Book Bytes #2: Mencken on Men and Women

For my second Book Bytes entry, I'm going to continue the male/female theme, but from a more personal level than a political one. This will not be one continuous passage, however, but bits and pieces of various essays that Mencken wrote over many years, and from his 1918 book In Defense of Women. I don't think anyone ever accused Mencken of being a feminist by any stretch of the imagination, but he did have a shrewd eye for human interaction. He observed, for instance, that though it is commonly thought that women were more compassionate and sympathetic than men, they could also be more ruthless and manipulative than men, while men were often far more prone to sentimentality. We are a curious thing, we humans. Anyway, here are the words of HL Mencken - brilliantly phrased, provocative, and sometimes enraging.

~ begin excerpts ~

A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition. The mark of that so-called intuition is simply a sharp and accurate perception of reality, an habitual immunity to emotional enchantment, a relentless capacity for distinguishing clearly between the appearance and the substance. The appearance, in the normal family circle, is a hero, magnifico, a demigod. The substance is a poor mountebank...

This shrewd perception of masculine bombast and make-believe, this acute understanding of man as the eternal tragic comedian, is at the bottom of that compassionate irony which paces under the name of the maternal instinct. A woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness, his need of an amiable environment, his touching self delusion. That ironical note is not only daily apparent in real life; it sets the whole tone of feminine fiction. The woman novelist, if she be skillful enough to arise out of mere imitation into genuine self-expression, never takes her heroes quite seriously. From the day of George Sand to the day of Selma Lagerlof she has always got into her character study a touch of superior aloofness, of ill-concealed derision. I can't recall a single masculine figure created by a woman who is not, at bottom, a booby.

That is should still be necessary, at this late stage in the senility of the human race to argue that women have a fine and fluent intelligence is surely an eloquent proof of the defective observation, incurable prejudice, and general imbecility of their lords and masters. One finds very few professors of the subject, even among admitted feminists, approaching the fact as obvious; practically all of them think it necessary to bring up a vast mass of evidence to establish what should be an axiom. Even the Franco Englishman, W. L. George, one of the most sharp-witted of the faculty, wastes a whole book up on the demonstration, and then, with a great air of uttering something new, gives it the humourless title of " The Intelligence of Women. " The intelligence of women, forsooth! As well devote a laborious time to the sagacity of serpents, pickpockets, or Holy Church!

Women, in truth, are not only intelligent; they have almost a monopoly of certain of the subtler and more utile forms of intelligence. The thing itself, indeed, might be reasonably described as a special feminine character; there is in it, in more than one of its manifestations, a femaleness as palpable as the femaleness of cruelty, masochism or rouge. Men are strong. Men are brave in physical combat. Men have sentiment. Men are romantic, and love what they conceive to be virtue and beauty. Men incline to faith, hope and charity. Men know how to sweat and endure. Men are amiable and fond. But in so far as they show the true fundamentals of intelligence--in so far as they reveal a capacity for discovering the kernel of eternal verity in the husk of delusion and hallucination and a passion for bringing it forth--to that extent, at least, they are feminine, and still nourished by the milk of their mothers. "Human creatures," says George, borrowing from Weininger, "are never entirely male or entirely female; there are no men, there are no women, but only sexual majorities." Find me an obviously intelligent man, a man free from sentimentality and illusion, a man hard to deceive, a man of the first class, and I'll show you a man with a wide streak of woman in him. Bonaparte had it; Goethe had it; Schopenhauer had it; Bismarck and Lincoln had it; in Shakespeare, if the Freudians are to be believed, it amounted to down right homosexuality. The essential traits and qualities of the male, the hallmarks of the unpolluted masculine, are at the same time the hall-marks of the Schalskopf. The caveman is all muscles and mush. Without a woman to rule him and think for him, he is a truly lamentable spectacle: a baby with whiskers, a rabbit with the frame of an aurochs, a feeble and preposterous caricature of God.

