The History of Emotions: Foundations

Every now and again I run into a wall. Great and sustained bursts of writing resolve themselves into deep depressions of inactivity. The marathon runner in me knows the importance of rest and recovery after a hard slog, but that knowledge makes the days of low productivity no less easy to deal with. It’s always a bit of a mystery to me how the spark gets to be reignited. I think one has to look for inspiration, not wait for it to come.

At the moment I’m trying to come up with a rigorous justification of, and outline for, the history of emotions. At the same time I am documenting the modern origins of the notion that emotions are historical. It seems, of late, that every time I think that emotional historicism is gaining some traction among emotions scholars, someone comes along and hits me over the head with the most rank essentialism. I am mining rich seams of historical evidence for emotional change over time; others simply point to their endocrine systems, spilling their guts about biological determinism. The experience is dispiriting.

It is, therefore, somewhat joyous to find an historical source to break me out of a funk. George Henry Lewes – life partner of George Eliot, critic, private experimentalist, radical, polymath – foreshadowed the debates that preoccupy emotions scholars as long ago as 1879. He saw the essentialising tendencies in psychology and physiology; he understood the links between emotions and morality. He was, perhaps better than most of his contemporaries, well versed in evolutionism and sensibly critical of it, though he recognised that humans were humans wherever and however one found them. Is not the passage below an elegant and still relevant statement of both the historicity of emotions and a compelling justification for studying the history of emotions? 

Because Psychology is interpreted through Sociology, and Experience acquires its development mainly through social influences, we must always take History into account. It shares with Society the distinctive character of progress. It is for ever germinating, for ever evolving. The physiologist recognises the same organs and functions in the savage and the civilized, in Greek, Hindoo, old German, or modern European; but not the same thoughts and sentiments. The brain of a cultivated Englishman of our day, compared with the brain of a Greek of the age of Pericles, would not present any appreciable differences, yet the differences between the moral and intellectual activities of the two would be many and vast. These are not to be assigned to the organism and its functions. The co-ordination of sensory processes in the brain of the Greek was doubtless as perfect as that in the brain of the Englishman; but the quality of the moral feelings and the range of conceptions, so far as we could test them objectively, would be very different…. Thus, while the laws of the sentient functions must be studied in Physiology, the laws of the sentient faculties, especially the moral and intellectual faculties, must be studied in History. The true logic of Science is only made apparent in the history of Science.

George Henry Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind, 

3^rd series, 1 (London: Trübner & Co., 1879) 

Bestiality in a Time of Smallpox

The news is rife with fear. Influenza is abroad. Worse still, measles is said to be making a big comeback. But disease is not the only problem. The flames of fear are being fanned by the opponents of vaccination. Measles, for example, is entirely preventable, but remains among us because of concerns that the vaccine prophylactic is worse than the disease. The thoroughly debunked notion that the MMR vaccine causes autism is still at large, and with it a cluster of nebulous fears of Big Pharma conspiracies and the risks of contaminating children with manufactured diseases. Yet such fears are not new. The fear of vaccination is as old as vaccination itself. Edward Jenner’s method for preventing smallpox summoned the spectre of sinful flesh. Vaccination was akin to bestiality; the vaccine itself was a beastly sexual disease.

The original ‘vaccine’, named after the cow from which it came, was a massive step forward in smallpox prevention. Until then, children were commonly inoculated with smallpox itself, which usually resulted in a light dose of the disease. Inoculation, however, killed many who underwent it, and left the rest fully contagious. Nevertheless, when Jenner’s Inquiry into the matter finally appeared in 1798, explaining how an animal disease would prevent a human one without resorting to dangerous inoculation, it attracted as much odium as it garnered support.

