A reader takes strong exception to my advice to a woman who feels her husband is not manly. Laurence Butler, in his comments in the previous post, writes to the woman:

If the leadership role has been temporarily vacated, you had better step in lest your children grow up to imitate a stoic but sorrowful mother doting on an unimpressive father. I think it’s totally appropriate for you to tell him you are dissatisfied with his behavior, with his composure, and with his unwillingness to supply the manly presence you fell in love with and pledged to spend the rest of your life with. If he ‘wishes’ for you to leave him alone and let him keep his femininity, I think you have an obligation to the both of you to not respect that wish. This isn’t to recommend incessant nagging or anything, but woman in her highest role, the heroines in the great plays remembered throughout history, did not sit idly by and watch their lord’s mind, body, and manor decay from the foundation while she put up nice curtains. Too frequently now are the women who allowed this, or worse those who encouraged the emasculation of men/the masculation of women, being reenacted by posterity.

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