Does eHarmony grade you on your manliness?

For reasons that will become clear shortly, there's no chance of me actually reading Harvey Mansfield's recent tract on "Manliness". But fortunately, thanks to The New York Review of Books - the TV Guide for the New York set, a friend of mine notes - there's no need for me to do so. Especially if my primary interest in reading Mansfield is to evaluate my own manliness according to his criteria. (I really am a child of my age, you see.) So, given my limited exposure to Mansfield's ideas - I use this term in the most permissive sense possible - let's see how I score. Will I come out of the process as comfortable with my masculinity as I was when I went it? Or will my self-conception be transformed by the raw power of Straussian thinking.*

Let's start off with some of my intellectual, emotional, and social characteristics:

(1) I'm generally rational in my approach to everyday life. Given my chosen profession, there's possibly no project that I identify with more than the project of rational criticism and self-control. Now, to be sure, I understand this project in different terms than most do, and, in particular, do not understand it as a cold and dispassionate enterprise. But nonetheless it seems clear that for Mansfield this would count as a clear mark of unmanliness. After all, for Mansfield, manliness is clearly opposed to the neurosis of self-examination, embracing instead the unreflective "manly" leap into the risky unknown. (The very thought of it makes me nervous.)

(2) I am generally sympathetic to the needs of others, and when I am not, I strive to be. This too would count against my manliness for Mansfield. For sympathy yokes our actions to the feelings and reactions of others, and nothing could be as unmanly as this. And, even worse, sympathy is a clear indication that, as a "sensitive man", I have allowed my emotional life to be shaped by certain traditionally feminine ideals. Very much a no-no, according to Mansfield.

(3) I find the "manly job of self-assertion" deeply unpleasant - although also ultimately irresistible. Here my grade seems to mixed - for I seem to be in a state of conflict with my inner manliness. Part of me, being manly, feels driven to assert myself. But at the same time, I feel ashamed of this drive and constantly try to repress it. Perhaps if I can overcome these repressive urges, a greater share of manliness might lie within my grasp.

(4) Finally, I refuse to behave in a "chivalrous" fashion. Mansfield writes that, "Most of the time the gentleman conceals his superiority with chivalrous irony; he pretends to defer to his inferiors." Or, in other words, a manly man respects women by making a show of behaving towards them as if they were his superiors. Unfortunately, here too I grade out as decidedly unmanly. In fact, I go much further in this direction than will most contemporary men. I won't even pick up the tap on a first date. And not because I'm cheap. Rather simply because it seems to me morally unacceptable to do so.

So on these criteria, I am scoring very low by Mansfield's lights. Which raises the question of whether there is a self-help companion to "Manliness" for those of us lost in a sea of post-feminist gender dissociation. (One might think it would be impossible to become manly by such means, but Mansfield's comments on Teddy Roosevelt suggest otherwise.)

But is this really all that there is to our traditional understanding of manliness? Isn't, on the contrary, the essence of manliness something more physical? Doesn't the core of what it is to be a man lie in having a certain sort of body as opposed to a certain sort of mind? At the very least, it seems wrong to exclude the physical aspects of manliness from our discussion here. So here is my last hope. Perhaps I do not have a manly mind or heart, but I still might at least possess a manly body. And if so, aren't I one up on Mansfield where it really counts (from a manly perspective)? So let's see how I do here:

(1) I am quite hairy. This seems intrinsically manly. And it is a good indicator of high testosterone levels. And what could be more manly than that?

(2) I sweat in extraordinary quantities. Gross, but manly. For instance, the Japanese appear to find the smell of my sweat disgusting. Again not a clear advantage, but surely manly. (As I'm sure Teddy would agree.)

(3) I am very strong, given my level of physical exercise. Manly on its own, and indicative again of hidden reserves of manliness as well.

This side of things is indeed looking up. (And I haven't even touched on what really matters when it comes to the physical side of manliness.) Still, what sort of life can I expect with such a manly body and such an unmanly mind. What women would consider a sad hybrid like me? Perhaps someone with a manly mind and unmanly body? Or, in other words, according to Mansfield, a truly sexy feminist. I must say, that sounds rather nice.

*Of course, the fact that Mansfield is a Straussian raises all sorts of interpretative complications here. For instance, is Mansfield's neo-conservatism really just a pose for the general reading public? Is his work really a feminist polemic on the esoteric level? In defending manliness does he really mean to do manliness a disservice? Most reviewers of Mansfield's book have ignored these questions, but the very idea of someone like Harvey Mansfield writing a book defending manliness is so hilarious that it's hard not to think that there's some sort of convert agenda at work here. At the very least, it's worth noting that Mansfield does often acknowledge that there is a difference between "being manly" and "defending manliness", something which opens the door to all sorts of interpretative possibilities.