Wellcome Library, London

James Gillray’s popular 1802 print of the bestial effects of cowpox  strikes the modern viewer as ridiculous: cows emerging from heads, trunks and limbs. Jenner stands centrally, penetrating the arm of a terrified patient with ‘vaccine pock, hot from ye cow’. The patient has previously been ‘opened’ by a special brew. To the right, those already vaccinated undergo a series of horrors caused by contamination with animal disease. The image is shot through with innuendo about sexual transgression (communing with the beast) and venereal disease (syphilis).The pregnant hag on the extreme right seems at once to vomit and give birth to bovine progeny, while behind her another matron sprouts the satyr-like horns of the beast. The breeches of a bumpkin are breached. The faces of others are marked by monstrous eruptions of ‘the pox’.

The image reflects the intensity of the debates and fears around vaccination. Gillray’s caption directs us to the publications of the ‘Anti-Vaccine Society’: not a formal body, but a reference to Jenner’s principal opponents. The prominent physician Benjamin Moseley was the culprit in chief, responding to the ‘Cowmania’ in 1800 with a series of concerns. While Jenner had styled cowpox Variolae Vaccinae, smallpox of the cow, Moseley called it Lues Bovilla, bovine syphilis, with all the long-term mental and nervous consequences of the human ‘pox’. He asked:

Can any person say what may be the consequence of introducing the Lues Bovilla, a bestial humour – into the human frame, after a long lapse of years? Who knows, besides, what ideas may rise in the course of time, from a brutal fever having excited its incongruous impressions on the brain? Who knows, also, but that the human character may undergo strange mutations from quadrupedan sympathy and that some modern Pasiphaë may rival the fables of old?

His classical reference might pass us by, but the invocation of bestiality would have been obvious to the educated in 1800. Pasiphaë, cursed by Poseidon, had copulated with a bull. Having built a wooden cow and covered it with cowhide, she had hidden inside it in order to receive her desired mate. She later gave birth to the Minotaur. Moseley played not only on the taint of venereal disease, but also on the fragility and sanctity of the human, warning of a hybrid and brutal progeny. Vaccination was not only dangerous, it was immoral.

Wellcome Library, London

The search was on for proof of the bestial consequences of being inseminated with animal disease. In 1805 Dr Rowley, who derived his living from the impugned technique of inoculating with smallpox, claimed to have found it and to have showed it to Moseley. Moseley marked the animalistic transformation and Rowley published exaggerated portraits of Gillray-esque figures, supposedly drawn from life. The ‘Oxfaced boy’ was presented as tangible proof of the brutal result of bestial infection. Beware the ‘modern chimera’, went the cry.

Vaccination did not properly shake the fear of bestial venereal disease until the end of the nineteenth century, with some still adamantly claiming an identity between cowpox and syphilis. From 1853, responsibility for administering the vaccine in England was put in the hands of the Poor Law Guardians. The association of vaccination with the workhouse caused a resurgence of the syphilitic fear among the well-to-do. Jenner’s innovation helped fuel concerns. After an initial vaccination from the cow, he realised that it could then be carried on from arm to arm. The matter from one vaccination pustule could be collected and inserted into the arm of the next child. What respectable mother would take her child to be contaminated with matter drawn from the arm of a ne’er-do-well? Cowpox was one thing, but what about all the other diseases that riddled the poor? The class system relied on bodies being kept apart. The State’s insistence on bringing them together seemed to risk the fabric of civilisation, even if the risk of disease was actually minute. While most doctors believed that cowpox was not related to syphilis, how could they be sure that the vaccine wasn’t tainted with the diseases of the immoral when incubated in the arms of the poor? Better to risk smallpox than to invite syphilis into one’s children.

The fearful kept their children away and a preventable disease continued to rage, often to epidemic proportions. The form taken by fear reflects the preoccupations of the society that produces it. In our times it is a fear of corporate medicine and its reckless advocates, forcing unknown risks upon our children. For early nineteenth-century anti-vaccinists, cowpox vaccination was a sordid and unholy communion, the embodiment of an immoral trinity: animality, bestiality and sexually transmitted disease. 

This post first appeared on Notches. To order Edward Jenner click here or here.

