Needed: a few good men?

Just when it seemed the gender wars had petered out, there comes a loud new battle cry: Man up, America!

Now, I confess it's news to me that our society was lacking in manliness. But I am a man, and therefore would be the last to know. The first piece of evidence that masculinity is in demand comes from a woman: Darcy Burner, the Democrat who lost her bid for Congress in the Eastside's 8th District.

In e-mails with Seattle Times reporters about why she failed to ride the national Democratic wave, Burner suggested her gender did her in.

"It was clearly a wave that helped men more than women," she wrote. "A reasonable hypothesis would be that the wave was related to voter feeling about the war, and voters responded by preferring Democratic male challengers to Republican incumbents (of either gender), but did not apply that same preference to Democratic female challengers."

As proof she noted that in the 20 most closely contested races, female Democrats mostly lost while male Democrats almost all won.

I asked Professor Susan Carroll of the Center for American Women and Politics, at Rutgers, about this notion that voters wanted to "man up."

There's not much support for it in the national results, she said. Women candidates didn't have a banner year, but did gain a few seats in both the U.S. House and Senate.

Yet Carroll said there is ample survey evidence that "Burner is absolutely correct that when war is a dominant issue, it's bad for women candidates. There's a stereotype that men have expertise on war. Though I would say it was muted this year because voters believe the war is failing."

So perhaps Burner's man-up mania is just made-up melodrama. On the other hand, how to explain the rock-star popularity of another local making waves of late, Pastor Mark Driscoll? He founded Mars Hill Church, now Seattle's largest with a flock of 5,000.

He's a man's man who takes the pastoral out of pastoring. Recently when the Episcopal Church installed its first woman as presiding bishop, Driscoll in his blog, www.theresurgence.org, compared her to a "fluffy baby bunny rabbit" trying to lead "God's men." He also called for Christians to "man up soon."

"The problem in the church today — it's just a bunch of nice, soft, tender chickified church boys," he said in a talk on how to expand the church. "Sixty percent of Christians are chicks and the 40 percent that are dudes are still sort of chicks. It's just sad.

"... [So] we're looking around going 'How come we're not innovative?' It's because all the innovative dudes are home watching football. Or they're out making money, or climbing a mountain, or shooting a gun, or working on their truck."

This guy heads the hottest church in Seattle. He's a contributing faith-page columnist for this paper. People mass to hear his counsel. Which appears to be: what ails us is we're a bunch of sissies.

Man up the government, man up the church. Yikes. This is just one man's opinion, but I can't think of any institutions more in need of a good chickifying than those two.

Danny Westneat's column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.