With thanks to The Opinionator @NYT:
By Mark Dery
The trouble with manhood, American-style, is that it's maintained by frantically repressing every man's feminine side and demonizing the feminine and the gay wherever we see them. In his book, 'The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity,' clinical psychologist Stephen Ducat calls this state of mind 'femiphobia' — a pathological masculinity founded on the subconscious belief that 'the most important thing about being a man is not being a woman.'
OK, so maybe I'm overstepping the bounds of my Learning Annex degree in pop psychology. But the hidden costs of our overcompensatory hypermachismo are far worse than a few politicians slimed by pundits. The horror in Iraq has been protracted past the point of lunacy by George W.'s bring-it-on braggadocio, He-Ra unilateralism and damn-the-facts refusal to acknowledge mistakes — all hallmarks of a pathological masculinity that confuses diplomacy with weakness and arrogant rigidity with strength. It is founded not on a self-assured sense of what it is but on a neurotic loathing of what it secretly fears it may be: wussy. And it will go to the grave insisting on battering-ram stiffness (stay the course! don't pull out!) as the truest mark of manhood.
2 comments:
And it will go to the grave insisting on battering-ram stiffness (stay the course! don't pull out!) as the truest mark of manhood.
And we'll all get to watch and see what a demon is spawned.
We are already.
One wonders how much of the electorate (and of the GOP constituency in particular, including some women) is locked into this view, and applauds its associated rhetorical posturing--the politicians certainly seem to think so, judging by the rhetoric they provide.
Then again, Reagan got out of Lebanon in a hurry following the bombing, with a minimum of associated rhetoric. He may have been sufficiently secure in his manly image to be able to get away with it. Not W.
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