Realmannspracht Ain’t So Bad

This post by Anakin over at Biblical Manhood got me to thinking (while on the road last week with no radio, no AC in my truck, and lots of time to kill) about what it means to be a “real man” and complementarily, a “real woman”. Anakin correctly notes that

“real man” talk has been used by people to shame men into compliance with social norms.

However, I differ with my friend Anakin’s conclusion that such pressuring behavior is inappropriate and/or illegitimate. Anakin may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater by completely dismissing the utility of shaming/conforming language in helping a man stay on the correct path. For true masculinity, as created by God, harnesses in a constructive manner the generative power given by Yahweh to the male sex alone. The male sex is the one given the power, the strength, the drive, and the daring to create and explore and conquer and to build. But this same power may be used for evil as well as good, and the society that directs this generative energy in a productive direction is one that prospers, while societies that fail to do so fail to thrive. This is why norming/shaming language is useful in that it sets the boundaries for appropriate and constructive behavior from men. It is not the language that is the problem, but it may be the utterer, if that utterer is using realmannspracht as a put-down or appealing to an illegitimate standard.

Men often bristle when it is women, particularly feminists, who use realmannspracht. And for good reason, too: those who covet boorish frat-boy behavior for themselves are patently unable to legitimately critique what it means to be a full-fledged man. This is because they are attempting to take something which isn’t theirs and aren’t eligible for, possess it, and then pervert it into a abomination to serve to their own ends.

Yet that is not to say that one must be a masculist, or even male, to render a thoughtful critique on appropriate masculine behavior. Indeed, there are some women, even self-described feminists, who are able to legitimately offer a substantive evaluation of what a fully masculine male does and is. All depends on their qualifications and their motivations for offering a critique. Do they offer it constructively, with an eye toward promoting the greater good? Or do they criticize with intent to destroy or delegitimize, so as to set up a pretext to assimilate masculine behaviors into feminine or neutral spaces?

I quote an example of thoughtfully offered commentary on masculinity below, for it complements quite nicely precisely what Anakin had to say regarding realmannspracht:

“A woman simply is, but a man must become. Masculinity is risky and elusive. It is achieved by a revolt from woman, and it is confirmed only by other men. Manhood coerced into sensitivity is no manhood at all.”

For those who don’t immediately recognize the source of the quote, it is from one Camille Paglia, a feminist and a self-professed lesbian. While Paglia’s quote isn’t realmannspracht per se, offered as it was in a spirit of constructive description, it does serve as an auxiliary to realmannspracht in that it miscasts where masculinity comes from and how it is achieved.

For starters, Paglia’s quote above does get it partly right in that, yes, masculinity must be risky. It must weigh and accept risk when appropriate. To stifle a man’s risk-taking nature, this tendency to take calculated risks when the benefits appear to outweigh the costs, the imperative for men to stand on principles when the pragmatic path is so much more attractive, is to squelch part of what it means to be a man.

But Paglia errs in claiming that masculinity may only be conferred by other men. This is where Anakin correctly skewers the notion that manhood is awarded by the brotherhood to a prospective man. As Anakin said in his above-linked post, the only standard that matters is that of God’s, and worldly attempts to twist these standards into something different from what God intended, or to attempt to make Man’s standards supersede that of God’s, are completely improper. Even if it is other men who are doing it.

I think Paglia also errs in stating that masculinity may only be achieved by revolting from the feminine. Perhaps in using this metaphor she is referring to boys separating from their mothers and gravitating toward their fathers; if this is the case, the metaphor is imperfect. For boys, in real life and in intact families, do not separate from their mothers and gravitate toward their fathers. This separation from mother only occurs in stunted female-only families. Instead, in a properly formed nuclear family, boys cleave from both their parents to become his own man, a separate being that, while still under the tutelage of his father and/or the brotherhood of men, is not psychologically dependent upon them. In any case, by stating that boys separate from women implies that the feminine is humanity’s “base case”, Paglia’s quote teaches that the female is normal, the standard, and the male is abnormal. In essence, Paglia provides psychological cover to inappropriate feminine realmannspracht, as the notion that the masculine comes from or, if you will, out of, the feminine, nominates women as the arbiter of masculine behavior.

Which brings me next to Paglia’s claim that a woman simply “is”. For certain there was a short time in our recent history where this was true. During this time, a woman need do nothing except consume oxygen, breed, be chaste, do as she was told, and behave decorously. She was a “lady”, surrounded by “gentlemen” in a patriarchal framework that served to insulate society from both roguish nature of unrestrained male and female sexuality. But this time does not exist any longer, as that social infrastructure that protected women and society from the fallen nature of humanity–patriarchy–has been torn down. In particular, standards of ladylike behavior were quickly discarded, with no follow-up conception of feminine behavior created in its place, leaving woman without a point of reference to define socially constructive behavior.

So Paglia is largely correct in her assertion that women “are”. Today, women simply “be”, with no training in how to be a “woman”, let alone a “lady”, with no lanes in the road to steer them in the direction of socially productive behavior. In the absence of patriarchy, this “being” is a recipe for disaster. We need only to look around us to seize upon the folly of fully half of our society simply existing: a sex that is literally out of control, resulting in rising rates of illegitimacy, divorce, shacking up, crime, squalor, poverty, and illiteracy, and lowering rates of productivity and sub-replacement fertility. In other words, our civilization is devolving right before our very eyes.

So what to do? Well, I think the early feminists were correct in that the model of femininity in the 1800s and early 1900s was incomplete and were right to rebel against it. Women were limited in the “ladylike” role of the Victorian era, improperly so in my opinion, and although the early feminists didn’t come out and say it in so many words, it was and is insufficient for women to simply “be”. They must become as well, the same as men must become. Thus we would do well to re-institute a vision, a model for womanhood that includes a parallel matriculation process for girls that ends with an induction into the sorority of women, just as boys matriculate into the brotherhood of men.

In some ways, this induction into the ranks of full-fledged women happens already, via the socially unconstructive rite of unwed teen motherhood. This phenomenon may be viewed as girls vaulting themselves into the ranks of full-fledged femininity, much in the same way that boys join gangs in a misguided bid to gain acceptance into the brotherhood of the masculine. Needless to say, neither is appropriate, and neither is useful for propagating or sustaining a society.

At the risk of being accused of realfrauspracht, I submit the following traits for consideration of socially constructive behaviors for modern women, in no particular order:

* Integrity
* Chaste until marriage, faithful within marriage
* Industrious / hard working
* Disciplined
* Charitable
* Accountable / responsible
* Self-controlled
* Modest in dress and behavior
* Selfless

Looking back at this list, these qualities strike me as the same as those that would be ideal for men to exhibit. Perhaps this is no mistake, in that it is folly to have one sex act in a manner congruent with civilization while the other gives itself over to promiscuous dissipation and indulgent selfishness.

Thus, I propose that todays women grab a hold of today’s girls, train them to value integrity above all else, to be good wives to one man, to be good mothers if they are called to be so, and to be productive citizens both in the workplace and in society as a whole.

Tagged as: men, women