It would be an easy matter, indeed, to demonstrate that superior talent in man is practically always accompanied by this feminine flavour--that complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable. Lest I be misunderstood I hasten to add that I do not mean to say that masculinity contributes nothing to the complex of chemico-physiological reactions which produces what we call talent; all I mean to say is that this complex is impossible without the feminine contribution that it is a product of the interplay of the two elements. In women of genius we see the opposite picture. They are commonly distinctly mannish, and shave as well as shine. Think of George Sand, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth of England, Rosa Bonheur, Teresa Carreo or Cosima Wagner. The truth is that neither sex, without some fertilization by the complementary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavour. Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a bank director. And woman, without some trace of that divine innocence which is masculine, is too harshly the realist for those vast projections of the fancy which lie at the heart of what we call genius. Here, as elsewhere in the universe, the best effects are obtained by a mingling of elements. The wholly manly man lacks the wit necessary to give objective form to his soaring and secret dreams, and the wholly womanly woman is apt to be too cynical a creature to dream at all.

What men, in their egoism, constantly mistake for a deficiency of intelligence in woman is merely an incapacity for mastering that mass of small intellectual tricks, that complex of petty knowledges, that collection of cerebral rubber stamps, which constitutes the chief mental equipment of the average male. A man thinks that he is more intelligent than his wife because he can add up a column of figures more accurately, and because he understands the imbecile jargon of the stock market, and because he is able to distinguish between the ideas of rival politicians, and because he is privy to the minutiae of some sordid and degrading business or profession, say soap-selling or the law. But these empty talents, of course, are not really signs of a profound intelligence; they are, in fact, merely superficial accomplishments, and their acquirement puts little more strain on the mental powers than a chimpanzee suffers in learning how to catch a penny or scratch a match. The whole bag of tricks of the average business man, or even of the average professional man, is inordinately childish. It takes no more actual sagacity to carry on the everyday hawking and haggling of the world, or to ladle out its normal doses of bad medicine and worse law, than intakes to operate a taxicab or fry a pan of fish. No observant person, indeed, can come into close contact with the general run of business and professional men--I confine myself to those who seem to get on in the world, and exclude the admitted failures--without marvelling at their intellectual lethargy, their incurable ingenuousness, their appalling lack of ordinary sense. The late Charles Francis Adams, a grandson of one American President and a great-grandson of another, after a long lifetime in intimate association with some of the chief business "geniuses" of that paradise of traders and usurers, the United States, reported in his old age that he had never heard a single one of them say anything worth hearing. These were vigorous and masculine men, and in a man's world they were successful men, but intellectually they were all blank cartridges...

A woman, if she hates her husband (and many of them do), can make life so sour and obnoxious to him that even death upon the gallows seems sweet by comparison. This hatred, of course, is often, and perhaps Almost invariably, quite justified. To be the wife of an ordinary man, indeed, is an experience that must be very hard to bear. The hollowness and vanity of the fellow, his petty meanness and stupidity, his puling sentimentality and credulity, his bombastic air of a cock on a dunghill, his anaesthesia to all whispers and summonings of the spirit, above all, his loathsome clumsiness in amour--all these things must revolt any woman above the lowest. To be the object of the oafish affections of such a creature, even when they are honest and profound, cannot be expected to give any genuine joy to a woman of sense and refinement. His performance as a gallant, as Honor de Balzac long ago observed, unescapably suggests a gorilla's efforts to play the violin...

~ end excerpts ~
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This is pure and simple hatespeech. Period.