Sympathy and the Legacy of Complacency

When the going is good, the corrupt, the corpulent, the anti-intellectual, and the gourmand get their day. If the going is good for a while, these guys get their feet well and truly under the table. It’s a mighty job to get a placeman to give up his place. If we live in an era devoid of political nous, in the midst of a dearth of brilliance and of the spluttering rhetoric of leaders who cannot lead, we are not the first:

In the courts of princes, in the drawing-rooms of the great, where success and preferment depend, not upon the esteem of intelligent and well-informed equals, but upon the fanciful and foolish favour of ignorant, presumptuous, and proud superiors; flattery and falsehood too often prevail over merit and abilities.

We have probably all slaved in environments of clientism and nepotism, where the face-fitting yes-men contort their mediocrities into pleasing shapes for the sake of scraps from the table. Now it is a pervasive Occidental malady. The cultivation of flattery endured for long enough that the cultivation of talent went begging for infrastructure. The man of vision thumps his fist on the table in frustration, but is swept along in a rushing torrent of ephemeral images, of passing fads, reality ‘stars’, and auto-tuned politics. He’s just another piece of noise.

In such societies the abilities to please, are more regarded than the abilities to serve. In quiet and peaceable times, when the storm is at a distance, the prince or great man, wishes only to be amused, and is even apt to fancy that he has scarce any occasion for the service of any body, or that those who amuse him are sufficiently able to serve him. The external graces, the frivolous accomplishments, of that impertinent and foolish thing called a man of fashion, are commonly more admired than the solid and masculine virtues of a warrior, a statesmen, a philosopher, or a legislator. All the great and awful virtues, all the virtues which can fit, either for the council, the senate, or the field, are, by the insolent and insignificant flatterers, who commonly figure the most in such corrupted societies, held in the utmost contempt and derision.

These are not peaceable times. Far from it. But when we long ago bet our solid virtues on a pyramid scheme we scarcely thought how we might retrieve them once the sun ceased to shine. The British notion of ‘service’ has been reduced to James Bond quips and glib citizenship tests demanding that ‘foreigners’ know how to glorify General Gordon. To get it back, we need to know that there is something to serve. Citizenship is about belonging, but also owning. It is about acknowledging a mutual set of responsibilities, from the State to the individual and vice versa. There isn’t a lot of that spirit about any more. The phrase ‘we’re all in this together’ has been appropriated for a political slogan, heightening our distrust, and making us all the more entrenched in our view that, actually, it’s every man for himself. If ever we needed leadership, it is now. But where to find him or her?

When the duke of Sully was called upon by Lewis the Thirteenth to give his advice in some great emergency, he observed the favourites and courtiers whispering to one another, and smiling at his unfashionable appearance. “Whenever your majesty’s father,” said the old warrior and statesmen, “did me the honour to consult me, he ordered the buffoons of the court to retire into the antechamber.”

It’s not exactly hopeless out there, but if we were to cast around for a latter-day duke of Sully we might have to wait a while to find him. Trouble these days is that the throne room’s been flogged for a porn set and we’ve been living in the antechamber for years. There’s a party going on and everyone’s been hammered for a decade. We are utterly self-absorbed, racing each other to the bottom of the sleaziest autobiography charts.

All the quoted passages here are from Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). Smith knew that the essential corollary of the selfish was the sympathetic. To share the joys, but also the sufferings of one’s fellow man was the basis of civilisation. It is in a man’s interests to sympathise with other men, to care for his needs, to feel his pain, for in solidarity he increases the likelihood that, in his own pain, he too will find the succour of others. The Golden Rule, with its archetypical architecture of altruism, depends first and foremost on self-knowledge of self-interest: Do as you would be done unto. In our clamouring for the top, or in our struggle to avoid the abyss, we trample the man underneath us. The more we trample, the more damage we do to ourselves.

It really were better that we pulled together. The leadership for which we yearn can be sourced in each other. No amount of charisma in a suit is going to do it for us. It’s time to turn a clenched fist into an open hand. Who will be first?

