculinity, against their fear of the feminine. In a culture in which it’s so important to deny the feminine in men, masculinity becomes a really brittle achievement. It’s quite Sisyphean–you know, you can never quite get there. You’re always having to prove it.

Part of the reason is that this type of masculinity is defined largely in terms of domination. The problem is that domination–either in a personal or a global context–can never be a permanent condition. It’s a relational state. It’s dependent on having somebody in a subordinate position. That means you could be manly today, but you’re not going to be manly tomorrow unless you’ve got somebody to push around and control, whether that is an abused wife or another country. So this kind of masculinity is really brittle.

Faux men have to keep proving they are not tied to Ma’s apron strings; and subconsciously, to faux men any woman is All Women is Mother. The compulsion to denigrate women or anything understood to be “feminine” is, always, the mark of a faux man. Ann Coulter is “safe” because she is relentlessly unfeminine; a guy in a girl’s body. She uses the word female as an insult; she is alleged to have said in a 2003 interview, “It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact.” (If anyone can find a link to the original source, please let me know.) Righties can count of Coulter not to get all womanly and maternal on them. She is the ideal woman for men who hate women. She does not remind them of their mothers.

Glenn continues,

The Coulter/Hannity/Limabugh-led right wing is basically the Abu Grahib rituals finding full expression in an authoritarian political movement. The reason people like Rush Limbaugh not only were unbothered, but actually delighted and even tickled by, Abu Grahib is because that is the full-blooded manifestation of the impulses underlying this movement — feelings of power and strength from the most depraved spectacles of force. The only real complaint from Bush followers about the Commander-in-Chief is that he has not given them enough Guantanamos and wars and aggression and barbaric slaughter and liberty infringement. Their hunger for those things is literally insatiable because they need fresh pretexts for feeling strong.

And that is where Ann Coulter comes in and plays such a vital — really indispensible — role. As a woman who purposely exudes the most exaggerated American feminine stereotypes (the long blond hair, the make-up, the emaciated body), her obsession with emasculating Democratic males — which, at bottom, is really what she does more than anything else — energizes and stimulates the right-wing “base” like nothing else can. Just witness the fervor with which they greet her, buy her books, mob her on college campuses. Can anyone deny that she is unleashing what lurks at the very depths of the right-wing psyche? What else explains not just her popularity, but the intense embrace of her by the “base”?

Yep.

While looking for other things I came across a nice specimen for the Faux Male exhibit. Awhile back rightie writer Harvey C. Mansfield wrote a book called Manliness that I have not read but have read much about. This review of Manliness on the site Intellectual Conservative is worth a comment. It begins:

In the twenty-first century workplace, the neutered male, all-too-often, is the employee most successful at climbing organizational hierarchies. Being a good listener, empowering others, and providing solicitous attention — as opposed to speaking the truth, taking a stand, and defending the meek — are the traits most likely to result in becoming a CEO or CFO. To get ahead, one must avoid confrontation rather than precipitate it. Characteristics like stoicism, independence, and reticence are now construed as signs of not being a team player despite their once being prevalent in the manliest of men. Perhaps a desire to commemorate what once was is what motivated Harvey Mansfield to write his book, Manliness, as the term itself has become a pejorative.

The premise is nonsense. Although there are exceptions to everything, in my experience corporate CEOs are not touchy-feely types. More often they exhibit absolute self-confidence and ruthless, take-no-prisoners aggression. A touch of sociopathy doesn’t hurt. Mansfield is an academic who needs to get out more. The reviewer, Bernard Chapin, possibly has another excuse. Or not. This comes later in Chapin’s review:

Levity aside, the strongest message of Manliness is delivered in these lines:

    As opposed to being manly, a defense of manliness requires that a man look a woman in the eye and tell her that she is inferior in certain important respects. Men cannot do that today.

He could not be any more right. The very reason that men are vilified and maligned is due to their refusal to defend themselves.

Obviously, Chapin and Mansfield are sniveling little weenies. Real men don’t have to put down women to “defend themselves.”

Having exposed Mr. Chapin for the unmanly lump of protoplasm that he is, you will not be surprised to find out that Mr. Chapin is an Ann Coulter admirer. Of course. Defending her use of the word faggot — which, inexplicably, he doesn’t spell —

F*ggot is not a term of hate. It’s a word sometimes used to describe gays as well as a bundle of sticks or branches, a type of meatball, and, way back when, it even represented a unit of measurement.

