‘Every Inch a King’: Some Books About Manhood
In the first pages of “Manliness,” for instance, Harvard University professor Harvey Mansfield recounts this incident:
‘Recently I had a call from the alumnus magazine at the university where I work, asking me to comment on a former professor of mine now being honored. Responding too quickly, I said: ‘What impressed all of us about him was his manliness.’ There was silence at the other end of the line, and finally the female voice said: ‘Could you think of another word?”
“Manliness” was published in 2006. Since then, our attempt to become a gender-neutral society, to erase the boundaries between male and female, has gone from a jog to a sprint. Many in our society find manhood and manliness antiquated and therefore irrelevant; others mock those concepts; still others claim they’re offensive.