Beasts Within

At whatever point you choose to dip into the history of philosophy, from Plato (or before) to some ephemeral chap of the moment, you’ll find that it’s pretty commonly understood that underlying every man is an animal, and not a cute kitten either. No, not with Darwin did the idea emerge that somewhere within us was the beast, or at least its legacy. One way or another, the history of humanity has revolved around suppressing this thing in us that subverts reason and supplants honour.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been finding out about his inner animal, and its consequences, this week. I’m not going to try and convict him here, of course, but the tale is cautionary. Ask around the world of posthumanists and their ilk and you’ll find an overwhelming reluctance to distinguish humans from animals in any sort of meaningful way, despite several thousand years of this being at the centre of the meaning of civilisation. I wouldn’t go so far as to call that a conceit, but it is pretty daring, and is challenged most dramatically when a given human behaves, for want of a better way of putting it, like an animal.

To what standard shall we hold people? To nature? I don’t quite see a basis for morality there. Indeed, in making moral imperatives, and in judging moral transgressions, we always designate something in the man that supersedes the animal in him. At the same time, these codes always acknowledge the animal’s presence, its danger, and its closeness to the surface. To deny its presence is to abdicate vigilance. To celebrate its presence is surely to risk us all. No, our human qualities must cage this beast, subjecting it to an iron will and an unimpeachable reason.

This is an essential and on-going task of the individual and of the society. If we fail, we shall lose the meaning of the ‘inhuman’, and if we reach that point, send us all to Riker’s Island.

On Bullies and Accomplices

Tom Brown’s Schooldays is not my favourite text, but it is full of educational and relational ideals that seem to endure, especially now, when they are so seldom observed. Not least among its lessons is the attitude towards bullying, a theme that recurs throughout the novel. I’ve been given to turn once again to these pages after having witnessed the video of the Australian bullying and the victim’s rather emphatic response to it. That young man has made something of a name for himself, but his notoriety saddens me to some extent. The idle idiots who shot the video, and who then presumably submitted it to the local news, succeeded in getting both boys suspended from school. And now he’ll spend the rest of his childhood being ‘the fat kid who fought back’. He did the right thing, but it should have been private. He should have been able to fight his own battles and have the satisfaction of prevailing. Now he has lost control. In joining the fray of commentators I realise I’m adding to that loss, but the example – since it is public – must now serve to assist the thousands of others undergoing his torment. Those idle bystanders who have brought Casey Heynes to international attention represent the silent culprits complicit in bullying everywhere. Whatever we think of Heynes and his bully, we must roundly scorn those who implicitly endorse bullying by their inaction.

Let us turn to Thomas Hughes. Tom and East dig in and beat off their assailant (the scene depicted above), but in return the bully Flashman sullies their reputations. The legacy outlasts his presence. It is easier to follow the bully than to strike out for what is right: 

If the Angel Gabriel were to come down from heaven, and head a successful rise against the most abominable and unrighteous vested interest, which this poor old world groans under, he would most certainly lose his character for many years, probably for centuries, not only with upholders of said vested interest, but with the respectable mass of the people whom he had delivered. They wouldn’t ask him to dinner, or let their names appear with his in the papers; they would be very careful how they spoke of him in the Palaver, or at their clubs… But… bear in mind that majorities, especially respectable ones, are nine times out of ten in the wrong; and that if you see a man or boy striving on the weak side, however wrong-headed or blundering he may be, you are not to go and join the cry against him. If you can’t join him and help him, and make him wiser, at any rate remember that he has found something in the world which he will fight and suffer for, which is just what you have got to do for yourselves; and so think and speak of him tenderly.

Not every boy will have the power to overcome his bullies. Sometimes guile must serve in the stead of brute force. Sometimes reserves of fortitude must be drawn upon. But he must give no quarter; must not comply. He must know, deep down, however much it hurts, and however much the fear debilitates, that his tormentor is more afraid than him. The tormentor is the coward, the uncertain, the envious. However unhappy the boy, the bully is more so. The boy must dig deep, for right is on his side. And when he does fight his battles, he should fight them without the world’s attention. But he would be helped if his peers, knowing right from wrong, and being cognisant of his plight, did not follow the bully’s path of least resistance. If I were to suspend anyone in Casey’s case, it would be the girl with the camera on her phone. She had her chance to do the right thing, to do something, and she failed. The bully got what was coming to him, and may have learnt his lesson. That should have been an end to it. But what has she learnt?

