SAVE THE MALES Why men matter - Why women should care
A review of the new book by Kathleen Parker (Random House 2008)
Kathleen Parker has delivered a tour de force of insight about the current and prospective state of Gender Relations in modern America. That she has done so with genuine respect for both Men and Facts, and in a manner that many Men will find both intellectually refreshing and stimulating, makes her work all the more important a building block.
Although she avoids use of the term Misandry (which I define as Hatred of Men, Masculinity and Normal Heterosexuality) with the exception of referring to one Son's feminist grade school teacher as "Miss Andry", Parker provides considerable detail of the BAMN BAMN (Bash Men, By Any Means Necessary) ideology at work in our gender toxic culture.
However, she manages to avoid many of the pitfalls of other authors focusing on the trivial, and whenever it seems as if she is going to rehash previous tabloid trash (ie: the Paris-Lindsay-Brittany axis of evil) - she manages to redirect the book in to areas where her voice is all the stronger for the silence of others. For instance, her analysis of Gender and the Military is quite laudable, even for those who don't agree with all she says - if only for the fact that she talks common sense about subjects that are so taboo, it would cost the career of any serving officer to breach them.
In many respects this is the finest, and last, word from Women about Men's Issues. Not only has Parker staked out clear and defensible positions for important issues on the Gender Wars Battlefield (Fatherhood, Procreation, Equal Rights, Discrimination, Harassment...)- but done so as one who is not a combatant seeking to trash Men for fun and profit (unlike those `stiffed' by other authors) and in fact as a Mother who Loves Her Sons and sees nothing contradictory in the term "Good Men". Perhaps one day Male Authors will have the same opportunity to Frankly discuss Gender Issues and still be published - although Parkers book is being "Back-Shelved" by major retailers who keep it from public display.
In the end it is this connectedness to Men that brings the Humanity to Parker's book, and she helps remind both Men and Women that We are Not Enemies but rather Partners - even if that is considered Heresy by the Radical Gender Feminist Power structure running the victimization scam for fun and profit.
Perhaps the true power in Parker's book is that Men and Women can read it and not be angry at each other, although their perspective of Radical Gender Feminism may be irreversibly altered. That and the fact that her book is a `going forward' view - and not the standard `Death to the Patriarchy' demand for retribution that passes for feminist critique.
One `near' omission was the lack of discussion or the influence of the `non male identified' wing of radical feminism (I don't like to embarrass residents of the Greek Isle of Lesbos by referring to these deeply hateful hyper militant Misandrist types as `Lesbians' - seeing as there is a lawsuit in Greece over use of the term right now). However, under a chapter sub heading "Isms & Ologies" she does say in reference to a feminist book dealing with such types that it was a : "distant early warning that feminism was being hijacked by women who were not precisely interested in bonding with the opposite sex."
In closing I would say that it was another quote that Parker Included on the evil nature of political correctness (showing her not afraid to share wisdom from others), by Theodore Dalrymple from "Frontpage" Magazine that I found most impressive - if only because it showed her as someone not afraid to touch the central nerve at the heart of such Censorship Pogroms - and expose it for the hateful Misandrist fraud it truly is.
Dalrymple explained: "In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade of convince, nor to inform, but to Humiliate; and therefore the less it corresponded to reality the better.When people are torced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself.
One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control , I think that if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."
Whether you agree with her or not, Kathleen Parker has certainly set out her arguments in a manner that invites analysis, and only offends those Misandrists who already know the answer to all Gender Issues = BAMN BAMN.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
Kathleen Parker Wants to Save the Males
Richmond Times Dispatch (Virginia)
August 10, 2008 Sunday
Kathleen Parker Wants to Save the Males
Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care, by Kathleen Parker, is a summary of how feminism's push to put women on an equal - or superior - standing with men has backfired. Parker writes a syndicated column that appears regularly on The Times-Dispatch's Op/Ed page.
The book, in true Parker fashion, is sharp, witty, and on point. She presents her case well, and her writing is engrossing and thought-provoking - to those who agree with her as well as those who do not.
Beginning with a history of the female empowerment movement, Parker explains how for the past 25 years, males have been indoctrinated from the schoolhouse on the idea "women good, men bad." She lays out the history of this phenomenon as she sees it, beginning in 1989 when Harvard professor Carol Gilligan claimed research showed that girls were drowning in a patriarchal education system. From that research, feminists and liberals latched onto the idea that girls suffered from low self-esteem. An all-out effort was launched to push girls to the front of the line and praise their every effort - often at the expense of boys.
Much of Parker's arguments put the plight of males squarely on the shoulders of these feminists and liberals as well as an ongoing campaign by Hollywood and advertisers to portray men as dolts and women as capable and efficient. Even schools have gotten into the act, rewriting textbooks that now devote as much space to women as to men. On this topic, Parker relates, "This is a nice idea, except that women simply haven't accomplished as much as men in the areas that make history. I know this is blasphemy, but there's no way around the facts. Women have done great things, no doubt. Radium! Madame Curie, you rule! ... Martha Washington was a great woman to be sure, but she did not, in fact, lead the American Revolution. George did, and it's his face, not hers, on the dollar bill. We have to try to deal with that."