Chapin writes,

Consider Coulter’s statement for a moment. Does she really think that Edwards is gay? I seriously doubt it. She was using her enemies’ PC sensitivity as a means to provoke and incite — which is exactly what happened. The quip was an incendiary joke. Coulter is not publicity shy, and, given her background, must have known that furor would follow her heretical observation. Ironically, Howard Dean’s response — “this kind of vile rhetoric is out of bounds” — plays like made-to-order dogma. Like Dean, many leftists would like to send Coulter to places far fouler than rehab. Why is saying a word like f*ggot out of bounds? If a homosexual called Coulter a breeder or a black person called her a cracker, would we judge them “hate-filled and bigoted?” Of course not.

Well, um, I would, if the name-calling were intended to be hateful. (Coulter is neither a breeder nor a cracker as I understand the terms, however.) But the point is that if we measure Mr. Chapin by his own masculinity measure — “speaking the truth, taking a stand, and defending the meek” — you can see that he falls a tad short. What Coulter said was nothing but a juvenile slur. Pretending otherwise is not “speaking the truth.” It’s “pathological denial.”

17 thoughts on “Stout-Hearted Men?

  1. Exceptional post, Barbara. It would be more intriguing to contemplate if we weren’t being led by all these faux man’s men.

  2. It’s always amused me that that Hollywood tough guy John Wayne carefully avoided military service in World War II, despite being of an age to serve. (His reason, a football injury, did not hold up under research; Garry Wills in his book about Wayne found that he was not on his college football team long enough to get injured IIRC.)

    Schwarzenegger has never served in the military either but given his age I don’t think he actually dodged a war.

    As for hatred of the New Deal: my grandparents and their three kids were saved from starvation by the WPA which hired my grandfather to work on construction projects. And yet, to the end of their lives, both grandparents HATED Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. I finally figured out that this was because the crash of 1929 revealed a very awkward fact: that our economic system and its boom-bust cycle means that one family cannot control its own economic destiny and that was just too much to face. Accepting the New Deal — a solution to the worst of the boom-bust problem — meant admitting there’s a much bigger world out there and individuals do not and cannot control it by themselves, so of course they hated it.

  3. Yesterday I was stuck in the car with hannity insannity…who declared he would apologize for anns remarks when the Al Sharpton apologized to hannity for twanna brawly(spelling sorry).WTF??????

    Then later, on a late night taco binge I heard a radio show on a black R&B station. To tell the truth I wished the trip would have lasted longer because the topic was about the evangelical church preaching hate for homosexuals.A man noticed this and started a group to lobby churches to stop.This group wanted to lobby churches in a effort to combat the james dobsons, focus on the family,ect of the world or at least get equal time.The AME churches were the only ones willing to open their doors and their hearts to acceptance of the gay community.White , evangelical churches REFUSED to even consider the message claiming there was too much political pressure on them from the government, who is spoon feeding them faith based funds.Who is gonna rock the gravy boat? When church leaders can use the hate to collect funds and increase their followers there in no hope in asking for them to stop.Imagine a time when a group has to be formed to ask churches to stop preaching hate and intolerance only to be told no…WOW.
    The radio conversation was between 2 brilliant women and I tried to find a on-line stream to the conversation but couldn’t(my bratty birds were asleep and THEY have stereos)..but the conversation got deeper into the bible and where evangelicals were getting their ammo to preach hate and intolerance towards the homosexual community and just how deep seeded the situation is..and it’s affects on all of us…and I thought to myself why is the mainstream media not having this conversation?Surely we have the time now that Anna Nicole has been laid to rest.

    Ann yelled out the “f” word.And that sucks.But what really upsets me are the nice little back stabbing code words like “protecting marriage” which is equal to saying “we hate “f’s” as far as I am concerned.As judge Judy once said “Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining”.All those righties acting like they are above what coulter said and would never say it themselves shouldn’t be so fast to give themselves a free pass.You don’t need to say the “f” word to be a homophobic asshole.Actions speak louder than words to me and the actions of the right towards the homosexual community in this country has been a collective juvenile slur for the past 6 years.
    The fact that the right thinks that it is ok to use being a gay person or being a female as an insult is an insult in itself.But it isn’t an insult to me.. it’s a insult to THEIR party.I think Ann coulter should be on tv everyday screaming the f word at least she said what they are all thinking..she just didn’t hide behind focus group approved words to express her hate.I think the right is mad at ann because it is ok to hate but one has to use the right words.We all know what the rightie agenda is about(wink wink nod nod) but we mustn’t say it because if people knew who would support it?We might think converting people to christians at gun point is a good idea but maybe we shouldn’t tell folks that…lest we look like the real rightie nutballs we are.

