Hillsdale, Camp Tapico, and the telos of women

A Need to be Needed

I discovered C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity at some point during high school, and afterward began devouring everything the man wrote. In a book whose title I can no longer remember, he wrote that we (people in general) ought to get over our need to be needed, and he said he sees this desire "specially in women." I agreed with him for a while.

On a therapy walk to the Academy, a male college friend told me that he felt he wasn't needed. I started paying attention to men's need to be needed, and I found that it was just as extant as women's, but unlike women's, it was fed.

Women need men. We know that. At our dorm meeting at the beginning of the year, our house mother told explained opposite-sex visiting rules in our (women's) dorm. "I love when boys visit," she told us. "I think they're the greatest thing in the world, especially when they're moving furniture." Carry this heavy box. Open the door for me. Walk back to my dorm with me after dark. We need your strength. We get emails about this all the time: St. Anthony's needs help setting up for the picnic, and there are tables to move so we need men.

Do men need women? I paid attention and found two different answers: one from camp (where staffers shower four or five times a week and let the Kalkaska dust stick to our sweaty skin) and one from Hillsdale (where well-groomed students study "the higher things").

At camp, it's obvious that women are needed. There are rosters to fill out for every class and blue cards to fill out for every scout in every class, and every week the program director lectures program staff about bad paperwork. Nobody enjoys paperwork, but but the female staffers are significantly more competent at getting everything filled out legibly and accurately. In addition to this, we have a power over campers (all boys ages 11-17) that the men don't have. Put a girl at the candy window at the trading post and everything sells like hotcakes. Put a girl in charge of a merit badge class and even large crowds of first-years will pay attention. This year, we were specifically told to have a girl in the truck on equipment moves. Why? She's probably smaller and there are already too many people in the truck. She will remember to write down numbers and will write them legibly. And when she gets out of the truck and throws a grill into the bed, scoutmasters and scouts spring into action. Gets them out of the campsite faster. At camp, women are necessary. Women are vital. And it's our femininity that's so important. Camp is a place where boys can do all sorts of crazy things (thirty-two feet in the air on ropes is perfectly safe, Mom) without their mothers telling them not to, but camp can't run without women. Everybody knows that. And everybody appreciates us.

But a Hillsdalean view on femininity is more likely to be accurate, because we study the higher things and go to church. I looked and looked but couldn't find any reason for us to be here. We have men to carry books, open doors, and walk us back to our dorms after dark. And as long as men are moving tables for us, we don't really have to do anything. We aren't really needed. We just sit there and look pretty.

I shared this with a male friend at Hillsdale. I told him:

We don't need women. So what if we're pretty. We're superfluous. We're only here because heterosexual men want something to look at. Anyway that's what it feels like at Hillsdale...Are women more attractive when we're terrified, weak, helpless, incapable, and cold?

He told me he had to sleep on it, then never got back to me with an answer. I searched all over Hillsdale for an answer, and it appeared to me that, according to prevalent Hillsdalean philosophy, my initial conclusion was accurate: women are pretty but essentially superfluous. Therefore, women shouldn't move tables or lift anything heavy or set things on fire or (corollaries) otherwise be helpful or have fun. It isn't feminine. Few Hillsdaleans will actually argue this point, but I couldn't find anyone to argue against it, and it's exactly how I felt among Hillsdaleans.

I had a question: are women needed? I had two answers: camp's absolutely and Hillsdale's well, no, not really, but you are pretty. If I had a question about square lashing or dutch oven cooking, I would ask my camp friends. This question, however, is about "the higher things," about philosophy. Thus, Hillsdale is the authority on the matter.

Therefore, women are beautiful but essentially superfluous. Problem solved, or, question answered, anyway. I felt awful.

Look at Genesis. God creates earth, God creates man, man asks God for woman, God creates woman. We weren't part of the original design. We're only here because Adam wanted something pretty to look at. And how many times have men asked God stupid questions? ("Everyone else has a king. We want one, too.")

