" ... [the author] turns her impressive powers of reporting and analysis to the problems of men and comes up with a revolutionary diagnosis ..."--Jacket.
"If, as men are so often told, they are the dominant sex, why do so many of them feel dominated, done in by the world? Anyone who reads a magazine, watches a TV talk show, or listens to a radio call-in program has heard the evidence: America is having a masculinity crisis. Angry White Males have become a voting bloc. Dads are deadbeat. Boys are on the rampage. And with each schoolyard shooting and presidential peccadillo, with each corporate sexual harassment lawsuit and laid-off worker gone berserk, the media offer up the stock pronouncements: Men are out of control, overcontrolling, dangerous, violent, and even, it has been written, obsolete. Their troubles are said to be internal, the result of testosterone poisoning, Y chromosomes, attention deficit disorder, a warlike nature. Furthermore, it's charged, men have only themselves to blame, for aren't they the ones in control of the culture? Or are they? In Stiffed, Susan Faludi, the acclaimed author of Backlash, the convention-smashing manifesto on women's embattled status, turns her impressive powers of reporting and analysis to the problems of men and comes up with a revolutionary diagnosis. Men's problems aren't the product of biology, or of such trumped-up enemies as feminism and affirmative action, but of a modern social tragedy. By listening to men's stories in their own voices, by taking them on their own terms, Faludi uncovers a buried history- the untold story of how America made a glittering set of promises to the men of the baby-boom generation ... and proceeded to break every one of them. The betrayal of the American man has been perpetrated on many fronts, from the boardroom to the football stadium, from the army recruitment center to the suburban living room. Stiffed takes us on a journey through a contemporary masculine landscape littered with broken promises and into the lives of individual men whose accounts reveal the heart of the male dilemma. With an empathetic vision that breaks down the familiar lines of gender battle, Faludi travels deep into the meaning of male anguish. She intimately chronicles the struggles of industrial workers, sports fans, combat veterans, evangelical husbands, media executives, movie stars, porn actors, militiamen, astronauts, and "bad" boys--whose sense that they've lost their skills, jobs, civic roles, wives, teams, and secure futures is only one symptom of a larger and more profound collapse. Faludi pinpoints men's greatest antagonist and discovers that it is not what conventional wisdom would have us believe. What keeps men from revolting against their circumstances? Faludi's explanation for that mystery opens up the possibility that men's coming rebellion could emancipate both sexes from their true and mutual enemy, a cultural force that constrains us all. Stiffed is a major reassessment of what it is to be a man in modern America. The national discussion it will surely provoke could shatter the old paradigm of men versus women and lay the groundwork for a culture that affirms the needs of everyone."--Dust jacket flaps.
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