You Want Me On That Wall [posted by Allah]

Harvey Mansfield on manly men and the women who enjoy washing the skidmarks out of their underwear.

"Men look down on women's work . . . not because they think it is dirty or boring or insignificant, which is often true of men's work; they look down on it because it is women's work."

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Ultimately, he concludes that it is OK for men and women to be treated similarly in the workplace; but in private life, "it should be recognized that men will be manly and sometimes a bit bossy . . . and that women will recognize manliness with a smile by checking it while giving it something to do or, on occasion, by urging it on."

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Though he thinks that his female students have become "more assertive than they used to be," he observes that "the very same women will be careful of the sensibilities of the men they wish to attract and not try to compete with them except in fun or ironically." "If not," his brow rises slightly, "I think they would have trouble getting married.

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"What you see today at Harvard and elsewhere are a lot of liberal males who are trying to make women happy by trying to treat them as if they weren't women." "And that," says the man who never misses the chance to open a door for a woman or help her put on her coat, "doesn't work very well." So why didn't he simply write a book on gentlemanliness? "Because before you're a gentleman, you have to be a man. Gentlemanliness is a refinement. It presupposes that you have a certain superiority over women, but teaches you how to exercise it. It also teaches you that women are superior in their ways."

Reached for comment, this dude nodded real slowly and deliberately.

I kid. Mansfield says the hallmark of a manly man is that he's "confident in risky situations," which, not coincidentally, happens to be the stock answer of every woman I've ever met when asked what quality they find most attractive in a man. In fact, I'm tempted to read his argument as a restatement of the alpha male/beta male paradigm, but I don't think it works: the alpha/beta distinction turns on status, not confidence, and while the latter is certainly a component of the former, that's all it is -- a component. Take a rich man who's insecure and a poor man who's self-assured and see which one attracts a higher quality of chicks. I know who my money's on. No pun intended.

I told Karol I'd write more about alphas and betas and how I think betas are human garbage, but it's too late to do it tonight. Stay tuned!