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Fritz Feds

Tuesday, April 11, 2006


I'm a man, but I can change, if I have to, I guess.

An interesting piece on manliness.  Well, a review of a book about manliness, written by Christina Hoff Sommers.  Be ready for Hobbes, Nietzsche, and Simone de Beauvoir.  A teaser:
One of the least visited memorials in Washington is a waterfront statue commemorating the men who died on the Titanic. Seventy-four percent of the women passengers survived the April 15, 1912, calamity, while 80 percent of the men perished. Why? Because the men followed the principle "women and children first."
The monument, an 18-foot granite male figure with arms outstretched to the side, was erected by "the women of America" in 1931 to show their gratitude. The inscription reads: "To the brave men who perished in the wreck of the Titanic. . . . They gave their lives that women and children might be saved."
Today, almost no one remembers those men. Women no longer bring flowers to the statue on April 15 to honor their chivalry. The idea of male gallantry makes many women nervous, suggesting (as it does) that women require special protection. It implies the sexes are objectively different. It tells us that some things are best left to men. Gallantry is a virtue that dare not speak its name.


3 comments

Comments:
It tells us that some things are best left to men.

Wait, what? Which things? Self-sacrifice? I think many women do that pretty well, enough to the point where I'd say it's pretty much a common trait of that particular gender. Or did you mean dying in the ocean? Because if you did, then I'll let you have that one.
 
I didn't write this, but I think it means dying in the ocean. Leonardo DiCaprio illustrated to me the particular talent of our gender. Although I never saw the movie.
 
I didn't mean at all that women are not capable or don't engage in the whole self-sacrifice whatnot, they most surely do. The review (and the book apparently) provides a lot more than this blurb on the Titanic. For the purposes of this post, and for the sake of argument, the dying in the ocean is more the direction I was pushing than general self sacrifice. "Women and children first" probably originated in a desire to perpetuate the species and eventually grew into chivalry. Of course, conventional wisdom is that chivalry is dead. I guess I have a lot of thoughts on the gender/sex issue, a lot of them growing out of con law and some of my rebellious reading, but it comes down to one thing. The only difference greater than male and female in the natural world is living and dead. (and if anyone can remind me where I came accross that idea, I sure would appreciate it) Yes, you heard it here first, I think men and women are DIFFERENT. Do I think they should be treated differently be the government? Not so much, but I think we need to acknowledge that there are differences.
 
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