I saw over at PZ’s that it is “What about the menz?” Day. [pha]
What is particularly sad is that the US is far from the worst example of patriarchy. I’ve spent time in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. Over at Siggy’s [knot] he opposes virtuous masculinity, harmless masculinity, and toxic masculinity. It’s an interesting thought, but I finally had to jump into the fray because I don’t think virtue and masculinity are at all related. There is a philosophical spike-strip that we need to avoid, regarding the question of whether “virtue” is inherently masculine (per the Romans, who invented the word and would have translated it as “manliness”) and then we need to argue about how to measure the qualities of goodness in a post-Nietzschean age. We can easily bog ourselves down in the philosophic steppe-lands of Asia with the question “what is good?” and I would rather not go there, anymore. But since the word “virtue” has been played from the deck, I think we can use it with the tacit understanding that we don’t really know what virtues are, pace Philippa Foot. Perhaps some of you remember when Richard Carrier was a thing, and went on his big rampage about that objective morals were a possibility and it all came from virtue ethics, which was Foot’s thing. The idea is that virtues are the good behaviors we can recognize in others, and can therefore speak objectively about a person’s virtues because, uh, any fool can see that they are virtuous. I wasted several days on Foot’s beautifully written book, until I got to the part where she wrote something to the effect of “of course this does not answer the Nietzschean nihilist challenge, but those guys are poopoo heads.”
As one of those poopoo heads, I remain unconvinced by Foot’s argument, and never felt I was able to get through to Carrier’s Manly Shield of Obtuseness +4, beyond that it is an objective fact that people have opinions about virtues, but that does not make the virtues objective facts; it just makes the whole problem worse. If anyone cares to straighten me out on this point, I’m game but I warn you that my responses are essentially pyrhhonian not Nietzschean. [Remember, Nietzsche was all about actualizing one’s belief as meaningful because one believes it and all that glorious sturm gerschutz]
Siggy really hits the crux right on the spot here:
If masculinity is conceived as a set of virtues, where does that leave someone like me, who prefers to reject masculinity? If I reject masculinity, would I therefore be a villain?
My answer to that is simple, that the conjunction of masculinity as a virtue or a collection of virtues, is a category error. One can be virtuous (whatever that is) without being masculine or anything else. But when I unpack the American ideas of virtues, it becomes a disgusting collection of really nasty, slimy, stuff. The first examples I can think of, of American manly virtues, is violent revenge. Generally pointless violent revenge. I nearly threw up in my mouth (because too much vodka in my lemonade) thinking about this, because far too often in American culture a man’s honorable tendency to keep his word is when his word is “I am going to kill you.” I grew up in the era of Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood movies, in which a tough guy metes out phenomenally over-the-top vengeance for real or imagined slights. Mentally reviewing the canon of Dirty Harry movies we realize quickly that Callahan’s entire raison d’etre is to hinge tremendous violence on any really flimsy excuse. For example, the whole reason Callahan is a “hero” is because his way of dealing with a store robbery is to make a minimal attempt to talk the ‘bad guys’ into surrendering, then shooting them with a massively overpowered tool of violence. Bruce Lee in Enter The Dragon is a massively overpowered tool of violence, and Charles Bronson summons a demon of violence on demand. All these characters have the virtue of consistency and ethical behavior, so long as their ethics have absolutely nothing to do with making the world a better place. In fact, the carbon footprint of a corpse is higher than that of a living human being (so long as they are living a ‘green’ lifestyle), so killing is objectively bad for the environment. We see these media tropes often, and wonder why Bernie Goetz thinks the appropriate response to someone asking for money is to paralyze them with a bullet. We watch The Wild Bunch and think that when we’re up against the wall, the poetic response is a great big sloppy gun battle. How many mass shooters are re-enacting that final scene in their minds?
Or Cross of Iron. Or, or, or. Actually let me say a thing about Cross of Iron: that was a potentially brilliant and thoughtful film about the German military experience on the Russian front, but Peckinpah had to turn it into a movie about utterly pointless, nihilistic revenge. The final scene, in which Steiner metaphorically emasculates Stransky, while laughing, is, um, the end of a American movie.
From Cross of Iron
The horror of the situation, to me, is that American media images of toxic masculinity are so pervasive worldwide that we have to fight against them, before we can even have a conversation about masculinity and what it is. We have so thoroughly muddied the field that we can’t find the flowers under our feet because it’s all been mashed to ick. I think there is nothing wrong with masculinity (whatever that is!) so long as it is not forced to carry all this horrible baggage.