Ed;
I suppose i am seeking Clarification on this subject ....While I agree men And women Are Diffrent . I views these diffrences as complimentary to the other sex . Where as i see Mecken saying That women that women are superior and only deal with men out of Pity (clearly chauvinism) .... when he borrows from Otto Weininger he clearly takes this out of text as weininger Stated "In such a being as the absolute female there are no logical and ethical phenomena, and, therefore, the ground for the assumption of a soul is absent" and "the female must be described as absolutely without the quality of genius. . . . There is no female genius, and there never has been one . . . and there never can be one. Those who are in favour of laxity in these matters, and are anxious to extend and enlarge the idea of genius in order to make it possible to include women, would simply by such action destroy the concept of genius" This was also The View of schopenhauer And also Frued (who was greatly Influenced By schopenhauer) please do not read me Wrong I dont not believe women have no soul or are with out genius In Fact i think women are great ....While i DO agree that men are different from women, in a whole range of aptitudes, skills, and abilities . which is why i believe the more rational and logical approach is for feminism to disregard their premise that the sexes are equal. A woman is not equal to a man and a man is Not Equal to a woman , but both sexes have strengths and weaknesses, which when used in a complementary fashion can benefit both. If we understand the hard wiring of the mind in both sexes, the male mind is geared toward systematic processes whereas the female mind is geared toward empathetic processes. Both of these processes can be used to benefit each sex when used in coordination and cooperation instead of what we see today, which is competition.

By Vic Vanity (not verified) on 21 Apr 2004 #permalink

"In order to emphasise her claims to masculine prerogatives, her
claim, that is, to the highly paid positions of men and not to the
'prerogatives,' of, say, soldiers, emancipated women from time to time
organise so-called 'movements.' Such campaigns give her an opportunity
to draw the world's attention to her with a great deal of shouting and
noise, to wear badges and dress up in the latest suffragette look and
to openly demonstrate her political views by putting lighted candles
in her living-room windows. In full view of the television public,
women have pinched the bottoms of building-site workers and
perpetrated other absurdities. Woman frees herself from her imaginary
'chains' at regular intervals: spiritual ones being unknown to her,
she interprets them literally. At the turn of the century it was the
corset that went. In the seventies the bra, and just to make sure that
everyone knew about it, she got men to make see-through blouses.
Perhaps in the next wave of emancipation it will be the uncomfortable,
long skirt which goes - the skirt they have just flirtatiously
readopted and made part of their props, despite general male
disapproval. But their stupidity, their inanity, their ridiculous
behaviour, their mendacity and lack of feeling, and their tedious and
abysmally stupid chatter are still there: women have never taken any
steps to get rid of those.
No matter how much a woman is earning, she will never let a man take
her place in the house, nor will she take on his responsibility for
earning their livelihood and maintaining their social prestige. Even
though it is quite possible - since she is much more thick-skinned and
consequently will suffer less by doing work of deadly routine - that a
job really does 'fulfil' her and make her 'happy,' she will never help
*him* with *her* money. She will never open doors for him or light his
cigarette; she will never take out any insurance policy in his favour
or give him alimony should there be a divorce - that is not considered
'feminine.' Neither would it occur to a man to expect such a
settlement - he has been conditioned too well. The husband of the
emancipated woman will simply give his wife a kiss, wipe the traces of
face cream, powder and lipstick from his face and throw himself once
again into the battle."

[Source: Esther Vilar: The Manipulated Man. London: Pinter & Martin
1998. page 138f. (First published in the original German in 1971, in
English in 1972.) (Words between asterisks are in italics in the
book.)]

"There is one great advantage which women have
over men: _they have a choice_ -- a choice
between the life of a man and the life of a
dimwitted, parasitic luxury item. There are
too few women who would not select the latter.
Men do not have this choice."

Esther Vilar, "What is Woman?"
in _The Manipulated Man_ (original title,
_Der dressierte Mann_, English translation
by Eva Borneman and Ursula Bender)
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, publishers (1972)
page 19.
http://www.martin.wagner.dsl.pipex.com/themanipulatedman.htm

Vic, you seem to have trouble understanding the notion that I have zero interest in holding a discussion with you on this subject. I thought I made that clear when I told you to go away 3 or 4 times on the other post. Perhaps if I'd randomly capitalized words for no reason and left out all relevant punctuation the way you do, you would have understood. I suggest you try Jessy's blog, which you can link to from their comment. You'd enjoy it a good deal more.

I think I'm going to stop posting on this subject. It brings the whackos out of the woodwork.