International Be A Gentleman Day

By no means confine your gentlemanliness to a single day, but let February 22^nd, the first International Be A Gentleman Day, be a signpost for the way things should continue. An Australian fellow by the name of Peter Ryan – why is it that I encounter so many good Australians these days? – established the concept and set up Today’s Gentleman last autumn. The ethos of the site is much in the vein of my own, and I’m more than happy to point you generous people in his direction. You can officially declare your taking part on the 22^nd on the facebook event page. What does it entail? I’ll let it stand in Ryan’s own words:

This is a day for all (men and women) to reacquaint themselves with going about their day constantly displaying “Gentlemanly” conduct.

      In the busy, time-poor society of today, sometimes it is a little too easy to forget the importance of courtesy, respect, consideration and, dare I say it: Chivalry.

      This is a day to hold the door open for the next person, give up your seat for someone who needs it more, help someone in need, let the lane changer in, let the person with two items go in front of you in the supermarket queue, hold the lift, share a taxi, look around you and make the world a better place one Gentlemanly action at a time.

      BaG day is also a time to recognise and celebrate those who have consistently displayed these behaviours, and to show others the quality of social interactions possible when everyone is behaving this way.

What makes me certain of his intent is his highlighting of a definition of integrity from dear old Wikipedia. In case you were wondering:

Integrity is a concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the quality of having an intuitive sense of honesty and truthfulness in regard to the motivations for one’s actions. Integrity can be regarded as the opposite of hypocrisy, in that it regards internal consistency as a virtue, and suggests that parties holding apparently conflicting values should account for the discrepancy or alter their beliefs. The word ‘integrity’ stems from the Latin adjective integer (whole, complete). In this context, integrity is the inner sense of ‘wholeness’ deriving from qualities such as honesty and consistency of character. As such, one may judge that others ‘have integrity’ to the extent that one judges whether they behave according to the values, beliefs and principles they claim to hold.

If a man wishes to sponsor integrity, we must only ask where to sign on.

Sins of the Flesh

Not so long ago I introduced the first guest writer to Being Manly. It is now my pleasure to welcome my humble blog’s first guest artist, the venerable and manly Julian Peters, whose literary comic art is making a stir in Montreal. He has kindly lent me these four panels, on the Wicked Ankle Flasher of London Town, to accompany my text on The Sins of the Flesh.

Some moons ago I complained, under the good head of ‘I Like To Be Tied Up’, of the male throat’s loss of erotic status. This could be recovered, I postulated, by the universal adoption of the necktie, which would surely have the effect of sending those who lust after men wild with anticipation for the rare moments when top buttons are loosed. I have noticed some progress out there with regards to tying the knot, but the jury is still out as to its impact on the libido. I must now return to this topic, plunged as I am – like a celebrity neckline – into a culture of fleshly display, and bodily exhibitionism.

It is not only the Germans who have lost the primal instinct when it comes to the flesh. It is a general disease of the West that we are no longer titillated by suggestion, and must instead witness the brutal candour of sex and sexuality at every moment. Once upon a time, a sigh, a lengthened gaze, and a knowing look would have been enough to establish that television characters had done the deed. Now we would not be certain, and we demand the ocular proof. One can blame the internet, if one will, which has taken the shame out of purchasing pornography. Partakers of such things used to get a thrill from the mere daring of having to purchase their visual feast under the gaze of public scrutiny. This also kept up the shame levels, and I believe to some degree kept our baser natures in check. The internet has dispensed with all these balancing forces. The result is a whole new level of exposure, if you will, and now nothing short of the whole hog, sometimes literally, will do the trick. To be sure, the depths of the human imagination have always been plumbed, packaged and sold, for those few who had a taste for it. But now it seems to be the norm, and this is our loss.

