{"id":1218,"date":"2005-10-19T13:06:26","date_gmt":"2005-10-19T17:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2005\/10\/19\/harvey-mansfield-and-judith-butler-"},"modified":"2005-10-19T13:06:26","modified_gmt":"2005-10-19T17:06:26","slug":"harvey-mansfield-and-judith-butler-agree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2005\/10\/19\/harvey-mansfield-and-judith-butler-agree\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvey Mansfield and Judith Butler agree!"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

In my department here, our most conservative professor is Harvey C. Mansfield<\/a>.  Mansfield is something of a lightining rod for many of the people and groups on campus.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, he gave a talk to the “pro-life” group on campus (I only put
\nquotes around pro-life because that’s their self-preferred term, but
\nit’s arguable as to whether it’s the most value neutral term
\navailable–“anti-abortion” would be better, I think).  It’s covered in the campus rag<\/a>. 
\nMansfield discussed his latest political theory work on
\n“Manliness.”  (This seems to me a topic worth investigating, as it
\nseems a substantial background concept in so much of modern political
\ntheory, e.g., in Machiavelli’s works.  If you just dismiss
\nmanliness outright [and the study of gender considerations generally],
\nyou are likely to miss a lot of what these thinkers have to say. 
\nThat said, I don’t agree entirely with Mansfield’s conclusions. 
\nBut I am willing to engage them intellectually.)<\/p>\n

Members of the GLBT student group are predictably outraged.  Their
\nresponse is that they’d like to organize a lecture on “Womanliness” with a Mansfield look-alike in drag.<\/p>\n

I’ll skip over the fact that the point of such an action seems less to
\nengage on an intellectual level and more to vent anger and
\nhumiliate.  And they can’t win in that way, I think.<\/p>\n

More to the point, we have a report of the following:<\/p>\n

Multiple students challenged Mansfield’s opinions concerning
\ngender and family in respect to gay and transgender people. Mansfield
\nresponded that he thought gay and transgender people are on “society’s
\nmargin” and should remain there. <\/p>\n

“Substitutes for the traditional family are dysfunctional,” he said, “You wouldn’t want children to grow up in them.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(I, BTW, don’t agree with the conclusion about the
\ndysfunctionality of non-traditional families.  Traditional
\nfamilies enjoy no monopoly of functionality and no lack of dysfunction.)<\/p>\n

Contrast his statements to what Judith Butler<\/a> said in 2004, after the
\nlegalization of marriage in Massachusetts, in a 7 March NYT article about the
\nambivalence many queers felt about matrimony:<\/p>\n

Many gay men and lesbians — in fact most of the ones I know — are not
\njumping to jump the broom. They like their status as couples living
\nbetween the lines, free of all the societal expectations that marriage
\nbrings. But since they don’t want to feed politicians using gay
\nmarriage as an election issue, they are largely mum.<\/p>\n

”It’s very hard to speak freely right now,” said Judith Butler,<\/b>
\na gender theorist and professor at the University of California,
\nBerkeley. ”But many gay people are uncomfortable with all this,
\nbecause they feel their sense of an alternative movement is dying.
\nSexual politics was supposed to be about finding alternatives to
\nmarriage.”<\/p>\n

”I’ve been with the same
\nwoman for 13 years,” she continued, ”and she jokes if I ever tried to
\nmarry her she’d divorce me. I know many people who feel the same way.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think we can safely regard Butler and Mansfield on different sides
\nand even ends of a discussion about gender.  But both are
\nconcerned with keeping some sort of marginal status for sexual
\nminorities.<\/p>\n

Perhaps they could work on a book together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my department here, our most conservative professor is Harvey C. Mansfield.  Mansfield is something of a lightining rod for many of the people and groups on campus. Yesterday, he gave a talk to the “pro-life” group on campus (I only put quotes around pro-life because that’s their self-preferred term, but it’s arguable as to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-jE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}