I just posted the diametric opposition to your posted excerpt. One is 'enlightened' while the other apparently relegates one to the category
of 'wacko'. Surely this is rationality at work, since objectively both are equally offensive and nonsensical in any absolute sense -- however true in their generalities they may claim to be.

I'm glad you enjoyed the satire on my blog. It's too bad though, that you can't understand the concept of wacko when you see it. I guess I owe a small degree of credit as I didn't delineate the relationship between the two pieces; yet neither did I credit it with any magnamity (which, I assume, is part of the criterion for the category of wacko).

"I think I'm going to stop posting on this subject. It brings the whackos out of the woodwork."

Yep. With a more careful reading of Mencken, you might have realized he predicted such would happen:

"But as women, gaining economic autonomy, meet men in progressively bitterer competition, the rising masculine distrust and fear of them will be reflected even in the enchanted domain of marriage, and the husband, having yielded up most of his old rights, will begin to reveal anew jealousy of those that remain, and particularly of the right to a fair quid pro quo for his own docile industry. In brief, as women shake off their ancient disabilities they will also shake off some of their ancient immunities, and their doings will come to be regarded with a soberer and more exigent scrutiny than now prevails. The extension of the suffrage, I believe, will encourage this awakening; in wresting it from the reluctant male the women of the western world have planted dragons' teeth, the which will presently leap up and gnaw them. Now that women have the political power to obtain their just rights, they will begin to lose their old power to obtain special privileges by sentimental appeals. Men, facing them squarely, will consider them anew, not as romantic political and social invalids, to be coddled and caressed, but as free competitors in a harsh world. When that reconsideration gets under way there will be a general overhauling of the relations between the sexes, and some of the fair ones, I suspect, will begin to wonder why they didn't let well enough alone."

- H. L. Mencken, In Defense of Women

"Yep. With a more careful reading of Mencken, you might have realized he predicted such would happen:"

I thank you once again for the slight, however it doesn't behoove you to pretend my prior points don't exist. It's just so...lame.

I believe both pieces have some validity when taken in the context of generalities and not absolutes. Apparently to you, my posted piece was 'wacko', yet your originally quoted piece claims a, "shrewd eye for human interaction". You have a double standard. Both are valid to a degree as generalized observations of human nature and it's consequences. Both are written as such.

However, I am not an expert on Mencken, nor do I claim to be. I will point out though that Vilar's piece shows what Mencken's is missing: the element of male chivalry.

Mencken says, "Men, facing them squarely, will consider them anew, not as romantic political and social invalids, to be coddled and caressed, but as free competitors in a harsh world. " which ideally, would be true. However, he doesn't make it clear like Vilar does that male chivalry will allow a man to consider her as both equal *and* worthy of deference (as has been happening for some time now), as she is deft at manipulating him to such. In contrast to Menken, Vilar claims that it is men who are inherently more intelligent, more industrious, and possessed of the better human traits. What they have in common is that both agree women are simply the manipulators of human action.

However, as Vilar points out (and Mencken seems to concur): without chivalry and guilt, such men are untouchable by the characteristic manipulations of women. THIS is what Vilar assumes makes men the betters of women, ultimately, and what she deigns as portending the end of female manipulation.

My counterpoint is equally valid, and to dismiss it shows a closed mind. However, it's not like it is against the law to have a closed mind.

My final point is that I believe both to be of misanthrope paradigm, despite whatever valid observations they may have made on human nature.

What I find funny about this is the hysterical reaction to it. The bits I took from Mencken were only part of the picture, of course. I could as easily have posted the opposite from him, hammering the flaws in women. Mencken was an equal opportunity critic, to be sure. I also did not say that I agree with him on all that, though I do agree with much of it.

One thing to keep in mind about Mencken is that he always makes a distinction between the average and the best. When he slams men for his "oafish affections" and his need to constantly puff himself up, he is talking about the average guy, the member of what he would call the "booboisie". And when he says that being the wife of such a guy would revolt "any woman above the lowest", who can argue with that? The same is true of the opposite, of course. Being the husband of most women would revolt any man above the lowest as well. And Mencken says as much, it just wasn't included in the quotes I gave. One must always begin their reading of Mencken with the notion that Mencken is forever dividing groups into the average and the best.

