Blogging for Books--Through A Man's Eyes

I often find it illuminating to read multiple books at a time, and the three books that I happened to be reading simultaneously this last week were particularly interesting to play off one another. From the Blogging for Books program I was reading "Through A Man's Eyes" by Shaunti Feldman, a primer for the uninitiated Christian woman on "the visual nature of men." I was also working through the local library's copy of Betty Freidan's "The Feminine Mystique," and re-reading the 16th century "Book of the Courtier."

Each one of these books was trying to say something about the obvious but slippery subject of the difference between men and women. In each book I found myself nodding at a particular sentence or two and saying "yes, I wouldn't have thought to put it like that, but I find this to be almost universally true." In each book I also found thoughts to which I reacted with outright disgust and disagreement.

To be brief, the Feldman book fared extremely poorly in comparison to the others. It was technically weak, full of junk science, suspect popular theology, and often bordered on the downright offensive. Yes, a man is a different sort of creature than a woman. There is no unfolding of this truth which would justify the sort of oppressive restrictions that Feldman proposes for both sexes as a consequent. She commits the double sins of inventing a convenient history in which her particular argument finds its moment of crisis in the present age and in commandeering a complicated and inexact science (the nature of the brain) for her own agendas. I would not recommend the book.

In contrast, the Friedan book, despite its own issues with junk science and missing the tone of its own moment in history, is a provocative and well-constructed challenge to the spirit of its time. For better or worse, the arguments about a woman's relationship to her career and her home have been framed by Betty Friedan, and her work on the subject is the right place to start.

And then there's Castiglione. He writes in the form of a dialogue, so often the truly awful and misogynistic statements you'll find within his pages are rebutted or argued by another speaker several pages later. Whether or not you believe the culture of 16th century Italy was fair to its women, the women certainly were treated as human beings. Within the pages of Castiglione are complex and nuanced appeals to the social good, metaphysical formulations of truth and love, and several different principles on which a man or a woman might "do" ethics. Yes, the characters in the dialogue often make barbarous proposals for their women. But the women speak back and answer for themselves, and they answer not as anatomical eye candy which is obligated to be hidden, nor as victims demanding restitution, but as full human beings.