Naturally, I am thinking of many other cultures, which did not have our problem until we (and the British) exported it to them. We cannot walk past the truly massive numbers that the British killed in real-world revenge: ask a Zulu how many they lost because of “Winning” at Isandlwana and, as Ceteswayo said, “all of them.” The British were appallingly effective at punitively massacring ‘backwards’ people for having the temerity to kill a redcoat or two. Or, sadistically massacring people by lashing them across the barrel of a cannon for the crime of having killed a British woman. We wonder where everyone gets this stuff; we wonder where Bollywood and Hollywood get it. In my childhood I spent a lot of time studying feudal Japanese culture, which was beautiful and fascinating and not about revenge-killing as a manly virtue. The Japanese had a concept called “the pen and the sword in accord” which specifically pointed toward the idea that someone who was just a good killer had something wrong with them; you had to be a decent poet, or painter, or philosopher, or flower arranger and those were as important as one’s skills with a sword. (Even Miyamoto Musashi was a fair painter) There are subthemes in the Japanese martial legends which promote the flute-player who died in battle as being a greater loss than the musketeer that ended his final performance. (Kagemusha) One of the most interesting pieces of film regarding concepts of revenge and manliness has to be Kobayashi’s epic Harakiri in which the great Tatsuya Nakadai conveys a sophisticated and thoughtful samurai who is trying to explore the essence of virtue, at the expense of some assholes. But at least the bad guys aren’t just pop-up characters; they are individuals with inner lives. Well, until the hero kills them.
My claim, then, is that virtue and masculinity cannot be connected. I might expansively argue that if we connect them, we do so only in order to disparage masculinity. As Siggy says “If I reject masculinity, would I therefore be a villain?” No, you can operate in parallel or at right angles to masculinity, and be either a villain or a hero. Or, you can make a futile last stand like The Wild Bunch. To wit:
I love his expression in the thumbnail. He knows he is not going to succeed. But the entire planet is at stake so he’s going to try as hard as he can. I submit to you that this is a quintessential example of virtue (whatever that is) He knew that he was speaking to a selected group of America’s worst, but his truth did not change in the slightest. Nor, was he dismissive or discourteous. He taught the facts as they were understood and said his bit as clearly as he could. One cannot compare Joe Rogan’s “dumb jock” performance with Sagan’s and conclude that Rogan is the better man. It is simply impossible, unless the contest is “hitting people in the head” (and I suspect Rogan is actually not as good at that as he tries to make out).
My original idea was to write a lengthy essay about Sagan’s greatness, in this Earth’s moment of need, but I decided to see how ChatGPT would do. So, I present my AI partner’s version, of which I 100% approve. Some of my commentary follows, but ChatGPT swept the field so far as I am concerned:
Carl Sagan: A Manly Virtue in the Face of Crisis
Carl Sagan’s 1985 testimony before Congress on climate change stands as a powerful example of manly virtues expressed through intellect, courage, and moral responsibility. Though the term “manly virtues” may conjure images of physical strength or martial valor, Sagan redefined it in a way that is perhaps even more enduring: through his commitment to truth, his willingness to face difficult realities, and his devotion to the greater good.
The Courage to Speak Truth to Power
Sagan addressed Congress during a time when the science of climate change was still emerging and its implications were not yet widely accepted. It takes courage to present hard truths, especially to those who may not want to hear them. Sagan, with his characteristic poise, articulated the dangers of unchecked carbon emissions and the potential for a “runaway greenhouse effect” with clarity and conviction. In doing so, he demonstrated a deep-seated bravery—not of physical confrontation, but of intellectual integrity.
A Commitment to Knowledge and Reason
Sagan’s testimony wasn’t emotional grandstanding; it was a masterclass in reasoned argument. He distilled complex scientific principles into accessible language, making the stakes of climate change understandable to all. His ability to bridge the gap between science and policy showed the virtue of mastery—the kind that comes from years of disciplined study and a profound respect for truth.
Responsibility and Stewardship
At the heart of Sagan’s plea was a profound sense of moral responsibility. He wasn’t merely a scientist; he was a steward of humanity’s future, urging decision-makers to act not out of short-term interest but for the sake of generations to come. This sense of duty—to protect the planet and its inhabitants—revealed a deeply compassionate and selfless character, hallmarks of true masculinity.