Type 5 offered a quote from In Defense of Women that I was planning to use as a follow up. It's statements like that (written in the early 20th century, remember) that make me say that Mencken has a shrewd eye for social interactions, and not just in this area. Time and time again I find in his writings a prediction that matches reality today to the letter, and descriptions of reality that are still perfectly true today.

I think Jessy made an interesting point in response to that about male chivalry as perhaps placing a limit on how men will compete with women. I think there's some truth to that. I certainly feel that myself in a myriad of ways, a desire to protect the women I care about to a far greater degree than the men I care about. Is it something innate or something taught? Both, I suspect, in varying degrees.

I disagree with Vilar that men are inherently smarter or possessed of better human traits than women, of course. In my own life, I tend to get along much better with women than with men, and for the very reasons that Mencken cites. Most men are forever preening and posturing, puffing themselves up and pretending to be what they're not. Mencken calls this his "bombastic air of a cock on a dunghill". Watching the constant male jockeying for position, with losers forever attempting to emulate, within the confines of his group, the alpha male he wishes he could be, is equal parts appalling and amusing to me. Interesting, though, that most of the women I have had close friendships with have tended not to get along with other women very well, just as I don't get along with other men very well. They tend to think that women are catty and manipulative and shallow. There must be some explanation for that, eh?

Ed, pardon me for getting into this late when the conversation is over ... I just read one of your comments and thought: Did that person actually read the excerpt you posted??

This commenter writes: While I agree men And women Are Diffrent . I views these diffrences as complimentary to the other sex . Where as i see Mecken saying That women that women are superior and only deal with men out of Pity (clearly chauvinism) ....

Er ... what? How could this person have missed that Mencken made that exact point??

"The truth is that neither sex, without some fertilization by the complementary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavour. Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a bank director. And woman, without some trace of that divine innocence which is masculine, is too harshly the realist for those vast projections of the fancy which lie at the heart of what we call genius. Here, as elsewhere in the universe, the best effects are obtained by a mingling of elements."

Red ;

as i said i was seeking clarification

By Vic Vanity (not verified) on 22 Apr 2004 #permalink

Red-

In my experience, I've found that people with chips on their shoulder tend to see what they want to see. Everything gets filtered through the prism of the way they view themselves. If they view themselves as a victim, then everything gets interpreted as a slight against them. If they view themselves as a hero, then everything gets interpreted as proof of their glory. We all do it to one degree or another, of course, we can't treat every single new piece of information as a blank slate, we have to filter it through our view of the world to some extent. But those with an axe to grind will find fodder for grinding even where there is none to be found. And the more contrary to reality one's view is, the more the prism has to distort it in order to make it fit within the confines of our biases.

I've found, over at my blog, that a lot of people comment before reading a whole post. They'll have a kneejerk response to the first few sentences, and they cannot hold themselves back from firing off a comment. I'll read the comment and think: "They cannot have read the whole post."

But who knows. We all have our blind spots.

"The bits I took from Mencken were only part of the picture, of course. I could as easily have posted the opposite from him, hammering the flaws in women."

Yet you didn't. Interesting choice.

Yet you didn't. Interesting choice.

It's all part of the global feminist conspiracy. I'm sure you understand.

I sincerely hoped this subject would just cool for a while, but I see it has been brought up again.
You and I both know the circumstances behind his attitude Ed. No one else here could possibly know or understand.
Let's let this subject drop again and move on to something else.
Thank you:-)

It's all part of the global feminist conspiracy. I'm sure you understand.

Well, no. I was thinking more about your alienation from the masculine, which you expressed pretty clearly in your follow-up:

Watching the constant male jockeying for position, with losers forever attempting to emulate, within the confines of his group, the alpha male he wishes he could be, is equal parts appalling and amusing to me.

Which is your business. However, when you decide to put down men publicly (as you have admitted you chose to do in this piece) you'll increasingly find yourself getting an argument. Have you found it worth it so far?

