Manhood does not require an argument — yet Josh Hawley keeps arguing

You have probably heard the news. US Senator Josh Hawley, of Missouri, wrote a book. It’s called Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs. You have probably also seen an array of reactions to it, some that take the book seriously, some that don’t. I suppose I’m taking it seriously, given that I’m talking about it. But I want to point out something fundamental that should, I think, inform reactions to arguments in favor of manhood but usually doesn’t.

Manhood does not require an argument in favor of it. Neither does anything else that constitutes a human being’s individual identity. I am a man because I am a man. I was born this way. Maybe you were born this way. Maybe you were assigned an identity at odds with being born this way. Maybe you decided to change how you appear to others. Maybe that requires an argument. But not the way we were born. There is no argument needed. We are what we are.

Hawley’s book, however, is chock full of arguments. I won’t recount them. You can find them here and here and here and here. My point is that he’s making an argument in favor of something that does not require an argument in favor of it. Every reaction, before we get to any other question, should first ask: why?

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Actually, why twice. First, there’s no need for an argument. Second, the manhood Hawley is arguing for is the most widely recognized variation of manhood – widely recognized in that there’s 10,000 years of human history behind the idea that men should be at the top of every unit of organized human effort. Men have been on top for so long that most people don’t see it as a choice. They see it as the way things are, as if it were the natural order.

So, before we get to any other question, we have to ask why someone like US Senator Josh Hawley took the time to write a book that makes an argument in favor of something that 1) does not require an argument in favor of it and 2) that’s widely recognized after centuries of practice as the natural order of things. Why is he arguing in favor of something that’s unquestioned by many?

The easy answer is that he wants to be president someday. To be sure, but if we leave it there, we’re not taking the subject as seriously as we should. We’re leaving it to an ambitious man willing to say anything to get what he wants.

Why is he arguing in favor of something that’s unquestioned by many? Because the manhood that Hawley is arguing in favor of cannot exist on its own. It cannot exist independent of the organized human effort over which it has come to prevail. It cannot exist without these arguments, these constant arguments, in favor of it, because the manhood that Hawley is arguing for requires convincing other people that it is not only good but natural.

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Why does it require convincing other people that it is not only good but natural? Because most people don’t like being stepped on. The manhood that Hawley is arguing in favor of depends for its existence on stepping on other people’s necks. Most people do not offer up their necks for the purpose of being stepped on. They must be convinced to offer up their necks.

So Hawley did not write a book about manhood, per se. He wrote a book about power. Manhood doesn’t require an argument in favor of it. Dominance does.

I’m going to leave you with a second question that I think we should also ask. After asking why he’s making an argument in favor of something that does not require an argument in favor of it, we should ask why we keep listening to an argument that depends on convincing other people that it's not only good but natural to offer up their necks for the purpose of being stepped on.

Why do we keep honoring these arguments with our attention?

We don’t have to.

We choose to.

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