Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast

I would like this podcast to start a conversation with women of all ages, convictions and styles of life – wherever situated on the gamut of experience. In principle, there is no bar to men joining in, since how one defines women has a lot to do with what it means to be a man. But it is women I invite to pull up a chair at this virtual café table and put their questions and views into the conversation. Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of A Good Look at Evil, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, now appearing in an expanded second edition and as audiobooks. Dr. Rosenthal writes a weekly column for “Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column,” (www.dearabbie-nonadvice.com) where she explores the situation of women. She thinks women’s lives are highly interesting. She’s the editor of The Consolations of Philosophy: Hobbes’s Secret; Spinoza’s Way by her father, Henry M. Rosenthal. She’s written numerous articles that can be accessed at Academia.edu .

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Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast

Masculinity

October 29, 2021 • Abigail L. Rosenthal • Season 1 • Episode 8

0:00 | 5:55

Any woman still maintaining that the terms “masculinity” and “femininity” should be put between scare quotes, as mere social or grammatical constructs, is invited to walk unescorted into the midst of this bunch. In shorts.

The blog shows a photograph taken in 1899 of the crew of sailors aboard the cruiser USS Brooklyn. They are a masculine bunch to put it nicely.

Me, I’ll wait here. Let me know how that worked out for you.

At the other end of the same spectrum of male/female relations, Simone de Beauvoir locates Vinca (Colette’s fictional jeune fille), who feels unaffected “the morning after,” having merely satisfied her girlish curiosity with the help of her young friend Phil. For his part, Phil is quite taken aback by the calm with which Vinca has survived his boyish efforts to initiate her. De Beauvoir comments, “in truth, Phil is wrong to be astonished, his amie has not met the male.”

So it seems there can be too much, but also too little, of a good thing!

The highs and the lows of a woman’s life are not meliorated by treating masculinity and femininity merely as roles. Denial only demeans the woman who is trying to figure out her situation. Likewise, to deprive masculinity of a place of honor on the social map -- even divesting young men of due process when accusations are leveled on college campuses -- will turn the terrain that tolerates this injustice into a desert for young women too. We need to learn the difference between civilizing our animal powers and erasing them, between asserting our dignity and sterilizing our lives.

One time the wife of a college president asked me how Plato, “a man, can write about women?” “Because,” I said, recalling how he was known in antiquity, “he’s the divine Plato!”

If God can talk to men, and it’s not beneath His/Her dignity, why can’t women talk to them as well?