Justifiably, Parker also points to the breakdown of the nuclear family for much of society's ills. Save the Males lays much of the blame for today's social ills on a perceived push to eliminate adult males from the home. She uses statistics and anecdotal evidence to show how men are increasingly portrayed as brutes who aren't to be trusted around women or children.
Yet, this push has been extremely harmful to the family. Parker points out that without a father figure in the home, it is challenging for boys to grow into strong, responsible men. Girls experience greater self-esteem issues without a father figure. With the number of kids growing up in fatherless households tripling since 1960, many children, girls as well as boys, suffer from the lack of a male presence. Parker contends that single women raising families on their own are creating a self-perpetuating underclass.
Parker explores topics such as the feminizing of men, the growing obsession with porn and with trampy women, and a hilarious chapter on the bizarre celebration of the female anatomy on college campuses, and she does so with a stinging humor - which is probably necessary to make some of these distasteful topics readable.
She devotes a fairly lengthy chapter to the role women play in today's military and offers compelling evidence that in combat and on deployed ships, women are often detrimental to the battlefield. Despite Hollywood's shining spin on women in the military, they are simply not physically equal to the challenge of war. Again, agree or disagree, her arguments have merit.
Parker does an excellent job of pointing out the many necessary, even noble characteristics that most men exhibit. Her premise is sound - the attitudes of many of today's women toward men, toward sexuality, and toward the family are hurting all of society, and children especially. The book will anger some and delight others - but it is often humorous, completely frank, and eminently readable.
- Robin Beres
Executive Assistant of the Editorial Pages
* * *
Excerpts from what others are saying about Kathleen Parker's Save the Males:
Meredith Bryan
New York Observer, June 27
In Save the Males, syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker defends that least likely of underdogs: the American Man. Parodied in pop culture, disenfranchised by the family courts, emasculated by Lamaze class, and forced to endure crazy, empowered women "rhapsodizing about their vaginas and swooning over their inner goddesses," men today are raised in a culture that has turned against them, claims Ms. Parker....
Many of Ms. Parker's points about our culture's widely accepted hostility toward men are compelling. Men do grow up seeing themselves portrayed in movies and sitcoms as "dolts, bullies, brutes, deadbeats, rapists, sexual predators, and wife beaters" rather than competent heads of households, as they were in "Leave It to Beaver." And maybe they do attend schools that cater to girls' learning styles and - gasp! - teach a feminist-revisionist's version of history.... Boys are taught, by virtue of innovations such as the now-defunct "Take Our Daughters to Work Day," that they "are unfairly privileged by virtue of their maleness, and they will be punished for it."
Hilariously, she seems to think that by killing off real manliness, we've imperiled ourselves, that the rise of the metrosexual ("perfumed ponies") has left women vulnerable. "In the dangerous world in which we live, it might be nice to have a few guys around who aren't trying to juggle pedicures and highlights," she warns.
Are we really facing a future wherein our misguided struggle for "equality" leads us to impregnate men via politically driven science? Are [women] all shrews or exhibitionists, alienating and emasculating our husbands and suitors with our male-bashing and narcissism and keeping them from their children?
No.
Might it be good to acknowledge that fathers are important and adjust divorce and custody laws to reflect that? To recognize and accept that men and women have intractable differences? To stop teaching girls that it's OK to mock boys? (It's a bad habit we don't seem to kick.)
Maybe, yes.
Zoe Williams
The Guardian (London), Aug. 6
Here's the problem: When you get into a battle of the sexes, both sides have grievances. Society tends to denigrate men more openly than it does women, but then women are portrayed so routinely as hunks of flesh to be measured out by the pound that we only notice it happening to men because it's aberrant. Ultimately, you can carry on about culture, and what it does to self-esteem, how people see fathers, how they see mothers, how parents see themselves and one another; you can argue about this stuff forever....
The big mistake of this movement was not that it attacked men, nor that it turned us all into slags...but that it separated itself from socialism. It shouldn't have.
Fairness has not yet been established. Women still earn less than men (14 percent less full-time, 34 percent less part-time), still look after the children in 93 percent of parental separations, won't have fiscal equality in old age from the pension system for about 45 years. Men are ill-served by the NHS and die of unnecessary cancers, while women are screened much more often. Let's attack this stuff that we can measure, attack it even if we're not the victims of it, attack it even if it's conflicting, here favoring men, there favoring women, attack it because its tangibility is an open flank. The rest is just noise.
August 10, 2008 Sunday
Kathleen Parker Wants to Save the Males
Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care, by Kathleen Parker, is a summary of how feminism's push to put women on an equal - or superior - standing with men has backfired. Parker writes a syndicated column that appears regularly on The Times-Dispatch's Op/Ed page.