The Legacy of Leadership
Carl Sagan’s testimony is a reminder that strength is not always about wielding power but about using one’s voice and knowledge to inspire action. His willingness to engage in this fight for the future, knowing the challenges he would face, embodies a quiet but profound heroism.
In an era that often equates masculinity with dominance or aggression, Sagan showed that true manliness lies in courage, intellect, and the unwavering commitment to protect and uplift others. Through his testimony, he sought not personal gain but the survival and flourishing of life on Earth—a vision as bold and as noble as the cosmos he loved to explore.
What ChatGPT did there is wrote about Sagan’s virtues in context. That is, I believe, the only sensible way to do it because otherwise you’re writing a blank check for the nihilist. Someone who never lies could be Harry Callahan, or Carl Sagan, equally. We have to say instead that Sagan neither embellished nor downplayed any single part of his presentation. As ChatGPT points out “His ability to bridge the gap between science and policy showed the virtue of mastery—the kind that comes from years of disciplined study and a profound respect for truth” – another way of saying that is that Sagan so clearly conveyed his point that his knowledge of it seemed unassailable because it was. In toxic masculinity terms, “if you argued with Sagan you’d pull back a stump.”
ChatGPT gets the last word:
In an era that often equates masculinity with dominance or aggression, Sagan showed that true manliness lies in courage, intellect, and the unwavering commitment to protect and uplift others. Through his testimony, he sought not personal gain but the survival and flourishing of life on Earth—a vision as bold and as noble as the cosmos he loved to explore.
This is the prompt I gave ChatGPT:
Would you please write me a brief blog posting about the manly virtues exhibited by carl sagan when he gave congressional testimony about climate change, and tried to save the world
yeah, I never quite had a good understanding of what “masculinity” or “manliness” is, only what people said it wasn’t.
It’s often struck me as this sorta nebulous quality that is more used as a means to belittle others for not being “enough” rather than an actual definable goal/ideal/rolemodel/whatever.
Maybe it’s just that there has been too much “toxic masculinity” but I can’t help but feel a lot of the current ideas about “masculinity” seem to be about the ability to project power and subjugate others, (a man doesn’t take orders, he gives them, etc., etc.)
I know he’s not very popular around this blog network, but I can’t help but be reminded of a section in Chis Hedges’ “Empire of Illusion” book, where he had a pretty ranty bit about how you (the reader) are not an action hero, bad stuff may happen to you, and you probably won’t be able to do much about it.
If virtues were objective facts, peoples opinions about them wouldn’t vary so much. It’s only possible to handwave about the universality of abstractions like “honesty”, “integrity”, and “courage” as long as you avoid getting down into the nitty-gritty of what those actually mean in practice in specific cultural contexts.
When is Achilles more manly – when he’s weeping over the corpse of his friend, or when he’s desecrating the corpse of his enemy? Modern America would probably say the latter, but I suspect the ancient Greeks might not have agreed…
Frankly, I find asking myself ‘What would Captain Kirk do?’ sufficient for most situations.
At the risk of going of at a tangent, your ChatGBT missive on Carl Sagan triggered a thought that it might equally well apply to Jacob Bronowski. I admit I know very little about either man, limited to their presentations of “Cosmos” and “The Ascent of Man” respectively, and having, still, Bronowski’s book of the series in the Most Often Re-Read shelf upstairs. Some digging raised the fact that both series were produced by Adrian Malone. A surprise, perhaps, or perhaps not. Both Bronowski and Sagan, however, were a deep influence on my teen-tween years, and my core believe in the Golden Rule. I wonder, in this age, where we find similar role models for the next generation.
Compliance to a given set of virtues can be objectively measured; but this does not imply that the giving is objective.
Personally, I think that morals and virtues have a strong component in shared evolutionary history, so that even if all of us can agree that something is virtuous, that does not make it objective. First of all, the set of us is at issue, and has changed severely over the course of history. It used to be that only land-owning while males were considered us.
Is it virtuous and manly to offer your body for your spouse to eat after copulation, in order to nourish the resulting progeny? Primates universally proclaim No!!, but spiders probably have long philosophical questions on this point. I call this the argument from more people should read science fiction.
And then you do the opposite?