Fully convinced of my sex's (and, therefore, my own) ontological superfluity, I longed to be back at camp, where at least I didn't feel superfluous.

I band-aided the problem by talking to one of my camp friends who insisted over and over that "women are amazing." I would tell him something awful I did (gossip? talk too much? complain? take too long to get ready?), then say women do this all the time, and therefore we're horrible people. He would nod and say yes, women do that, and I love you for it. "Everything about ya'll is pretty amazing. Cept the whole bleeding thing, that just sounds like a cruel joke," he told me. "You're the most beautiful thing on man's black earth," he said. Finally I asked him what, specifically, he finds so amazing about women.

"You want everything?" he asked.

"Yes," I told him.

"How long do you want to be up?"

I always felt better after talking to him, but I didn't think I ought to. Women are superfluous, and I was (transparently) manipulating him into feeding my ego.

Rules On How to Treat Men
I watch people. Paying attention to common themes running through behavior makes it easier to be kind to people. If I can understand why someone is acting in a particular obnoxious way, it's less obnoxious. So I form rules on how to treat people.

Once I have rules, I experiment. I try them out on people and see what sort of reactions I get, then I try and figure out where those reactions are coming from. (She talks way too much, and it's really annoying. But she's doing it because she doesn't think anyone's paying attention. So I'll listen to her. Mmm? Yup. She looks like she's happier.)

I've tested my rules on how to treat men, and I have quite a list. Don't hit him in the crotch. Don't call him a coward, even if you think he is one. Don't even joke about cowardice. When you see his strength, tell him. Say thank you when he offers his strength (carrying books, holding doors, etc.). Don't tell him he failed. If he's not sure he can do something, tell him you know he can do it, even if you aren't sure yourself. If he's trying to accomplish something (putting the star on the Christmas tree, for example), and he's having trouble, obviously failing, and getting really frustrated, don't waltz in and do it for him and don't ask if he needs your help. Be willing to help if he asks, but don't expect him to. Don't rearrange his desk, room, walls, etc. Don't take too long to get ready. Use the bathroom really, really fast. Don't fuss about how you look. Don't complain. Don't talk too much. Don't scream. Don't giggle. If you haven't seen him in a while, don't run out and hug him in front of everyone. Don't manipulate him. Don't force him to do anything for you, but ask for his strength (walk me back to my dorm, carry this box) if it looks like it won't bother him. If he offers, accept and say thank you. If he offers to carry the box and you wanted to carry it yourself, let him carry it. Walk through doors that he opens for you. If the box is too heavy for you, don't just tell him to come over and help: tell him you need his strength. Don't tell him he is scared or weak. Most importantly, don't step on his pride.

A few of us were hanging out in a male friend's dorm room. I told him he should put his other poster up, and he said there was no wall space. I did a very small amount of rearranging and within about thirty seconds, there was plenty of room. "That's what you get for bringing women in," his roommate said. "They come in and rearrange all your stuff." So I moved everything back to its original location.

Little things like that happen all the time. I do something feminine, it's shot down, and I decide not to do it again. No one intended to insult me, but I could tell I was being annoying--in fact, that my femininity itself was annoying--so I added it to my rules list.

Any time I heard a man say "I hate when women do X" or "it bugs me when women do Y," my rules list was automatically updated. Let men do things the way they want them done. Don't step on his pride. Those were key to my rule book.

Masculine Pride and the Necessity of Women

I think, though, that my rule book was not based entirely on kindness, as I originally intended, or at least thought I intended. It was based also on fear: I wanted to be liked and I was scared I wouldn't be. If you walk around stepping on people's pride all the time, nobody's going to like you. I was scared to step on men's pride.

Men don't whine the way women do, but the complaint I hear most often from them is that women step on their pride. But as much as they hate it, they need their pride stepped on. Look at any war in history. It could have been solved faster and with fewer deaths if pride weren't an issue.