The book, in true Parker fashion, is sharp, witty, and on point. She presents her case well, and her writing is engrossing and thought-provoking - to those who agree with her as well as those who do not.
Beginning with a history of the female empowerment movement, Parker explains how for the past 25 years, males have been indoctrinated from the schoolhouse on the idea "women good, men bad." She lays out the history of this phenomenon as she sees it, beginning in 1989 when Harvard professor Carol Gilligan claimed research showed that girls were drowning in a patriarchal education system. From that research, feminists and liberals latched onto the idea that girls suffered from low self-esteem. An all-out effort was launched to push girls to the front of the line and praise their every effort - often at the expense of boys.
Much of Parker's arguments put the plight of males squarely on the shoulders of these feminists and liberals as well as an ongoing campaign by Hollywood and advertisers to portray men as dolts and women as capable and efficient. Even schools have gotten into the act, rewriting textbooks that now devote as much space to women as to men. On this topic, Parker relates, "This is a nice idea, except that women simply haven't accomplished as much as men in the areas that make history. I know this is blasphemy, but there's no way around the facts. Women have done great things, no doubt. Radium! Madame Curie, you rule! ... Martha Washington was a great woman to be sure, but she did not, in fact, lead the American Revolution. George did, and it's his face, not hers, on the dollar bill. We have to try to deal with that."
Justifiably, Parker also points to the breakdown of the nuclear family for much of society's ills. Save the Males lays much of the blame for today's social ills on a perceived push to eliminate adult males from the home. She uses statistics and anecdotal evidence to show how men are increasingly portrayed as brutes who aren't to be trusted around women or children.
Yet, this push has been extremely harmful to the family. Parker points out that without a father figure in the home, it is challenging for boys to grow into strong, responsible men. Girls experience greater self-esteem issues without a father figure. With the number of kids growing up in fatherless households tripling since 1960, many children, girls as well as boys, suffer from the lack of a male presence. Parker contends that single women raising families on their own are creating a self-perpetuating underclass.
Parker explores topics such as the feminizing of men, the growing obsession with porn and with trampy women, and a hilarious chapter on the bizarre celebration of the female anatomy on college campuses, and she does so with a stinging humor - which is probably necessary to make some of these distasteful topics readable.
She devotes a fairly lengthy chapter to the role women play in today's military and offers compelling evidence that in combat and on deployed ships, women are often detrimental to the battlefield. Despite Hollywood's shining spin on women in the military, they are simply not physically equal to the challenge of war. Again, agree or disagree, her arguments have merit.
Parker does an excellent job of pointing out the many necessary, even noble characteristics that most men exhibit. Her premise is sound - the attitudes of many of today's women toward men, toward sexuality, and toward the family are hurting all of society, and children especially. The book will anger some and delight others - but it is often humorous, completely frank, and eminently readable.
- Robin Beres
Executive Assistant of the Editorial Pages
* * *
Excerpts from what others are saying about Kathleen Parker's Save the Males:
Meredith Bryan
New York Observer, June 27
In Save the Males, syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker defends that least likely of underdogs: the American Man. Parodied in pop culture, disenfranchised by the family courts, emasculated by Lamaze class, and forced to endure crazy, empowered women "rhapsodizing about their vaginas and swooning over their inner goddesses," men today are raised in a culture that has turned against them, claims Ms. Parker....
Many of Ms. Parker's points about our culture's widely accepted hostility toward men are compelling. Men do grow up seeing themselves portrayed in movies and sitcoms as "dolts, bullies, brutes, deadbeats, rapists, sexual predators, and wife beaters" rather than competent heads of households, as they were in "Leave It to Beaver." And maybe they do attend schools that cater to girls' learning styles and - gasp! - teach a feminist-revisionist's version of history.... Boys are taught, by virtue of innovations such as the now-defunct "Take Our Daughters to Work Day," that they "are unfairly privileged by virtue of their maleness, and they will be punished for it."
Hilariously, she seems to think that by killing off real manliness, we've imperiled ourselves, that the rise of the metrosexual ("perfumed ponies") has left women vulnerable. "In the dangerous world in which we live, it might be nice to have a few guys around who aren't trying to juggle pedicures and highlights," she warns.
Are we really facing a future wherein our misguided struggle for "equality" leads us to impregnate men via politically driven science? Are [women] all shrews or exhibitionists, alienating and emasculating our husbands and suitors with our male-bashing and narcissism and keeping them from their children?
No.
Might it be good to acknowledge that fathers are important and adjust divorce and custody laws to reflect that? To recognize and accept that men and women have intractable differences? To stop teaching girls that it's OK to mock boys? (It's a bad habit we don't seem to kick.)
Maybe, yes.
