n Wednesday, October 12th 2005, a debate was held in Dartmouth Hall on the issue of masculinity. It was entitled, “Is Manliness a Virtue in a Free Society?” Professor Peter Travis, the chair of the English department, and Professor Harvey Mansfield, of the Government department at Harvard, were the contestants. The debate was sponsored by a large number of conservative organizations on campus, in addition to the Dartmouth Free Press as one of the few, if not the only, obviously liberal organizations.

The central focus of the debate on “Manliness as Virtue” seemed completely lost every time Mansfield opened his mouth to speak. Travis pointed out that, according to Mansfield’s own definitions of virtue (which included such obviously unproblematic terms as ‘honor, justice, brevity’), “manliness isn’t a virtue; virtues are virtues.” That is, there was nothing implicit in the virtues that Mansfield was listing that suggested that these virtues were somehow the cultural property of men in society.

Travis veered away from the use of the word ‘manliness,’ instead choosing the more apt ‘masculinity,’ which he qualified by saying that masculinity separates itself potentially and necessarily from being attached to men. He made provocative and compelling indictments of how masculinity has been constructed in American society by pointing out such problems as the underachievement of boys in education, the emotional retardation of men, and the lack of strong non-violent images of masculine men in American media. He argued that manliness is not, in fact, a virtue, but a social means by which men are incarcerated in their roles as men. Travis presented his argument with a wealth of statistical information, backed up by strong psychoanalytic, literary, and cultural theories that rendered Mansfield’s repetitive reiterations of manly men as virtuous men like a little boy kicking and screaming with his toy guns.

Indeed, Mansfield’s first opportunity to respond to Travis’ statements began with a denigration of Travis’ own masculinity, simply because Travis had used the word ‘fuck’ in his speech (or some variation thereof). Mansfield chose this defamatory tactic rather than a critical analysis and rebuttal of Travis’ points. Mansfield then implored the audience to join the military to fight the War in Iraq to prove ourselves as virtuous men. Firstly, this was an obnoxious statement, considering that a good number of us in the audience were not men. It is a peculiar crime of those in power to assume that their audience is like them (ex: White people talking in classrooms as if everyone is White, male authors writing about the human subject as male, etc.). Secondly, it was presumptuous of Mansfield to assume that men become men when they enlist in the military to fight in a dubious war.

The debate (quite predictably) veered into party political territory, with both men debating the virtues of the Democratic and Republican parties based on how they were each stereotypically male. Travis quite cleverly avoided a defence tactic, and instead indicted Mansfield’s values of manliness by using Mansfield’s own military rhetoric against him. Travis asserted that 38 of the 40 most prominent Republicans now in power in Washington did not serve overseas, whereas 38 out of 40 of the most significant Democrats presently in Washington did serve in the military overseas. The implication here is, of course, that manliness as a virtue is in fact a socio-psychological means by which Republican’s macho fantasies of military prowess can be superimposed upon the male citizens of this country, resulting in the deaths of primarily poor and/or colored young American men. What Uncle Sam is really asking is: Do YOU have a big penis?

Unsurprisingly, the question and answer section of the debate consisted mostly of antagonistic questions by White conservative men directed at Travis. This included a particularly humorous question on why strong Dartmouth women (presumably White women, or at least Anglicized women) would want strong “manly” men, (also presumably White, or at least really rich and loud) if indeed feminism is so great and masculinity, as it is currently constructed, is so bad. Without attempting to paraphrase Travis’ response, I will merely interject with my own assertion that women are as much implicated in upholding patriarchy— the system that materially disadvantages women as much as it spiritually damages men in the process—as men are.

Finally, I was frustrated throughout the whole debate by how the conversation was obviously about white American masculinity. The conservative and reactionary defence of masculinity was implicitly racist and classist; this was first shown through the complete ignorance on Mansfield’s part (and his masses of uncritical conservative fans) of cross-cultural definitions of masculinity and how they differed vastly from his own conceptions of White Anglo-Saxon American virtue. Secondly, this is apparent from the irritating valorization of the military as a masculine institution, when indeed it is one of the very few ways by which poor men in America are able to get a college education under an administration that is increasingly cutting off funds from public education to fuel the military machine.

If men become manly, virtuous men by dying for unscrupulous non-virtuous men (the very people who sponsored this debate and who are feeding off the oil produced by their charred carcasses), then Travis was right. Manliness is not a virtue. Virtues are virtues. A lesson learnt? Not until hordes of rich White conservatives flock off to enlist in the military and watch their children be killed to prove the virtuosity of their manly rhetoric.

In the meantime, I’m Asian and I love tofu.