As AH said, women are men’s complements. In order to really get at the heart of what it means to be a man, is not a matter of what it means to be a man independent of everyone else; it matters what he does in communion with others. If man is to be a hermit, then yes, being a man is dependant on nothing, but what he does himself in no relation to another. Since that complement is needed to fulfill what it means according to AH’s proposition, the relationship to the complement has an important part.
Don’t forget complement does not mean compensation. If you start out from with the idea that a person is to be independant, then complement would seem to fall into compensation for an other’s weakness. The correct postion for this idea is that is essential to determine a how well a man is being a man taking in consideration of being in communion with another or others. In that case complement means doing your role, and helping others do theirs. In football, that a offensive lineman cannot move the ball is not a bad thing, nor that a quarterback needs protection from getting tackeled. (Granted life is not near as compartmentalized as football, but I just though it in there for the point.)
One of the big problems though for AH’s argument is that it is truncated. It does sound like the men’s and women’s roles are compartmentalized, when they are more dynamic, but in order to get at the fundamentals to give a clearer understanding of the proposition some definite boundaries must be set that will not give a true idea of the actual boundries.
If AH is basing his ideas on TOB, then of course it is going to be lacking in dynamics. The book is hundreds of pages, even before you get to even more books giving interpretations of it. I just got out my copy of TOB, good luck trying to wade though 500+ pages of JPII when he’s getting philosophical and theological.
For Maria, part of the problem is that it is more relational than a person’s actual ability. So I think you are right in using your antidotes to point out that if you leave it up a person’s abilities, the AH’s argument doesn’t hold true completely in that respect. I’m certain that AH has said so too. I think it would also be well to acknowledge also the limitation of those antidotes. It is a relational thing, to get a real good grasp one would have to have something equivalent to working in communion with another, a spouse, as you both work towards raising up a child or “child” to be a “Man-man instead of a Man-baby” (or a “woman-woman instead of a woman-baby”) as your life’s “magnus opus”, at least if you want to refute the idea on its own terms. (Granted that does not mean one would have to be successful, that child is a unique person with distinct will. It just means as far as the work you’ve done, it was done well.)
Ok I’m just playing. 