Manliness was never my idea.

Growing up I emulated handsome soft heroes – Shakespeare’s and Dickens’ “fair youths,” troubadours, Fred Astaire and Cary Grant – and shied from thugs, swaggerers, cowboys. I wooed world-beating independent ladies (who were also beautiful) and recoiled from flirts or femmes fatales. Politesse is a part of my patrimony for which I’m grateful. Anybody who advocates grabbing women “by the pussy” or the equivalent gives me hives. Violence against women is a crime against humanity. I realize it takes all sorts but not that sort. To hell with them.

I’ve never paid for sex. I suspect if my dad had lived longer he’d have taught me to – and I’d have heeded – but from curiosity more than lust. Sex for me is lovemaking, not semen-draining; romance, not wrestling. To treat a woman as a receptacle feels a lonely defeat. Politically, I favor legal prostitution – to protect its workers and patrol disease – but emotionally I recoil from a purchased kiss.

In affect, I’m drawn to loveliness, physiognomy plus vulnerability. Michelangelo’s David may be the sexiest guy ever. He doesn’t want to kill Goliath, but he must.

I take no credit for my preferences. Gender relations, I’m convinced, are shaped by tribal custom and reactions to parental examples, inherited not inherent. The nauseating misogyny of nineteenth century Frenchmen, trading mistresses like merchandise, wasn’t their innovation but comme il faut. Don Giovanni, with his list of a thousand conquests, was likely fulfilling his dad’s daydream, though we’ve got no back-story to prove it.

Manliness is in the news because the Nameless One, our intrepid chieftain, seems to appeal particularly to white males, old and young. I get it with the old guys, superseded in their lifetimes by g-d- females. Heaven help them, they might even have gotten stuck with a female boss! But the young men, bred in an environment of more equal rights and opportunities? How can they be sliding back into troglodytic thuggery, where might makes right? How can they shrug off rape accusations, dolled-up robotic wives and pussy chuckles? Manliness circa 2025 seems to mean misogyny, brutality, turpitude, swaggering, lying – loud cars and louder mouths – Proud Boys with nothing to be proud of. I blink, incredulous. How can this be?

I can offer no explanation other than the irredeemable vileness of our kind. I used to believe awareness and education would ameliorate our nature, that the momentum from barbarism to civility was unrelenting and one-way. Monsters like Jack the Ripper and Hitler were grotesque exceptions to the heartening rule.

Nowadays I feel estranged – from my sex no less than my nation. I will never concede that truth, gentleness, courtesy, kindness, honesty, decency are lifestyle choices, take them or leave them. Being better human beings – better in ourselves and to one another – is the only sane reason to exist. Without this ideal, what is life but a grubby scrum for material advantage? Why be if not better?

Manliness like the Nameless One’s contradicts democracy. Democracy’s premised on a promise of equality. His version of manliness advocates inequality; asserts it’s OK for guys to grab women by the pussy but not for women to grab guys by the balls; gloats about winning, no matter how.

I favor manliness of a different sort – call it the manliness of saints. I believe in doing right, no matter what; in the glorious Golden Rule, treating others as I’d wish to be. I believe in steely principles and gentle touch; in love, not hate; encouragement, not disparagement; giving, not grabbing. Let me resemble Michelangelo’s David: yes, I’ll assail evil, but how sad we must.