 

Don’t mistake this for prudery. It’s really rather the opposite. We are sensual and thinking beings, and for as long as man has thought, he has known that eros and logos make for a heady cocktail. The greatest thing about humanity’s capacity for the erotic is its elevation above that which is merely animal. It is our sinking to the level of the beast that I decry, and the problem is just too much flesh, too often.

Never was a period more erroneously known for prudery than the Victorian Age. Here were men and women in a state of almost permanent arousal, for their taboos were so far-reaching. The merest improper suggestion could cause embarrassment; the slightest transgression of social inhibitions led to scandal. Quite self-consciously, all talk of sex was strictly censored, or else subject to censure. The only way safely to stay within these bounds was to make sure that one always kept them in mind. In short, Victorians thought about sex all the time. The slightest hint of sexuality sent shivers up the spine. An ankle here, a wrist there, a bat of the eyelids perhaps: any such thing sent a man – or a woman – into an internal frenzy. Just imagine what the bedroom scene must have been like, once all that passion was given an outlet.

In sum, taboos feed the imagination, and it is through our imagination that we thrive as humans. If all our mental capacities are denied to us through a too ready access to images of base animality, then base animals are what we shall become.

And Other Utterances

It is ‘Frosh Week’, which seems to mean that the neighbourhood goes to hell for a few days. Not being overly inclined to dwelling within Sodom and Gomorrah, I annually reflect on the reasons for this descent into every kind of vice. Alcohol, immaturity, and the complicity of the university authorities seem to make the lethal cocktail. The immaturity we may blame on the parents; the university should be ashamed of itself; the alcohol would perhaps not be such a problem without the other two. In any case, I wonder how many fun first weeks end in unanticipated tragedy of one form or another. The principal chant, boomed out military style all week by hordes of roaming children (with apologies to readers who’d care not to know), goes ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, three cheers for fucking’. These words will no doubt haunt those afflicted with unintended pregnancies, diseases, and humiliations. And how many alcoholics begin their journey here?

 (c) 2010 academicmice.com

A less weighty observation to terminate this post: whooping, out of the mouths of young women, is unladylike; out of the mouths of young men it is effeminate. Can the young not find a more civilised way to utter their enthusiasm for their misguided lives?

Honour Bound?

I have of late been reading a book about Imperial German doctors and their prescriptions with regard to honour. I shall not trouble you with the details of this tome, but merely bring to your attention one of its observations, which seems particularly pertinent in the light of my recent post on la Gloire.

Honour, so says the author, referring to some esteemed theorists, used to be thought to fall somewhere between the law and the moral conscience:

While morality was empowered by the inner voice of the individual’s conscience, the law used external, physical force. The social demands of honour… were secured by internal as well as external means. Violations of honour had subjective, inner consequences and social, externally palpable ones. In this way, correct conduct could be guaranteed in areas which could not be reached by the law and in which conscience-based morality alone was not reliable (A-H Maehle, Doctors, Honour and the Law, 2009).

Among doctors, lawyers, academics and the like, on the one hand, and among such nebulous groups as gentlemen or the aristocracy, on the other, a breach of honour damaged the whole group, whose reputation as societal leaders and upstanding citizens was called into question by the misdeeds of an individual. The importance of restoring this jointly held and esteemed sense of honour accounts for duels, specialist courts and panels of arbitration, and private clubs and societies. A man would fight a duel to restore not only his own slighted reputation, but also that of his peers; a court specific to a respected profession could censure and publicly disown dishonourable miscreants; private societies could expel undesirable elements, thereby ensuring their collective honour stayed intact. The thread of civility by which society hangs, to which I referred yesterday, was duly reinforced by an understanding of the social importance of a shared code of honour.