Zoe Williams
The Guardian (London), Aug. 6
Here's the problem: When you get into a battle of the sexes, both sides have grievances. Society tends to denigrate men more openly than it does women, but then women are portrayed so routinely as hunks of flesh to be measured out by the pound that we only notice it happening to men because it's aberrant. Ultimately, you can carry on about culture, and what it does to self-esteem, how people see fathers, how they see mothers, how parents see themselves and one another; you can argue about this stuff forever....
The big mistake of this movement was not that it attacked men, nor that it turned us all into slags...but that it separated itself from socialism. It shouldn't have.
Fairness has not yet been established. Women still earn less than men (14 percent less full-time, 34 percent less part-time), still look after the children in 93 percent of parental separations, won't have fiscal equality in old age from the pension system for about 45 years. Men are ill-served by the NHS and die of unnecessary cancers, while women are screened much more often. Let's attack this stuff that we can measure, attack it even if we're not the victims of it, attack it even if it's conflicting, here favoring men, there favoring women, attack it because its tangibility is an open flank. The rest is just noise.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Brits rethinking domestic duty
Majority believe a woman's place is in the home, says new study
By Jerome Taylor
Wednesday, 6 August 2008
The gender equality fight in Britain has already peaked, with greater numbers of people convinced that a woman's place is in the home, according to new research published today.
A study of both male and female attitudes towards women in the workplace over the past 30 years has revealed "mounting concern" that female employees who successfully pursue a career are doing so at the expense of family life.
Researchers at Cambridge University compared the results of hundreds of social attitude surveys from the past three decades. They found that although current attitudes are more egalitarian than they were in the 1980s, there are growing signs that the gender equality fight hit a high point in the 1990s and has since gone into decline.
The findings suggest that both men and women in Britain are having second thoughts about whether women should try to pursue both a career and a family life.
In the mid-1990s 51 per cent of men and 50 per cent of women agreed with the idea that family life would not suffer if a woman is in full-time employment. In the latest equivalent survey those figures have fallen to 42 per cent of men and 46 per cent of women agreeing that work does not impinge on family life.
The research also shows that fewer women now believe a successful career is the key to financial and social freedom. In 1991 nearly 65 per cent of female respondents said that a job was the best way for a woman to be independent. That has since dropped to just 54 per cent.
http://www.independent.co.uk/
By Jerome Taylor
Wednesday, 6 August 2008
The gender equality fight in Britain has already peaked, with greater numbers of people convinced that a woman's place is in the home, according to new research published today.
A study of both male and female attitudes towards women in the workplace over the past 30 years has revealed "mounting concern" that female employees who successfully pursue a career are doing so at the expense of family life.
Researchers at Cambridge University compared the results of hundreds of social attitude surveys from the past three decades. They found that although current attitudes are more egalitarian than they were in the 1980s, there are growing signs that the gender equality fight hit a high point in the 1990s and has since gone into decline.
The findings suggest that both men and women in Britain are having second thoughts about whether women should try to pursue both a career and a family life.
In the mid-1990s 51 per cent of men and 50 per cent of women agreed with the idea that family life would not suffer if a woman is in full-time employment. In the latest equivalent survey those figures have fallen to 42 per cent of men and 46 per cent of women agreeing that work does not impinge on family life.
The research also shows that fewer women now believe a successful career is the key to financial and social freedom. In 1991 nearly 65 per cent of female respondents said that a job was the best way for a woman to be independent. That has since dropped to just 54 per cent.
http://www.independent.co.uk/
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Make up for males...
Toldja.
Make up for men. Read and weep - but make sure your manscara is waterproof!
Make up for men by Dan Newling
Make up for men. Read and weep - but make sure your manscara is waterproof!
Make up for men by Dan Newling
Friday, July 25, 2008
Review: Save the Males
Save the males! A new book says society is biased AGAINST men. Ridiculous? Hardly, says Amanda Platell of the Daily Mail.
Every once in a while, a book not so much lands on your desk as lobs itself like a hand grenade, exploding preconceived wisdoms and shattering the bones of the status quo. Save The Males is such a book.
It is the fiercest and most fearless defence of men, fatherhood and ultimately the family I have read in many years.
American author Kathleen Parker's courageous thesis is that initially, through extreme feminism, then via its craven implementation into society, women have demonised men and trivialised their contribution, especially to family life.
I say courageous because, in the eyes of many women and of the liberal establishment, suggesting men have had a rough deal is nothing short of heresy.
Parker should be burnt at the stake, they cry. But isn't it ironic that only a woman could make such a plea for men?
She argues: 'As long as men feel marginalised by the women whose favour and approval they seek, as long as they are alienated from their children and treated as criminals by family courts, as long as they are disrespected by a culture that no longer values masculinity tied to honour, as long as boys are bereft of strong fathers and our young men and women wage sexual war, then we risk cultural suicide.'
It's enough to set a feminist's hair on end. Parker argues that in trying to make the world fairer for women, an adjustment most agree was vital, we have made it unfair for men. In our attempt to honour women, we have dishonoured men.