Just to advocate some deviltry:
The flip side of Hollywood “masculinity” entails endurance, the toughness to keep going despite pain, injury, etc – something I gave a lot of thought to some years back while driving 100 miles with a freshly broken clavicle. “Positive machismo” I decided to call it at the time (would’ve made a really boring movie, though).
This overlaps somewhat with the notion of “courage”, which some of the Greek philosophers considered the greatest of virtues, and some the least. Contemplating the behavior of certain US politicians lately – we know they know better! – I tend to swing toward the former position: whatever latent goodness someone may have means nothing if they don’t act on it.
The irony here is that women mostly have the most of both endurance (e.g., childbirth) and courage (imagine dating only those strong enough to beat you up, and with proven group proclivities to do so).
Telling me you’ve never watched Star Trek without actually saying you’ve never watched Star Trek.
@3, 8
The thing about the Kobayashi Maru
(As a trans woman) i personally feel that masculinity is often defined in similar ways to whiteness. And you can’t really get a positive definition until you get away from the role masculinity plays in patriarchy
Just a lil’ remark about your mention of Eastwood and Bronson movies… watching Sergio Leone’s westerns, one will quickly see that all the main characters therein depicted are a bunch of galaxy-level bastards, no exception.
The scenario is: there are no saints, only devils in that land. As you rightly say, taking those roles as a depiction of laudable masculinity is (1) horrid and (2) totally missing the point.
It’s also pretty impressive how they managed to tell such good, edge-of-the-seat stories by only showing interactions between villains… brrrr. And yet, yay.
(The Dirty Harrys and Bronson revenge movies on the other hand I just found and find disgusting).
Dunc@#2:
If virtues were objective facts, peoples opinions about them wouldn’t vary so much. It’s only possible to handwave about the universality of abstractions like “honesty”, “integrity”, and “courage” as long as you avoid getting down into the nitty-gritty of what those actually mean in practice in specific cultural contexts.
That’s Sextus Empiricus’ “mode of disputation”, which I completely agree with in this case. There is often an appeal to manifest or intuitively obvious abstractions which don’t turn out to be abstractions at all. While it’s easy to say that “a sense of justice is a virtue” how then can we have any honest disagreement about abortion? For just one example. (Left as an exercise to explain why a sense of justice might have something to do with whether one is pro- or contra- abortion). We can point and say “obviously a sense of justice is a virtue and it is objectively true that people have a sense of justice” and not dig into the question of whether or not it is shared.
It has always seemed odd to me that consequentialists reject the idea that virtues are objective facts, then turn right around and argue that a “moral calculus” can be performed to achieve a decision by aggregating our beliefs regarding a certain thing, and thus we can achieve decisions based on our summation of the consequences of the decision. Let’s just blow by the fact that the items that are summarized in our moral calculus may also be in dispute. Hey, if Dunc says “murder is bad” and Marcus says “murder is bad” then we can total that up – so long as we never ask whether either party considers abortion to be “murder” To me it seems like an obvious scam – Mill and Bentham were experienced enough thinkers not to skip over that point in an excess of enthusiasm.
dangerousbeans@#10:
(As a trans woman) i personally feel that masculinity is often defined in similar ways to whiteness. And you can’t really get a positive definition until you get away from the role masculinity plays in patriarchy
That seems depressingly impossible, to me. At first blush.
On further thought, I think I’d have to say something to the effect that societal definitions of masculinity, in a patriarchal society, do not entirely determine individual opinions and that, individually, we can step outside of them and establish our own. For example, my definition of masculinity has a great big helping of the toxic stuff (since I grew up in the 70s, and the 80s media landscape) but there are places and ways in which I reject it and have my own values. I think it’s always dangerous to point to anything from bushido in a discussion about toxic masculinity, since it seemed to be a great fountain of it, but they at least have some ideas that certain things should only be done in a positive way. The life-giving sword/death-bringing sword comes to mind, but really I am thinking of the notable fact that the Seven Samurai are defending the desperate villagers and their strategy is defensive and not vengeful. At any point in the battle, the ronin could have chosen to go away, but they chose to continue to press their attack.
