Another Harvard provocateur

[driver]

<p>I post this not to annoy, nor because I completely agree with Professor Mansfield on this subject, but because he is someone I’d like to sit next to on a long train ride. With Professor Jeffrey Hart sitting on my other side. What fun that would be.

“What you see today at Harvard and elsewhere are a lot of liberal males who are trying to make women happy by trying to treat them as if they weren’t women.” “And that,” says the man who never misses the chance to open a door for a woman or help her put on her coat, “doesn’t work very well.” So why didn’t he simply write a book on gentlemanliness? “Because before you’re a gentleman, you have to be a man. Gentlemanliness is a refinement. It presupposes that you have a certain superiority over women, but teaches you how to exercise it. It also teaches you that women are superior in their ways.”</p>

<p>Nine years ago, when Mr. Mansfield offered his first seminar on manliness, I barely managed to score a seat in the small classroom. So many campus feminists had crowded in that students were forced to sit on the floor. These women saw their opportunity, finally, to have it out with the conservative bogeyman.</p>

<p>But Mr. Mansfield got the best of them. He proceeded to talk for much of the next two hours about the ancient Greek notion of thumos, or spiritedness, an idea he believes is the precursor of modern-day manliness. The feminists were bored silly–almost none returned the following week.

</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008046[/url]”>http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008046&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[rorosen]

<p>“damn Hart and Mansfield,… Driver likes them more than she likes me,… I’m gonna find those bastards and when I do,…I’ll challenge them,…first I’ll lift some weights and them WhamPow they’re dumped in with the luggage and I get to sit with Driver the entire train ride. O.K. Now where did I put that dictionary? Where are my breath mints?”</p>

[rorosen]

<p>well, rorosen, perhaps you should think about this:</p>

<p>“The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization” —Ziggy Freud</p>

[rorosen]

<p>Hey, pal, who the hell are you to tell me how to win a lady’s
favor? They say they like a man with brains but you and I know it’s strength that weakens those knees, arm-charm,…
gentlemen with pedigree and sword,… clomp those PhD’s on their noggins and she’ll be coming around the mountain when she comes,…</p>

[rorosen]

<p>Mansfield "observed that the only “gentlemen” at Harvard were conservatives and gay men. Conservatives, he believes, realize something’s been lost in the recent social revolution; and gay men “have a certain greater awareness and perspicacity than other men.” </p>

<p>I suggest, rorosen, that you take a long look in the mirror and decide exactly where you wish to fall,…</p>

[rorosen]

<p>you and whom else?</p>