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I would like to join this discussion group. However if the only discussion is at 230 am (GMT, my time) on a weekday, I can't make that. When are the discussions to be? Only on the chat?
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Hi Raymond,
We'd love to have you join the book discussion. Because the chats are not convenient for people, we are holding the discussion via an e-mail list that I will be announcing shortly, so people can discuss the book when it's most convenient for them.
Scott
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The only problem for me is that if I order a book it will (often) take more than 4 weeks for it to arrive.
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A quick mention for cyberManbooks.com. It will be open in early 2002. This WILL have a Mens' Studies section.
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As it happens, I picked up a free copy of Who Stole Feminism? a few years ago; it's around here somewhere. I've never read it. Why? Because the title to begin with is garbage, so I didn't really expect to find anything of much value in the book. Nobody "stole" feminism. On the contrary, it's been feminism's overwhelming success which has laid bare for all to see its fundamental irrationality, hysteria (hint: check the etymology of this word) and hatred.
It seems that Christina Hoff Sommers, and a few other women, have, somewhat belatedly, begun to feel a trifle embarrassed by feminism's "excesses," so they're trying to do some damage control. I'm sorry, it won't work, not in the long run. Feminism was a lie in the beginning, it is a lie now, it will always be a lie. A new coat of makeup -- the eternal female solution to appearance problems, which are actually caused by what's below the surface, not what's on the surface -- won't make it not a lie.
I was more interested in Sommers' more recent, much-celebrated The War Against Boys. However, when I saw a copy at the library, I applied my usual test for books which purport to discuss "gender relations": I looked up "circumcision" in the index. As usual, I found only slight mention of this subject. The Infant Male Circumcision Program is no less than the pre-emptive, surgical first strike in the modern American "war between the sexes." It was begun long before Sommers, Gloria Steinem ("A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle"), Valerie Solanas ("The Society for Cutting Up Men," a.k.a. SCUM) or anyone now living was born; it has been fabulously successful, and is still firmly supported by all female "opinion leaders," from Dr. Laura through Ann Landers to NOW. When a book about "the war against boys" simply ignores that war's first and most important campaign, I can't find reason to take it very seriously.
Ms. Sommers may be a very nice person; she may even mean well. But the truth is she has not really even begun to address the subjects she appears to be exploring. There's nothing "revolutionary" in her work to get excited about. At best it may be half the truth; why not go for the whole?
This reminds me of when I hear people rejoicing because the IRS has "refunded" some of the money it extorted from them in the previous year. The truth is, the IRS never had any right to any of that money in the first place (in case you haven't heard, the income tax is voluntary); why celebrate when a thief gives back part of what was stolen? Just don't "contribute" in the first place, and avoid the whole business.
Feminism is a "philosophy" which proposes to divide humanity into two opposing camps, and set them at war. This makes about as much sense as a war between the right hand and the left. Feminism is entirely based on the profound wisdom of the average preadolescent Valley Girl: "Boys are Aliens."
If you buy feminism's basic premise, the most you can do is hope you won't be punished too severely for being male. And be pathetically grateful if you run across a "good cop" Big Sister who, out of the kindness of her gentle, "feminine" heart, decides to let up a little on the rubber hose treatment. But there is another alternative: you don't have to buy the premise.
"Kinder, gentler" feminism is still feminism. Why put up with this garbage at all?
I'll dig out the book, and take a look at it. And be interested to see what readers on this forum make of it.
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I just went and picked up the book, which so far has been interesting enough in it's attack on misinformation that even the credulous media bombs us with. I think it is very important that we 'know our enemy' by studying how they fight us. I don't think Sommers has yet clicked to the fact that she still holds to an ideology, that just in it's very name 'feminism', will continue to keep the sexes pretty divided.Anyway, off to the reading room! Count me in on the discussion.
Adam Smith
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