My mind is running down too many tracks to follow, right now. One of them is that if someone wants to write a blog posting about toxic masculinity in Star Wars I’d love to read it. Or Star Trek for that matter. But I was trying to think of the biggest wads of toxic masculinity that I’ve encountered in 70s culture and those would have to be 1) fake martial artists (Frank Dux, Count Dante) 2) Mack Bolan 3) John Norman’s Gor books. It’s a little scary to say, but those actually try to present as philosophies of life of a sort, which I don’t think the Dirty Harry movies do. Beyond the surface similarities, what about Seven Samurai compared to The Wild Bunch? Kobayashi’s nihilism in Sword of Doom is deliberately to illustrate the danger of staring into the abyss, compared to the same director’s Harakiri which is clearly the sword that is attempting to bring justice, failing.
outis@#11:
Just a lil’ remark about your mention of Eastwood and Bronson movies… watching Sergio Leone’s westerns, one will quickly see that all the main characters therein depicted are a bunch of galaxy-level bastards, no exception.
My dad and I would often go see the movies at the senior class film series over at the university. It was $1 to get in and they often had really interesting foreign films, etc. One night we went to the junior class film series instead of the senior, and wound up watching Magnum Force. I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t appreciate the tiny bits of gratuitous nudity but I was trying to find a point – any point – in the movie, at all. So, there are bad guys and Harry Callahan’s way of dealing with them is to be identical to a bad guy, just better at it. Uh, OK. Is that it?
It’s also pretty impressive how they managed to tell such good, edge-of-the-seat stories by only showing interactions between villains… brrrr. And yet, yay.
Yeah, like The Bad, The Bad, and The Badder oh, excuse me, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly wait is there actually a hero in this? Why is film being exposed so wastefully, when there is A Clockwork Orange or Seven Samurai or something that carries some kind of point?
I know I keep coming back to Seven Samurai because, well, it’s probably my favorite movie that isn’t Doctor Strangelove sure, there’s violence but Kurosawa is careful to show that that good guys are good guys because they regret it and they’d be just as happy chopping wood (Heihachi) or practicing swordsmanship (Kyuzo) – when they are in a situation where violence is clearly the solution (the bandit who captures the child early in the movie) they’ll do it, and do it well, because that’s what they do, but they don’t dance around about it.
Even in high school, I thought that the characters Clint Eastwood plays are, literally, insane. He doesn’t even seem to get any enjoyment out of anything, not even killing people, although he manages the occasional wry quip about that. What civilian would want to be rescued by Harry Callahan? He generally doesn’t kill civilians but I always felt it’s obvious that’s just a marker of his skill and not that he cares in the slightest. It says something to me about how profoundly sick American popular culture is that Eastwood had a long and successful career portraying flat affect psychopaths, and that it sparked an entire generation of copycat cinematography (Everything with Arnold Schwartznegger, Charles Bronson, Bruce Willis, etc.) I also found it interesting that Quentin Tarantino became popular and famous for adding emotional/psychological back-stories behind such characters, and that his answer to why they are the way they are is apparently that they’re horrible human beings.
Pierce R. Butler@#7:
The flip side of Hollywood “masculinity” entails endurance, the toughness to keep going despite pain, injury, etc
Yes, except there’s that whole aspect where so often that is part of the revenge plot. You know, the scenes where Clint Eastwood’s character gets beaten and busted up and re-learns how to shoot, or practices kung fu, or whatever, and comes back and kicks everyone’s ass. Of course, that is lifted from Yojimbo it is not inherently an Eastwood/Hollywood trope.
I am being oblique. So: I agree 100% that endurance is a virtue in dogs, humans, battleships, women, etc. In fact, I might say it is the virtue of being able to take a beating and hang in without flipping full psycho like Harry Callahan, and just becoming an empty-eyed killing machine. Again, Yojimbo. That’s a trope that is very thoroughly explored by Shintaro Katsu in the Zatoichi shows where he is always getting clobbered and chopped.
This overlaps somewhat with the notion of “courage”, which some of the Greek philosophers considered the greatest of virtues, and some the least.
I always appreciated Plato’s observation that courage is not being devoid or unaffected by fear – it is understanding how scary the situation is, and choosing to proceed anyway. That ties in with some of the other virtues mentioned here – like knowing you are a better swordsman and trying to talk someone out of fighting with you (Kyuzo in Seven Samurai “it would be pointless”)
The irony here is that women mostly have the most of both endurance (e.g., childbirth) and courage (imagine dating only those strong enough to beat you up, and with proven group proclivities to do so).
Yup. That’s why bros are so anti-feminist – they have seen how the spiders and mantises deal with it.