By bending over backwards to make single mothers feel good about themselves, by diminishing the role of fathers, by elevating women as the superior parents, we have gone a considerable way to destroying one of the basic tenets of a successful society - family life.
Apart from the effects of this seismic social shift on society, it is also grossly unfair. Can you imagine a world where men demanded women be more like them - dress like them, act like them, even look like them. Because that is effectively what our post-feminist society has done, but with the genders switched.
The traditional male values, what Parker almost poetically calls 'masculinity tied to honour', are now seen as nothing more than a direct assault on women.
Unless men are like us, the thinking goes, they insult us and threaten our existence: hence the feminisation of men, or as we so disingenuously describe it, getting in touch with your feminine side.
Thus Hybrid Man was born. An acceptable male model now is more likely to be of the David Beckham variety, wearing more make-up than the missus, hairless, perfumed, varnished, emasculated by his bossy wife and perhaps fond of wearing her undies.
Good dads, loving husbands, supportive male role models, they're few and far between even in the fictional world of TV.
But in the real world it wasn't enough that we demanded they be more like us, we superior human beings. We had to traduce men as well, treating them in almost all forms of popular culture as useless, ineffectual, even comic characters, or as violent, cheating and untrustworthy.
And so Sitcom Man was born. Parker challenges us to try to think of a wholesome, reliable role model in myriad 'dads' created on TV or in movies. Fathers are always portrayed as incompetent or inconsequential, mindless or mean, comic or cruel. If you relentlessly portrayed any ethnic or minority group in such a biased way, you'd be pilloried on air.
Parker cites many reasons for the dereliction of men. First, there has been the institutionalisation of motherhood at the expense of fatherhood.
'We seem to accept that children shouldn't be raised without mothers, but we regard the contributions of fathers as optional,' Parker says.
Just last week, Nicola Brewer, the chief executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said: 'Fathers are being marginalised to the extent of simply "seasoning" in their children's upbringing.'
And the state reinforces the 'Mum best, Dad dodgy' myth. 'The family courts effectively make fathers a slave to the state, his wages become state property, his time with his children is determined by a family court judge, and he faces jail if for whatever reason he fails to pay his child support on time.'
Family courts in America increasingly approve of 'virtual parenting', which means Mum can take the kids and live wherever she likes and Dad can do it long distance, via the phone or internet.
'Thanks to divorce, unwed motherhood, and policies that unfairly penalise and marginalise fathers, 30-40 per cent of all American children sleep in a home where their father doesn't,' she writes.
Parker believes that perhaps the biggest blow to men's roles in families has come with the explosion and normalisation of single motherhood.
'By elevating single motherhood from an unfortunate consequence of poor planning to a sophisticated act of self-fulfilment, we've helped to fashion a world not just in which fathers are scarce, but in which men are superfluous,' she says.
It's enough to set a feminist's hair on end
Single professional women shopping for donor sperm on the internet has become the equivalent of buying designer shoes online. The number of babies born to unmarried mothers aged between 30 and 44 increased by a staggering 17 per cent from 1999 to 2003.
In short, slowly but surely, men are being made obsolete as society embraces single motherhood as the equivalent of the nuclear family for fear of not offending the sisterhood.
And so, hey presto, the marginalisation of men marches on.
And if the child is born of a normal sexual encounter, the consequences for men can be equally dire, as they have no rights, only duties.
'If a woman gets pregnant she can abort - even without her husband's consent. If she chooses to have the child, she gets a baby and the man gets an invoice.
'Inarguably, a man should support his offspring, but by the same logic, shouldn't he have a say in whether his child is born or aborted?'
The number of children living in fatherless homes has tripled since 1960, from eight million to 24 million in the U.S.. So it comes as no surprise that 21st-century man feels isolated and increasingly obsolete.
'At the same time that men have been ridiculed in the public sphere, the importance of fatherhood has been diminished, along with other traditionally male roles of father, protector and provider, which are incredibly viewed as regressive manifestations of an outmoded patriarchy,' Parker writes.
She also examines the feminisation of education. There is overwhelming evidence now that boys' and girls' brains are wired differently, but over 20 years both in America and in the UK we have made learning harder for boys and more suitable for girls. The result, Parker says, is that the gap between young men's and women's academic achievements is widening.
In 2005, 133 women graduated from college in the U.S. for every 100 men. By the end of this decade that gap is expected to be 142 females for every 100 males.
And as ever the poorest and most deprived are the hardest hit. Among African Americans, the figures are far worse. Twice as many women as men graduate. Parker blames the achievement gap on the absence of fathers.
What is especially refreshing is that Parker's quest to Save The Males is not just about fairness to men. We need to do it, she says, not only 'because we love our sons but because we love our daughters'.
And because she believes, as many of us do, that the best building block for a stable and peaceful society is the traditional nuclear family.
'Part of our nation's strength has always been a function of its families. Restoring the family is critical to our survival in these untidy and dangerous times.' So, too, is 'respecting men and the important contribution they make to children's lives and society'.
