|
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
|
 |
|
|
|
by Anonymous User on Monday December 31, @09:18AM EST (#1)
|
|
|
|
|
I ordered it Nov 10th.
Try to order it direct.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
For what it's worth, my wife ordered it for me about two weeks ago from Barnes and Noble. It arrived a few days later. I know there's been talk here about not shopping at B&N, but she didn't know that. Anyway, they do seem to have it in stock.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Misandry, the hatred of men, is the opposite of misogyny, of which we've heard so much.
This is not true. If misandry were the "opposite" of misogyny, it would mean "love of women" and not "hatred for men." Likewise "love of women" is not synonymous with "hatred for men." misandry, simply means "hatred for men."
The trouble is that casual misandry has become so deeply embedded in the culture that we don't even see it any more.
What's this "we" stuff? :) I've seen it all along.
Over the past decade, large parts of the culture have come to favour "female" values over "male" ones. Many people (including many men) have come to believe that the virtues of expressiveness, feeling, connection, intuition, caring, community and egalitarianism are somehow better than the virtues of reserve, stoicism, action, hierarchy, duty, power, patriotism, discipline and technology. Estrogen good. Testosterone bad.
She hits the nail on the head here. Qualities viewed as "masculine" now have an evil connotation while qualities viewed as "feminine" are held up as qualities for which to strive. However, I would also maintain that the majority of the qualities she lists could be either masculine or feminine, depending upon who is the possessor of those qualities. I don't think we can say that testosterone is responsible for stoicism, patriotism, heirarchy, and reserve, to name a few.
First, it's too grab-baggy. Although their thesis is broadly true, the authors pound away with a blunt instrument, and too many of their examples are obscure and dated.
I found this to be true in several of the examples of misandry noted from the text of that book on this Web site. I honestly do not believe "Beetle Bailey" to be a misandrist comic strip. I *do* find Norelco, Hefty, and Reebok's recent anti-male campaigns to be misandrist.
Are men and women really polarized? They may be on TV sitcoms. But the authors present no evidence that they are so in real life.
I think we can prove the polarization in real life, although the authors may not have done so. The fact that the sitcoms portray women as superior can cause real-life women to feel that sense of superiority, which then leads to her humiliating her other (with sexist jokes or remarks) in front of her friends. Likewise, I have my own experiences with misandry being tolerated in the workplace while misogyny is not.
Maybe I'm trivializing, but it seems to me the war between the sexes is finally on the wane. The counter-revolution has been under way for quite some time now, and backlash books are a bigger industry now than man-bashing ones.
I disagree with this completely. Obviously, male-bashing books are still big business. Otherwise, we wouldn't have authors like Bob McElvaine (Eve's Seed) still trying to cash in on it. Also, if you ask an average joe on the street if he knows what "The Feminine Mystique" is, the answer is probably "yes." Ask him what "The Myth of Male Power," "Spreading Misandry," or "The War Against Boys" is and he probably won't know.
Since Sept. 11, all those despised male values have galloped right back into fashion.
This isn't exactly true, either. The "manly man" galloped back into fashion for a couple of short weeks, but now we're right back into the hatred. Witness all the posts about misandrist advertising and misandrist books here since Sept. 11.
In any event, I still don't have my copy of this book, either. I'm anxiously awaiting it. Once I've read it, I will probably post my own review.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Anyone know how to contact the author of that review? I'd like to send her my comments.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
mwente@globeandmail.ca
careful,with,this,one...
her,consideration,of,male,issues,is,sporadic,and,I 'd,speculate,,driven,a,bit,by,some,male,relative,r ather,than,philosophical
sorry,keyboard,problem,lost,spacebar!!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
by Anonymous User on Monday December 31, @02:20PM EST (#6)
|
|
|
|
|
Your points are well taken. Many thanks.
I would like to add my own response to the reviewer's comment, "Spreading Misandry is rather earnest and humourless, which perhaps reflects its quasi-academic roots." I agree with this, but I might have put it less diplomatically. Based on the first fifty pages of the book (which is far as I've read), I would say that the writing in this book varies from smooth and polished to awkward and hard-to-follow. I'm guessing that this reflects the book's dual authorship: one author is a professional writer and the other an academic. But despite my misgivings about its style, I look forward to reading the rest of it and the two volumes to follow.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
by Anonymous User on Monday December 31, @04:43PM EST (#7)
|
|
|
|
|
I think it's probably quite hard to know which examples to choose for a book. By the time you decide and eventually publish, they're probably out of date, people don't remember them or were contentious in the first place. That's why they should have probably chosen more obvious or "higher impact" examples.
In the UK just now, misandry is rampant too. Anti male adverts, TV chat shows and columnists abound. I was watching a TV "Cock up" comedy show last week full of celebrity chef on-camera bloomers. It was being presented by Lisa Tarbuck (daughter of a well known UK comedian). Her "tongue in cheek" intros to each clip had a number of references to "fragile male egos". My antenna was up!
Then she introduced quite a famous clip by asking who had a sturdier stomach for some of the more "raw" things that a chef has to deal with. Her answer? "Women of course - men are nothing but gutless wimps in the kitchen". Then she showed the clip where a well known UK chef (Nick Nairn)was watching black pudding (you might call it blood sausage in the US) being made by an old lady in the traditional way with sheeps blood and oats. Nick Nairn had been out drinking the night before, and as the old woman hand mixed the blood/oats mixture, he had to leave her cottage, go outside and be sick. It was quite amusing and the old lady looked at the cameraman/producer/whoever with a look which seemed to say "That wasn't meant to happen, was it?".
However, as the audience laughed at the clip, Tarbuck said "I think the funniest part of that clip is the old lady's facial reaction - 2000 years of utter contempt captured in one look at the camera". Then they showed the old lady's "look" again. A gross misinterpretation of a fairly befuddled elderly person, who was not used to being on TV, all for a cheap anti male jibe.
I was not surprised to hear that when Tarbuck and her father appeared on a Celebrity "Who wants to be a millionaire" Special, the three charities that they chose to share their winnings included one called "Newcastle Women's Aid". Almost every other celeb chose Nationally recognised worthy causes.
Unfortunately, her star appears to be rising on UK TV.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Excellent book!
The first few chapters cover the history of misandry in film and media. Some background in film theory would help to give a reader greater depth to examine films. The current lens used to deconstruct films is a feminist one that started with Laura Mulvey (do a websearch to find more info).
I did feel that the authors would wander off topic in certain areas and flail around a bit from time to time but as a whole managed to stay on task. (One of the things I did was to try and determine which author wrote which chapter.)
I plan to use this book as a resource in the "gender in film and media" class I am taking next quarter. (yes I know gender is code for feminist but I love bucking the system and providing an alternative viewpoint)
Tony H
|
|
|
|
|
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
|