    With that in mind I point to insannity yesterday..he is putting his stock in guliani..and he told his listeners yesterday that when they get behind him and put him in office he will be forced to put forward the agenda of those who put him there(wink wink nod nod)…the implacation being that guliani had to act like he tolerated gay folks and pro abortion people to get into office but once he got there he would be a slave to the christian right neo cons who installed him…but it is OK,, because hannity didn’t use the “f” word.Gotta love those code words..

  4. Excellent post, Maha.. As a person who grew up weak and frightened and hiding behind a mask distrorted masculinity,I can attest to the fact that you’ve got it right in exposing the inner child of the macho man. You nailed it! I hope that your readers who were raised nutured and secure can grasp the wisdom of your words because it took me a lifetime of conflict and therapy to fully understand the wisdom that you’re offering. It’s a potent analysis..believe me, I lived it. My father died when I was 8 years old, and in a lot of ways I grew up like the boy named Sue.

  5. Thanks for reading my piece. A couple of the things you said are misrepresentations, however.

    First off, your statement,

    “Obviously, Chapin and Mansfield are sniveling little weenies. Real men don’t have to put down women to ‘defend themselves’ Real men don’t have to put down women to “defend themselves.”

    Well, they do if they’re attacked which is exactly what my point in the piece was. You’ve angle is not reflective of my position though as you’ve purposely set up a straw man argument. One shouldn’t put anybody down in life. Those who treat me with respect I will respect. We should be nice to people we don’t know and treat others with kindness; however, should one be attacked by radical feminists (or women in general) as men have been for over 40 years then it is a man’s duty to defend himself. By cutting off my quote where you did you response is misleading. Here is the rest of it from the Mansfield book review:

    The very reason that men are vilified and maligned is due to their refusal to defend themselves. Personally, as strange as it may sound, I have encountered numerous men who regard the refutation of fictitious charges of oppression, rape, and theft as being beneath them and unmanly. I have no notion as to now such an absurd disposition came about. Honor and justice demand that if someone lies about you, you must make the truth known. Defying conformity and asserting oneself are the manliest of traits. Government, via affirmative action, divorce and child custody proceedings, along with the biases endemic to sexual harassment law, has officially preferenced one sex over the other. We live in a time of the New Chivalry [1] in which men are expected to smile before being thrown into the abyss. America would be better served if men cautiously, assertively, and verbally defended themselves. For those who lack the proper arguments, studying Professor Mansfield’s book is highly recommended.

    I’ve also written a chapter on this that is coming out slowly as an audio file:

    http://mensnewsdaily.com/2007/03/05/the-womans-real-man-pt-1/

    You may not have understood what Mansfield was getting at in his book. I would have been happy to explain this to you had you asked. He does not imply that women are inferior; he means that men have lost the will to stand up to women at any level due to the lie of our own inferiority which many believe. Yes, it’s sick and it’s wrong but a lot of guys refuse to defend themselves when they are slandered. Furthermore, your position misses the point that to not defend yourself before a women is the chauvinist position as those fellows often defer out of feelings of superiority. Men like myself view women as our equals and that is why we must respond to them in the same fashion as we would to any criticism from a peer. If I am special then women are special; if I am not special then women are not special. This is how it must be.

    “Having exposed Mr. Chapin for the unmanly lump of protoplasm that he is.” I’m sorry but you’ve done nothing of the kind. Every person should, and must, defend themselves in our society. My genitalia does not make me your inferior. I refuse to be a slave to radicals but that merely makes me a sensible person.

  6. If a homosexual called Coulter a breeder or a black person called her a cracker, would we judge them “hate-filled and bigoted?” Of course not.

    LOL! They damn well WOULD raise a hew-&-cry about how such statements prove how persecuted and oppressed traditional white families are.

    Is he lying, or does he really not see he is as much of a whiny little shit as any of the “feminized males” he find contemptible.

  7. Wow…do men really find woman so threatening that there is a need to defend ones self? What is it that men are afraid women will do that they need to defend themselves in the first place?Sounds like someone may be a slave to their own fears.Sad that the writer feels “attacked” by women as a whole.Also sad that he thinks we are somehow inferior…wow shocking.