Fathers are always portrayed as incompetent
Parker writes almost poetically about the ultimate beauty of men's innate character. When she looks at her own father and fathers around her, she concludes that being a dad is, in fact, the manliest thing a man can do.
It encourages responsibility, sacrifice and the ability to put others before yourself - all essential qualities to a functioning society, let alone a home.
'When we take away a man's central purpose in life and marginalise him from society's most important institution (the family), we strip him of his manhood.'
And it's not all we strip away, as studies have discovered here. We reduce a child's chance of a successful and happy life.
'Growing up without a father is the most reliable indicator of poverty and all the familiar social pathologies affecting children, including drug abuse, truancy, delinquency and sexual promiscuity. Yet some feminists and other progressives still insist that men are non-essential.'
The powerful argument Parker constructs is that unless we wake up, and wake up quickly, to the importance of men in family life, society as we know it is doomed. In the creation of a more femalefriendly world, we have unwittingly created a culture hostile to men, not in the workplace, but the most important place, the home.
How refreshingly honest, how devoid of political correctness or feminist dogma for a woman to argue for and ultimately celebrate the necessity and the goodness of men.
She rightly warns of the dangers to our society of a world without manliness. It's all very well for the armed forces to affect an equality between men and women, she says, but when the chips are down and a child or a society needs rescuing, it will not fall on the shoulders of our womenfolk.
And in an increasingly hostile world, we will need our men and we'll need them to be men, to display unashamedly the sheer physical strength and courage that even after a century of feminist intervention still dwarfs women's.
'In the coming years, we will need men who are not confused about their responsibilities to family and country.
'We need boys who have acquired the virtues of honour, courage, valour and loyalty. We need women willing to let men be men - and boys be boys.'
And we will need women like Kathleen Parker with the courage to fight for men. Saving the males, she argues, will also save women and children as we all 'stand to benefit from a society in which men feel respected and thus responsible'.
By engaging men's nobility and recognising their unique talents, we all benefit. And the process could start with us just being a bit nicer to them.
'It wouldn't hurt to fix a guy a burger now and then without the woman acting as though she's just established democracy in the Sunni Triangle.'
Chastened, I'm off to buy some burgers and a few buns.
• Save The Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care by Kathleen Parker, published by Random House
Every once in a while, a book not so much lands on your desk as lobs itself like a hand grenade, exploding preconceived wisdoms and shattering the bones of the status quo. Save The Males is such a book.
It is the fiercest and most fearless defence of men, fatherhood and ultimately the family I have read in many years.
American author Kathleen Parker's courageous thesis is that initially, through extreme feminism, then via its craven implementation into society, women have demonised men and trivialised their contribution, especially to family life.
I say courageous because, in the eyes of many women and of the liberal establishment, suggesting men have had a rough deal is nothing short of heresy.
Parker should be burnt at the stake, they cry. But isn't it ironic that only a woman could make such a plea for men?
She argues: 'As long as men feel marginalised by the women whose favour and approval they seek, as long as they are alienated from their children and treated as criminals by family courts, as long as they are disrespected by a culture that no longer values masculinity tied to honour, as long as boys are bereft of strong fathers and our young men and women wage sexual war, then we risk cultural suicide.'
It's enough to set a feminist's hair on end. Parker argues that in trying to make the world fairer for women, an adjustment most agree was vital, we have made it unfair for men. In our attempt to honour women, we have dishonoured men.
By bending over backwards to make single mothers feel good about themselves, by diminishing the role of fathers, by elevating women as the superior parents, we have gone a considerable way to destroying one of the basic tenets of a successful society - family life.
Apart from the effects of this seismic social shift on society, it is also grossly unfair. Can you imagine a world where men demanded women be more like them - dress like them, act like them, even look like them. Because that is effectively what our post-feminist society has done, but with the genders switched.
The traditional male values, what Parker almost poetically calls 'masculinity tied to honour', are now seen as nothing more than a direct assault on women.
Unless men are like us, the thinking goes, they insult us and threaten our existence: hence the feminisation of men, or as we so disingenuously describe it, getting in touch with your feminine side.
Thus Hybrid Man was born. An acceptable male model now is more likely to be of the David Beckham variety, wearing more make-up than the missus, hairless, perfumed, varnished, emasculated by his bossy wife and perhaps fond of wearing her undies.
Good dads, loving husbands, supportive male role models, they're few and far between even in the fictional world of TV.
But in the real world it wasn't enough that we demanded they be more like us, we superior human beings. We had to traduce men as well, treating them in almost all forms of popular culture as useless, ineffectual, even comic characters, or as violent, cheating and untrustworthy.
And so Sitcom Man was born. Parker challenges us to try to think of a wholesome, reliable role model in myriad 'dads' created on TV or in movies. Fathers are always portrayed as incompetent or inconsequential, mindless or mean, comic or cruel. If you relentlessly portrayed any ethnic or minority group in such a biased way, you'd be pilloried on air.