It's often said that women are a pacifying force on society. I originally had this epiphany at a Students for Life meeting: there were probably twenty or so women and three men. I thought, if abortion is ended in this country, it's going to be because of the women. Dr. Jackson told our Anglo-Saxon and Medieval British Literature class at least twice that Anglo-Saxon women often had a role of "peaceweaver" between men. Last year, a Hillsdale friend decided that when he was president, I would be his Secretary of Preventing him from Committing War Crimes. Fyodor Dostoevsky said (and I first heard this in a CCA lecture, of all places) that "beauty will save the world."

Women are better at seeing people, too. It's a lot easier for us to see how our actions affect other people. We understand other people's pain better. I think this is true, anyway: it certainly seems that way. How often is there a video of someone getting injured, and the men laugh, and the women are utterly horrified? And both sexes are subsequently disgusted with each other? I don't think this is impossible for men, but I think it comes more easily to women.

G. K. Chesterton wrote "the true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." If men have nothing behind them to love, then they will fight because they hate what is in front of them, and hate ruins everything. Our mere existence prevents (some of) this.

I read on a male friend's facebook profile that "true strength lies in gentleness." As a woman, I have no authority to make claims about what is manly and what isn't, but I can say this: the man who smashes something beautiful to prove his manliness looks like a coward next to the man who admires its beauty, confident in his own strength, knowing he can smash it but also that he doesn't have to.

Gentleness, it seems, doesn't come as easily to men as it does to women. But I've noticed in a lot of men a strong desire not to hurt women. A camp friend sprained his ankle jumping off a pavilion; the same friend told me he feels horrible if his girlfriend jams her finger catching a football. My biggest fears are all selfish; a male camp friend told me that his biggest fear is that I or one of his other female friends will be hurt and that a man will be to blame. I've often been frustrated playing football with my male friends, because they won't shove me out of the way, won't even touch me, and they pour out copious apologies when they step barefoot on my shod toe. I tell them I grew up playing tackle football with between two and four brothers, depending on how you count, and that I'm not going to break, but they are still too careful. I don't think it's entirely their fault. I think it's built somewhere deep in men not to hurt women. And I think part of our telos is so that men can learn to be gentle.

Men need women to step on their pride now and then, but they're often too proud to say so. Men need women to do something they hate having done and often don't know they need. We're like dentists.

This doesn't mean we should go tromping all over his pride whenever we get the chance. As a woman, it's easy to get really worked up about a minor problem. Often, I'm perfectly aware that it's not a big deal. I can't understand why I'm so upset about it, and I get frustrated. When this happens, I talk to a male friend, because he can think clearly for me. (My women friends usually sympathize with the problem and I get even more upset about it.) Pride, I think, similarly blinds men, and, similarly, when this happens they need women to think clearly for them. But tears more than pride are conducive to asking for help.

This doesn't mean that men are horrible, uncivilized animals. They're absolutely not.

This new conclusion makes sense of everything. It explained why I felt more comfortable being a woman at camp than I did being a woman at Hillsdale. It explained why men's need to be needed is fed and why women's isn't--and this explains why C. S. Lewis sees the needed to be needed "specially in women."

It doesn't explain why God made men and women this way, but that's his business and not mine.

It doesn't explain why I found the answer at camp and not at Hillsdale. I don't think that many Hillsdaleans actually believe what I called the Hillsdalean view, but it certainly felt that way.

I've revised my list of rules. I won't hit him in the crotch. I won't even hint that I think him a coward. When he offers his strength, I usually accept, and when he doesn't offer, sometimes I'll still ask. I won't tell him that he failed or that he's a failure. If he isn't sure he can do something, I tell him I know he can do it. If he's trying to accomplish something and obviously failing and getting frustrated, I tell him I'm willing to help, but won't jump in without being asked. I tell him "we need your strength" whenever I get the chance.

But hiding my femininity?

It's off the list.