    Women have been attacking men for 40 years?And now for all “man” kind it is time to even the score?So some 20 year old is going to feel the rath of men because men,as a whole feel they have been attacked for 40 years?I am amazed to learn men feel so victimized by “women” not just one or two women, but we are all evil and poor poor helpless men must defend themselves.One might suggest therapy would be a better way deal with the paranoid feelings.

    bchapin, in his response,helps to make both Maha and Greenwalds point….OUTSTANDING!!!!!!!!!Do you think he will call me a name and then claim he was just “standing up for himself as a man”?

    He is right that genitalia doesn’t make him your inferior.He has done that well for himself with his own words.No help needed from the crotch region. And by the way where did he get the notion that you believed having genitalia made him inferior? Is that in the Maha comment rules????Straw men ? Anyone?

    I am off to sharpen my claws…I have 40 years of attacking men to catch up on..Why am I always the last to get the memo?

  8. Bchapin — Keep sniveling, son. I know good and well where you are coming from. Alas, the woods are full of weenies like you.

    “My genitalia does not make me your inferior.”

    I never said it did. Learn to read. Oh, and grow up and be a man. I like men who are, you know, men.

  9. Nobody sniveling here, just good logical arguments. I have no desire to call any of you names. Radical feminism has been attacking men for 40 years, but radical feminists are but a hypersmall minority of women on the whole.

    “Wow…do men really find woman so threatening that there is a need to defend ones self?” These are the words of a chauvinist. Men and women are equals, and both sexes should always defend themselves when they are attacked. Your comment would make sense only if men were somehow superior and above women which we certainly are not in this country.

    “Oh, and grow up and be a man.” So then, being a man means being a submissive? Is that what being a man means? Letting others lie about you as you smile obliviously? That’s silly but these comments do help me with my work so I appreciate the imput.

    What exactly is your position? If a woman says something about a man then it is your belief that the man should say nothing in his own defense? That’s the crux of the matter as I, nor anyone I no of, runs around attacking women either verbally or physically. Why would this be because we evolved with one sex to play the serf and the other to play the feudal master?

    I think the world will be a better place when both men and women stand up for themselves whenever they are demeaned or insulted.

  10. Well, I am silly to get into this right here, but when I was growing up,- 50 or so years ago, – we were all taught, boys and girls, that we were to ignore people who called us names, that response to such behavior was unworthy of us.

  11. So then, being a man means being a submissive?

    Real men are neither dominant nor submissive.

    That’s the crux of the matter as I, nor anyone I no of, runs around attacking women either verbally or physically.

    Everything you write is one long howl of adolescent rage and fear and resentment of women. I’m sorry you are so screwed up, but I have no patience with it. Get therapy, and go away.

  12. Reading Bchapin’s little dissertation on being a “manly man”reminds me of a skit that John Belushi did on Saturday Night Live many years ago called Miles Coppethwaite. In the skit, Belishi was a lascivious sea captain who wanted to comfort his cabin boy, and mentor him to become a “manly man”. Michael Pailin played the cabin boy who tried to ward off the captain’s advances with a naive and innocent reply of.. but,I don’t need comforting, Captain.

    For me, the term, “manly man” equates to a code word for buggery.

  13. Bc, I hardly see how asking a question makes me a chauvinist. I am shocked to learn men are so terrified of women.Not being a male the question was a reasonable one considering I would have no understanding of what it is like to be a poor, threatened,afraid male.

    Men and women are equals???Well talk to me when you can squeeze an 8 pound child out of your penis about being equal.Talk to me when YOU stand up for equal pay for women for an equal days work…talk to me when women can go home and sit on their asses at night instead of their days just starting when they get off work and we will talk about equal.Talk to me about being equal when the number of males who are victims of spouse abuse or death at the hands of a spouse is anywhere near equal.See, what you are giving me is lip service about us being equal…not equality.And you want to whine here about how you are threatened by women?SAD INDEED.If we are equal when the hell do men intend to let society reflect that?You equality seems to be very selective at best.One could consider that chauvinistic but unlike you I don’t need to call you a chauvinist,,, your words do it for me.
    It was amusing how you claimed you wouldn’t call names then you labeled me a chauvinist….WOW….you can’t even be honest for one paragraph…you shouldn’t write a book.Instead you should read some.
    I am so so so sorry some evil women lied against you in your past and that you have had some bad experiences but standing up for yourself didn’t change what happened to you…and since you still are carrying it like baggage it didn’t help you move on either.Please seek help and try not to spread your illness to others. But thanks for educating us on what is wrong with the angry white male.It is a shocking look inside the minds of frightened males.To a therapist you are a summer home in the hamptons…gotta love it.