Well, no. I was thinking more about your alienation from the masculine, which you expressed pretty clearly in your follow-up

LMAO. Gosh, I love phrases like that. Masculine is an adjective. It has to modify something to have meaning. I'm alienated from the masculine WHAT? Masculine behavior? If by masculine you mean macho, then yes, I'm quite "alienated" from that and happily so. I love empty catchphrases like this. Ironically, a lot of the more touchy feely feminist writings are chock full of such phrases.

Which is your business. However, when you decide to put down men publicly (as you have admitted you chose to do in this piece) you'll increasingly find yourself getting an argument. Have you found it worth it so far?

I haven't insulted "men" - I am one, and I obviously did not insult myself. I have perhaps insulted most men. I frankly think that most of the human race is fairly irrelevant, and that holds true of men as well as women. Most people, in my experience, are pretty much blank and devoid of most of the virtues that I esteem. On that, Mencken and I tend to agree. That this position has provoked such a furious response from the Defenders of the Masculine "Something" has, I must confess, given me a good deal of amusement.

If by masculine you mean macho, then yes, I'm quite "alienated" from that and happily so.

Good, then we are in agreement. As the ever provocative and incisive Fred Reed put it, "Just about everything that once defined masculinity is now denounced as macho, a hostile word embodying the female incomprehension of men."

That this position has provoked such a furious response from the Defenders of the Masculine "Something" has, I must confess, given me a good deal of amusement.

I pretty much figured that.

Good, then we are in agreement. As the ever provocative and incisive Fred Reed put it, "Just about everything that once defined masculinity is now denounced as macho, a hostile word embodying the female incomprehension of men."

LOL. Hilarious. There's just one small problem with this - I'm a man. Whatever you might think about my opinions, my opinions cannot possibly be based upon the "female incomprehension of men". I comprehend men very well; I've been one all my life. And I think there is a very big difference between machismo and masculinity.

Masculinity is simple self-confidence, without the need to puff oneself up vainly and strut like a rooster to impress anyone. Machismo, because it is entirely based on insecurity, is quite the opposite. When you see a man being macho, you're seeing someone acting out their utter lack of masculinity by play-acting the role of the super tough guy. That's why the macho man goes for such eloquent displays of rationality as, "What are you looking at, faggot?" or "I'll kick your ass, fucker". These are tiny, insecure, pathetic little men who are so unsure of their masculinity that they continually make ostentatious displays of how tough they are in order to compensate. As a general rule, they're losers in life who know that they are essentially useless. Their jobs are mindless and always at risk because they have no special skills to give them job security, they make a living with their body and they know, deep down, that any body would do the job just as well. All of this insecurity and lack of importance weighs on them, so they make up for it by becoming the Big Dog in the pack of losers that they run with. And they become the Big Dog by strutting and posturing and pushing people around, and all their pals, who are even more pathetic than they are, start to admire them. Or maybe they decide to go kill a deer, that'll prove that they're a Real Man . If they were secure in their masculinity, they wouldn't be so obsessed with telling everyone how much they could benchpress, or how fast their car goes, or how badly they beat up some guy who mouthed off to them (probably for exactly the same reason they responded, to prove that they were the biggest hog at the trough).

Ah well. I was looking for an opportunity to use that Reed quote. One look at this thread and I knew you were the one to provide it. Thanks for being so predictable.

LOL. Hilarious.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I did, too.

Ah well. I was looking for an opportunity to use that Reed quote. One look at this thread and I knew you were the one to provide it. Thanks for being so predictable.

Except that, as I pointed out in great detail, it has no bearing on me. None of which you bothered to respond to, so one can only presume that you can't provide a reasonable response to it. So if your goal was to use a quote that was totally irrelevant in a conversation in which you've pretty much made yourself look more foolish with every post, congratulations. You've succeeded admirably. I hereby appoint you the Defender of Macho Men Everywhere. Your lame defense of macho men is almost as ridiculous as the behavior you intend to defend. Cheers!