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摘要
摘要
"Kimbrell offers a political manifesto around which men can gather to save their lives, save their friends and families, and save the earth." --Utne Reader American men are in crisis. We see the consequences all around us: the alarming increase in male unemployment and homelessness, punitive custody laws deprive men of their children, and high pressure competitive jobs that leave men vulnerable to stress-related diseases and substance abuse. As Andrew Kimbrell brilliantly shows, these are not the problems of "fringe" groups or misfits, but of every man in living and working in our society. How did this happen? How have downward mobility, negative male stereotypes, and societal indifference converged to threaten men's very lives? Andrew Kimbrell has seen the fear that men are living with and has heard their anxious voices. From the corporate executive facing downsizing to the disenfranchized African-American, Vietnam vet, and divorced father, men are in pain. In The Masculine Mystique, he traces the turbulent history that has brought men to this crisis. From the laws of enclosure that first separated men from their land centuries ago to the steep decline in real wages earned by American men in the last twenty years, Kimbrell explains the shifts that have steadily undermined men and created a destructive masculine mystique. As a lawyer, activist, environmentalist, and father, Kimbrell urges men to mount a campaign of social, political, and community action. In this fiercely reasoned, deeply persuasive book, Kimbrell encourages men to stand up and demand a better life, a better world. Through stories of men who are working to better their condition, he gives us much-needed models. His political manifesto outlines the platform men need to adopt on a personal, legislative and societal level. Because the time has come for men to act.
评论 (3)
出版社周刊评论
Unlike most books on the ``crisis of masculinity,'' this call to action by lawyer and environmentalist Kimbrell (The Human Body Shop) is neither an attack on nor a reaction to feminism. Rather, it advances the proposition that men, no less than women, have been victims of social change since the advent of the industrial revolution. The effect of such changes, Kimbrell argues, has been to turn workers into machines whose only concern is to turn out more products and for whom feelings are nothing but excess baggage. Thus the modern masculine mystique presents a gender model who is competitive, aggressive, violent, insensitive and hyperrational, a portrait accepted by sociobiologists, who maintain that these qualities are in the genes. Not so, says Kimbrell, who asserts that the resultant misandry has damaged men in their relations with women, their children and other men. After exploring precisely how men suffer from this stereotype, he issues ``a manifesto for men'' with recommendations to remedy the situation, none of them antifeminist and all of them achievable. An important analysis that recalls The Feminine Mystique (1963) of Betty Friedan. Author tour. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus评论
Kimbrell's prescription for the ``grim condition of the American male'' involves what he calls a gender revolution, one based on the rediscovery of masculinity as ``a primal generative and creative force.'' A public-interest attorney and environmental activist, Kimbrell offers sound analysis and remedies for some of the social ills that impact on the fears, confusions, and personal problems of men. He finds their origin in the Industrial Revolution, when individual family units were displaced from the land and self- sustaining farmers were turned into wage earners and city dwellers. The loss of independence was accompanied by a loss of both pride and a sense of responsibility. The ensuing glorification of competition and the profit-driven notion of ``success,'' coupled with the reality of the mass of men being relegated to menial jobs and repetitive factory labor, is manifest in a wide range of ongoing and often increasing male-oriented problems, from violence and depression to heart attacks and sexual dysfunction. Kimbrell disagrees that the so-called masculine traits of aggression, selfishness, and insensitivity are the ``inevitable result of biology.'' Masculinity itself has to be ``recreated'' in the public consciousness as a quality that stresses cooperation, efficiency, stewardship of the planet, and the nurturing of others. The goals and strategies of the male communityhis Manifesto for Menshould include a national ``father policy'' that erases fatherlessness by fighting for ``profather'' restructuring in the courts, on the job, in the welfare system, and throughout the government bureaucracy. Mentoring programs should direct men in actively aiding one another and their families, but also in seeing to the welfare of the unemployed, disabled veterans, minority males, men in prison, and the homeless. There are a few circular arguments and some repetition, but Kimbrell does seem to arrive at solutions that bolster men without having to denigrate women. (Author tour)
Choice 评论
Kimbrell's title is an exercise in wishful thinking, a hope that the work will serve to inspire a viable men's movement just as Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique (1963) helped launch feminism three decades ago. Aimed at readers along a wide spectrum of the male population, the book is largely a polemic against the sad state into which men of the Western world have fallen in the last half millennium. The prime cause for the descent of the gender is the industrial revolution. The coming of the machine age undermined the semi-idyllic world of yore, forcing men into lives of emotional impoverishment, destructive competition, psychological degeneration, moral corruption, and physical decline. All is not lost, however, for the author lays out a route to redeem the masculine soul. The task will be difficult, he explains, but by revitalizing the male community, providing proper education, and by redirecting government, the job can be done. Kimbrell's arguments contain bits of insight and wit, but accepting them entirely requires considerable faith, buttressed as they are by dubious statistical snippets, carefully selected historical examples, and supportive quotations of uneven usefulness. B. R. Burg Arizona State University