  14. It’s high time a public figure on our side called out the weenies on the other side and their phony macho for what it is. Articles like this and Glenn’s help get to the bottom of it.

    Fortunately or unfortunately, this will likely take someone whose real masculinity is beyond question, such as a Wes Clark or a Jim Webb. Or even a Bill Maher or Tim Robbins who sometimes has the guts, if not a recognizable record of achievement in the real world. It could well be someone from the entertainment world who first says what’s been written here, in much the way that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert broke the ice by making it “safe” to joke at Bush and wingnuttia. They led with humor, giving voice to what so many of us were horrified at inside.

    Sadly, Edwards only reacted to the surface message – about faggots – by condemning it, and preaching a message of inclusion. Necessary, but as you and Glenn so aptly point out, this is not what Ann Coulter is about, and even she admitted as much. Edwards’ message dances to Ann’s game, and does nothing to disarm her.

    What’s needed is a knock out blow. When one of our public figures can speak to this pathetic need for a father figure while citing all the immature behavior on the world stage that’s the result of this childish longing, speaking directly to the sickness within people like Ann Coulter and others, that’s when the right will be seen for the hollow weenies that they truly are. That’s when our side will see a long overdue measure of respect. It will only happen when we have the guts and insight to call a spade a spade, in such a way that anybody whose eyes aren’t blind can see.

  15. After reading this entire thread I made note of one huge misrepresentation of fact that demonstrates the springboard from which local (as in here on this site) thought derives is tainted.
    The book Manliness correctly pointed out the characteristics needed to succeed and climb in corporate America, especially in very large public companies.
    To wit, when reasonably intelligent adult men leave a seminar muttering the word “change” breathlessly as if the concept exists only in the LaPlacian domain of differential equations, indeed, that is not a sign of independent thinking and stand up character. What they are doing is laughable, and many of them know it. The language of corporate America has become nearly meaningless, speaking more words with little to no content, or recycling business self help principles that are no more than sexed up basic common sense. Read Jack Welch’s book and tell me it contains an original idea, a tangible actionable item, and a form of lone ranger agressiveness, or is it another jargon filled tome about recognizing change and embracing it?
    “Who Moved My Cheese”….when men read that book with expectation that rivals a religionists study of scripture, there is a problem. No one will say yes or no anymore. We all facilitate, collaborate, caucus, and read and write emails. How in the world does anything real ever get done?
    Sure, once a man is CEO, maybe then he can be agressive and single minded in his approach…in other words the way he is naturally, the way he REALLY is, but to get there he must suppress that side of himself and act very unmanly.
    The effect of this is so incredibly subtle that people either gloss over disinterested, or they reject it as false. If you have never worked in an environment like I describe then you’ve never worked in a big company.
    The flawed reasoning behind the rejection of Chapins positing of this truth flows (un)naturally into flawed analysis further on.

    [CAL — I’ve worked for big corporation and have had to deal with real CEOs, not just middle managers. I stand by what I wrote. maha]

  16. If for not Mr. Chapin’s logical posts in this thread, I would never consider being part of such pure stupidity. If the feminist agenda was so right why for last 40 years has this country been sliding down the tubes. Could it be because women can not do as good a job as a man? Maybe that’s why they don’t get paid the same. Maybe that’s why they are unable to run successful small businesses. Could it be that feminism has destroyed the American family? [sentence deleted for being too raunchy for this blog — maha]

    Why is it whenever a man disagrees with a butch, that it is always some women from the past that has done him wrong. And right, they should seek therapy from a profession that is all leftist morons. You know, the ones that reversed the theory that homosexuality is a metal disorder.

    [Note: I started to delete that last sentence because it violates comment rules, but the misspelling of “mental” makes it rather cute. — maha]

  17. Why is it whenever a man disagrees with a butch

    Mr. Chapin is not a man, and I’m not a butch.

    I will say again to whatever mouth-breathers and knuckle-draggers he chases over here — I don’t have a problem with men. I like men. What I hate is the faux masculinity — actually a kind of perpetual adolescence — that Mr. Chapin exemplifies.

    And, of course, you miss the whole point and assume that I dislike you because you are a man. No, I dislike you because you are NOT a man.

    A real adult, manly man is a rare and wondrous creature, and I wish there were more of them. Sorrowfully, you and Mr. Chapin don’t count.

    And now, comments are closed.

    BTW — You might learn something about where faux masculinity comes from in my new post. Please do not add comments to that post without reading it. Such comments will be deleted (see commenting rules).

Comments are closed.