Gender Roles

God Bless C-SPAN. I've come across a couple of surprisingly coherent discussions of the male and female roles in our culture, and I give them my full endorsement as worthy of your time. Each is about an hour.

The first is a discussion with Leslie Bennetts on her book, The Feminine Mistake. She talks about the recent shift among women towards being homemakers instead of pursuing careers. Some really interesting questions from the audience at the end.

The second is an interview (audio only) with Harvey Mansfield on his book, Manliness. He is, for lack of a better term, an enlightened chauvenist. He fully recognizes that women are valuable in society, but he sees them contributing value through their traditional roles as supporters of their husbands. This is more of a side discussion, though, and I bring it up only to serve as a contrast with the first link. His main point is that there are some qualities that can be defined as distinctly "manly" and that men should strive to embrace them. Oh, and he's also interviewed by feminist author Naomi Wolf, who clearly takes umbrage at the notion that the qualities he lists aren't considered "womanly" as well. I've never heard two such well-spoken and educated people want to tear each others' eyes out quite so badly.

Finally, a summation of the male-female dichotomy by the sociologists of Good Charlotte. When you get right down to it, their analysis of the resource-driven behavior of both sexes is the most accurate description of the three: