Word: mansfields
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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This 10-year-old side project of the Kenan Professor of Government—Mansfield ’53 normally spends his days translating Machiavelli and doling out C-minuses—broadly analyzes manliness as a fading characteristic in our modern, supposedly “gender neutral” world. “Manliness,” Mansfield said to the large crowd in the Kirkland House Junior Common Room, “is confidence in the face of risk...
...first, Mansfield’s breathy, soft words did not set off any alarms about sexism or homophobia. They actually seemed progressive; Mansfield was shifting America’s idolatry of “manly” qualities such as intoxication, cigarette smoke, and muscular physiques to assertiveness and confidence...
...Mansfield proceeded with his tale of how he came to this “common sense” conclusion, and how this elusive trait was exhibited in the “best” men and very rarely in women (e.g. Ms. Thatcher), an air of female repression burst to the surface...
From Achilles to Dostoevsky to John Wayne, Mansfield claimed, the world of literature and entertainment have shown that men almost exclusively possess a yearning for taking on risk. Hence, “the essence of men”—the Aristotelian interpretation of “manliness” that Mansfield used often in his talk—is “confidence in the face of risk...
...today’s less restrictive world, the growing appearance of confident women does not completely oppose Mansfield’s thesis, but it does question its longevity. In a recent interview with The Harvard Salient, Mansfield said, “I begin from the fact that men seem to have a quality of manliness about them that you don’t find in women, or don’t find to the same degree, or don’t find in the same...