Parker cites many reasons for the dereliction of men. First, there has been the institutionalisation of motherhood at the expense of fatherhood.
'We seem to accept that children shouldn't be raised without mothers, but we regard the contributions of fathers as optional,' Parker says.
Just last week, Nicola Brewer, the chief executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said: 'Fathers are being marginalised to the extent of simply "seasoning" in their children's upbringing.'
And the state reinforces the 'Mum best, Dad dodgy' myth. 'The family courts effectively make fathers a slave to the state, his wages become state property, his time with his children is determined by a family court judge, and he faces jail if for whatever reason he fails to pay his child support on time.'
Family courts in America increasingly approve of 'virtual parenting', which means Mum can take the kids and live wherever she likes and Dad can do it long distance, via the phone or internet.
'Thanks to divorce, unwed motherhood, and policies that unfairly penalise and marginalise fathers, 30-40 per cent of all American children sleep in a home where their father doesn't,' she writes.
Parker believes that perhaps the biggest blow to men's roles in families has come with the explosion and normalisation of single motherhood.
'By elevating single motherhood from an unfortunate consequence of poor planning to a sophisticated act of self-fulfilment, we've helped to fashion a world not just in which fathers are scarce, but in which men are superfluous,' she says.
It's enough to set a feminist's hair on end
Single professional women shopping for donor sperm on the internet has become the equivalent of buying designer shoes online. The number of babies born to unmarried mothers aged between 30 and 44 increased by a staggering 17 per cent from 1999 to 2003.
In short, slowly but surely, men are being made obsolete as society embraces single motherhood as the equivalent of the nuclear family for fear of not offending the sisterhood.
And so, hey presto, the marginalisation of men marches on.
And if the child is born of a normal sexual encounter, the consequences for men can be equally dire, as they have no rights, only duties.
'If a woman gets pregnant she can abort - even without her husband's consent. If she chooses to have the child, she gets a baby and the man gets an invoice.
'Inarguably, a man should support his offspring, but by the same logic, shouldn't he have a say in whether his child is born or aborted?'
The number of children living in fatherless homes has tripled since 1960, from eight million to 24 million in the U.S.. So it comes as no surprise that 21st-century man feels isolated and increasingly obsolete.
'At the same time that men have been ridiculed in the public sphere, the importance of fatherhood has been diminished, along with other traditionally male roles of father, protector and provider, which are incredibly viewed as regressive manifestations of an outmoded patriarchy,' Parker writes.
She also examines the feminisation of education. There is overwhelming evidence now that boys' and girls' brains are wired differently, but over 20 years both in America and in the UK we have made learning harder for boys and more suitable for girls. The result, Parker says, is that the gap between young men's and women's academic achievements is widening.
In 2005, 133 women graduated from college in the U.S. for every 100 men. By the end of this decade that gap is expected to be 142 females for every 100 males.
And as ever the poorest and most deprived are the hardest hit. Among African Americans, the figures are far worse. Twice as many women as men graduate. Parker blames the achievement gap on the absence of fathers.
What is especially refreshing is that Parker's quest to Save The Males is not just about fairness to men. We need to do it, she says, not only 'because we love our sons but because we love our daughters'.
And because she believes, as many of us do, that the best building block for a stable and peaceful society is the traditional nuclear family.
'Part of our nation's strength has always been a function of its families. Restoring the family is critical to our survival in these untidy and dangerous times.' So, too, is 'respecting men and the important contribution they make to children's lives and society'.
Fathers are always portrayed as incompetent
Parker writes almost poetically about the ultimate beauty of men's innate character. When she looks at her own father and fathers around her, she concludes that being a dad is, in fact, the manliest thing a man can do.
It encourages responsibility, sacrifice and the ability to put others before yourself - all essential qualities to a functioning society, let alone a home.
'When we take away a man's central purpose in life and marginalise him from society's most important institution (the family), we strip him of his manhood.'
And it's not all we strip away, as studies have discovered here. We reduce a child's chance of a successful and happy life.
'Growing up without a father is the most reliable indicator of poverty and all the familiar social pathologies affecting children, including drug abuse, truancy, delinquency and sexual promiscuity. Yet some feminists and other progressives still insist that men are non-essential.'
The powerful argument Parker constructs is that unless we wake up, and wake up quickly, to the importance of men in family life, society as we know it is doomed. In the creation of a more femalefriendly world, we have unwittingly created a culture hostile to men, not in the workplace, but the most important place, the home.
How refreshingly honest, how devoid of political correctness or feminist dogma for a woman to argue for and ultimately celebrate the necessity and the goodness of men.
She rightly warns of the dangers to our society of a world without manliness. It's all very well for the armed forces to affect an equality between men and women, she says, but when the chips are down and a child or a society needs rescuing, it will not fall on the shoulders of our womenfolk.
And in an increasingly hostile world, we will need our men and we'll need them to be men, to display unashamedly the sheer physical strength and courage that even after a century of feminist intervention still dwarfs women's.