To be sure, this still exists in some spheres today, although it is not called honour, and is not defended by duelling. But by and large we have lost sight of this middle step between the law and the conscience, this honorific superego. In countless ways we see that the morality of individuals is insufficiently developed to prevent them from acting without inhibitions, and that the law remains rightly disinterested, even if it is not uninterested, in moral matters. There is no extra check; no sense of being bound by common interest, or the common good.

On Fathers

The child is father to the man, or so they say, but what kind of man the child becomes depends on the kind of father he happens to have. In these days of ‘fathers for justice’ and paternity leave, does anyone stop to ask what justice for fathers might mean, or what fathers ought to do on their paid break from work? What is the role, the duty, of the father after his biological deed has been done? What should he be to his child, for childhood’s duration?

There were times when the answers to these questions were understood, responsibilities acknowledged. There are obvious differences according to time and place, but a common core of fatherliness emerges. Fathers were to be exemplars of virtue to their children, especially to their sons. They were to demonstrate, either through their actions or through their knowledge, the appropriate models of courage and physical prowess. A delicateness of touch and a gentleness of demeanour were to be married to a robustness of spirit when the moment commanded it, and sons were to understand that the former without the latter would not a man make. In many periods, the father was the moral teacher, ensuring the next generation of citizens understood what citizenship meant, and why it was worth fighting for. Some people have misunderstood this as all tiger shooting and rugby, but as we might expect, it was richer than that. The boy was to respect his father and treat his mother with the courtesy that his future wife might expect. Here, the father would lead by example, as also in the cases of piety, temperance, and fortitude. The son would learn from the father that in the family lay life’s treasure, and its sanctity would provide the motivation for its defence.

A way of life, in a free state, is perhaps reducible to this unit. To challenge a state so constructed is to challenge the core element of the family. A call to arms, therefore, would not be an appeal to an intrinsic masculine attraction to blood and guts, pomp and circumstance, and glory. On the contrary, the image of the thing to be defended – the gentleness of family life – will serve to ensure that the boy-becoming-man attends the roll call.

Justice for fathers in our world might then begin with the education of fathers in matters manly. While courage, strength and indefatigability have been watered down in our world, we have almost failed to notice that fidelity, courtesy, patience, civility, temperance and loyalty have virtually disappeared. If fathers do not know, or cannot pass on these things, then justice for certain children may well be to leave certain fathers out in the cold. But where these things can be salvaged, and where the correct spirit can be divined, then the least we can strive for is to allow fathers the freedom and the time to do their duty to their children. And if inspiration is required, a father may find it in the eyes of his new child. For surely in this, what is needed is implicitly understood.

Keep Your Trousers On, Ladies!

A little while ago, Rose C’est La Vie made mention on this site of her interest in female masculinity, and lamented the demise of trousers’ significance as symbols of feminine defiance. One of the lamentable things about throwing out all the rules is that it becomes much more difficult to act subversively. Absolute freedom might, so it seems, come at the price of being dull.

I’m not actually sure I buy that last thought, for complacency is the biggest risk to the freedoms attained. We must remain vigilant. Last night I saw some BBC News footage from Banda Aceh about the stiffening of Sharia Law in that unfortunate place. It is a story of gendered segregation, invidious policing, and a slew of strictures that prescribe what it is moral and immoral to wear. Naturally, the BBC took a left-leaning – or should that be Occidental – perspective, and sought out those brave womanly souls refusing to don headscarves, who cling desperately to long pants. Indeed, the new clamp down includes a ban on women wearing tight trousers. A bewildered trouser seller exclaimed: ‘what we wear doesn’t reflect our morality’. No, but in that setting trousers remain politically dangerous.

We are not given to think about these things any more, but that is a sign of how far we have come in the West. It is worth reminding ourselves from time to time that the matter-of-fact ubiquity of women in ‘men’s clothing’ is an emblem of our liberality. These things are matter-of-fact only after significant struggle; they represent other struggles of greater weight, about which we are also now dangerously blasé. Indeed, trouser wearing is the thin end of the wedge. That is precisely what the Aceh authorities are afraid of. And it is precisely why we should not cease to celebrate the history embodied by all women who don their slacks without a second thought.