'In the coming years, we will need men who are not confused about their responsibilities to family and country.
'We need boys who have acquired the virtues of honour, courage, valour and loyalty. We need women willing to let men be men - and boys be boys.'
And we will need women like Kathleen Parker with the courage to fight for men. Saving the males, she argues, will also save women and children as we all 'stand to benefit from a society in which men feel respected and thus responsible'.
By engaging men's nobility and recognising their unique talents, we all benefit. And the process could start with us just being a bit nicer to them.
'It wouldn't hurt to fix a guy a burger now and then without the woman acting as though she's just established democracy in the Sunni Triangle.'
Chastened, I'm off to buy some burgers and a few buns.
• Save The Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care by Kathleen Parker, published by Random House
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Save the Males review:
War between the sexes gets fresh, new look
Sunday, July 20, 2008
SAVE THE MALES: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care,
by Kathleen Parker
Random House. 214 pages. $26.
BY MANDY TWADDELL Special to the Journal
“Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man?” Henry Higgins wanted to know in My Fair Lady. The war between the sexes, once defined by mystery and charm, has turned into a battleground where men are losing — badly.
What changed? Parker begins with the feminist movement of mid-20th-century America. There was the film Stepford Wives, books like The Feminine Mystique and In Another Voice, along with a surge in Women’s Studies as an academic discipline. An ideology took shape. Its goal was to elevate women in all areas of public life and to punish men for centuries of domination. Thus men as demons and women as victims replaced the earlier suffragette movement that aimed for voting rights and equality.
Parker, a syndicated journalist, does not want to turn back the clock. The point of her book is to highlight facts that need further inquiry. Here are a few of them: 1) A child traveling alone by air cannot be seated next to a stranger who is male: “What’s the message?” Parker asks. 2) Men are the fragile sex, more vulnerable to disease and a shorter lifespan. 3) Men are underrepresented in higher education and singled out as having traits that require alteration. Anthropologist Lionel Tiger notes: “ADD and ADHD didn’t exist until Ritalin did.”
Parker seems most alarmed by the suspension of due process, as women invite government to step in and referee family life. An aggrieved father, having lost custody of his children, asserts: “We face opposition from a half-trillion-dollar federal bureaucracy” that primarily serves women. Parker cites the response to the Duke lacrosse players as evidence of today’s knee-jerk attitude toward accusations of male beastliness.
There is an interesting chapter on sci-fi parenthood. While “the pill” gave women control over procreation, advances in fertility science along with stockpiles of sperm allow future generations to arrive without the participation of men. This trend puts men on the path to extinction, and for some women, that is a good thing.
Here’s where a sense of humor and a reality check come in. Despite the battle of the sexes, most men and women are attracted to one another. They like to be together. As the French often observe, “The more things change, the more they are the same.”
Men will survive.
SAVE THE MALES: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care,
jimandy111@cox.ne
Sunday, July 20, 2008
SAVE THE MALES: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care,
by Kathleen Parker
Random House. 214 pages. $26.
BY MANDY TWADDELL Special to the Journal
“Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man?” Henry Higgins wanted to know in My Fair Lady. The war between the sexes, once defined by mystery and charm, has turned into a battleground where men are losing — badly.
What changed? Parker begins with the feminist movement of mid-20th-century America. There was the film Stepford Wives, books like The Feminine Mystique and In Another Voice, along with a surge in Women’s Studies as an academic discipline. An ideology took shape. Its goal was to elevate women in all areas of public life and to punish men for centuries of domination. Thus men as demons and women as victims replaced the earlier suffragette movement that aimed for voting rights and equality.
Parker, a syndicated journalist, does not want to turn back the clock. The point of her book is to highlight facts that need further inquiry. Here are a few of them: 1) A child traveling alone by air cannot be seated next to a stranger who is male: “What’s the message?” Parker asks. 2) Men are the fragile sex, more vulnerable to disease and a shorter lifespan. 3) Men are underrepresented in higher education and singled out as having traits that require alteration. Anthropologist Lionel Tiger notes: “ADD and ADHD didn’t exist until Ritalin did.”
Parker seems most alarmed by the suspension of due process, as women invite government to step in and referee family life. An aggrieved father, having lost custody of his children, asserts: “We face opposition from a half-trillion-dollar federal bureaucracy” that primarily serves women. Parker cites the response to the Duke lacrosse players as evidence of today’s knee-jerk attitude toward accusations of male beastliness.
There is an interesting chapter on sci-fi parenthood. While “the pill” gave women control over procreation, advances in fertility science along with stockpiles of sperm allow future generations to arrive without the participation of men. This trend puts men on the path to extinction, and for some women, that is a good thing.
Here’s where a sense of humor and a reality check come in. Despite the battle of the sexes, most men and women are attracted to one another. They like to be together. As the French often observe, “The more things change, the more they are the same.”
Men will survive.
SAVE THE MALES: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care,
jimandy111@cox.ne
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